Africa

The Truth About Diamonds…

June 20, 2012 By Chris Everard Leave a Comment

My name is Chris Everard - I have spent 17 years travelling to eleven countries investigating and reporting on how the super-wealthy families - who have become known as ‘the illuminati’ to many - gain their riches… I have established a monthly magazine which publishes fully illustrated reports and iBook/articles about the Aristocratic-Royal Elite, cover-ups, secret episodes of world history and other matters which are ignored by the mainstream media. FEED YOUR BRAIN MAGAZINE refuses all big corporate advertising and is instead funded by it’s readers via subscriptions. It gives us the the kind of editorial freedom which, say, the BBC do not have - for example, the Director General of the BBC is actually appointed by the Queen…

In this DIAMOND JUBILEE year, I decided to publish investigations into the DIAMOND industry - every diamond on the planet has been the result of some form of exploitation of people or the environment…

You can get a free copy of FEED YOUR BRAIN MAGAZINE by submitting your email in the little box at https://www.FeedYourBrainMagazine.com/ - this is a snippet of the kind of research and investigation I publish each month….

In the 40 years between 1952 - 1992 the Queen avoided paying tax. Does she really have any respect for the British people? She has almost completely avoided paying any contribution towards the upkeep of Britain. Now take a close look - a really close look - at her facial expressions on those rare occasions when the royal family step out onto the balcony at Buckingham Palace. Complete and utter control of the BBC newsfeeds has allowed - up until now - a very effective ‘news blackout’ on the investments of the royals - and their attitude towards the British working class…
Some of the Queen’s most important investments have been in the Nuclear electric industries… and DIAMONDS…

Fortunes have been made and lost in the age-old trading of diamonds. Three of the world’s largest diamonds are owned by the British Queen - whose real name is Elizabeth Saxe Coburg und Gotha (her name is not really ‘Windsor’ - that is a ‘styled’ title-name). The combined value of these diamonds is in excess of $1,000million dollars - perhaps as much as $2,000 million. If these diamonds were re-cut and sold, the accrued fund of money could be placed in a high return deposit savings account, producing an annual income which would provide enough cash to provide the National Health Service with Scanners and dialysis machines FOREVER. Additionally, African & Indian communities in the areas where the diamonds were originally discovered would also benefit from an annual income.

Diamonds are NOT rare - at the African Ekati diamond mine, they are transported on conveyer belts - in giant heaps. A direct result of diamond mining is the diversion of rivers to allow for the mining of alluvial diamond deposits. When the mine is depleted, the rivers are not redirected to their original courses, which in turn results in the pollution of waters and destruction of surrounding flora and fauna. The mining activities also degrade the surrounding land by increasing atmospheric air pollution, contaminating surface and ground water and increasing soil erosion and leaching. The pollution is, in the most extreme cases, leading to desertification and permanently changing land use from agriculture to waste, rendering it useless to traditional inhabitants when the diamonds have all been mined. In the short run the inhabitants of the region are suffering from sickness and disease related to contaminated drinking water supplies. Such diseases include dissentry, Malaria, schistosamiases and Biomphalaria pfeiffer. Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the Congo and Angola are the foremost sources for diamonds in Africa - all these countries have been thrown into civil war and chaos by British Military forces & mercenaries. The ensuing chaos guarantees that the diamond mining can go on unhindered by democratically elected leaders demanding a fair cut of the profits for the African people. The royal elite have mountains of diamonds in stock and carefully control the sale & distribution, giving the impression that diamonds are ‘rare’.

Just recently, Sierra Leone erupted into what the BBC described as “civil war”. The truth is that most of these ‘turf wars’ play into the hands of diamond prospectors, with the displacement of millions of Africans quite - just by chance, of course - enabling mining companies to set up shop, their facilities looking like high security prisons which mar the natural beauty of the landscape and strip the subterranean strata using high powered water hoses and acids in search of yet more shiny transparent crystals. There is, without question, a strange paradox, that many African villages rely on a single standpipe of water, whilst just yards away, high powered water hoses flush diamonds underground by workers who have to suffer the indignity of anal probes and x-rays as they leave their workplace, the bosses making sure that none of their modern slaves have swallowed a small uncut gem to allay the horrendous inequality of their society. (below): The Indian Koh-I-Nor diamond set into a platinum crown owned by Queen Elzabeth’s dead mother.

The royal greed for diamonds has scarred our wonderful planet. In Kimberly, South Africa, we see an abandoned mine which was dug by hand using local labourers who were paid pennies for their hard work in arduous conditions. The giant hole left behind after the royal-elite diamond traders moved on to trash yet another landscape could easily be converted into a hydro-electric power station to benefit the local community. It was abandoned in 1914.

The Russian ROMANOV royal family are cousins to the British-Bavarian house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Windsor. An orgy of top soil washing and feverish mining has left ridiculously huge chasms and black holes in the Rusiian countryside. A mine at Mirney in Siberia is 1,200 meters in diametre and more than 500 meters deep. The royals have left a giant sink hole at Yellowknife in Canada - a territory stolen from First Nation Canadian Indians - which is so big it can be seen from space. The Diavik diamond mine could easily be converted into a marine biology research station - but like so many other diamond mines, it will probably be left as an ugly scar on our planet.

In the 1930s, a third of British children suffered growth defects caused by malnutrition. This is the era in which queen Elizabeth II grew up - whilst beggars and child prostitutes fought hand and mouth for food and favour from the rich outside the walls of royal palaces, the young Elizabeth was being groomed to take her place as an adult princess - she had her own child sized six-roomed thatched cottage in the garden of the Royal Lodge at Royal Windsor Great Park (situated near Windsor Castle). The London Times reported; ‘The Small House is fully furnished with running water, electric light, and a wireless.’ Architect John Nash rebuilt the Royal Lodge for King George IV and it became one of the Queen Mother’s many homes. She died there, aged 101, after a century of indulgence, fine champagne and enjoying whole-body blood transfusions at the tax payer’s expense.

Since the 1800s, the British-Bavarian royal sovereign houses have been asset stripping Africa and India and building vast estates which are now almost impossible to value accurately. Their investments are global, with rumours suggesting that Queensland in Australia is actually owned by the royal Crown Estates (perhaps that would explain the reason for it’s name), and every building in Regent Street in central London is owned by the Crown Estates. Officially, the Crown Estates are custodians, merely owning properties on behalf of the British people - but that, as far as I am concerned, is nothing but window dressing and political double-speak - as at no time in history has any of the Crown Estates been sold off in order to build hospitals or fund public services. On the rare occasions when there are sell-offs, they are usually Leasehold, and the properties eventually return back to the Crown.

