SIX MILLION DEAD IN CONGO'S WAR

[Hannah Bell]

Over six million people have been killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the deadliest conflict since the Second World War.

A study published by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in January 2008 said that 5.4 million people had died from 1998 to 2007 in Congo, with 45,000 more victims being added to the death toll every month.

With Congo’s war showing no signs of abating, this would put the death toll at 6.9 million today.

“Six million dead is a staggering figure that should jolt the international community into providing greater protection for Congo’s civilian population,” said Fr Pierre Cibambo, a Congolese priest who works at Caritas headquarters in the Vatican.

http://www.caritas.org/activities/emergencies/SixMillionDeadInCongoWar.html

[apocalypsehow]

1. Kick, Rec. n/t.

[Odin2005]

2. Blood Coltan.

[Hannah Bell]

4. congo wars going on now. most americans know nothing of it, let alone know the name of *any*

victim, or know that their tax dollars support the murders, that their *religious* institutions assist the murders, that their *corporations* profit from the murders.

and like most threads on congo at DU, this one will die a quick death from lack of interest.

cause americans don't care about africa and most americans don't look any deeper than the 6 oclock news & "hotel rwanda" to learn about africa.

holocaust is ongoing, backed by international capital.

[Hannah Bell]

5. kik

[Hardrada]

6. There have been some shows on television about this

and a book or two, I think. Maybe none about the current fight there. Do you know of one? It is startling to think nations don't even have to have an SS or NKVD to have so many casualties.

[jotsy]

8. I'm still reeling from the idea of 45,000 a month.

I had known about diamonds being at the heart of some of these conflicts, but it was this comment that inspired to learn if something more was in play. Apparently raw materials for the hi tech toys that have become a staple in contemporary times are in the Congo in abundance. I hear Smedley Butler, yet again. How will I ever wash the blood of their choices from staining my spirit? How long before I'm asked to endure the same kind of cruelty due to my own in action when it what someone else, somewhere else suffering. I don't like what I feel my own leaders have made me deserve. Tissue please.

I rec'd it.

[leveymg]

55. Coltan is Unobtainium.

Somehow Resources Development Corporation (RDC) managed to find a way to get the Na'Vi to kill and enslave each other so Unobtainium mining could continue. Didn't even have to bring in the Starship Troopers after '63.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[aquart]

7. Now there's a familiar number.

It's pretty easy to do when you stay within your borders. Germany's error, of course, was crossing borders. It forced people who would rather have turned a blind eye to take a stand.

When do you suppose the Congo will consider sufficient blood shed? When the rivers are completely polluted? When the corpses spread plagues?

[Hannah Bell]

9. what? easy to do when you stay in your borders? what are you talking about?

the congo war isn't confined to the borders of congo, & staying inside borders doesn't make it easier to kill 6 million people.

The Second Congo War, also known as Africa's World War and the Great War of Africa, began in August 1998 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly called Zaire), and officially ended in July 2003 when the Transitional Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo took power (though hostilities continue to this day).

The largest war in modern African history, it directly involved eight African nations, as well as about 25 armed groups.

By 2008 the war and its aftermath had killed 5.4 million people, mostly from disease and starvation, making the Second Congo War the deadliest conflict worldwide since World War II. Millions more were displaced from their homes or sought asylum in neighboring countries.<6>

The war and the conflicts afterwards are, among other things, driven by the trade of conflict minerals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War


The First Congo War (November 1996 to May 1997) was a revolution in Zaire that replaced President Mobutu Sésé Seko, a decades-long dictator, with rebel leader-cum-President Laurent-Désiré Kabila. Destabilization in eastern Zaire that resulted from the Rwandan genocide was the final factor that caused numerous internal and external actors to align against the corrupt and inept government in Kinshasa. The new government renamed the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo, though it brought little true change. Kabila alienated his allies and failed to address the issues that had lead to the war, ultimately allowing the Second Congo War to begin in 1998, mere months after coming to power. In fact, some experts prefer to view the two conflicts as one war.<5>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Congo_War

Mobuto = US proxy.

Kabila = US proxy.

[aquart]

58. Thanks for the correction.

But when any nation decides to kill its own, it's damn easy. I don't back down on that. International pressure is timid and late coming. And neighboring nations decline to intervene until they are seriously inconvenienced.

But I was indeed wrong about the borders. Serbia crossed borders to commit mass murder. Clinton begged Europe to join him in intervention but they would not until the Serb blood lust expanded to Albania. (Had a Czech-American friend at WaPo then, and I remember his frustration at Western European indifference.)

[Skittles]

10. OMG

:cry:

[KharmaTrain]

11. A Clash Of Cultures Complicated By Ideology And Imperialism

The DR Congo is a massive country that was drawn arbitrarily on a map to please the King of Belgium. Tribes that didn't get along now were required to live in a nation-state concept that none trusted as it always led to one group getting all the power and subjugating the others. Actually the wars in the Congo have been almost non-stop since 1960, including many years of proxy wars for resources by US and Soviet intersts. The large amount of natural wealth...diamonds, gold, uranium and platinum only up the ante to keep the nation weak and involved in their own genocide than to pay attention to the exploitation of their resources.

[Hannah Bell]

12. US, France, Belgium, Russia, Israel, China -- the "clash of cultures" = western & asian capital v.

africa.

[Hannah Bell]

13. U.S. Military and Corporate Recolonization of the Congo

The United States' involvement in Congo since before independence from Belgium in June 1960 has been steady, sinister, and penetrating. Most notable was the ClA's role in the overthrow (September 1960) and later assassination (January 1961) of Congo's first Prime Minister, the charismatic (and socialist) Patrice Lumumba... And questions continue to linger over the mysterious plane crash in September 1961 that killed U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold as he was flying to the border town of Ndola to meet with Moise Tshombe, president of the breakaway Katanga Province...

In October 1996, the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL), commanded by and composed mainly of Tutsi military forces from Paul Kagame's Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA), along with Tutsi refugees from Zaire and some Congolese patriots, all under the titular leadership of Congolese exile Laurent Kabila, crossed into Zaire from Rwanda and Burundi. In May 1997, after only seven months of fighting, they had overthrown the 30-year dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko...

