Wednesday, September 23, 2009

THE END OF THE US DOLLAR'S HEGEMONY...OR A GEOPOLITICAL STRATEGY FOR A GLOBAL CURRENCY FOR THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC ENSLAVEMENT OF HUMANITY...?


UN wants new global currency to replace dollar

The dollar should be replaced with a global currency, the United Nations has said, proposing the biggest overhaul of the world's monetary system since the Second World War.

By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor, Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/currency/6152204/UN-wants-new-global-currency-to-replace-dollar.html

07 Sep 2009

A number of countries, including China and Russia, have suggested replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency

In a radical report, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has said the system of currencies and capital rules which binds the world economy is not working properly, and was largely responsible for the financial and economic crises.

It added that the present system, under which the dollar acts as the world's reserve currency , should be subject to a wholesale reconsideration.

Although a number of countries, including China and Russia, have suggested replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency, the UNCTAD report is the first time a major multinational institution has posited such a suggestion.

In essence, the report calls for a new Bretton Woods-style system of managed international exchange rates, meaning central banks would be forced to intervene and either support or push down their currencies depending on how the rest of the world economy is behaving.

The proposals would also imply that surplus nations such as China and Germany should stimulate their economies further in order to cut their own imbalances, rather than, as in the present system, deficit nations such as the UK and US having to take the main burden of readjustment.

"Replacing the dollar with an artificial currency would solve some of the problems related to the potential of countries running large deficits and would help stability," said Detlef Kotte, one of the report's authors. "But you will also need a system of managed exchange rates. Countries should keep real exchange rates [adjusted for inflation] stable. Central banks would have to intervene and if not they would have to be told to do so by a multilateral institution such as the International Monetary Fund."

The proposals, included in UNCTAD's annual Trade and Development Report , amount to the most radical suggestions for redesigning the global monetary system.

Although many economists have pointed out that the economic crisis owed more to the malfunctioning of the post-Bretton Woods system, until now no major institution, including the G20 , has come up with an alternative.

Please read the excellent article published below on this blog to understand the context and the real geopolitical objectives of the banksters behind this move.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/currency/6152204/UN-wants-new-global-currency-to-replace-dollar.html

WELCOME TO THE NWO: CENTRAL BANK, GLOBAL CURRENCY & GLOBAL GOVERNMENT


Coming Soon:

A Global Central Bank, Global Currency & World Government


By Andrew Marshall

source: http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/Article/A_Global_Central_Bank_Global_Currency_World_Government.html

Following the 2009 G20 summit, plans were announced for implementing the creation of a new global currency to replace the US dollar’s role as the world reserve currency. Point 19 of the communiqué released by the G20 at the end of the Summit stated, “We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250 billion into the world economy and increase global liquidity.” SDRs, or Special Drawing Rights, are “a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund.”

As the Telegraph reported, “the G20 leaders have activated the IMF’s power to create money and begin global ‘quantitative easing’. In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it.”1

The article continued in stating that, “there is now a world currency in waiting. In time, SDRs are likely to evolve into a parking place for the foreign holdings of central banks, led by the People’s Bank of China.” Further, “the creation of a Financial Stability Board looks like the first step towards a global financial regulator,” or, in other words, a global central bank.

It is important to take a closer look at these “solutions” being proposed and implemented in the midst of the current global financial crisis. These are not new suggestions, as they have been in the plans of the global elite for a long time. However, in the midst of the current crisis, the elite have fast-tracked their agenda of forging a New World Order in finance. It is important to address the background to these proposed and imposed “solutions” and what effects they will have on the International Monetary System (IMS) and the global political economy as a whole.

A New Bretton-Woods

In October of 2008, Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK, said that we “must have a new Bretton Woods – building a new international financial architecture for the years ahead.” He continued in saying that, “we must now reform the international financial system,” and that he would want “to see the IMF reformed to become a ‘global central bank’ closely monitoring the international economy and financial system.”2
On October 17, 2008, Gordon Brown wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he said that this ‘new Bretton-Woods’ should work towards “global governance,” and implementing “shared global standards for accounting and regulation,” and “the renewal of our international institutions to make them effective early-warning systems for the world economy.”3

In early October 2008, it was reported that, “as the world’s central bankers gather this week in Washington DC for an IMF-World Bank conference to discuss the crisis, the big question they face is whether it is time to establish a global economic ‘policeman’ to ensure the crash of 2008 can never be repeated.” Further, “any organisation with the power to police the global economy would have to include representatives of every major country – a United Nations of economic regulation.” A former governor of the Bank of England suggested that, “the answer might already be staring us in the face, in the form of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS),” however, “the problem is that it has no teeth. The IMF tends to couch its warnings about economic problems in very diplomatic language, but the BIS is more independent and much better placed to deal with this if it is given the power to do so.”4

Emergence of Regional Currencies

On January 1, 1999, the European Union established the Euro as its regional currency. The Euro has grown in prominence over the past several years. However, it is not to be the only regional currency in the world. There are moves and calls for other regional currencies throughout the world.

In 2007, Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, ran an article titled, ‘The End of National Currency’, in which it began by discussing the volatility of international currency markets, and that very few “real” solutions have been proposed to address successive currency crises.

The author poses the question, “Will restoring lost sovereignty to governments put an end to financial instability?” He answers by stating that, “this is a dangerous misdiagnosis,” and that, “the right course is not to return to a mythical past of monetary sovereignty, with governments controlling local interest and exchange rates in blissful ignorance of the rest of the world. Governments must let go of the fatal notion that nationhood requires them to make and control the money used in their territory. National currencies and global markets simply do not mix; together they make a deadly brew of currency crises and geopolitical tension and create ready pretexts for damaging protectionism. In order to globalise safely, countries should abandon monetary nationalism and abolish unwanted currencies, the source of much of today’s instability.”