From 1953 up until 1992, the monarchy paid not a single penny in tax. More than 2,400 tax rises took place in that period, with the cost of goods being ramped due to massive amounts of duty being levied on them.
In 1992, a paltry £1million was begrudgingly handed over in ‘tax’ - perhaps this is the reason why the queen described 1992 as her “Anus Horribilis”. In the same year, a mysterious fire at Windsor Castle resulted in taxpayers being told that they would have no less than £30 Million taken from their wage packets to pay for the damage! Ten years later, in 2002, the Queen apparently was not required to pay tax on the cash bequeathed in her mother’s will. The Queen Mother often gave the impression that she was ‘broke’. But she owned not one, but TWO castles! Allegedly, £140 million was placed in Swiss Trusts for the benefit of her grandchildren… If true, then this shows that the Queen Mum was one of the wealthiest people in the world. She was allegedly in debt due to horse racing gambling fetishes - if this is true, then surely a 100 year old woman would not have needed TWO castles and one of these giant estates could have been commercialised or sold off or rented out as a hotel to take the burden off her ‘debts’.

THE CROWN’S ESTATES
So, let us now take a closer look at these so called ‘Crown Estates’… What we have here is a portfolio of some of the world’s most famous landmarks and buildings worth a conservative £6 billion, with urban properties valued at £4.2 billion, and rural holdings valued at £919.5 million; and an annual profit of £226.5 million - that’s almost £1 million profit per day earned from rental and lease incomes. The majority of the estate’s income is derived from urban cities - most notably properties in central London. The Crown’s estate also owns 272,000 acres (110,000 hectares) of agricultural land and forest, and, wait for it, more than half of the UK’s foreshore - beaches, ports, promenades, piers etc. It also includes Ascot racecourse and the aforementioned Windsor Great Park… I think you’re beginning to get the ‘big picture’…
This cosy little arrangement, where vast amounts of tax free cash is paid directly into the bank accounts of Royals has continued, with every succeeding sovereign renewing the arrangement made between King George III and Parliament and is now recognised as “an integral part of the Constitution [which] would be difficult to abandon”. That is, of course, an odd term - as Britain does not have an official ‘Constitution’.

The Crown Estates has an interesting history, where various monarchs have played a kind of ‘soft shoe shuffle’ moving assets in and out of the Crown Estates portfolio as and when their heavy drinking/heavy gambling/heavy tipping (delete as appropriate) habits needed. Upon King George III’s accession of the throne he ‘surrendered’ the income from the Crown lands to Parliament in return for a fixed civil list. What this means is that to this day there very often is a minister inside the Cabinet Office who is described as ‘Minister Without Portfolio’ and it is this minister’s responsibility to manage the Crown Estates. Old King George surrendered to parliamentary control the hereditary excise duties, post office revenues, and “the small branches” of hereditary revenue including rents of the Crown lands in England, (which amounted at that time to about £11,000) and was granted a ‘civil list’ annuity of £800,000 for the support of his household and the expenses of civil government, subject to the payment of certain annuities to members of the royal family. So, in other words, he forewent the few tens of thousands of peasant rents the Crown Estates were levying, handed over control to a puppet minister, and in exchange picked up nearly a £1 million tax free sum every 12 months. However, although the king had retained large hereditary revenues, his income proved insufficient for his expensive life style! Why? Because he used to reward friends with bribes and lavish gifts! Debts amounting to over £3 million during the course of King George’s reign were paid by Parliament, and the civil list annuity was then increased from time to time - leading to the situation we have today, where vast mortgages and massive ‘salaries’ are now paid to more than two dozen Royals who have seldom had ‘normal’ jobs.

55% of Britain’s foreshore is owned and operated by the Crown Estates - permission has been granted time and time again for ugly and dangerous nuclear reactors which belch radioactive waste into the English channel, North Sea and Irish Sea.

Filed Under: Africa, Banks, Corruption, Housing, Illuminati, Income Inequality, Nuclear, Poverty, Royal Family, Russia, Taxes, United Kingdom, War

Syrian Peace Deal: UN’s Cloak to NATO’s Dagger

April 10, 2012 By Aaron Jackson 1 Comment

Turkey begins fabricating “cross border” incidents to justify Brookings prescribed “safe havens” inside Syria.
by Tony Cartalucci on April 9, 2012

From the very beginning, US policy makers admitted that Kofi Annan’s “peace mission” to Syria was nothing more than a rouse to preserve NATO’s proxy forces from total destruction and create “safe havens” from which to prolong the bloodshed. It was hoped that with established “safe havens” in Syria, protected by Turkish military forces (Turkey has been a NATO member since 1952) violence and pressure verses the Syrian government could be perpetually increased until it finally collapsed and the carving up of Syria could commence.

Photo: Annan is a trustee of Wall Street speculator George Soros and geopolitical manipulator Zbigniew Brzezinski’s International Crisis Group (ICG), along side Neo-Conservative corporate lobbyist and warmonger Kenneth Adelman, US State Department-listed Iranian terror organization MEK lobbyist - General Wesley Clark, Wall Street-backed color revolution leader- Mohammed ElBaradei of Egypt, and Brookings Institution’s Samuel Berger. Serving as “advisers” to the International Crisis Group include, Neo-Conservative warmonger Richard Armitage, former Foreign Minister of Israel Shlomo Ben-Ami, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bank of Israel Governor Stanely Fischer, and President of Israel Shimon Peres. While Annan poses as a representative of the “United Nations” he is in reality representing the pro-regime change agenda of the ICG and the special interests that fund its work.

….

This has been confirmed by Fortune 500-funded, US foreign-policy think-tank, Brookings Institution which has blueprinted designs for regime change in Libya as well as both Syria andIran. In their latest report, “Assessing Options for Regime Change” it is stated (emphasis added):

“An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership.This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.” -page 4, Assessing Options for Regime Change, Brookings Institution.

Click to enlarge

Image: Also out of the Brookings Institution, Middle East Memo #21 “Assessing Options for Regime Change (.pdf),” makes no secret that the humanitarian “responsibility to protect” is but a pretext for long-planned regime change.