Yet Rwanda is a tiny impoverished nation, and Uganda is not much larger or richer, while Congo is one of the largest, richest, and most populous nations in Africa, which at one time had its most powerful army How did this happen? Could impoverished Rwanda and Uganda have orchestrated, armed, and financed such operations on their own?

Is it a coincidence that Rwandan strongman Paul Kagame was trained in the United States? That the Rwandan army received, and continues to receive, training in the U.S.? That the Pentagon has had Special Forces military training missions in Rwanda and Uganda for more than five years? That vast segments of the Congolese infrastructure, particularly the mining companies, have been taken over by U.S.- and western-linked multinationals, working with the Rwandan and Ugandan rebels and governments?

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Africa/US_Recolonization_Congo.html

[Hannah Bell]

46. In 1990, the now President of Rwanda, Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame

returned from training at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to lead the first U.S. supported invasion of Rwanda by the army of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF).

Kagame is identified with the Tutsi tribe, but this is a meaningless social construction serving the western media theme of “African conflicts by African people” (a.k.a. tribalism, yet again).

When the plane carrying the Hutu president of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down over the Rwandan capital on April 6, 1994, all hell broke loose. Under cover of “the genocide” - and a total U.S. media propaganda blitz - Kagame and the RPF invaded and secured Rwanda. Hundreds of thousands of killings attributed to “the genocide” were committed by RPF forces in 1994. The killings spread to DRC. With total U.S. military support, the RPF has committed countless crimes against humanity.

Albright, Clinton, Bush Sr., the national security apparatus - all had extensive knowledge prior to April 1994 about the Hutu plan to exterminate their enemies. The U.S. did not merely let “the genocide” happen, they assisted.

Zaire was invaded in August 1996, immediately after Paul Kagame visited the Pentagon to check his battle plans, and following George H.W. Bush’s telephone call to his long-time partner-in-crime Mobutu Sese Seko, Bush was securing the mining interests of his Barrick Gold Corporation, and those of his Swedish comrade Adolph Lundin. Washington’s MPRI mercenary firm -- and a handful of Israeli military experts -- advised the invading “rebel” forces.

All hell broke loose, again.

The second U.S. supported invasion of DRC began in 1998. The International Rescue Committee and the National Academy of Sciences independently determined that some 3.5 million people died in DRC between August 1998 and June 2001. The counting stopped there, but the killing didn’t.

The U.S. is the leading arms dealer in central Africa. By 1995, Halliburton subsidiary Brown and Root was setting up military bases in Rwanda.

Back in the U.S. Jean Raymond Bouelle was setting up America Mineral Fields Corporation in Hope, Arkansas, signing mining contracts in DRC and Sierra Leone. U.S. Special Forces assisted the RPF and UPDF, and their Congolese allies in the U.S. proxy wars for the Congo. The Bouelle companies continue to pillage Africa under cover of war and executive privilege.

The U.S. provided military support and training for all sides under International Military Education and Training, Joint Combined Exchange Training and the Africa Crisis Response Initiative. These programs involve psychological operations, tortures, massacres and disappearing as standard operating procedure.

The contre-genocide continues. April 2003, the eastern DRC city of Bunia was devastated by RPF military operations. Tribal tensions have been inflamed by RPF, UPDF and -- certainly -- by U.S. Special Forces. Massacres of hundreds of people have lasted days at a time. Civilians have been herded into houses and set on fire. George H.W. Bush’s Barrick Gold runs a concession at the nearby Kilo-Moto goldfields.

Paul Kagame was received at the White House on March 3, 2003. He later spoke at the James Baker Institute, in Houston, where he met with his patron, George H.W. Bush.

The DRC people daily die due to the complete breakdown of everything – while organized crime, sexual slavery and extortion proliferate. Eastern Congo has been absolutely, and unfathomably, ravaged. Malnutrition affects some 16 million people in DRC where, on average, some 2600 people have died every day of the war. It is protracted, horrible, unnecessary and stoppable.

Ditto for Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola and Sudan.

The American way of life is intimately connected with war-as-cover for Africa’s petroleum, copper, manganese, uranium, gold, tin, bauxite, timber and water. Some 80% of world supplies of cobalt and columbo-tantalite (coltan) are found in DRC. Cobalt is the big story, never reported, stockpiled by the Defense Logistics Agency, elemental to the superalloys of the nuclear weapons complex. Coltan is essential for cell phones, playstations and computers. Africa’s diamonds are sold on Main Street, USA. Every diamond is a “blood” diamond.

The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times all manufacture the disinformation. Writers and academics like Philip Gourevitch, Christopher Hitchens, Mahmood Mamdani and 2003 Pulitzer winner Samantha Power – the bonified experts on “the genocide” in Rwanda – have covered these stories up. Indeed, ostensible “exposes” surfaced June 6, 2003, in the New York Times and other newspapers, and have run repeatedly on National Public Radio – an emerging propaganda campaign designed to legitimate the international mining cartels.

Even the peace and justice community has dismissed the DRC, and Africa more broadly. People don’t hesitate to take action to try to stop war in Iraq. We struggle with the Palestinians. Our witnesses for peace frequent Latin America. Our conferences and workshops proliferate and, more often than not, Africa is entirely off the agenda. Worse still, the excuses abound. Meanwhile, the refugees and political dissidents are all around us. Africa suffers in silence. It is the legacy of our lifestyle and the intention of empire. It is depopulation, by design.

http://www.allthingspass.com/uploads/html-53Update%20On%20the%20Congo%20by%20Author%20Keith%20Harmon%20Snow.htm






keith harmon snow is a journalist and photographer whose dispatches on war in Africa and disinformation in America won two Project Censored awards in. In 2000 keith spent seven months in Africa researching genocide and U.S. covert operations, and he attended the criminal International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda in Arusha Tanzania. In 2001 he provided expert testimony at a special congressional hearing on genocide and covert operations in Africa, in Washington DC. He has worked in 16 African countries.

