The New Dark Age

‘RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO’ initiative

Like the ‘Save Tibet’ campaign, the one-sided propaganda campaign and institutionalized big-money networking of the ‘Save Darfur’ movement compelled ordinary citizens to become active participants in ‘stopping genocide.’ A similar agenda is driving the new ‘RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO’ initiative. While their ideological programs are advanced through the Western mass media, organizations—e.g. the International Crises Group, Center for American Progress, International Rescue Committee, ENOUGH!—work to manufacture consent and channel popular consciousness through jingoistic sloganeering and humanistic language that offers ‘news’ consumers exactly what they want to hear: peacekeeping, human rights, democracy, sustainable development, participatory mapping, Africa for the African people, and ‘never again’ interventions against genocide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Senator Tom Daschle is a Special Policy Advisor for Alston & Bird, and an Honorary Senior fellow of the Center for American Progress (CAP), the nationalist U.S. big money ‘think tank’ behind a multitude of front groups with hidden foreign policy agendas around Uganda, Rwanda, Congo and Sudan.[49] These include the ENOUGH! Project, the new RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO initiative, the Genocide Intervention Network, the ONE Campaign and the International Crisis Group (ICG)—all of which somehow involve agents like John Prendergast, former national security insider for President Bill Clinton. It is interesting that a lot of the same people show up tied to different organizations involved in ‘grass roots’ campaigns to help Africa.

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

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

Daschle and Dole’s law firm, Alston & Bird, is a sponsor of the corporate ‘Millennium Promise’ project, and they provide pro bono legal services, in both the U.S. and Africa, for the Millennium Villages and Millennium Promise, both in Rwanda.[52] These programs are designed to put a ‘development’ face on Africa while maintaining structural inequality, protectionist trade barriers and military superiority.

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

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

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

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

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

BLESSED BE THE PEACEKEEPERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lemarchand makes the usual error of accepting the ‘clinical description of the atrocities inflicted on Tutsis’ at face value. How does he know they are all Tutsis and only Tutsis? Because African Rights says they are? Where does he get his information about ‘daily manhunts conducted on the hills’? Why would Lemarchand so quickly trust the claims of a report that he simultaneously castigates for its (authors’) extreme and obvious biases?

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

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

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

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

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

THE KANSTEINER CONNECTION

The Moto Gold Project is located in the Kilo Moto goldfields in the north east of the DRC, some 150 kilometers west of the Ugandan border town of Arua. Kilo Moto was President Joseph Mobutu’s private mine, but the project, at various stages, involved powerful Western interlocutors: Belgians Yves Le Norvan and the Damseau family; Roger Lemaire, a Houston (TX) insider; and an Israeli military agent identified as David Agnon.[68] Kilo Moto’s gold, then as now, usually exited Congo (Zaire) through remote airstrips.[69]

The present Moto Gold Mining ‘lease’—a massive land grab corruptly obtained—covers an area of approximately 1,841 square kilometers and involves sites at Durba, Watsa and Doko. Moto Gold’s partners in Orientale include Siemens and Ken Overseas. Siemens director Tiego Moseneke is also a director of PetroSA, a new South African oil minor poaching DRC oil concessions on Lake Albert.[70] Ken Overseas Company is involved in the Minière de Bakwanga (MIBA) diamond mines in Congo’s Mbuji-Mayi province. In their reports on war and plunder in DRC, the United Nations Panel of Experts named Ken Overseas in a MIBA mining consortium linked to Belgian tycoon Philippe de Moerloose and Israeli mining magnate Dan Gertler; both men have been flagged for arms trafficking.[71]

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

The balkanization of Congo appears to be a major objective behind the current organized chaos in the Great Lakes region. [73] Further, it is obvious that conflicts from within the U.S.—between the Department of State, Pentagon and intelligence agencies—are translating to regional warfare on the ground in, especially, Sudan, Uganda, and Congo.