….

And while “peace” was being peddled by Soros-funded International Crisis Group trustee Kofi Annan, the US, UK, France, and members of the West’s proxy Arab League simultaneously called for Assad to stand down and withdraw troops from secured cities while openly declaring that arms and cash would continue to flow to the rebels. The “Friends of Syria” summit would even ludicrously declare that “wages” would be paid to rebels to continue their battle to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Clearly the label “peace deal” is inappropriate for a proposal that seeks to empower and indeed see one side prevail militarily over another whose hands are purposefully tied. It is an unconditional surrender to foreign-funded terrorists simply labeled as a “peace deal.”

The Brookings Institution’s “safe havens” and “humanitarian corridors” are meant to be established by NATO-member Turkey, who has been threatening to partially invade Syria for weeks in order to accomplish this. And while Turkey claims this is based on “humanitarian concerns,” examining Turkey’s abysmal human rights record in addition to its own ongoing genocidal campaign against the Kurdish people both within and beyond its borders, it is clear they are simply fulfilling the agenda established by their Western patrons on Wall Street and in the city of London.

Photo: Turkish tanks entering Iraq to raid Kurdish towns and hunt suspected rebels in 2008. More recently, Turkey has been bombing “suspected” rebel bases in both Turkey and Iraq, as well as conducting mass nationwide arrests. Strangely, as Turkey verifiably does what Libya’s Qaddafi and Syria’s Assad have been accused of doing, in all of their hypocrisy, are now calling for a partial invasion of Syria based on “humanitarian concerns.”

….Now, Turkey is fabricating stories involving Syrian troops “firing across” the Turkish-Syrian border. The New York Times published these bold accusations before admitting further down that “it was unclear what kind of weapons caused the injuries on Sunday around six miles inside Turkish territory,” and that “there were conflicting accounts about the incident.” As are all the accusations used by NATO, the UN, and individual member states to justify meddling in Syria’s affairs, these tales involve hear-say from the rebels themselves.

It is clear that Turkey, NATO, and the UN are attempting to set the pretext for the establishment of “safe havens” and “humanitarian corridors” intended to circumvent the UN Security Council which has seen attempts to green-light military intervention vetoed twice by Russia and China. As the UN “peace deal” deadline of April 10 comes and goes, we can expect an ever increasing din of propaganda purporting Syrian violations against Turkish sovereignty, the continued propaganda campaign accentuating the “victimization” of NATO’s death squads, and the public roll-out of Brookings’ Turkish established “safe haven” within Syrian territory.

Image: Some of the corporate sponsors behind the Brookings Institution, from whose playbook Kofi Annan is being directed in his disingenuous “peace mission” to Syria. (click image to enlarge)

Image: Just some of the corporate and “institutional” sponsors of the International Crisis Group, upon which Kofi Annan sits as a “trustee” with other dubious personalities including George Soros, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Israeli President Shimon Peres, Egypt’s Mohammed ElBaradei, and Neo-Cons Richard Armitage and Kenneth Adelman. (click image to enlarge)

….The UN “peace deal” was a rouse from the beginning. The West has no intention of leaving Syria intact and will seek all means by which to prevail in toppling the government, carving up the country along sectarian lines, plunging it into perpetual violence as it has Libya, and moving next toward Iran. While it is essential to expose the truth behind Syria’s unrest, is also important to identify the corporate-financier interests driving this nefarious agenda and boycott them entirely while seeking out viable local solutions to support instead. If none exist, it is our duty to use our time, money, attention, and resources to create such alternatives instead of perpetuating the self-serving agenda unfolding before us.

Ultimately it is “we the people” paying into this current paradigm that allows it to continue moving forward, therefore it by necessity must be “we the people” who undermine and ultimately replace it.

Source: https://landdestroyer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/syrian-peace-deal-uns-cloak-to-natos.html

Filed Under: Africa, British Petroleum, China, Corporations, France, Genocide, Human Rights, Iran, Libya, Military Industrial Complex, NATO, Russia, Safety, Syria, Terrorism, Turkey, United Kingdom, United Nations

US Escalates Role in Somalia War

November 25, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

With the latest invasion by Ethiopian forces, the US has yet another proxy force on the ground in Somalia, fighting against the al-Shabaab militant faction, which itself exists primarily in response to foreign invasions.

Between the US-subsidized “transitional” government. the African Union forces, Ethiopia and the Kenyan invasion force, the US has several proxies in this fight, and has pumped more than half a billion dollars into funding the assorted armies since 2007.

That cost is likely to rise considerably, and the Obama Administration is also intensifying its direct involvement in the nation,

US meddling in Somalia is a tradition which dates back for decades, but with ever increasing numbers of foreign troops in the nation, all of them at least partially on the US dime, it seems that meddling is getting worse by the year, and accomplishing very little.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/us-escalates-role-in-somalia-war.html

Filed Under: Africa, USA, War

Libya, Getting it Right: A Revolutionary Pan-African Perspective

November 13, 2011 By T Kelly 1 Comment

Thousands of Indians, Egyptians, Chinese, Filipinos, Turks, Germans, English, Italians, Malaysians, Koreans and a host of other nationalities are lining up at the borders and the airport to leave Libya.

It begs the question: What were they doing in Libya in the first place? Unemployment figures, according to the Western media and Al Jazeera, are at 30%. If this is so, then why all these foreign workers?

For those of us who have lived and worked in Libya, there are many complexities to the current situation that have been completely overlooked by the Western media and ‘Westoxicated’ analysts, who have nothing other than a Eurocentric perspective to draw on. Let us be clear - there is no possibility of understanding what is happening in Libya within a Eurocentric framework. Westerners are incapable of understanding a system unless the system emanates from or is attached in some way to the West. Libya’s system and the battle now taking place on its soil, stands completely outside of the Western imagination.

News coverage by the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera has been oversimplified and misleading. An array of anti-Qaddafi spokespersons, most living outside Libya, have been paraded in front of us - each one clearly a counter-revolutionary and less credible than the last. Despite the clear and irrefutable evidence from the beginning of these protests that Muammar Qaddafi had considerable support both inside Libya and internationally, not one pro-Qaddafi voice has been allowed to air. The media and their selected commentators have done their best to manufacture an opinion that Libya is essentially the same as Egypt and Tunisia and that Qaddafi is just another tyrant amassing large sums of money in Swiss bank accounts. But no matter how hard they try, they cannot make Qaddafi into a Mubarak or Libya into Egypt.