[leftstreet]

14. K&R

[Hannah Bell]

15. Dan Gertler: At it Again?

Monday, June 21, 2010

Israeli diamond tycoon Dan Gertler appears to be working his magic again. Various sources have reported his involvement in Caprikat, a British Virgin Island registered company that was reported to have taken oil blocks 1 and 2 in Lake Albert. At the same time, he is reportedly behind Highwinds, another British Virgin Islands based company, that is reportedly taking over the lucrative Kolwezi Tailings copper & cobalt concession that is being expropriated from Canadian company First Quantum.

Neither company has any reported expertise in mining or oil drilling. They both appear to be newly-founded companies.

In both cases, Gertler's alleged companies have stepped in to take over concessions whose worth is well-known and that are being claimed by other parties. In the case of Kolwezi, First Quantum says it has already sunk $700 million in the project, whose rich mineral deposits are well-known. In Lake Albert, the blocks are being claimed by two other parties already - Tullow Oil first had the rights for both blocks, one of which was sold on to Divine Inspiration, much to the alarm of Tullow. On the one hand, this makes the investments safe bets for Gertler, as at least he knows the value of the concessions. On the other hand, he will have to weather the international legal disputes that are currently unfolding. (First Quantum has gone to arbitration, while at the same time being sued by the Congolese state for $12 billion).

Gertler also recently bought the BIC bank from Congolese businessman Pascal Kinduelo (whose curious involvement in the Divine Inspiration deal was also documented here). And he has been rumored to be involved in several offshore oil concessions, as well, in the Atlantic off the Congolese coast.

Gertler was just 27 when he first became involved in the Congo in 2000, obtaining a monopoly of diamond exports (worth around $600 million) in return for $20 million. He had previously been involved in diamonds in Angola and he is the grandson of Moshe Schnitzer, the founder of the Israel Diamond Bourse. He is now one of the richest Israelis.

In 2007, one of the companies that Gertler helped found, Nikanor, went public on the London AIM stock exchange, raising a record $434 million. Again, it was a company with no previous record or expertise in mining that had been granted some of the Congo's richest copper and cobalt assets.

Gertler's success has been closely linked to his warm relations with the presidency. He was one of the only westerners to be invited to Kabila's wedding in 2006, and has very close links with Katumba Mwanke, the president's closest financial adviser.

For those interested in Middle East politics, Gertler, a devout Orthodox Jew, is also behind the Green Park and Green Mount companies that are helping to finance the building of new Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Why these new concessions, whom do they benefit? Not clear. The fact that they are registered in the British Virgin Islands will make it difficult to find out who is a shareholder. The investments are certainly risky, and the shenanigans with the existing contracts has certainly not helped boost investor confidence in the Congo - the World Bank's IFC, a partner in the First Quantum project, has suspended activity in the Congo for the time being. Risk insurance premiums have risen by 40% over the past 18 months due to contractual insecurity, a serious headache for investors.

Industry insiders, however, suggest that the last big round of mining concession acquisitions happened just before the last elections and helped the president raise funds for his expensive campaign. The next elections are in 2011.

http://congosiasa.blogspot.com/2010/06/dan-gertler-at-it-again.html

[Octafish]

16. JFK Cried for Congo

JFK receives the news of Patrice Lumumba's murder

The above caption, by Jacques Lowe, personal photographer to JFK, reads:

"On February 13 1961, United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson came on the phone. I was alone with the President; his hand went to his head in utter despair, "On, no," I heard him groan. The Ambassador was informing the President of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, an African leader considered a trouble-maker and a leftist by many Americans. But Kennedy's attitude towards black Africa was that many who were considered leftists were in fact nationalists and patriots, anti-West because of years of colonialization, and lured to the siren call of Communism against their will. He felt that Africa presented an opportunity for the West, and, speaking as an American, unhindered by a colonial heritage, he had made friends in Africa and would succeed in gaining the trust of a great many African leaders. The call therefore left him heartbroken, for he knew that the murder would be a prelude to chaos in the mineral-rich and important African country, it was a poignant moment."

(end quoting from 1983 book "Kennedy A Time Remembered" by Jacques Lowe)

As news stories describe the massacre of thousands in the Congo (April 2003) I remember Orwell and JFK, two of my favourite people. In 1984 Orwell told us that once Big Brother took control of the world (One World Government) it was divided into three Super-States and the Disputed Territories, over which the Super-States waged continuous war. The people of the Disputed Territories (including equatorial Africa) were "expended like so much coal or oil". Their nations were gutted for their "valuable minerals and important vegetable products".

Like so much else of what Orwell told us, he was accurate about the fate of Africa. Its nations have never had a chance to survive on their own without interference. However, had President Kennedy been allowed to live and enact his policies for Africa, that continent could be equal today to Europe and America.

CONTINUED...

http://www.orwelltoday.com/jfkcongo.shtml

After the assassination of President Kennedy, JFK's pro-Democracy, anti-colonial policies in Congo were reversed.

[Hannah Bell]

17. us killed lumumba.

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hannah Bell]

19. we don't know the inside baseball.

[Octafish]

21. Absolutely. We only get the Rightwing's version of history.

Here are the CFR people's version of reality.

Here's neocon Philip Zelikow's version of what JFK said during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Meaning I'll stick with the pro-JFK perpsective.

[Hannah Bell]

28. getting it in this thread too, & all over DU, frankly, i'm sick of it.

[apocalypsehow]

33. If you don't want factual replies posted within your OP's, you shouldn't submit threads.

Myself, I think the topic addressed in this thread should be read by as many as possible, and Rec'd it for that very reason.

But if you don't like the repartee that often comes in such OP's, you have the option to not post them. :toast:

[Name removed]

34. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[apocalypsehow]

40. LOL - love the scintillating repartee.

:grouphug:

[apocalypsehow]

44. "I'll stick with the pro-JFK perspective" - see below:

when people get deeply invested in a worldview that rotates around a profound historical figure, whether it be Jesus Christ or John F. Kennedy (or Ronald Reagan), they begin to construct narratives that explain away that historical figure’s failings and exaggerate their accomplishments during that limited time on this earth we all have.

They start to remake the actual person who lived into an image that corresponds with their elevated estimate of them: they begin to make myths, and tell sacred stories about their great deeds, and mighty triumphs. Their defeats and failures are usually chalked up to the nefarious workings of enemies, traitors, the self-serving, the greedy, and other assorted agents of evil.