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

Kansteiner is a director of the precious metal firm Titanium Resources Group, a company deeply tied to Sierra Rutile Limited, a firm pivotal to the bloodshed in Sierra Leone. [76] Sierra Rutile Ltd. director Sir Sam Jonah reportedly helped finance Rwandan RCD rebel groups in DRC while he was a CEO of Ashanti Goldfields; Jonah is also a director for Moto Gold.[77] Sierra Rutile is owned by Max and Jean-Raymond Boulle and Robert Friedland, ‘Friends of Bill’ Clinton who are linked to clandestine networks of offshore holdings and front companies involved in weapons trafficking, money laundering and human rights atrocities from Burma to the Congos to Mongolia.[78]

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

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

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

‘Its name notwithstanding, the ICC is rapidly turning into a Western court to try African crimes against humanity,’ writes Mahmood Mamdani. ‘It has targeted governments that are U.S. adversaries and ignored actions the United States doesn’t oppose, like those of Uganda and Rwanda in eastern Congo, effectively conferring impunity on them.'[79]

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

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

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

Only recently, as power shifts from the G.W. Bush power elite to the incoming Obama Administration—being packed with Clintonite friends and officials, and by Democratic Party financiers like diamond kingpin Maurice Tempelsman—has Nkunda or Rwanda been subject to any kind of ‘harsh criticism’. The New York Times article of December 3, 2008, is the perfect example of the ‘news’ media serving hidden agendas. In ‘Rwanda Stirs Deadly Brew of Troubles in Congo,’ the New York Times peddles the standard narrative about ‘genocide in Rwanda’ in 1994.

Suddenly, writes Jeffrey Gettleman, one of the NYT’s chief Congo propagandists of late, there is a ‘secret Rwandan brotherhood’ and Rwandan government officials are involved in the bloodletting and plunder in Congo.[80] Such ‘exposés’ appear only because power factions—in this case a right-wing Republican faction allied with the Bush administration—are exerting leverage through their mouthpiece, the New York Times, and thus mildly exposing the obvious links of the former Clinton administration—a competing power faction, more heavily comprised of right-wing Democrats—to war and covert operations in Congo. There is a similar political economy of intervention at work vis-à-vis Darfur, Sudan.

Suddenly it is beneficial to name a few names—names like Modeste Makabuza Ngoga—names that have been known and named before.[81] These New York Times articles are nothing more than expedience, tricks in a bag of tricks, as power jockeys for its positions, and for massive private profit, as we approach the zero hour and the twilight of savior Barack Obama’s coming, bringing ‘change’ to America, and the same old, new, humanitarian warfare to Africa. [82]

NOTES:

[1] There are exceptions to the rule, including the extensive publications by this author and those by Africa researcher David Barouski. See, e.g., David Barouski, ‘Mining in the Ituri Province of the Congo-A Contemporary Profile,’ Z-Net, April 15, 2008; and David Barouski, Laurent Nkundabatware, His Rwandan Allies, and the ex-ANC Mutiny: Chronic Barriers to Lasting Peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo, February 13, 2007.

[2] Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellon Books, 1999.

[3] Investigations into the 1994 events in Rwanda and documents presented at the International Criminal tribunal for Rwanda reveal a huge body of evidence supporting what soon become obvious conclusions.

[4] Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski, ‘Behind the Numbers: Untold Suffering in Congo,’ Z Magazine, March 1, 2006; and Human Rights Watch, The Curse of Gold, June 1, 2005.

[5] See: keith harmon snow, ‘Gertler’s Bling Bang Torah Gang,’ Dissident Voice, February 9, 2008.

[6] Private investigations, North Kivu, DRC, 2005-2007, and private communications, 2008.

[7] Private communications, July through November 2008.

[8] See: Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellon Books, 1999; and keith harmon snow, ‘Darfurism, Uganda, and U.S. War in Africa: The Spectre of Continental Genocide,’ Dissident Voice, November 24, 2007; private interviews, eyewitnesses working in western Uganda at the time, October 2007.