Gaddafi waves to demonstrators gathered in Benghazi to show support for his return to office after he resigned as leader of the Revolutionary Command Council. The council refused to accept his resignation.

The first question is: Is the revolt taking place in Libya fuelled by a concern over economic issues such as poverty and unemployment as the media would have us believe? Let us examine the facts.

Under the revolutionary leadership of Muammar Qaddafi, Libya has attained the highest standard of living in Africa. In 2007, in an article which appeared in the African Executive Magazine, Norah Owaraga noted that Libya, “unlike other oil producing countries such as Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, utilized the revenue from its oil to develop its country. The standard of living of the people of Libya is one of the highest in Africa, falling in the category of countries with a GNP per capita of between USD 2,200 and 6,000.”

This is all the more remarkable when we consider that in 1951 Libya was officially the poorest country in the world. According to the World Bank, the per capita income was less than $50 a year - even lower than India. Today, all Libyans own their own homes and cars. Two Fleet Street journalists, David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, who are by no means supporters of the Libyan revolution, had this to say:

“The young people are well dressed, well fed and well educated. Libyans now earn more per capita than the British. The disparity in annual incomes… is smaller than in most countries. Libya’s wealth has been fairly spread throughout society.Every Libyan gets free, and often excellent, education, medical and health services. New colleges and hospitals are impressive by any international standard. All Libyans have a house or a flat, a car and most have televisions, video recorders and telephones. Compared with most citizens of the Third World countries, and with many in the First World, Libyans have it very good indeed.”¹

Large scale housing construction has taken place right across the country. Every citizen has been given a decent house or apartment to live in rent-free. In Qaddafi’s Green Book, it states: ”The house is a basic need of both the individual and the family, therefore it should not be owned by others.” This dictum has now become a reality for the Libyan people.

Large scale agricultural projects have been implemented in an effort to “make the desert bloom” and achieve self-sufficiency in food production. Any Libyan who wants to become a farmer is given free use of land, a house, farm equipment, some livestock and seed.

Today, Libya can boast one of the finest health care systems in the Arab and African World. All people have access to doctors, hospitals, clinics and medicines, completely free of all charges. The fact is that the Libyan revolution has achieved such a high standard of living for its people that they import labor from other parts of the world to do the jobs that the unemployed Libyans refuse to do. Libya has been called by many observers inside and out, “a nation of shop keepers.” It is part of the Libyan Arab psyche to own your own small business and this type of small scale private enterprise flourishes in Libya. We can draw on many examples of Libyans with young sons who expressed the idea that it would be shameful for the family if these same young men were to seek menial work and instead preferred for them to remain at home supported by the extended family.

No system is perfect, and Libya is no exception. They suffered nine years of economic sanctions and this caused huge problems for the Libyan economy. Also, there is nowhere on planet earth that has escaped the monumental crisis of neo-liberal capitalism. It has impacted everywhere - even on post-revolutionary societies that have rejected “free market” capitalism. However, what we are saying is that severe economic injustice is not at the heart of this conflict. So then, what is?

A Battle for Africa

The battle that is being waged in Libya is fundamentally a battle between Pan-African forces on the one hand, who are dedicated to the realization of Qaddafi’s vision of a united Africa, and reactionary racist Libyan Arab forces who reject Qaddafi’s vision of Libya as part of a united Africa and want to ally themselves instead with the EU and look toward Europe and the Arab World for Libya’s future.

One of Muammar Qaddafi’s most controversial and difficult moves in the eyes of many Libyans was his championing of Africa and his determined drive to unite Africa with one currency, one army and a shared vision regarding the true independence and liberation of the entire continent. He has contributed large amounts of his time and energy and large sums of money to this project and like Kwame Nkrumah, he has paid a high price.

Many of the Libyan people did not approve of this move. They wanted their leader to look towards Europe. Of course, Libya has extensive investments and commercial ties with Europe but the Libyans know that Qaddafi’s heart is in Africa.

Many years ago, Qaddafi told a large gathering, which included Libyans and revolutionaries from many parts of the world, that the Black Africans were the true owners of Libya long before the Arab incursion into North Africa, and that Libyans need to acknowledge and pay tribute to their ancient African roots. He ended by saying, as is proclaimed in his Green Book, that “the Black race shall prevail throughout the world.” This is not what many Libyans wanted to hear. As with all fair skinned Arabs, prejudice against Black Africans is endemic.

Brother Leader, Guide of the Revolution and King of Kings are some of the titles that have been bestowed on Qaddafi by Africans. Only last month Qaddafi called for the creation of a Secretariat of traditional African Chiefs and Kings, with whom he has excellent ties, to co-ordinate efforts to build African unity at the grassroots level throughout the continent, a bottom up approach, as opposed to trying to build unity at the government/state level, an approach which has failed the African unification project since the days of Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure. This bottom up approach is widely supported by many Pan Africanists worldwide.

African Mercenaries or Freedom Fighters?

In the past week, the phrase “African mercenaries” has been repeated over and over by the media and the selected Libyan citizens they choose to speak to have, as one commentator put it, “spat the word ‘African’ with a venomous hatred.”

The media has assumed, without any research or understanding of the situation because they are refusing to give any air time to pro-Qaddafi forces, that the many Africans in military uniform fighting alongside the pro-Qaddafi Libyan forces are mercenaries. However, it is a myth that the Africans fighting to defend the Jamahiriya and Muammar Qaddafi are mercenaries being paid a few dollars and this assumption is based solely on the usual racist and contemptuous view of Black Africans.

Actually, in truth, there are people all over Africa and the African Diaspora who support and respect Muammar Qaddafi as a result of his invaluable contribution to the worldwide struggle for African emancipation.

Over the past two decades, thousands of Africans from all over the continent were provided with education, work and military training - many of them coming from liberation movements. As a result of Libya’s support for liberation movements throughout Africa and the world, international battalions were formed. These battalions saw themselves as a part of the Libyan revolution, and took it upon themselves to defend the revolution against attacks from within its borders or outside.

These are the Africans who are fighting to defend Qaddafi and the gains of the Libyan revolution to their death if need be. It is not unlike what happened when internationalist battalions came to the aid of the revolutionary forces against Franco’s fascist forces in Spain.