The author explains that, “monetary nationalism is simply incompatible with globalisation. It has always been, even if this has only become apparent since the 1970s, when all the world’s governments rendered their currencies intrinsically worthless.” The author states that, “since economic development outside the process of globalisation is no longer possible, countries should abandon monetary nationalism. Governments should replace national currencies with the dollar or the euro or, in the case of Asia, collaborate to produce a new multinational currency over a comparably large and economically diversified area.” Essentially, according to the author, the solution lies in regional currencies.5

In October of 2008, “European Central Bank council member Ewald Nowotny said a ‘tri-polar’ global currency system is developing between Asia, Europe and the US and that he’s skeptical the US dollar’s centrality can be revived.”6

In South America, there are moves to create a regional currency and central bank under the Union of South American Nations, which was established in May of 2008.7,8 The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a regional trade bloc of Arabic Gulf nations, has also been making moves towards creating a regional central bank and common currency for its member nations, following the example of Europe, and even being advised by the European Central Bank.9-12

From the time of the East Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, there have been calls for the creation of a regional currency for East Asia among the ten member nations of the ASEAN bloc, as well as China, Japan and South Korea. In 2008, ASEAN central bank officials and financial ministers met to discuss monetary integration in the region.13-19

Within Africa, there are already certain regional monetary unions, and within the framework of the African Union, there are moves being implemented to create an African currency under the control of an African Central Bank (ACB), which is to be located in Nigeria.20-24

In North America, there are moves, coinciding with the deepening economic and political integration of the continent under NAFTA and the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), to create a regional currency for North America, aptly given the current designation as the Amero, and even the then-Governor of the Central Bank of Canada, David Dodge, in 2007, said that a regional currency was “possible.”25-33

A Global Currency

In 1988, The Economist ran an article titled, ‘Get Ready for the Phoenix’, in which they wrote, “thirty years from now, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, and people in many other rich countries and some relatively poor ones will probably be paying for their shopping with the same currency. Prices will be quoted not in dollars, yen or D-marks but in, let’s say, the phoenix. The phoenix will be favoured by companies and shoppers because it will be more convenient than today’s national currencies, which by then will seem a quaint cause of much disruption to economic life in the late twentieth century.”

The article stated that, “The market crash [of 1987] taught [governments] that the pretence of policy cooperation can be worse than nothing, and that until real co-operation is feasible (ie, until governments surrender some economic sovereignty) further attempts to peg currencies will flounder.”

Amazingly the author of the article adds that, “Several more big exchange-rate upsets, a few more stockmarket crashes and probably a slump or two will be needed before politicians are willing to face squarely up to that choice. This points to a muddled sequence of emergency followed by patch-up followed by emergency, stretching out far beyond 2018 – except for two things. As time passes, the damage caused by currency instability is gradually going to mount; and the very trends that will make it mount are making the utopia of monetary union feasible.”

The article advocated the formation of a global central bank, perhaps through the IMF, and “this means a big loss of economic sovereignty, but the trends that make the phoenix so appealing are taking that sovereignty away in any case.”

The article concludes in stating that, “The phoenix would probably start as a cocktail of national currencies, just as the Special Drawing Right is today. In time, though, its value against national currencies would cease to matter, because people would choose it for its convenience and the stability of its purchasing power.” The last sentence says, “Pencil in the phoenix for around 2018, and welcome it when it comes.”34

Former US Federal Reserve Governor Paul Volcker has said that, “if we are to have a truly global economy, a single world currency makes sense.” A European Central Bank executive stated that, “we might one day have a single world currency,” in “a step towards the ideal situation of a fully integrated world.”35

The IMF held a conference in 2000 discussing how the world was segmenting into regional currency blocs and that a single world currency was possible, and that it is, in fact, preferable.36 Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Mundell has long advocated the creation of a global currency, and that it “would restore a needed coherence to the international monetary system, give the International Monetary Fund a function that would help it to promote stability, and be a catalyst for international harmony.”37

In March 2009, Russia suggested that the G20 meeting in April should “consider the possibility of creating a supra-national reserve currency or a ‘super-reserve currency’,” and to consider the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) in this capacity.38 A week later, China’s central bank governor proposed the creation of a global currency controlled by the IMF, replacing the US dollar as the world reserve currency, also using the IMF’s SDRs as the reserve currency basket against which all other currencies would be fixed.39

Days after this proposal, the US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, former President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, told the Council on Foreign Relations that, in response to a question about the Chinese proposal, “we’re actually quite open to that suggestion. But you should think of it as rather evolutionary, building on the current architectures, than – rather than – rather than moving us to global monetary union.”40

In late March a UN panel of economists recommended the creation of a new global currency reserve that would replace the US dollar, and that it would be an “independently administered reserve currency.”41

Creating a World Central Bank

In 1998, Jeffrey Garten wrote an article for the New York Times advocating a “global Fed.” Garten was former Dean of the Yale School of Management, former Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration, previously served on the White House Council on International Economic Policy under the Nixon administration and on the policy planning staffs of Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance of the Ford and Carter administrations, former Managing Director at Lehman Brothers, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In his article written in 1998, he stated that, “over time the United States set up crucial central institutions – the Securities and Exchange Commission (1933), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (1934) and, most important, the Federal Reserve (1913). In so doing, America became a managed national economy. These organisations were created to make capitalism work, to prevent destructive business cycles and to moderate the harsh, invisible hand of Adam Smith.” He stated that, “this is what now must occur on a global scale. The world needs an institution that has a hand on the economic rudder when the seas become stormy. It needs a global central bank.”

Interestingly, Garten states that, “one thing that would not be acceptable would be for the bank to be at the mercy of short-term-oriented legislatures.” In essence, it is not to be accountable to the people of the world. So, he asks the question, “To whom would a global central bank be accountable? It would have too much power to be governed only by technocrats, although it must be led by the best of them. One possibility would be to link the new bank to an enlarged Group of Seven – perhaps a ‘G-15’ [or in today’s context, the G20] that would include the G-7 plus rotating members like Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Poland, India, China and South Korea.” He further states that, “There would have to be very close collaboration” between the global bank and the Fed.42

In September of 2008, Jeffrey Garten wrote an article for the Financial Times in which he stated that, “Even if the US’s massive financial rescue operation succeeds, it should be followed by something even more far-reaching – the establishment of a Global Monetary Authority to oversee markets that have become borderless.”