That’s how the New Testament got written.

And when that narrative is called into question, challenged, debunked, it raises the angriest kind of hackles from those so invested: it’s almost as if you are calling into question their core identity; and, in some instances, you are.

When the facts themselves, as facts, are unpalatable to the person(s) invested in not accepting them, ugliness often follows.

Hence the anger - the irrational, lashing-out anger, coupled with scornful incredulity - directed at the person who does not flinch from presenting those facts, and who insists they be respected even when inconvenient & troublesome, regardless of the circumstances.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum. :thumbsup:

[apocalypsehow]

22. Yes we do. JFK was briefed by Ike himself about Lumumba's assassination - and didn't object.

Indeed, President Kennedy had a hand in assisting in the arrest of Nelson Mandela in South Africa during his administration. The justification was that South Africa was an ally in the Cold War against the Soviet Union - just as Belgium was when it came to the Lumumba matter.

JFK was many admirable things, but above all he was a Cold Warrior. Some of the choices he made as a Cold Warrior weren't so admirable.

[Hannah Bell]

23. lumumba killed jan 17. kennedy inaugurated jan 20.

no, you don't know the inside baseball.

[apocalypsehow]

25. Yes, I do. Kennedy was president-elect, and was briefed by Ike on the operation - and didn't object.

Please try again. :thumbsup:

[Hannah Bell]

27. no, you don't.

[apocalypsehow]

30. Yes, I do.

:hi:

Happy to kick your excellent OP again, for whatever reason. :beer:

[apocalypsehow]

29. While we're on the subject, what do you think of the American government's assistance in the arrest

of Nelson Mandela, circa 1962? Circa 1962, and with the explicit assistance of the Kennedy administration, signed off on by JFK himself? :shrug:

Have any rejoinders you wish to share about that?

[Name removed]

45. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[apocalypsehow]

26. Indeed, history reveals that Eisenhower was somewhat startled by the complicity of his successor

with the plan - he had expected at the very least a non-committal attitude based on partisan considerations (in case the plan blew up in the Republican administrations face, just days before the inauguration), but what he got, to his delight, was an almost eager acceptance.

Ike knew from that moment going forward that whatever else his successor was that he might not like, he was at least as committed to conducting the Cold War in the same ruthless manner that Eisenhower himself had been when it came to covert Ops.

[Octafish]

31. I'm still waiting for the 'bibliography' you promised on this very subject, apocalypsehow.

Remember? You didn't have a link then, either, apocalypsehow.

[Hannah Bell]

32. thank you. i can't talk to that person anymore.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hannah Bell]

39. and diamonds?

While the hot Chloe rock is certified “clean” a diamond, it was purchased from Angola’s state mining company, Endiama, a company involved in blood diamonds. No rock of desire of this stature—84.37 carats—comes out of Africa without organized bloodshed and suffering behind it...

Angola’s state firm Endiama is tied to the Lazare Kaplan diamond company owned by the Israeli-American Tempelsman diamond cartel. Maurice Tempelsman’s diamond interests were established in the Congo in the early 1960’s with the help of the CIA...

(Templesman = Jackie Kennedy's paramour...)

Sotheby’s is another company involved in blood diamonds. In 2005 Sotheby’s partnered up with the Israeli-American Steinmetz Diamond Group to form Sotheby’s Diamonds. Beny and Danny Steinmetz of the Steinmetz Group are partnered with Dan Gertler, a new White House insider considered the unofficial “Ambassador” to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country in central Africa cursed by diamonds and other minerals, where at least seven million people have died since 1996....French billionaire Francois Pinault owns London-based Christie’s and Sotheby’s, which is incorporated in Delaware.

The Steinmetz/Gertler partnerships between them have controlling interests in Dan Gertler Industries, Steinmetz Global Resources, Nikanor and Global Enterprises Corporate (GEC), companies with massive diamond concessions in Kasai, and copper/cobalt concessions in Katanga, two provinces in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Israeli-American diamond cartels involved in Congo are seeking to displace the diamond interests in Angola run by Israel-American Lev Leviev and Maurice Tempelsman, top-level partners of the Angolan state diamond companies.

Belgian-born Maurice Tempelsman has a long and bloody history in Africa. When Congo’s first Premier, Patrice Lumumba, pledged to return diamond wealth back to the newly independent Congo in the early 60’s, Tempelsman, who began with De Beers in the 1950’s, helped engineer the coup d’etat that consolidated the dictatorship of 29 year-old Colonel Mobutu, and the coup against Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah; diamonds were at stake in each.

http://www.zcommunications.org/chloes-blood-diamond-by-keith-harmon-snow


Roberts says immediately after Mobutu came to power that,

"Tempelsman became an even bigger player in the Congo recruiting his own staff from those CIA staffers that Mobutu most favored that put him in power. Mobutu also at this time gave Tempelsman, as a 'Christmas Gift', rich mineral resources."

She said Tempelsman then facilitated "the return of the Oppenheimers to the Congo. . . " And she quotes historian Richard Mahoney citing a State Department memo: "Congo Diamond Deal: 'The State Department has concluded that it is in the political interest of the US to implement this proposal.' (2 August 1961)."

Roberts also tells of a plot against Ghana's President Nkrumah in which "the State Department wrote a furious letter to Maurice Tempelsman saying that his office, by using an unguarded phone line, had betrayed the identity of the plotters against Nkrumah and the identity of the CIA Head of Station. The plotters seemingly were communicating to the White House via Tempelsman's office (memorandum for the President from WW Rostow, 24 September 1961)."

http://www.suzanmazur.com/?p=131

[leftstreet]

41. Oh wow

Thanks for that link

:thumbsup:

[Name removed]

47. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[leftstreet]

57. Thanks Hannah

??

Good additional link

[Hannah Bell]

43. and timber? and minerals?

While the people of Congo resign themselves to believing that “the page has been turned” in Congolese affairs, much of the ongoing exploitation today can be directly connected to banking, plantations and mining interests that plundered the Belgian Congo (1908-1960) and then the “independent” state—the Democratic Republic of Congo (1960-1972) and then Zaire (1972—1997)—controlled by Joseph Mobutu and his western business partners and backers.