Malian political analyst, Adam Thiam, notes that “thousands of Tuaregs who were enrolled in the Islamic Legion established by the Libyan revolution remained in Libya and they are enrolled in the Libyan security forces.”

African Migrants under Attack

As African fighters from Chad, Niger, Mali, Ghana, Kenya and Southern Sudan (it should be noted that Libya supported the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army under John Garang in their war of liberation against Arab hegemonists in Khartoum, while all other Arab leaders backed the Khartoum regime) fight to defend this African revolution, a million African refugees and thousands of African migrant workers stand the risk of being murdered as a result of their perceived support for Qaddafi.

One Turkish construction worker described a massacre: “We had 70-80 people from Chad working for our company. They were cut dead with pruning shears and axes, attackers saying: ‘You are providing troops for Qaddafi. The Sudanese were also massacred. We saw it for ourselves.”

This is a far cry from what is being portrayed in the media as “peaceful protesters” being set upon by pro-Qaddafi forces. In fact, footage of the Benghazi revolt shows men with machetes, AK 47s and RPGs. In the Green Book, Qaddafi argues for the transfer of all power, wealth and arms directly into the hands of the people themselves. No one can deny that the Libyan populace is heavily armed. This is part of Qaddafi’s philosophy of arms not being monopolised by any section of the society, including the armed forces. It must be said that it is not usual practice for tyrants and dictators to arm their population.

Qaddafi has also been very vocal regarding the plight of Africans who migrate to Europe, where they are met with racism, more poverty, violence at the hands of extreme right wing groups and in many cases death, when the un-seaworthy boats they travel in sink.

Moved by their plight, a conference was held in Libya in January this year, to address their needs and concerns. More than 500 delegates and speakers from around the world attended the conference titled “A Decent Life in Europe or a Welcome Return to Africa.”

“We should live in Europe with decency and dignity,” Qaddafi told participants. “We need a good relationship with Europe not a relationship of master and slave. There should be a strong relationship between Africa and Europe. Our presence should be strong, tangible and good. It’s up to you as the Africans in the Diaspora. We have to continue more and more until the unity of Africa is achieved.

From now on, by the will of God, I will assign teams to search, investigate and liaise with the Africans in Europe and to check their situations…this is my duty and role towards the sons of Africa; I am a soldier for Africa. I am here for you and I work for you; therefore, I will not leave you and I will follow up on your conditions.”

Joint committees of African migrants, the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union and international organizations present at the conference discussed the need to coordinate the implementation of many of the conference’s recommendations.

Statements are appearing all over the internet from Africans who have a different view to that being perpetuated by those intent on discrediting Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution. One African commented:

When I was growing up I first read a comic book of his revolution at the age of ten. Since then, as dictators came and went, Colonel Qaddafi has made an impression on me as a man who truly loves Africa! Libyans could complain that he spent their wealth on other Africans! But those Africans he helped put in power, built schools and mosques and brought in many forms of development showing that Africans can do for themselves. If those Africans would abandon him to be swallowed by Western Imperialism and their lies and just let him go as a dictator in the name of so-called democracy…if they could do that…they should receive the names and fate that the Western press gives our beloved leader. If there is any one person who was half as generous as he is, let them step forward.

And another African comments:

This man has been accused of many things and listening to the West who just recently were happy to accept his generous hospitality, you will think that he is worse than Hitler. The racism and contemptuous attitudes of Arabs towards Black Africans has made me a natural sceptic of any overtures from them to forge a closer link with Black Africa but Qaddafi was an exception.

Opportunistic Revolt

King of kings: few men have been so greatly misunderstood

This counter-revolutionary revolt caught everyone, including the Libyan authorities, by surprise. They knew what the media is not reporting: that unlike Egypt and Tunisia and other countries in the region, where there is tremendous poverty, unemployment and repressive pro-Western regimes, the Libyan dynamic was entirely different. However, an array of opportunistic forces, ranging from so-called Islamists, Arab-Supremacists, including some of those who have recently defected from Qaddafi’s inner circle, have used the events in neighbouring countries as a pretext to stage a coup and to advance their own agenda for the Libyan nation. Many of these former officials were the authors of, and covertly fuelled the anti-African pogrom in Libya a few years ago when many Africans lost their lives in street battles between Africans and Arab Libyans. This was a deliberate attempt to embarrass Qaddafi and to undermine his efforts in Africa.

Qaddafi has long been a thorn in the Islamists side. In his recent address to the Libyan people, broadcast from the ruins of the Bab al-Azizia compound bombed by Reagan in 1986, he asked the “bearded ones” in Benghazi and Jabal al Akhdar where they were when Reagan bombed his compound in Tripoli, killing hundreds of Libyans, including his daughter. He said they were hiding in their homes applauding the US and he vowed that he would never allow the country to be returned to the grip of them and their colonial masters.

Al Qaeda is in the Sahara on his borders and the International Union of Muslim Scholars is calling for him to be tried in a court. One asks why are they calling for Qaddafi’s blood? Why not Mubarak who closed the Rafah Border Crossing while the Israeli’s slaughtered the Palestinians in Gaza. Why not Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Blair who are responsible for the murder of millions of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan?

“An array of opportunistic forces, ranging from so-called Islamists, Arab-Supremacists, including some of those who have recently defected from Qaddafi’s inner circle, have used the events in neighbouring countries as a pretext to stage a coup.”

The answer is simple - because Qaddafi committed some “cardinal sins.” He dared to challenge their reactionary and feudal notions of Islam. He has upheld the idea that every Muslim is a ruler (Caliph) and does not need the Ulema to interpret the Quran for them. He has questioned the Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda from a Quranic/theological perspective and is one of the few political leaders equipped to do so. Qaddafi has been called a Mujaddid (this term refers to a person who appears to revive Islam and to purge it of alien elements, restoring it to its authentic form) and he comes in the tradition of Jamaludeen Afghani and the late Iranian revolutionary, Ali Shariati.