In late October of 2008, Garten wrote an article for Newsweek in which he stated that, “leaders should begin laying the groundwork for establishing a global central bank.” He explained that, “there was a time when the US Federal Reserve played this role [as governing financial authority of the world], as the prime financial institution of the world’s most powerful economy, overseeing the one global currency. But with the growth of capital markets, the rise of currencies like the euro and the emergence of powerful players such as China, the shift of wealth to Asia and the Persian Gulf and, of course, the deep-seated problems in the American economy itself, the Fed no longer has the capability to lead single-handedly.”43

In January of 2009, it was reported that, “one clear solution to avoid a repeat of the problems would be the establishment of a ‘global central bank’ – with the IMF and World Bank being unable to prevent the financial meltdown.” Dr. William Overholt, senior research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, formerly with the Rand Institute, gave a speech in Dubai in which he said that, “To avoid another crisis, we need an ability to manage global liquidity. Theoretically that could be achieved through some kind of global central bank, or through the creation of a global currency, or through global acceptance of a set of rules with sanctions and a dispute settlement mechanism.”44

A “New World Order” in Banking

In June of 2008, before he was Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, Timothy Geithner, as head of the New York Federal Reserve, wrote an article for the Financial Times following his attendance at the 2008 Bilderberg conference, in which he said that, “banks and investment banks whose health is crucial to the global financial system should operate under a unified regulatory framework,” and that, “the US Federal Reserve should play a ‘central role’ in the new regulatory framework, working closely with supervisors in the US and around the world.”45

In November of 2008, The National, a prominent United Arab Emirates newspaper, reported on Baron David de Rothschild accompanying UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown on a visit to the Middle East, although not as a “part of the official party” accompanying Brown. Following an interview with the Baron, it was reported that, “Rothschild shares most people’s view that there is a new world order. In his opinion, banks will deleverage and there will be a new form of global governance.”46

In February of 2009, the Times Online reported that a “new world order in banking [is] necessary,” and that, “it is increasingly evident that the world needs a new banking system and that it should not bear much resemblance to the one that has failed so spectacularly.”47

But of course, the elites that are shaping this new banking system are the champions of the previous banking system. The solutions that will follow are simply the extensions of the current system, only sped up through the necessity posed by the current crisis.

An Emerging Global Government

An April 3, 2009 article in the Toronto Star, reported that the G20 “confab constitutes the first great get-together of the new world order. This geopolitical order may follow a number of directions, by no means all of them pleasant. But its defining characteristic is already unchangeable.” Further, “An uncomfortable characteristic of the new world order may well turn out to be that global income gaps will widen because the rising powers, such as China, India and Brazil, regard those below them on the ladder as potential rivals.” The author further states that, “The new world order thus won’t necessarily be any better than the old one,” and that, “what is certain, though, is that global affairs are going to be considerably different from now on.”48

David Rothkopf, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the Clinton administration, and former managing director of Kissinger and Associates, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently wrote a book titled, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making, of which he is certainly a member. When discussing the role and agenda of the global “superclass,” he states that, “in a world of global movements and threats that don’t present their passports at national borders, it is no longer possible for a nation-state acting alone to fulfil its portion of the social contract.”49

He writes that “the international organisations and alliances we have today,” are evolving and achieving great things, despite certain flaws, and that he is “optimistic that progress will continue to be made,” but it will be difficult, because it “undercuts many national and local power structures and cultural concepts that have foundations deep in the bedrock of human civilisation, namely the notion of sovereignty.”50 He further notes that, “mechanisms of global governance are more achievable in today’s environment,” and that these mechanisms “are often creative with temporary solutions to urgent problems that cannot wait for the world to embrace a bigger and more controversial idea like real global government.”51

In December of 2008, the Financial Times ran an article written by Gideon Rachman, a past Bilderberg attendee, who wrote that, “for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible,” and that, “a ‘world government’ would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.” Asking if the European model could “go global,” he states that it can, and that this is made possible through an awakening “change in the political atmosphere,” as “the financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.”

He quoted an adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy as saying, “global governance is just a euphemism for global government,” and that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law.” However, Rachman states that any push towards a global government “will be a painful, slow process.” He then states that a key problem in this push can be explained with an example from the EU, which “has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for ‘ever closer union’ have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic. [Emphasis added]”52

In November of 2008, the United States National Intelligence Council (NIC), the US intelligence community’s “centre for midterm and long-term strategic thinking,” released a report that it produced in collaboration with numerous think tanks, consulting firms, academic institutions and hundreds of other experts, among them are the Atlantic Council of the United States, the Wilson Center, RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, Texas A&M University, the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House in London.53

The report, titled Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, outlines the current global political and economic trends that the world may be going through by the year 2025. In terms of the financial crisis, it states that solving this “will require long-term efforts to establish a new international system.”54 It suggests that as the “China-model” for development becomes increasingly attractive, there may be a “decline in democratisation” for emerging economies, authoritarian regimes, and “weak democracies frustrated by years of economic underperformance.” Further, the dollar will cease to be the global reserve currency, as there would likely be a “move away from the dollar.”55

It states that the dollar will become “something of a first among equals in a basket of currencies by 2025. This could occur suddenly in the wake of a crisis, or gradually with global rebalancing.”56 The report elaborates on the construction of a new international system, stating that, “by 2025, nation-states will no longer be the only – and often not the most important – actors on the world stage and the ‘international system’ will have morphed to accommodate the new reality. But the transformation will be incomplete and uneven.” It also notes that, “most of the pressing transnational problems – including climate change, regulation of globalised financial markets, migration, failing states, crime networks, etc. – are unlikely to be effectively resolved by the actions of individual nation-states. The need for effective global governance will increase faster than existing mechanisms can respond.”57

The report discusses the topic of regionalism, stating that, “Asian regionalism would have global implications, possibly sparking or reinforcing a trend toward three trade and financial clusters that could become quasi-blocs (North America, Europe, and East Asia).” These blocs “would have implications for the ability to achieve future global World Trade Organisation agreements and regional clusters could compete in the setting of trans-regional product standards for IT, biotech, nanotech, intellectual property rights, and other ‘new economy’ products.”58

Reflecting similar assumptions made by Rachman in his article advocating a world government is the topic of democratisation, on which the report says, “advances are likely to slow and globalisation will subject many recently democratised countries to increasing social and economic pressures that could undermine liberal institutions.” This is largely because “the better economic performance of many authoritarian governments could sow doubts among some about democracy as the best form of government. The surveys we consulted indicated that many East Asians put greater emphasis on good management, including increasing standards of livings, than democracy.” Further, “even in many well-established democracies, surveys show growing frustration with the current workings of democratic government and questioning among elites over the ability of democratic governments to take the bold actions necessary to deal rapidly and effectively with the growing number of transnational challenges.”59

The Creation of a New World Order

Ultimately, what this implies is that the future of the global political economy is one of increasing moves toward a global system of governance, or a world government, with a world central bank and global currency; and that, concurrently, these developments are likely to materialise in the face of and as a result of a decline in democracy around the world, and thus, a rise in authoritarianism. What we are witnessing is the creation of a New World Order, controlled by a totalitarian global government structure.