Amongst the many prominent people involved are Belgian nationals like Louis Michel, Étienne Davignon, Philippe de Moerloose and Andre Flahaut, and U.S. nationals like Henry Kissinger, Bill Richardson and Maurice Tempelsman.

The interests of the Royal Family of Belgium are also involved.

The predatory meddling and plundering of such people is rendered invisible by the international “community”—press, think-tanks, non-government organizations, foreign policy institutes and especially by academia—e.g. anthropology, international relations, political science, and African affairs departments.

Louis Michel is EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian AID, a gatekeeper position that insures that millions of Congolese people suffer miserably. ...He is reportedly a diamond merchant exploiting the diamond rich Tshikapa region of DRC. Michel also has ties to Congo’s diamonds through the Societe Miniere De Bakwanga (MIBA), a mainstay of Belgian neocolonialism in Congo; Michel’s son is reportedly directly involved at MIBA.(9)

Belgian business tycoon Viscount Étienne Davignon is chairman of the board of directors of S.N. Brussels Airlines, which he co-founded after the bankruptcy of Sabena, the Belgian national airline that carried Patrice Lumumba to his own death in 1961 and shipped DRC’s plundered minerals out of Rwanda (1998-2005) in partnership with the Kagame regime.

Davignon is also a member of the board of numerous Belgian companies, and a former director of Anglo-American Corporation, the big Oppenheimer/DeBeers mining conglomerate operating in Congo in partnership with G.H.W. Bush-connected Barrick Gold Corporation.

A 2001 Belgian parliamentary enquiry concluded that Davignon played an important and active role in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.(10) Like Maurice Tempelsman, Davignon was deeply involved in the Western coup d’etat that put Joseph Mobutu in power, and kept him there.

From 1989 to 2001, Étienne Davignon was chairman of the Belgian bank Société Générale de Belgique, one of the most lasting and perfidious enemies of the Congolese state.

Hundreds of billions of dollars of minerals were plundered by the Societe General de Belgique through its majority-owned subsidiary the Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK)—the Belgian Royal family’s mining company that exploited Congo’s copper, cobalt, tin, uranium and zinc from 1908, and later became GECAMINES, the parastatal mining company “controlled” by Mobutu and his closest cronies and Western allies. ...The U.S. purchased uranium from UMHK’s Shinkalobwe mine and later used it to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Étienne Davignon was a director of Kissinger Associates, the intelligence and defense-consulting firm set up by Henry Kissinger, whose list of notable associates includes Clinton’s former UN Ambassador Bill Richardson, who put a “humanitarian” face on the US invasion of Zaire (1996-1998).

Henry Kissinger is on the board of the International Rescue Committee, a prominent “relief” agency in the Congo—and one of the reasons the death toll is so high.

Étienne Davignon is also a director of Gilead Sciences, a “biotechnology” company whose past directors include Donald Rumsfeld (1988-2001).

Gilead directors today include George Shultz, a Bechtel director and former U.S. Secretary of State; Carla Hills, International Crisis Group director and NAFTA architect; John Madigan, a former Tribune Company (mass media and “news”) director and current member of the Defense Business Board of the U.S. Department of Defense; and Nicholas G. Moore, another Bechtel director, and former CEO/Chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers from 1994-2004. Gilead Sciences was involved in the “Tamilflu” scare.(13)

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) is involved in the Lueshe niobium mine in DRC’s North Kivu province, a mine currently kept off-line—and soaked in blood—by Rwandan-backed General Laurent Nkunda, the warlord in eastern Congo, in order to drive up world niobium prices.

Belgian Étienne Davignon is also Special Adviser to EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel.

Belgian Philippe de Moerloose, a member of Kinshasa’s elite, supplies jets, helicopters and other presidential toys to Joseph Kabila.(15) De Moerloose’s firm Demipex—based in Brussels, Kinshasa and Lumumbashi—deals in equipment and logistics and holds the sole Nissan distributorship in DRC. His firm Overseas Security Services is responsible for atrocities against desperate Congolese in MIBA held diamond concessions.

MIBA is reportedly $US 100 million in debt, with some $US 20 million owed to De Moerloose. De Moerloose’s Belgian aviation company, Demavia Airlines, partnered with the DRC-based Hewa Bora airlines, is accused of arms shipments to DRC. De Moerloose companies served as intermediaries shipping helicopters between France’s Aeromechanic Corporation and Britain’s Sloane Helicopters Ltd. to Air Katanga, a “Congolese” firm controlled by other notable Belgian nationals.

Philippe de Moerloose has business ties to the companies connected to George Forrest, a mainstay of exploitation in Congo since 1922;

De Moerloose also operates in Rwanda and Burundi, putting him in business relations on both sides of Congo’s wars. De Moerloose vehicles sold in Rwanda and Congo are used by armed forces, and De Moerloose (2002) confirmed that the Rwandan Ministry of Defense buys directly from his companies. Paul de Moerloose, a brother, married Marie-Pierre Pairoux, of the wealthy French Pierre Pairoux family—partners of George Forrest businesses.

Patrick de Moerloose has lived in Katanga’s copperbelt zone for 30 years, and was accused of stealing coltan and copper from Gecamines, the massive Congolese mining concern. De Moerloose companies are believed to be involved in illegal diamond, copper and cobalt smuggling out of DRC. Philippe De Moerloose is also implicated in selling weapons to Angola.(16)

Joseph Kabila is married to Sandrine Nguesso, the daughter of Dennis Sassou Nguesso, the President of Congo-Brazzaville. There were reportedly only two white men who attended Joseph Kabila’s wedding: one was Israeli-American diamond magnate Dan Gertler, the new King of the Congo, and the other was Belgian tycoon Philippe de Moerloose. France has very close ties with Sassou Nguesso...

Many of the same families behind the European colonial enterprise—rooted in slavery, white supremacy and terror—are behind the warlords in Congo today. The mainstays of exploitation, like the interests of former Belgian Barons or the Ministers of Colonies, have morphed into more insidious corporate entities.