Libya is a deeply traditional society, plagued with some outmoded and bankrupt ideas that continue to surface to this day. In many ways, Qaddafi has had to struggle against the same reactionary aspects of Arab culture and tradition that the holy prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was struggling against in 7th century Arabia - Arab supremacy/racism, supremacy of family and tribe, historical feuding tribe against tribe and the marginalisation of women. Benghazi has always been at the heart of counter-revolution in Libya, fostering reactionary Islamic movements such as the Wahhabis and Salafists. It is these people who founded the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group based in Benghazi which allies itself with Al Qaeda and who have, over the years, been responsible for the assassination of leading members of the Libyan revolutionary committees.

These forces hate Qaddafi’s revolutionary reading of the Quran. They foster an Islam concerned with outward trappings and mere religiosity, in the form of rituals, which at the same time is feudal and repressive, while rejecting the liberatory spirituality of Islam.

While these so-called Islamists are opposed to Western occupation of Muslim lands, they have no concrete programmatic platform for meaningful socio-economic and political transformation to advance their societies beyond semi-feudal and capitalist systems which reinforce the most backward and reactionary ideas and traditions. Qaddafi’s political philosophy, as outlined in the Green Book, rejects unfettered capitalism in all its manifestations, including the “State capitalism” of the former communist countries and the neo-liberal capitalist model that has been imposed at a global level. The idea that capitalism is not compatible with Islam and the Quran is not palatable to many Arabs and so-called Islamists because they hold onto the fallacious notion that business and trade is synonymous with capitalism.

Getting it Right

Whatever the mistakes made by Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution, its gains and its huge contribution to the struggle of oppressed peoples worldwide cannot and must not be ignored. Saif Qaddafi, when asked about the position of his father and family, said this battle is not about one man and his family, it is about Libya and the direction it will take.

That direction has always been controversial. In 1982, The World Mathaba was established in Libya. Mathaba means a gathering place for people with a common purpose. The World Mathaba brought together revolutionaries and freedom fighters from every corner of the globe to share ideas and develop their revolutionary knowledge. Many liberation groups throughout the world received education, training and support from Muammar Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution including ANC, AZAPO, PAC and BCM of Azania (South Africa), SWAPO of Namibia, MPLA of Angola, The Sandinistas of Nicaragua, The Polisario of the Sahara, the PLO, The Native American Movements throughout the Americas, The Nation of Islam led by Louis Farrakhan to name but a few. Nelson Mandela called Muammar Qaddafi one of this century’s greatest freedom fighters, and insisted that the eventual collapse of the apartheid system owed much to Qaddafi and Libyan support. Mandela said that in the darkest moments of their struggle, when their backs were to the wall, it was Muammar Qaddafi who stood with them. The late African freedom fighter, Kwame Ture, referred to Qaddafi as “a diamond in a cesspool of African misleaders.”

The hideous notion being perpetuated by the media and reactionary forces, inside and outside of Libya, that this is just another story of a bloated dictatorship that has run its course is mis-information and deliberate distortion. Whatever one’s opinions of Qaddafi the man, no one can deny his invaluable contribution to human emancipation and the universal truths outlined in his Green Book.

Progressive scholars in many parts of the world, including the West, have acclaimed The Green Book as an incisive critique of capitalism and the Western Parliamentary model of multi-party democracy. In addition, there is no denying that the system of direct democracy posited by Qaddafi in The Green Book offers an alternative model and solution for Africa and the Third World, where multi-party so-called democracy has been a dismal failure, resulting in poverty, ethnic and tribal conflict and chaos.

Every revolution, since the beginning of time, has defended itself against those who would want to roll back its gains. Europeans should look back into their own bloody history to see that this includes the American, French and Bolshevik revolutions. Marxists speak of Trotsky and Lenin’s brutal suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion by the Red Army as being a “tragic necessity.”

Let’s get it right: The battle in Libya is not about peaceful protestors versus an armed and hostile State. All sides are heavily armed and hostile. The battle being waged in Libya is essentially a battle between those who want to see a united and liberated Libya and Africa, free of neo-colonialism and neo-liberal capitalism and free to construct their own system of governance compatible with the African and Arab personalities and cultures and those who find this entire notion repugnant. And both sides are willing to pay the ultimate price to defend their positions.

Make no mistake, if Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution are defeated by this opportunistic conglomerate of reactionaries and racists, then progressive forces worldwide and the Pan African project will suffer a huge defeat and set back.

Source: https://www.sott.net/articles/show/237039-Libya-Getting-it-Right-A-Revolutionary-Pan-African-Perspective

Filed Under: Africa, Banks, Capitalism, Censorship, Corporations, Libya, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, Oil, Politics, Population, Poverty, Propaganda, Rights, Torture, USA, War

The real killers: American trophy hunters drive African lions closer to extinction

November 11, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

African lions are being driven towards extinction by American hunters determined to bag trophies, wildlife organisations have warned.

The lions, already threatened by conflict with farmers over land and by shrinking habitats, are being driven to the brink by the increasing demand from the U.S. for personal trophies, such as lion skins, and a growing trade in animal parts.

Jeff Flocken, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said: ‘The king of the jungle is heading toward extinction, and yet Americans continue to kill lions for sport. It is time for this senseless killing and unsustainable practice to stop.’

A coalition of wildlife organisations has petitioned the White House to list the African lion as an endangered species and ban the import of hunting trophies such as skins, claws and skulls, which can sell for thousands of dollars.

The coalition, which includes IFAW, the Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society International, Born Free and Defenders of Wildlife, said that two-thirds of the lions hunted for sport were taken to the U.S. in the past 10 years.

They said that at least 5,663 lions were traded for recreation between 1998 and 2008, with 64 percent of the resulting trophies being imported into America.

There were up to 200,000 lions in Africa 100 years ago, said the coalition. That figure has now fallen to between 23,00 and 40,000, with lions extinct in 26 countries.

The practice is made worse by the hunters’ desire to bag a dominant male, according to a report in The Guardian. The death of the leader makes the pride unstable, with the new dominant male often killing all the cubs to preserve his position. Mr Flocken said: ‘The countries that allow hunting have the worst drops in lion populations.’

Hunters are by no means the only threat. The human population in Afria, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, is growing rapidly and could hit 1.75 billion by 2050. Wilderness areas are being encroached upon to make room for agriculture and to build roads – such as the controversial highway across the Serengeti.

Some conservationists argue that a total ban on hunting is unnecessary. They claim that responsible hunting could in some instances help lion populations by conserving wilderness areas.

Filed Under: Africa, Animal Rights, Capitalism, Environment, Hunting, Protests, Rights Tagged With: Hunting

Vulture Stalking a Child: Is This Iconic Enough For You?