In fact, the very concept of a global currency and global central bank is authoritarian in its very nature, as it removes any vestiges of oversight and accountability away from the people of the world, and toward a small, increasingly interconnected group of international elites.

As Carroll Quigley explained in his monumental book, Tragedy and Hope, “[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.”60

Indeed, the current “solutions” being proposed to the global financial crisis benefit those that caused the crisis over those that are poised to suffer the most as a result of the crisis: the disappearing middle classes, the world’s dispossessed, poor, indebted people. The proposed solutions to this crisis represent the manifestations and actualisation of the ultimate generational goals of the global elite; and thus, represent the least favourable conditions for the vast majority of the world’s people.

It is imperative that the world’s people throw their weight against these “solutions” and usher in a new era of world order, one of the People’s World Order; with the solution lying in local governance and local economies, so that the people have greater roles in determining the future and structure of their own political-economy, and thus, their own society. With this alternative of localised political economies, in conjunction with an unprecedented global population and international democratisation of communication through the internet, we have the means and possibility before us to forge the most diverse manifestation of cultures and societies that humanity has ever known.

The answer lies in the individual’s internalisation of human power and destination, and a rejection of the externalisation of power and human destiny to a global authority of which all but a select few people have access to. To internalise human power and destiny is to realise the gift of a human mind, which has the ability to engage in thought beyond the material, such as food and shelter, and venture into the realm of the conceptual. Each individual possesses – within themselves – the ability to think critically about themselves and their own life; now is the time to utilise this ability with the aim of internalising the concepts and questions of human power and destiny: Why are we here? Where are we going? Where should we be going? How do we get there?

The supposed answers to these questions are offered to us by a tiny global elite who fear the repercussions of what would take place if the people of the world were to begin to answer these questions themselves. I do not know the answers to these questions, but I do know that the answers lie in the human mind and spirit, that which has overcome and will continue to overcome the greatest of challenges to humanity, and will, without doubt, triumph over the New World Order.

Footnotes:

1. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, ‘The G20 moves the world a step closer to a global currency’, The Telegraph, April 3, 2009, www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5096524/The-G20-moves-the-world-a-step-closer-to-a-global-currency.html
2. Robert Winnett, ‘Financial Crisis: Gordon Brown calls for “new Bretton Woods”,’ The Telegraph, October 13, 2008, www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3189517/Financial-Crisis-Gordon-Brown-calls-for-new-Bretton-Woods.html
3. Gordon Brown, ‘Out of the Ashes’, The Washington Post, October 17, 2008, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603179.html
4. Gordon Rayner, ‘Global financial crisis: does the world need a new banking “policeman”?’, The Telegraph, October 8, 2008, www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3155563/Global-financial-crisis-does-the-world-need-a-new-banking-policeman.html
5. Benn Steil, ‘The End of National Currency’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, Issue 3, May/June 2007, pp.83-96
6. Jonathan Tirone, ‘ECB’s Nowotny Sees Global “Tri-Polar” Currency System Evolving’, Bloomberg, October 19, 2008, www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=apjqJKKQvfDc&refer=home
7. BBC, ‘South America nations found union’, BBC News, May 23, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7417896.stm
8. CNews, ‘South American nations to seek common currency’, China View, May 26, 2008, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-05/27/content_8260847.htm
9. AME Info, ‘GCC: Full steam ahead to monetary union’, September 19, 2005, www.ameinfo.com/67925.html
10. John Irish, ‘GCC Agrees on Monetary Union but Signals Delay in Common Currency’, Reuters, June 10, 2008, www.arabnews.com/?page=6§ion=0&article=110727&d=10&m=6&y=2008
11. ‘TIMELINE-Gulf single currency deadline delayed beyond 2010’, Forbes, March 23, 2009, www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/03/24/afx6204462.html
12. Agencies, ‘GCC need not rush to form single currency’, Business 24/7, March 26, 2009, www.business24-7.ae/articles/2009/3/pages/25032009/03262009_4e19de908b174f04bfb3c37aec2f17b3.aspx
13. Barry Eichengreen, ‘International Monetary Arrangements: Is There a Monetary Union in Asia’s Future?’, The Brookings Institution, Spring 1997, www.brookings.edu/articles/1997/spring_globaleconomics_eichengreen.aspx
14. ‘After European now Asian Monetary Union?’, Asia Times Online, September 8, 2001, www.atimes.com/editor/CI08Ba01.html
15. ‘ASEAN Makes Moves for Asian Monetary Fund’, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, May 6, 2005, www.aseansec.org/afp/115.htm
16. Reuven Glick, ‘Does Europe’s Path to Monetary Union Provide Lessons for East Asia?’, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, August 12, 2005, www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2005/el2005-19.html
17. AFP, ‘Asian Monetary Fund may be needed to deal with future shocks’, Channel News Asia, July 2, 2007, www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/285700/1/.html
18. AFX News Limited, ‘East Asia monetary union “feasible” but political will lacking – ADB’, Forbes, September 19, 2007, www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2007/09/19/afx4133743.html
19. Lin Li, ‘ASEAN discusses financial, monetary integration’, China View, April 2, 2008, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/02/content_7906391.htm
20. Paul De Grauwe, Economics of Monetary Union, Oxford University Press, 2007, pp.109-110
21. Heather Milkiewicz & Paul R. Masson, ‘Africa’s Economic Morass—Will a Common Currency Help?’, The Brookings Institution, July 2003, www.brookings.edu/papers/2003/07africa_masson.aspx
22. John Gahamanyi, ‘Rwanda: African Central Bank Governors Discuss AU Financial Institutions’, The New Times, August 23, 2008, http://allafrica.com/stories/200808230124.html
23. Eric Ombok, ‘African Union, Nigeria Plan Accord on Central Bank’, Bloomberg, March 2, 2009, www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601116&sid=afoY1vOnEMLA&refer=africa
24. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Africa in the Quest for a Common Currency’, Republic of Kenya, March 2009, www.mfa.go.ke/mfacms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=346&Itemid=62
25. Herbert Grubel, ‘The Case for the Amero’, The Fraser Institute, September 1, 1999, p.4, www.fraserinstitute.org/Commerce.Web/publication_details.aspx?pubID=2512
26. Ibid, p.17
27. Thomas Courchene & Richard Harris, ‘From Fixing to Monetary Union: Options for North American Currency Integration’, C.D. Howe Institute, June 1999, p.22, www.cdhowe.org/display.cfm?page=research-fiscal&year=1999
28. Ibid, p.23
29. Barrie McKenna, ‘Dodge Says Single Currency “Possible”‘, The Globe and Mail, May 21, 2007
30. ‘Consider a Continental Currency, Jarislowsky Says’, The Globe and Mail, November 23, 2007, www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20071123.RDOLLAR23/TPStory/?query=%22Steven%2BChase%22b
31. CNN, Larry King Live, Transcripts, October 8, 2007, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0710/08/lkl.01.html
32. Herbert Grubel, ‘Fix the Loonie’, The Financial Post, January 18, 2008, www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=245165
33. Todd Harrison, ‘How realistic is a North American currency?’, Market Watch, January 28, 2009, www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Do-we-need-a-North/story.aspx?guid={D10536AF-F929-4AF9-AD10-250B4057A907}
34. ‘Get ready for the phoenix’, The Economist, Vol. 306, January 9, 1988, pp.9-10
35. ECB, ‘The euro and the dollar - new imperatives for policy co-ordination’, Speeches and Interviews, September 18, 2000, www.ecb.int/press/key/date/2000/html/sp000918.en.html
36. IMF, ‘One World, One Currency: Destination or Delusion?’, Economic Forums and International Seminars, November 8, 2000, www.imf.org/external/np/exr/ecforums/110800.htm
37. Robert A. Mundell, ‘World Currency’, The Works of Robert A. Mundell, www.robertmundell.net/Menu/Main.asp?Type=5&Cat=09&ThemeName=World%20Currency
38. Itar-Tass, ‘Russia proposes creation of global super-reserve currency’, ITAR-TASS News Agency, March 16, 2009, www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=13682035&PageNum=0
39. Jamil Anderlini, ‘China calls for new reserve currency’, The Financial Times, March 23, 2009, www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7851925a-17a2-11de-8c9d-0000779fd2ac.html
40. CFR, A Conversation with Timothy F. Geithner, Council on Foreign Relations Transcripts, March 25, 2009, www.cfr.org/publication/18925/
41. ‘UN backs new global currency reserve’, The Sunday Telegraph, March 29, 2009, www.news.com.au/business/story/0,27753,25255091-462,00.html
42. Jeffrey E. Garten, ‘Needed: A Fed for the World’, The New York Times, September 23, 1998, www.nytimes.com/1998/09/23/opinion/needed-a-fed-for-the-world.html
43. Jeffrey Garten, ‘We Need a Bank Of the World’, Newsweek, October 25, 2008, www.newsweek.com/id/165772
44. Sean Davidson, ‘Global central bank could prevent future crisis’, Business 24/7, January 10, 2009, www.business24-7.ae/articles/2009/1/pages/01102009_350bc822e4ee4508b724e55b0f1393df.aspx
45. James Politi & Gillian Tett, ‘NY Fed chief in push for global bank framework’, The Financial Times, June 8, 2008, http://us.ft.com/ftgateway/superpage.ft?news_id=fto060820081850443845
46. Rupert Wright, ‘The first barons of banking’, The National, November 6, 2008, www.thenational.ae/article/20081106/BUSINESS/167536298/1005
47. Michael Lafferty, ‘New world order in banking necessary after abject failure of present model’, The Times Online, February 24, 2009, http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/management/article5792585.ece
48. Richard Gwyn, ‘Change not necessarily for the better’, The Toronto Star, April 3, 2009, www.thestar.com/comment/article/612822
49. David Rothkopf, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making, Toronto: Penguin Books, 2008, p.315
50. Ibid, pp.315-316
51. Ibid, p.316
52. Gideon Rachman, ‘And now for a world government’, The Financial Times, December 8, 2008, www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7a03e5b6-c541-11dd-b516-000077b07658.html
53. NIC, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project, November, 2008, www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html
54. Ibid, p.11
55. Ibid, pp.11-12
56. Ibid, p.94
57. Ibid, p.81
58. Ibid, p.83
59. Ibid, p.87
60. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, New York: Macmillan Company, 1966, p.324

Sunday, September 06, 2009

THE LOOTING OF THE CONGO'S (DRC) MINERALS & THE GENOCIDE OF ITS INHABITANTS CONTINUE UNABATED OVER A CENTURY AFTER KING LEOPOLD'S GENOCIDAL REIGN...



King Leopold is dead, but the looting of the Congo's mineral resources and the exploitation, oppression and murder of its inhabitants continues unabated and in total impunity. Missionaries & colonial "administrators" have been replaced by NGO's, so-called "development experts", EU bureaucrats, secret services, corporations, corrupt politicians and other morally bankrupt parasites prospering-off the suffering and blood of the local inhabitants.

There is obviously no justice in this low world, but a Higher Justice awaits each one of these wretched individuals...


The War that did not make the Headlines: Over Five Million Dead in Congo?

by Keith Harmon Snow

source: www.globalresearch.ca

January 31, 2008

The International Rescue Committee in late January 2008 released a new report on the mortality in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. The report caught the eye of some news agencies, who quickly whipped up trite little articles as supposed expressions of horror. Over and over it has been declared “the world’s forgotten crises.” There are reasons why Darfur is in the crises of the day, the poster crises, and why Congo is hardly mentioned.1

However, the story of war and plunder in Congo is not unreported. It is a story that has been censored, manipulated, and covered up even while it is ostensibly being told. Plenty of information has been published about the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and plenty of this is flak, designed to whiteout the truth, and help keep the real story buried, and that includes the truly honest representations of war and suffering in Congo that have been published. Just because the mainstream doesn’t cover it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. This is the falsification of consciousness.

While the true death toll in Congo over the past series of wars—for the Congolese it is one long contiguous war—will never be known, it is far higher than the IRC figures. In the IRC’s tidy statistical equations there is no recounting the ordeal of the millions of people who have disappeared into the swamps, the tropical forests, the mass graves, torture chambers and death camps, or after crossing borders. The entire exercise in counting the dead is another way to do little to stop it. The IRC is about profits, but that is not all.