New players have dislodged some interests, like the Israeli-Americans dealing in blood diamonds through the Tel Aviv diamond exchange with the support of the White House. And now China is deeply involved in the fray, but that’s another story, another page to be unturned, and a hidden history to be excavated from the rubble of Central Africa.

http://www.otabenga.org/node/95

[Name removed]

51. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hannah Bell]

52. greenpeace says timber concessions fueling the war in congo -- but name no names except

black people & their "cronies"

http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/belgium/nl/press/reports/role-of-the-african-timber-tra.pdf

right, greenpeace, it's all about africans & their cronies.

undoubtably they're selling the timber to starving africans.

the only role the "international community" plays is apparently to come in & police these black warlords by force of arms.

there's a nice safe link for you all.

[Hannah Bell]

53. The Congo rainforest, the second largest tropical forest in the world,

The Congo rainforest, the second largest tropical forest in the world, has been handed a temporary lifeline after two-thirds of timber concessions were cancelled this week.

Congo's immense tropical forest, second only to the Amazon in size and importance, has come under increasing pressure from loggers, farmers and mining operations in recent years. Huge concessions covering tens of millions of hectares in the war-torn country have been parcelled out to international companies during the numerous conflicts that have beset the country. Most of these concessions adhere to no basic environmental standards and pay little or no tax to the central government, the review found.

Due to its remoteness, lack of roads and regular conflicts Congo's rainforest had previously escaped the wanton destruction seen in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia. However, in the last 15 years mature hard and softwoods from Congo have found their way into markets from the US to China and the EU, taking large bites out of the forest in the process.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/congo-rainforest-given-hope-as-deals-cancelled-1482768.html


The concessions sector is still dominated by the Europeans, but with an increasing prominence of Asian companies, which are already dominant in Equatorial Guinea, CAR and South-Congo.

One can see an emerging new scene of the logging industry driven mainly by new policies implemented in the Congo Basin countries.

Very large foreign-owned companies seem to have the possibility to cope with new public regulations and export standards required by western markets; many national small-scale companies are positioned on local markets and use their ties with local administration and national governments to avoid costly changes that would be required under stringent law enforcement; medium and large companies are frequently cumulating the disadvantages of the “formality” – the social visibility which made law bypassing much difficult – and the increasing competition and requirements on export markets.

Concentration (of the export-oriented) on one hand, fragmentation (of the domestic-oriented) on the other, seem to be the current trend in logging industry of the Congo Basin.

Very large concessions combined with weak or “absent” governments result in “State within the State” situation which influences the design and the orientation of public policies against the collective interest, and leads sometimes to very debatable local situations.

half of congo's forests are currently under concession

II.6.
Congo-Brazzaville

This low-populated country (the population of which is concentrated in main towns such as Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire) shows two different faces: the Northern region, with vast landlocked landscape of dense forestland with a dominance of Entandrophragma species, and the Southern, mostly composed of smaller pieces of forest, frequently logged-over at least once. The southern part is rich in Okoumé (Aucoumea klaineana).

Large concessions owned mostly by Europeans dominated in the North, while in the South, Asian companies have taken over former European companies by 1999-2000 and the end of the civil war.

In the North, the timber is exported to Europe through the Douala port in Cameroon (around 1000 km far from logging areas), on trucks of with a combination truck-train. In the south, logging areas are not very far of the Pointe-Noire port, and the timber is exported mostly to Asia.

Company profiles

In the North, 3 prominent companies are operating. The largest is CIB (Congolaise Industrielle des Bois), which is a subsidiary of the former German-Swiss Tropical Timber (TT timber group), taken over by the Danish DLH-Nordisk in early 2006.

With almost 1.3 million ha (1 million productive), and a large concession FSC-Certified (UFA Kabo), CIB is politically influent and is known also for the importance of the local social actions it is committed to.

Another company with almost the same concession area (1.1 million, with 900,000 productive) is IFO (Industrielle Forestière de Ouesso), a subsidiary of the German Danzer group.

The third one is the Rougier group, which expanded in 2006 by buying back the CRISTAL concession, run previously by the Lebanese Hazim, well-known in Cameroon.

Some other companies own large concessions in the North:
-the Chinese VicWood, who bought back in 2003 the French Thanry-Congo (461,296 ha)
-the French ITBL (322,000 ha)
-the Italian Likouala Timber (Fuser family, from and still in Côte d'Ivoire): 525,500 ha
-the Lebanese SIFCO, a family company that took over the former SOCALIB concession (Libyan) : 471,219 ha
-The Lebanese BPL, also involved in logging in Ghana where the family (Bitar) is installed (200,000 ha).

In the South, the largest concession is run by a Portuguese family.

The Foralac company controls 765,000 ha, but with only 330,000 ha suitable for timber production.

The Malaysian Taman company owns a 413,000 ha concession (291,000 productive hectares), but controls also two other companies (SOFIL and CIBN), which bring the total controlled area to 1.28 million ha (773.000 productive).

The Chinese Man Fai Tai has been taken over by a Chinese-Malaysian company, SICOFOR, and owns a 313,000 ha concession.

Another Chinese, Asian Congo Industries, has bought back the concession and the industrial unit of the former Socobois (German). Asian Congo Industries controls several Congolese medium-scale forest companies de facto in the region.

The Italian Trabec owns a 140,000 ha concession (99,000 productive), and is focused on processing, unlike the Asian companies that prefer log export. Trabec is the only one, in the South, committed to management plan preparation, despite a key regulation.

Several Congolese companies are active in the South, but most of them are used to selling their timber to Asian companies.

II.8.
DRC

In DRC, the logging industry was running at slow pace until 2002-2003, as the country was split into militia-controlled areas. A new list of existing contracts was published in November 2005. It
reported 141 contracts totalling 20.4 million hectares, including 100 contracts dated after May 2002 covering 15 million hectares.

The prominent companies are:

-The Lichtenstein based Holding company of the Nordsudtimber (NST) Group. It is said to control the two large concession holders in DRC, the SODEFOR group and the SOFORMA-FORABOLA-CFT group11, which are led by two Portuguese brothers.

Altogether, the 2 groups control over 5 million ha in DRC. The Swiss Precious Wood company considered taking a 10 % participation in the NST holding. Due to the uncertainties, this participation has been reduced until a further contract price increase is decided in 2008 (exclusive option).