November 9, 2011 By T Kelly 2 Comments

The Photographer committed suicide days after taking this photo.

Reports suggested that the child probably died.

In March 1993, photographer Kevin Carter made a trip to southern Sudan, where he took now iconic photo of a vulture preying upon an emaciated Sudanese toddler near the village of Ayod. Carter said he waited about 20 minutes, hoping that the vulture would spread its wings. It didn’t. Carter snapped the haunting photograph and chased the vulture away.

(The parents of the girl were busy taking food from the same UN plane Carter took to Ayod).

The photograph was sold to The New York Times where it appeared for the first time on March 26, 1993 as ‘metaphor for Africa’s despair’.

Practically overnight hundreds of people contacted the newspaper to ask whether the child had survived, leading the newspaper to run an unusual special editor’s note saying the girl had enough strength to walk away from the vulture, but that her ultimate fate was unknown.

Journalists in the Sudan were told not to touch the famine victims, because of the risk of transmitting disease, but Carter came under criticism for not helping the girl. ”

The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene,” read one editorial.

Carter eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for this photo, but he couldn’t enjoy it. “I’m really, really sorry I didn’t pick the child up,” he confided in a friend.

Consumed with the violence he’d witnessed, and haunted by the questions as to the little girl’s fate, he committed suicide three months later.

Source: https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/vulture-stalking-a-child/

Filed Under: Africa, Poverty

Hiding Africa’s looted funds: Silence of Western media

November 9, 2011 By T Kelly Leave a Comment

Quite often when you read newspapers, listen to radio and watch television in the West you learn how poor Africans are and how corrupt African leaders are. But you will never watch, read or hear anything in these media outlets about the role being played by Western banking institutions, property development and estate companies, the big corporations, and the Western political and business elite in promoting corruption in Africa. When it comes to Africa and the developing world, the Western media pretend to be doing a good job only when there is an embarrassing story or a scandal that undermines their credibility as watchdog of the state.

It is not uncommon to see poverty stricken Africans in poor living conditions being shown in documentaries and movies and on television screens in the West but the same documentaries and movies are always silent on the role played by the institutions in the West. Bribery as we all know involves a giver and a taker, but it is always the taker who is reported in media.

In many instances, as we shall soon see, bribes are offered in order to secure contracts or official favor or to induce officials to influence the outcome of a government decision. In other instances people become corrupt because of the existence of favoring conditions, as can be seen in most Western countries with their banking secrecy laws.

The media in the West tend to ignore the role of Western institutions for many reasons. One main reason they like to show the poverty level in Africa but refuse to show the role played by the Western banking, property and multinational corporations is the fear of losing revenue through advertising. Many of the media outlets survive through advertisements from the property, banking and multinational corporations so why would they want to incur their wrath?

Another reason is that the editors, program directors and the other big shots in the media are themselves shareholders of these banks and property companies, so why would they want to jeopardize the source of their own wealth? The enthusiasm with which CNN, BBC, ABC, CBS, ITN, SKYNEWS and other television producers portray Africa as poor and least developed is nothing like the way they report on the role played by the Western banking and other institutions.

They fail to tell the world that the looted funds that make Africans poor are indeed sitting in Europe, America, Australia, New Zealand and the offshore islands controlled by the West. They fail to tell the world that Africa would be a different place if all the stolen monies are returned, but would they ever raise a voice in support of such a laudable idea? Why would the media change the way they report when for centuries they have been the source of all the misinformation and misrepresentation of anything un-Western?

Corruption is rife in Africa because there are banking institutions in Europe – especially Switzerland, France, Jersey Island, Britain, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Austria, U.S. and many others – who accept money from African leaders without questioning the source of the money. According to the U.N., around $148 billion are stolen from the continent by the political leaders, the business elite and civil servants every year with collusion and connivance of banking industries in Europe and North America.

Corruption is rife in Africa because there are banking institutions in Europe who accept money from African leaders without questioning the source of the money.

Even though it is a common knowledge Western banks are acting as safe havens for looted funds from Africa, very little attention is received from the Western media to expose them. The media tend to focus their energies on the corrupt leaders with little or no mention at all as to where the monies they have stolen are being kept.

There has not been any concrete effort to expose the banks that collude and connive with these corrupt leaders who are impoverishing the people. No effort has been made by the political elite in Europe and America to force the banks to return these stolen monies to the poorest of the poor because they are often the shareholders and beneficiaries of profits made by these banks. They talk about corruption because it is embarrassing to them, but they have no agenda to fight it, as that would mean no fat dividends for them and no cheap credits for their citizens.

Within five years of his reign (1993-98), Sani Abacha of Nigeria, according to official figures, was able to stash $4 billion – or $12-$16 billion in unofficial terms. After his death in 1998, investigators in Nigeria, Europe and America stumbled on over 130 bank accounts abroad where some of the stolen money was kept.

The banks that received Abacha’s stolen funds are Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, ANZ, London Branch; Bank Len, Zurich; Bankers Trust Co., London; Bankers Trust Co., Frankfurt; Bankers Trust Co., New York; Banque Barring Brothers, Geneva; Bank in Liechtenstein A.G. Vaduz; Barclays Bank, New York; Barclays Bank, London; Banque Edouard Constant, Geneva; Banque Nationale De Paris, Geneva; Banque Nationale De Paris, London; Banque Nationale De Paris, Basle; Citibank N.A. London; Citibank N.A. New York; Citibank N.A. Luxembourg; Citibank Zurich; Credit Lyonnais, New York; Credit Suisse, New York; Credit Suisse, Geneva; Credit Suisse, Zurich; Deutche Morgan Grenfell, Jersey; FIBI Bank (Schweiz) A.G. Zurich; First Bank of Boston, London; Goldman Sachs and Co., Zurich; Gothard Bank, Geneva; LGT Liechtenstein Bank, Vaduz; Liechtenstein Landesbank, Vaduz; M.M. Warburg and Co., Luxembourg; M.M. Warburg and Co., Zurich; M.M. Warburg and Co., Hamburg; Merrill Lynch Bank, New York; Merrill Lynch Bank, Geneva; Midland Bank, London; National Westminster Bank, London; Paribus, London; Paribus, Geneva; Royal Bank of Scotland, Leeds; Standard Bank London Ltd., London; UBS AG, Zurich; UBS AG, Geneva; Union Bancaire Privee, Geneva; Union Bancaire Privee, London; Verwaltungs Und Private Bank A.G., Vaduz; ANZ, New York; and ANZ, Frankfurt. (Source: Tell Magazine, Oct. 7, 2002)

In February 2009, a French court had Omar Bongo’s nine bank accounts containing several millions of euros frozen. In confirming the court’s decision, lawyer Jean-Philippe Le Bail said, “This concerns Crédit Lyonnais, in which the president of Gabon has two current accounts, two savings accounts and a share account, and BNP, in which he has two checking accounts, a savings account and a share account.”