The International Rescue Committee has been described in the past as the ideal instrument of psychological warfare, and it is. This is exactly what is going on with the IRC today, and more, when the IRC—heavily subsidized by the very same profiteers—sends its body counters into Congo. But the IRC is not only the ideal instrument of psychological warfare, it is also the ideal instrument of intelligence gathering. The IRC capitalizes on their access to refugee populations, conflict areas and individual refugee encounters and interviews to gather intelligence on armed groups, leadership, resources, weapons and geographical conflicts, information that is selectively used to serve the greater interests of the IRC and its partners.

America’s Secret Warriors

Amongst the trustees or overseers of the International Rescue Committee is Henry Kissinger, a man whose interests run very deep in Congo. Henry Kissinger is tied to Freeport McMoRan (FXC) and FCX is all over the copper and cobalt show in Katanga. FCX director J. Stapleton Roy was Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research under Madeleine Albright, 1999-2000, during the Clinton administration invasions of Rwanda (1994) and then Congo/Zaire (1996); Roy retired to join Kissinger Associates.2

Another Kissinger Associates principal is Lawrence Eagleburger, who has past affiliations with the defense and intelligence insider Scowcroft Group, and has been a director of Halliburton Corporation since 1998. Scowcroft Group founder Brent Scowcroft served as the National Security Advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush and, 1982-1989, he was Vice-Chairman of Kissinger Associates.

Walter Kansteiner, a National Security insider for the Clinton and G.W. Bush administrations and a “principal member” of the Scowcroft Group today, is a director of Moto Gold (operating in blood-drenched Ituri, Congo) and of the military-based “conservation” organization, the Africa Wildlife Foundation (Washington D.C.), that is backing mercenary activities in the Congo’s Virungas Mountains region under the cover of gorilla protection.

Another Kissinger Associates director is Belgium’s Viscount Etienne Davignon, one of the Congo’s most lasting and current enemies. Davignon was directly involved, 1964-1965, in the code-named “Dragon” operations that installed the “kleptocrat” Mobutu and seeded the beginning of the end for millions of Congolese people.3,4 Davignon is also a close associate of Donald Rumsfeld through the bio-warfare production company Gilead Sciences.

The IRC board includes Samantha Power, the Founder of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard and Pulitzer-prize winning author of A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, the book that peddles genocide inflation on the one hand (regarding Rwanda, Yugoslavia and Sudan), and genocide denial on the other (regarding Congo, Uganda and Rwanda).5

The IRC “Freedom Award” for “extraordinary contributions to the cause of refugees and human freedom” has been given to some of the genocide inflators and deniers. In 1987 it went to John C. Whitehead and in 1992 to Cyrus Vance, two men with historical ties to covert operations in Congo, for example, through their National Security Agency and CIA insider status, and two men tied to the Maurice Templesman empire behind the plunder of Congo/Zaire for decades.

U.S. Congressman Donald Payne is one of those “friends of Africa” who hangs in the Andrew Young and Maurice Templesman crowd. His role as Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations in the Bush administration is one of his more stellar performances, a sad disappointment and complete betrayal to Africans and African-Americans.

In 1993 the “Freedom Award” went to Dwayne O. Andreas, the Archers Daniels Midland executive and top U.S. congressional campaign funder whose company makes sure there are starving refugees. ADM is deeply tied to Robert Dole and Andrew Young, the latter counting ADM as his many top clients at PR firm Goodworks International. Young is also deeply connected to the client regimes in Rwanda and Uganda—the chief protagonists in the Congo wars.

In 1995 the IRC’s “Freedom Award” went to Richard Holbrooke; in 1996 to Madeleine Albright; and in 2004 to General Romeo Dallaire. All three people were pivotal to the U.S. covert operations and the subsequent massive refugee displacements and mortality in Central Africa. Holbrooke and Albright are also culpable in crimes against humanity in former Yugoslavia, Haiti, Sudan and Iraq.

Finally, the “Freedom” award was shared in 2005 by William J. Clinton and G.H.W. Bush; Clinton launched the wars in Rwanda and Congo with the background support of his predecessor; Bush’s “humanitarianism” includes massive state destabilization, terror networks, torture, coups d’etat and war on sovereign nations.

The International Rescue Committee is not a neutral or purely “humanitarian” organization. The IRC has a deep history of nefarious activities going far beyond relief operations. The IRC is also a huge financial operation providing scads of executives and business people with scads of income in ways that do not help to alleviate the war or suffering, but rather exacerbate it. While the IRC claims 90% of its funds “are spent on refugee programs and services,” much of this money never hits the ground in Africa, what does often barely touches the life of a refugee. Amongst the IRC’s biggest funders are HSBC bank, GE, and Goldman Sachs, all involved in Congo’s blood diamonds plunder, and Pfizer and Gilead Sciences (the Davignon-Rumsfeld company). The IRC’s involvement in Congo—a mortality study—involves deeply political but generally hidden motives. Why doesn’t the IRC focus on feeding the living instead of counting the dead?

The Horror, The Horror

Beyond the simple calculus of the IRC’s highly political bias and interests, and cloaked in a smokescreen of neutrality, the mortality assessment is flawed. The IRC considers only the period of 1998 to 2007, excluding the first phase of the war, the U.S.-backed overthrow of Zaire and coup d’etat against Mobutu Sese Seko, 1996-1998. The IRC excludes this period for multiple reasons. (Requests to the IRC for comment were not answered.)

One of the obvious reasons is that the Pentagon was directly involved, 1996-1998, along with the private U.S. military companies Military Professional Resources Incorporated, and Kellogg, Brown and Root (Halliburton). Just as happened with the massive bloodletting in Rwanda, and premised of course from the start on the examples of selective justice at the Nazi Nuremburg trials, the international system manipulates statistics, dates, and timeframes partly to shield those agents who might otherwise be subject to some kind of future reckoning, and partly to serve the falsification of history and fabricate a false consciousness.

The IRC excludes the period 1996-1997 to shield the governments of now military President Paul Kagame, in Rwanda, and Yoweri Museveni, in Uganda, and their inner circles and extended networks of syndicated, organized crime.