-The SODEFOR group controls up to 3 million hectares (2 million hectares of productive area)
-The de facto group SOFORMA-FORABOLA-CFT is led by Portuguese and Swiss interests (ARD, 2003). SOFORMA group controls around 2 million ha (around 1 million hectares are productive) (FRM website, November 200612)

The other major player is the Danzer group

-SIFORCO, subsidiary of the Danzer Group, controlled up to 3 million hectares before the 2004’s fiscal reform and the introduction of an area tax. In 2004, SIFORCO brought back to the government logged-over and non-timber productive areas, and came up with a concession area of around 1.8 million ha. SIFORCO runs an important sawmill and peeling unit in Maluku, in the vicinity of Kinshasa.
-SEDAF is a Congolese company with 668,033 ha, which is allegedly a contractor of SIFORCO, to which SEDAF sells its timber production (Kühne K., 2005).

Other major players are:
-TRANS-M, a newcomer Lebanese company subsidiary of Congo-Future, a group with various activities in DRC that has 3 concessions totalling 746.000 ha.

-SAFBOIS, a Belgian Company with also US interests (ARD, 2003), controls around 334,700 ha.

-SICOBOIS is another Belgian company with concessions over 395.000 ha.

-Parcafrique, an Italian wood processor with 235,432 ha.

-SCIBOIS, with 229,400 ha, is a French company owned by the same family that owns ITBL in Congo-Brazzaville.

-ITB, another Lebanese company, has concessions over 200,000 ha.

- is an 81,000 ha company operating in the East-Congo, close to Kivu, in an area with Entandrophragma species (sapelli, sipo…), but landlocked. Focusing only on high quality sawnwood, especially on flooring, this Belgian company exports through Tanzania.

-SEFOCO controls 414,000 ha.

-OLAM-Congo, an Indian company, is a newcomer with around 300,000 ha.

-Another newcomer is the Chinese Yang Shushan, with a 188,672 ha-concession.

It is estimated that 75 % of the current concessions can be contested and cancelled
on a legal basis for having being allocated after the 2002 moratorium.

The new elected government will have to make a statement on this delicate issue.

http://www.rightsandresources.org/documents/files/doc_131.pdf

[blindpig]

54. Thanks Hannah

That some would blame local people for this wholesale devastation is obscene. Mainstream environmental orgs are very much part of the dominant culture and thus work against that which they profess to advocate. It's Capitalism, as usual.

[apocalypsehow]

35. Oh I had plenty of links - and thank you for once again giving me the opportunity to post them:

JFK the anti-New Dealer:

"Mr. Roosevelt has contributed to the end of capitalism in our own country, although he would probably argue the point at some length. He has done this not through the laws which he sponsored or were passed during his presidency, but rather through the emphasis he put on rights rather than responsibilites." -John Fitzgerald Kennedy

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/progjfk1.htm

Eleanor Roosevelt's dislike for JFK, a dislike that was mutual:

"Eleanor Roosevelt, the beloved symbol of the liberals openly berated JFK in 1956 at the Democratic Convention for not having taken a stand against McCarthy, and repeated her mistrust of JFK in an interview for Look magazine in 1958. The lingering image of JFK and the McCarthy connections was another reason why JFK was challenged from the left in 1960."

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/progjfk2.htm

More on Roosevelt & JFK's mutual contempt:

"She had left the 1960 Democratic Convention in tears when John Kennedy won the nomination. He was, to her, just Joe Kennedy's overreaching son, an arrogant young man who would not wait his turn...she had refused to sit on the inaugural platform with Kennedy and his family, wrapping herself in a mink coat and an Army blanket in the crowd below the stand." - Richard Reeves, "President Kennedy: Profile of Power"

http://www.amazon.com/President-Kennedy-Profile-Richard...

JFK's contempt for Adlai Stevenson:

"The party liberals, and Stevenson, felt that he deserved to be Secretary of State. JFK never considered the idea specifically because of the bitterness from 1956. JFK only offered UN Ambassador, a post that Stevenson resented as "beneath his dignity." So determined was JFK not to let a liberal run the State Department that he even rejected the liberals second and third choices, Chester Bowles and G. Mennen Williams."

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/progjfk3.htm

JFK's irritation with & suspicion of the Civil Rights Movement:

"JFK's less than wholehearted feelings of affection for the movement would surface again two years later when both he and RFK would agree with J. Edgar Hoover that King needed to be wiretapped because at least one of his advisors had suspected communist ties,"

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/progjfk4.htm

JFK the unapologetic Cold Warrior:

"In a series of oral history interviews for the JFK Library, RFK said that "it was worthwhile for psychological, political reasons" to stay in Vietnam.
"The President felt that he had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam....If you lost Vietnam, I think everybody was quite clear that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall." (32)
John Bartlow Martin point-blank asked RFK "if the President was convinced that the United States had to stay in Vietnam." The one-word response was "Yes."

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/progjfk5.htm

JFK administration, an overview (money quote):

"Contrary to much Camelot romanticism, Kennedy never considered any policy other than military victory. Just three weeks before his assassination, in the wake of the overthrow of the Diem regime, he remained hopeful about the prospects for an intensification of the war, telling the press that he thought there was a “new situation” in Vietnam, which would lead to, “we hope, an increased effort in the war” (emphasis added). He added that the U.S. policy should be to “intensify the struggle” so that “we can bring Americans out of there” - after U.S. forces had subjugated the country, a goal he never renounced."

http://legalienate.blogspot.com/2009/05/false-saviors-j...

JFK trending Right in 1960:

"As senator, Kennedy had zigzagged through the long obstacle course of civil rights legislation, siding in most cases, as a Ted Sorensen memo to Bobby proudly explained in December 1959, ‘with our friends in the South.’ He meant white friends.” - Richard D. Mahoney, "Sons and Brothers: the Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy"

http://www.amazon.com/Sons-Brothers-Days-Bobby-Kennedy/...