[9] The Acholi people—non-combatant men, but mostly women and children—have suffered decades of genocidal treatment by UPDF soldiers deployed by Yoweri Museveni, president in Uganda, and top military commanders Gen. James Kazini, Gen. Salim Saleh, Gen. Kahinda Otafiir, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, Lt. Gen. Katumba Wamala, Maj. Gen. Jim Owoyesigire, and Brig. Gen. Robert Rusoke.

[10] Private interview, eyewitness working in western Uganda at the time, October 2007; see also Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellon Books, 1999.

[11] Howard French, A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, Vintage, April 2005.

[12] Mahmood Mamdani, Understanding the Crisis in Kivu: Report of the CODESRIA Mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo September, 1997, Centre for African Studies University of Cape Town, November 20, 1998, http://hrp.bard.edu/resource_pdfs/mamdani.kivu.pdf.

[13] ‘ZAIRE: Peace Possible?’ Interview with Bill Richardson, PBS Online News Hour, May 9, 1997, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/may97/zaire_5-9.html.

[14] Friends of Rwanda advisory board: http://www.friendsofrwanda.com/foractivity/.

[15] ‘A Brief Profile of Joe Ritchie,’ The New Times, November 26, 2008, http://www.newtimes.co.rw/index.php?issue=13707&article=10610.

[16] Marc Kaufman and Robert E. Pierre, ‘Rich Brothers Mission to Save Afghanistan Stirs Suspicions,’ Washington Post News Service, International herald Tribune On-Line, November 9, 2001, http://www.uni-muenster.de/PeaCon/global-texte/g-notes/IHT%20RichBrothersMission-IHT.htm.

[17] Quotes are used because the ‘genocide’ label and realities on the ground are highly contested.

[18] Moto Gold Mines web site: http://www.motogoldmines.com/board_of_directors.9.html

[19] Private interviews, Bunia, Kisangani and Zani, DRC, March 26-28, 2007; and Mwana Africa presentation, 30th Minesite Mining Forum March 28, 2006: http://www.mwanaafrica.com/ir/files/presentations/2006/minesite_mar06.pdf.

[20] Mwana Africa presentation, 30th Minesite Mining Forum March 28, 2006: http://www.mwanaafrica.com/ir/files/presentations/2006/minesite_mar06.pdf.

[21] See: keith harmon snow, ‘Northern Uganda: Hidden War, Massive Suffering: Another White People’s War for Oil,’ Global Research, May 26, 2007.

[22] See: keith harmon snow, ‘Three Cheers for Eve Ensler?’ Propaganda, White Collar Crime and Sexual Atrocities in Eastern Congo,’ Z-Net, October 24, 2007.

[23] Jeffrey Gettleman, ‘Congo’s Riches, looted by renegade Troops,’ New York Times, November 18, 2008, p. 1, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/world/africa/16congo.html.

[24] See: keith harmon snow, ‘A People’s History of Congo’s Jean-Pierre Bemba,’ Toward Freedom, September 18, 2007.

[25] See: Dr. Enoch (Helan) Page, ‘‘Black Male’ Imagery and Media Containment of African American Men,’ American Anthropologist, March 1997, Vol. 99, No. 1, pp. 99-111.

[26] See e.g., William K. Lietzau, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/May2003/d20030522liet.pdf.

[27] Interview with human rights investigator, Bunia, DRC, March 23, 2007.

[28] Private communications, Orientale, DRC, November

[29] Private interview, Aru official, Aru, DRC, March 26, 2007.

[30] See: ‘An Industry Rebirth? Oil in the DRC,’ Consultancy Africa Intelligence; and Tower Resources: http://www.towerresources.co.uk/corporate.html; H Oil and Minerals Ltd. web site: www.hoilminerals.com.

[31] Tower Resources web site: http://www.towerresources.co.uk/operations.html.