In 1995 and 1996, the Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front (RPA/F) and their partners and backers, the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF), the Pentagon, MPRI and assorted other mercenaries, laid the groundwork for their imminent war by engaging Zairian territory through significant cross-border covert and terror operations from Uganda and Rwanda. In October 1996 there were at least 1.5 million Rwandan and Burundian refugees in eastern Zaire, according to most refugee agencies. The full-scale invasion began more formally when the RPA/UPDF proxy forces shelled the refugee camps. This was in violation of international humanitarian law, and it was a pivotal event to understand, because it was a replay of the events of October 1990, whereby the RPA invaded the territory of a sovereign government: Rwanda. Only this time it was eastern Zaire, and it involved the shelling of Hutu refugee camps.6 These are egregious crimes of international law.

France reported at the time that there were 1.2 million refugees and the United States insisted there were only 700,000, and the U.S. took the disingenuous line that all the refugees went back to Rwanda. They did not.

Hundreds of thousands of unarmed and innocent men, women and children were driven west, north, and south, running in fear for their lives from the allied invading forces who they knew from experience over the previous six years to be bloodthirsty killers. Many also were forced back to Rwanda where the RPA was targeting them. The RPA/UPDF forces hunted down and killed hundreds of thousands in a clear case of genocide. The names of the U.S. officials, the RPA and UPDF commanders and Congolese collaborators are all very well known to those who were on the ground or involved at the time.

One of these is long-time UNICEF executive Nigel Fisher, who is today also a member of the Advisory Council of the Diamond Development Initiative, a program run by and for the diamond industry but meant to put a reformative face on corporations and syndicated crime networks that for decades have plundered the Congo. Fisher was the UNICEF Special Representative for Rwanda in 1994, and he led that agency’s post-genocide [sic] recovery operations [sic] in the Great Lakes region of Africa (Rwanda, eastern Zaire, western Tanzania and southern Uganda) in 1994-1995. This places him squarely in the know about the massive genocidal killings and other crimes against humanity that occurred as the Rwandan military (then the Rwandan Patriotic Army) under current President Paul Kagame and the Ugandan military under President-for-life Yoweri Museveni first shelled the refugee camps and then marched across Zaire committing genocide.

So right off the bat we can add between 200,000 and 800,000 deaths to the new IRC mortality figures (and the 200,000 would be a very conservative figure).

Finally, the IRC is known for its long history of involvement in CIA and NSA activities, including shipping or transporting weapons.7 According to a top United Nations investigator, the IRC moved into bases in eastern Zaire in 1996 and started shelling the refugee camps with heavy weapons. Here is the direct quote: “The IRC took over some bases near the refugee camps and started shelling the camps with heavy weapons.” (Name withheld for confidentiality.)

The IRC has spent millions of dollars analyzing the “impact of conflict” in the Democratic Republic of Congo but they have said nothing of substance about the parallel economy of plunder that is enriching some of the same organizations that support their “humanitarian” programs. Their recent report is a glossy brochure offering a pornography of violence.

How stupid and blind do they think people are? How stupid and blind are we?

At the same time, the IRC has received massive “loans”—in the millions of dollars—over recent years from the U.S. taxpayer-funded Overseas Private Investment Corporation. What happens to all these OPIC funds?

In the new IRC report about mortality in Congo there is not a word about the causes of the ongoing strife or the structural factors which have made this holocaust possible, and perpetuate it.

Things Go Better with Blood

Offering their only real reason for the high mortality rates, the IRC states:

“Recovery from conflict is a slow and protracted process. The persistent elevation of mortality more than four years after the official end of the 1998–2002 war provides further evidence that recovery from conflict can take many years, especially when superimposed on decades of political and socioeconomic decline.”

This is nonsense. When hurricane Katrina hit, it was, after a brief delay, a rapid intervention process that established a chain of U.S. military command posts across the gulf coast. Troops, helicopters, tanks, and private military armies were quickly sent in, not to rescue people, but to secure the facilities of the US military and defense contractors, shipyards, banks and the high-end economic zone. It was all very efficient, hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer’s money was squandered on professional killers who, fresh from Iraq and Afghanistan, did the only thing they seem to know how to do, they killed people. But the point is that the U.S. government moves mountains when it wants to, and quickly.

Recovery from conflict “is a slow and protracted process” because there is an ongoing policy of intentional depopulation in Africa. The United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) spends about 40-45% of its billion dollar budget on airplane contracts flying around central Africa, and this goes to big business. There is never any problem shipping in weapons, and—offering a rather stark and poignant and undeniable example of the way things work and don’t—Coca Cola trucks ship coke all over the place, even in rural areas. Full stop.

Think about it.

There are no books and no bookstores in Congo for a reason. Starvation is widespread and there are food and grain shortages because of, and not in spite of, the United Nations and the IRC and the World Food Program and its ties to Robert Dole, Archers Daniels Midland, ConAgra and—a Henry Kissinger link—Continental Grain. There are shortages of health supplies and high rates of disease for a reason, and it is not because this is the “heart of darkness” or any other racist foolishness.

Coca Cola is not a healthy beverage for malnourished and starving children with no access to dental facilities. More importantly, Coke director Donald F. McHenry is a President of the IRC Group, a Washington DC consulting firm whose connections to the International Rescue Committee are difficult to ascertain. Former Ambassador Andrew Young, Madeleine Albright, George Soros, Lawrence Eagleburger, Frank Ferrari, Donald Easum, Donald F. McHenry and Frank Carlucci all frequently surface like tentacles of the Templesman octopus and most of these are tight with the intelligence apparatus, and all have ties to the flak producing CIA ciphers the Africa-America Institute and the Corporate Council on Africa.

IRC President and Director George Rupp is also a director of the secretive and euphemistically named Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa, a right-wing Judeo-Christian front organization. Other PCHPA directors include Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Robert Dole and David Beckman from the equally fundamentalist Christian front group Bread for the World. The Museveni government has forced 1.3 million Acholi people onto death camps in northern Uganda and denied them humanitarian relief.

Starvation happens not because this is Africa, or the Congo, it is because we are witnessing the most devastating example of predatory capitalism and heartless, absolute greed, combined with a spiritual crises—in the “first” world—of unprecedented proportions. The long term control of Congo’s resources is best served by eliminating as many black people as possible. The capacity to control Congo’s resources is enhanced by spreading terror, uprooting people, destroying families, sowing distrust and hatred. It is called divide and conquer and it is the oldest trick in the book of European conquest. The word that best describes the portfolio of psychological, emotional, physical, social, cultural and political effects of such campaigns of destabilization and terror is DERACINATION.

And all the while the humanitarian “misery” industry is raking in billions of dollars on programs to “help” the Congolese people, and universities create new programs and departments to train the privileged “development” work force, all to create and institutionalize dependency. This is structural violence, and it is part of a cycle of perpetuated wealth and privilege. It is managed inequality.