These are the banks whose shady dealings with the political and business elite in Africa continue to impoverish African countries but which for profit’s sake the media refuse to tell the world about. The banks know these corrupt leaders have stolen the money yet they pretend not to know until there is a scandal; then they begin to act as if they are responsible institutions.

Most of the above named banks have also been implicated for receiving billions of dollars of looted funds from the late Mobutu of Zaire, Lansana Conte of Guinea, Eyadema of Togo and a number of dictators and tyrants such as Omar Bongo of Gabon, Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Dos Santos of Angola, Denis Sassou-Nguesso of Congo, Paul Biya of Cameroon, Arap Moi of Kenya, Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, Ibrahim Babadjinda of Nigeria and a number of sitting and ex-presidents in Africa. Yet Western media are silent about where the funds are being kept.

The banks know these corrupt leaders have stolen the money yet they pretend not to know until there is a scandal; then they begin to act as if they are responsible institutions.

According to a 110-page report prepared by international risk consultancy firm Kroll, Arap Moi and his family have banked £1 billion in 28 countries, including Britain, but the media in the West will not expose the banks involved.

Apart from the banking sector, the property sector in Europe, America and Australia has also colluded and connived with the political and business elite in Africa to impoverish the people. It has been revealed that several African leaders have bought properties in Europe and America using the monies stolen from their poor countries.

It is on record that Mobutu of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire) bought villas in France, Switzerland, Belgium and many other European countries. Yet again the companies selling the villas have been kept secret. They will not be exposed by the media. Why would they?

According to Agence France Press, a French police investigation has established that Bongo and his family own at least 33 luxury properties in France, including a villa located at Rue de la Baume near the Elysée Palace in Paris, bought in 2007 for 18.8 million euros. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been spotted greeting Bongo in this villa bought with funds looted from Gabon. However, other investigations have uncovered that Gabon’s Bongo and his family have at least 59 properties plus several stocks and bonds in France alone. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was embarrassed when it was revealed that Bongo’s government paid his consultancy firm a staggering 2.64 million euros for advice on health policy drawn up by Kouchner before he took office.

It has recently come to light that Arap Moi of Kenya and his family bought several multimillion-pound properties in London, New York, South Africa and a 10,000-hectare ranch in Australia and has bank accounts containing hundreds of millions of pounds. While the majority of Kenyans live in slums and in rural areas with barely a roof over their heads and lack water and other basic necessities of life, Moi’s family live in a £4 million home in Surrey and £2 million flat in Knightsbridge. Yet the media will not expose the real estate companies involved.

Another area often ignored by the Western media is the role played by Western companies and corporations in encouraging corruption, bribery and thievery in Africa. It is very common for Western companies looking for lucrative contracts to pay bribes and kickbacks to induce officials into awarding them contracts.

For example, on Sept. 17, 2002, a Canadian firm called Acres International was convicted by the High Court in Lesotho for paying a $260,000 bribe to secure an $8 billion dam contract. In 2002 Halliburton, a company once controlled by former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, was accused of establishing a $180 million slush fund with the intent of using it to bribe Nigerian officials in order to secure a $10 billion liquefied gas plant contract in Nigeria.

Achair Partners, a Swiss company, and Progresso, an Italian company, have been accused of bribing Somalia transition government officials in order to secure contracts to deposit highly toxic industrial waste in the waters of Somalia. Such corrupt practices by Western companies seeking contracts in Africa are one of the reasons why poverty and diseases are rife in the continent.

The catastrophic environmental damage being caused by oil, mining and timber companies such as Shell, BP, Total, Elf, Texaco, Mittal and Anglo-America Corp. in Nigeria, Ghana, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Congo, DR Congo, South Africa, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Senegal do not make the news in the West. How often do we hear about the huge environmental price Africans are paying to satisfy the West’s insatiable appetite for energy and technology? Apart from the huge profits being made by these conglomerates, which we often hear in the news, do we also hear about their complete disregard for environmental rules and for the pollution of rivers, lakes, streams, wells and the entire environment?

How often do we hear about the huge environmental price Africans are paying to satisfy the West’s insatiable appetite for energy and technology?

In October 2002, after a three-year investigation, a U.N. panel of experts implicated Cabot Corp. of Boston, Eagle Wings Resources International and George Forrest’s OM Group of Ohio for arming rebel groups and collaborating with them to traffic from DR Congo its gold, diamond, timber and most importantly coltan (columbo-tantalite), a precious ore essential to Sony Playstations, laptop computers and cell phones. Coltan is often spirited out of DRC to U.S., Swiss, Belgian and German clients by Uganda and Rwanda army officers, rebel groups and through a network of criminal syndicates. In all, 85 companies were implicated by the report.

Except for the wars and the faces of stranded, hungry refugees, do these illegal activities by the corporations make the news in the Western media? Definitely not. Even when local journalists and writers document these for broadcast in the Western media, they refuse because it does not serve their interest in the wider scheme of things.

This is the hypocrisy and the double standard of the Western media. They want the world to know how poor Africans are but fail to tell the world that Africans are poor because Western banking institutions, property development companies, defense companies and defense contractors, oil, mining and technology corporations are major stakeholders in promoting Africa’s poverty and underdevelopment.

Corruption and bribery in Africa and indeed the developing world could be reduced tremendously if the media for once put aside its pick-and-choose journalism and attach the same importance to showing the degree of involvement by Western capitalist institutions in Europe, America and Japan and their role in keeping Africans poor.

Source: https://sfbayview.com/2011/hiding-africa%E2%80%99s-looted-funds-silence-of-western-media/

Filed Under: Africa, Banks, Capitalism, Corporations, Environment, Health, Human Rights, Money, Oil, Politics, Poverty