[32] Ken Silverstein, ‘The Arms Dealer Next Door: International billionaire, French prisoner, Angolan weapons broker, Arizona Republican. Who is Pierre Falcone?’ In These Times, December 22, 2001.

[33] Christopher Hitchens, ‘Childhood’s End,’ Vanity Fair, January 2006, http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/01/hitchens200601.

[34] After querying Vanity Fair editors with a story idea about war in Africa, the editors responded that Christopher Hitchens is their sole source correspondent on Africa.

[35] See: Richard Bartholomew, American Pastor Helps SPLA Battle LRA in Sudan,’ January 25, 2005, http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2006/01/25/american-pastor-helps-spla-battle-lra-in-sudan/; and keith harmon snow, ‘Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia?’ Global Research, February 7, 2007, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717.

[36] Jo Becker, ‘Children as Weapons of War,’ Human Rights Watch World Report 2004, Human Rights Watch, January 2004, http://www.hrw.org/legacy/wr2k4/index.htm.

[37] Interviews with UN Official in eastern DRC, August 2006 and February 2007. See also: ‘U.S. asked to arrest Ugandan-American rebel Jongomoi Okidi-Olal—The real brain behind LRA leadership?’ Xinhua, April 9, 2006, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-04/09/content_4402556.htm.

[38] Mwana Africa presentation, 30th Minesite Mining Forum March 28, 2006: http://www.mwanaafrica.com/ir/files/presentations/2006/minesite_mar06.pdf.

[39] See: Charles Onyango Obbo, ‘Soon the Guns of Goma might be heard in Kampala,’ Monitor On-Line, November 19, 2008, http://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/11dd77ace1d4c3d0.

[40] Private interviews, Bunia and Kisangani, February and March 2007.

[41] The international rhino conservation programs at Garamba are reportedly somehow tied to the political interests of the opposition party in Zimbabwe; private interview, UN investigator, Kisangani, DRC 2007.

[42] See: keith harmon snow, ‘Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia?’ Global Research, February 7, 2007, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717.

[43] See: keith harmon snow, ‘Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia?’ Global Research, February 7, 2007, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717.

[44] ‘ICC calls for renewed efforts to arrest Joseph Kony,’ RNW International Justice Desk, October 6, 2008, http://www.rnw.nl/internationaljustice/icc/Uganda/081006-uganda-kony.

[45] Paul S. Reichler and Lawrence H. Martin. See: Public sitting held on Monday 18 April 2005, at 10 a.m., at the Peace Palace, President Shi presiding, in the case concerning Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda), International Court of Justice, CR 2005/7, 2005

[46] Ralph G. Kershaw, ‘Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: International Justice According to Washington,’ Covert Action Quarterly, No. 74, Fall 2002.

[47] Jeevan Vasagar, ‘Uganda hires PR agency to buff up its image,’ The Guardian, May 21, 2005.

[48] See: Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellon Press, 1999.

[49] http://www.americanprogress.org/aboutus/staff/DaschleSenatorTom.html.

[50] Private interview with UN special investigator XXX XXX, Kisangani, DRC, 2006; investigations in Goma and Bukavu, DRC, 2005-2007.

[51] See: ‘Senator Tom Daschle Leads Delegation in Rwanda,’ Alston & Bird web site, July 22, 2008, http://www.alston.com/firm/News/Detail.aspx?news=2612.

[52] Alston & Bird web site: http://www.alston.com/firm/News/Detail.aspx?news=2612.

[53] Private interview with UN special investigator XXX XXX, Kisangani, DRC, 2006.

[54] Investigations of ‘American Intelligence Fusion Cell,’ Kisangani, DRC, July 31, 2006.

[55] Investigations and interviews in Kisangani, DRC, 2006.

[56] Private interview with UN special investigator XXX XXX, Kisangani, DRC 2007.