JFK's Foreign Policy - lots of Reagan, not much Ganhdi:

"In each of these chapters, JFK’s Cold Warrior mentality is evident in the people he trusted for advice... It seems striking to this reader to find that JFK’s policies differed little from Nixon or Reagan and yet his decisions do not appear to have shortened the Cold War at all—in fact they probably contributed to its longevity. Few will be impressed with JFK’s role in the arrest and imprisonment of Nelson Mandela or with the 163 individual covert operations he personally approved for the CIA to conduct in Latin America which, among other things, brought about the downfall of two democratically elected heads of state." (all emphases added)

http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2010/0406/book/b...

JFK the Bystander:

"JFK, martyred liberal icon, turns out to have been wholly indifferent to the question of civil rights for black Americans. Kennedy, who built a political career on the sinking of PT-109, once told a fellow survivor, "My story about the collision is getting better all the time. Now I've got a Jew and a ****** (N-word) in the story and with me being a Catholic, that's great."

Reviewed by Kirkus: quoted from "The Bystander," by Nick Bryant

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Bystander/Nick-Bry...

Well now, there yah are: that ought to be more than enough reading material to occupy someone who is in dire need of a little more information about the life & times of John Fitzgerald Kennedy other than what Oliver Stone’s movie provided.

All the books linked and cited above are available for purchase, but if you can manage to pry yourself away from your keyboard for even a miniscule amount of time I'm certain you will be able to get them on loan all for free at your local library.

It’ll also give you a chance to get out & about, do the Sunshine & fresh air thing, this beautiful summer season.

A win-win if I ever saw one!

Good luck on your educational endeavors!

[apocalypsehow]

36. As well as the addendum:

I am composing this reply before I post the one above to pair with it as an addendum I feel is important.

With just a few hours on Google and a brief romp through my personal library, I was able to compose the impressive roll-call of definitive evidence seen above that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, whatever else he was and did, was not a liberal by even the standards of 1963, let alone 2010.

He had what we would call “liberal” tendencies and instincts in some matters: he governed domestically on the slight left-of-center throughout his presidency, right up until the day of his tragic murder at the hands of a sad, pitiful loser named Lee Harvey Oswald.

But even here, the progressive of 2010 must pause: when I state “he governed domestically on the slight left-of-center,” I mean by the “left-of-center” standards of 1961, ’62, & ’63. That center has shifted significantly since those days, and in 2010 many of Kennedy’s views and policies in that regard would be considered either middle of the road, or even slightly on the conservative side of the ledger. Some would be considered outright Reactionary.

This is not to say JFK would’ve been a right-winger in 2010, as the wing-nut blogosphere and conservative talk radio always likes to claim: not a bit of it.

Instead it is likely that had JFK lived he would have moved further to the Left as time went by, just as his younger brothers did in the turbulent years that followed his tragic passing.

It is unlikely he would ever have become as liberal as his brother Ted, but he would almost certainly been to the Left of even the most “moderate” conservative, and firmly in the progressive mainstream.

We will never know, but that’s my best guess and opinion, and it, unlike so much else we’ve seen in this thread, is an informed opinion.

I predict the irrefutable facts I have presented will stir further anger on those invested in a false narrative regarding JFK not just because I insist on presenting them, but because they exist, as facts, at all. Anger because they are part of the actual ledger of recorded history in the first place, as opposed to the make-believe narratives which comfort some of those particularly enamored and bestirred by the life & times of the 35th president of the United States.

And they are irrefutable: backed up with those precious links that have been so clamored for, it only took me a few hours, the internet, and a bit of thumbing through my own personal library to run down ten proof-texts and bullet points showing that President Kennedy was not the idealistic, full-tilt liberal that some today would like to pretend he was. Had I more time to dedicate to it - a full day; a week; a month - the list & links would have run in the dozens, the hundreds, perhaps more.

This topic has long fascinated me, the deification of JFK the man by some on the progressive side of the ledger to an unreasonable, un-factual degree; Ronald Reagan has a similar fan club of fanatical worshippers on the conservative Right who treat him in a similar fashion as a magical demigod who could do no wrong.

Those who claim the label “progressive” should know better than to indulge in such fanciful hagiography, IMHO, but let’s put that aside.

To continue, when people get deeply invested in a worldview that rotates around a profound historical figure, whether it be Jesus Christ or John F. Kennedy (or Ronald Reagan), they begin to construct narratives that explain away that historical figure’s failings and exaggerate their accomplishments during that limited time on this earth we all have.

They start to remake the actual person who lived into an image that corresponds with their elevated estimate of them: they begin to make myths, and tell sacred stories about their great deeds, and mighty triumphs. Their defeats and failures are usually chalked up to the nefarious workings of enemies, traitors, the self-serving, the greedy, and other assorted agents of evil.

That’s how the New Testament got written.

And when that narrative is called into question, challenged, debunked, it raises the angriest kind of hackles from those so invested: it’s almost as if you are calling into question their core identity; and, in some instances, you are.

When the facts themselves, as facts, are unpalatable to the person(s) invested in not accepting them, ugliness often follows.

Hence the anger - the irrational, lashing-out anger, coupled with scornful incredulity - directed at the person who does not flinch from presenting those facts, and who insists they be respected even when inconvenient & troublesome, regardless of the circumstances.

That is the hallmark of a progressive way of thinking; the benchmark of a liberal way of reasoning and coming to grips with the world around us.

One I highly recommend.

Good evening.

[apocalypsehow]

38. And of course, you didn't have a *single* factual rebuttal back then - I thank you for bringing the

topic back up for everyone on DU's perusal. It was a great thread, in which not a single posted fact of mine was refuted. Thank you, Octafish! :thumbsup:

[aquart]

59. Considering who his daddy was...

It was amazing that ALL his choices weren't like that.

[burrowowl]

20. Same as the Jews killed

under Hitler and we do nothing!?

[Hannah Bell]

24. we're killing them.

[cali]

49. and we didn't do anything then either.

[Still a Democrat]

56. It was the defeat of Nazi Germany that stopped the Holocaust

And that defeat would not have happened without our involvement. The Holocaust was recognized as a grave crime here, but we didn't see it as enough reason to become involved in the war. So it's not totally accurate to say we didn't do anything.

[apocalypsehow]

42. *Kick*

:kick:

[Name removed]

48. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[NutmegYankee]

50. I read a statistic somewhere that 20 million people have died from Machetes alone

in just the past 30 years in central Africa. Horrible!