[57] See: ‘Silverback Cargo Freighters Rwanda,’ Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, http://www.sipri.org/contents/armstrad/Air_Cargo_Operators/Silverback_Cargo_Freighters.html and Silverback Cargo Freighters web site: http://www.silverbackcargo.com/inside.php?photo.

[58] Marianna Brungs, ‘EU: Coalition of Leaders Calls for EU Force in Congo,’ Crisis Watch Press Release, Human Rights Watch, London, November 27, 2008.

[59] Private interviews, Bunia, DRC, February and March 2007.

[60] Private interviews, Bunia, Aru and Zani, February 2007.

[61] Renzo Martens, Enjoy Poverty, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, http://idfa.nl/en/festival/schedule/film.aspx?id=781e5666-0d52-43d5-ba66-67c6815ce198.

[62] See: keith harmon snow, ‘Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia? The New, Old, Humanitarian Warfare in Africa,’ Global Research, February 7, 2007, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717.

[63] Kevin Funk and Steven Fake, The Scramble for Africa: Darfur—Intervention and the USA, Black Rose Books, 2008.

[64] René Lemarchand, Scholarly Review: Rwanda: The State of Research, http://www.massviolence.org/Rwanda-The-State-of-Research?artpage=4.

[65] Private communication, Jean-Marie Higiro, October 17, 2008.

[66] Paul Rusesabagina, ‘Rusesabagina responds to Rwanda government book on ‘Hotel Rwanda’,’ EUX-TV (Brussels), April 12, 2008, http://eux.tv/article.aspx?articleId=20114.

[67] More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa, Council on Foreign Relations, Task Force Report Number 56, January 2006, http://www.cfr.org/publication/9302/#author.

[68] Private interview, keith harmon snow with OKIMO Company officials, Bunia, March 24, 2007.

[69] Private interview, keith harmon snow with OKIMO Company officials, Bunia, March 24, 2007.

[70] Legal Brief Today, July 27, 2006, http://www.legalbrief.co.za/article.php?story=2006072709081497; and ‘Local Companies in Scramble for DRC Oil,’ Johannesburg Sunday Times, August 18, 2008; and H Oil and Minerals Ltd. web site: www.hoilminerals.com/index.php/news/entry/local_companies_in_scramble_for_drc_oil/.

[71] The others included the Groupe Van De Ghinste, Demimpex, Chanic and OSS; both OSS and Demimpex are De Moerloose companies. See: Report of the United Nations Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Also see: keith harmon snow, ‘Gertler’s Bling Bang Torah Gang,’ Dissident Voice, February 9, 2008; and keith harmon snow, ‘Congo’s President Joseph Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?’ Toward Freedom, November 13, 2007.

[72] ‘Genocide and Covert Operations In Africa, 1993-1999,’ United States One Hundred Seventh Congress, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, First Session, 17 May 2001, comp. Centre for Research on Globalization: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD111A.html.

[73] ‘The U.S. (Under)mining Job of Africa’ : http://cryptome.org/us-africa.wm.htm.

[74] See the KING KONG series published by keith harmon snow and Georgianne Nienaber, Op-Ed News, 2007 and 2008.

[75] Africa Wildlife Foundation: http://www.awf.org/section/about/trustees.

[76] Titanium Resources Group, http://titaniumresources.com/about-us/management-team.

[77] See Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations In Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Books, 1999.

[78] See Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations In Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Books, 1999.

[79] Mahmood Mamdani, ‘The New Humanitarian Order,’ The Nation, September 29, 2008.

[80] Jeffrey Gettleman, ‘Rwanda Stirs Deadly Brew of Troubles in Congo,’ New York Times, December 3, 2008; and Jerome Delay, ‘Many of the most powerful people in Congo have close ties to Rwanda’s elite in Kigali,’ New York Times, December 3, 2008.

[81] See: Roxanne Stasyszyn, ‘A World Playground: Congolese People Sacrificed for International Games and Profits,’ Dissident Voice, and Global Research, November 8, 2008.

Keith Harmon Snow is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Keith Harmon Snow