This is the U.S. foreign policy in action. The IRC merely institutionalizes the false framework of thinking that supports war and plunder and the entrenchment, rather than alleviation, of structural violence. Behind the psychological warfare the picture in Congo is very different, and the responsible forces are easily identified.

The Falsification of Consciousness

Here’s how the system projects—and inculcates—the falsified consciousness about Africa that people in the West are blinded by.

One of the long term dictator Mobutu Sese Seko’s right-hand men was Albert-Henri Buisine, a French mercenary-pirate who worked on the Kamanyola, the luxury yacht where Mobutu arrived by helicopter to receive foreign backers and “VIP” cronies. While Mobutu frequently visited the White House, Brussels, Paris, Tokyo, Geneva, London—and sometimes Tel Aviv—he regularly received his cronies and patrons on his yacht in Zaire.8

Protected by Albert-Henri Buisine and Israeli mercenary Meir Meyouhas—and a slew of crack black intelligence operatives—Mobutu received his guests. Hundreds of people came and went from Zaire over the years, and these included Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; Vice-President George H.W. Bush; Ambassadors Andrew Young and Jean Kirkpatrick; and mercenary Frank Carlucci. Diamond tycoon Maurice Templesman dined often with Mobutu on the Kamanyola, sometimes with his lover, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, often with his Zaire-based diamond agents like Jerry Funk or James Barnes, and with De Beers agents like Nicky Oppenheimer or Nick Davenport.9

The Templesman and De Beers empires exist today in Congo in their modern forms, and many of the same agents of the Mobutu period are connected to policies or actions that perpetuate suffering and violence in Congo and Angola and South Africa today. It is important to note, also, that the Templesman blood minerals machine has heavily subsidized the campaigns of the democrats, including recent fascist manifestations, Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton. In the final counting, Hillary Clinton has done more damage to Africa than Obama (but there is still time).

On May 11 and 12, 1990, Mobutu’s shock troops—including the Israeli-trained Special Presidential Division (DSP), SARM and National Gendarmerie—attacked the campus at the University of Lumumbashi, and they killed hundreds of students, at least, while countless more were tortured and brutalized. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency station in Lumumbashi supported the atrocities and cover-up. It sounds like a long time ago, but the players are still around. Some, like James Barnes, Maurice and Leon Templesman, and Nicky Oppenheimer, are still running big operations in Africa.

What was Albert-Henri Buisine’s role in protecting the Mobutu dictatorship and perpetuating such atrocities and where is Mobutu’s old mercenary bodyguard today?

Well, Mobutu’s French mercenary bodyguard Albert-Henri Buisine surfaced in October, 2007, in a Harper’s magazine article by Bryan Mealer, a journalist who formerly freelanced with the Associated Press and The Independent (London). Buisine is no longer a private military agent serving the terror apparatus of a Cold War dictator; he is the loquacious captain of a barge pressing 2600 tons of cargo up the Congo River (for his private shipping company and substantial personal profit). One hundred years after Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness we have a white American AP journalist retelling his unfathomable voyage up the Congo.

And there’s the nostalgic Captain, a reluctant French mercenary-terrorist-turned-pilot-profiteer, who for 16 years, against his will, Mealer tells us, served Mobutu reluctantly. “He was chained to Mobutu's shadow at all times, even living four straight years aboard the lavish presidential yacht, the Kamanyola, as it drifted aimlessly down the Congo River.”

Drifted aimlessly? Chained to Mobutu’s shadow? Hardly. This is fiction. There are deep cultural stereotypes and subliminal fault lines at work here that have been inculcated through decades of propaganda about Congo/Zaire. There is nothing but dross in Mealer’s account, no mention of the brutalities suffered by Congolese people, the strike-breaking and student massacres, or the rented crowds chanting “Mobutu! Mobutu” and the empty slogans of Mobutu’s Movement Populaire de la Revolution party. There is no mention of the hated Special Presidential Division terror apparatus, the illegal arrests and detention without trial, the tortures at underground dungeons like the “OAU-2” or the “corridor of death” in Kinshasa. It is all rendered nostalgic, and the plunderers of the past are painted as unwitting victims who missed their lot in life. The story casts the standard dispersions of pathos on the white exploiters, and this works to displace the attention from their past and often current criminality.

“Buisine now led the simple life of a river rat,” Mealer tells us, “making his run six or seven times a year,” pointing out “whirlpools roiling in the deep spots, crocodiles camouflaged in the mud, or, along a wooded island, a tree whose leaves cured hemorrhoids.” 10

Harper’s never mentions the agents of repression in such places, because the American public is all too happy with the vainglorious version of the beleaguered white hero challenging the savagery in the heart of darkness. How many stories about Congo involve a River and a Great White Hero challenging the savagery and darkness of the forest? Harper’s tells us nothing about Congo: it is the usual racist nonsense meant to displace the truth. The story is “good” reading, but it is fiction, a mirror reflecting our whiteness back to us. The author even claims that the natives communicate by drums so that villages along the river know the boat is coming before Buisine and the heroic white journalist arrive upstream. This is the falsification of American consciousness.

To cap the Harper’s silly whitewash, the photographer that traveled up river with Mealer is based in Kigali, Rwanda, and everyone in the region knows that you cannot work in and out of Rwanda today and still be telling the truth. Finally, Harper’s publisher John R. MacArthur is described by his magazine company as a “tireless advocate for human rights.”

And that is why we have more than 10 million dead in Congo since 1996, and millions more in Uganda and Rwanda. These nightmare numbers are the products of the Bush-Clinton-Bush administrations, a contiguous unfolding of fascism in America.

I traveled on this river more than once: in 2007 I also swam two-thirds of the way across it (at Lukutu, where I hit an island and turned back); I also swam across the tributary Lomami (2007) and Lopori (2006) rivers. The Harper’s production mirrors the obliviousness of white men in Congo and the even greater obliviousness of white editors, and it is all to satisfy the voracious obliviousness of increasingly stupefied readers.

Been there, done that. Now it is time for us all to grow up.

Plantation Slavery in the Heartland

At the height of the supposed disintegration of Zaire—mid-1980’s through the mid-1990’s—the Blattner family was rapidly expanding their operations and consolidating power. The previous and already vast empire in Zaire was established by James Blattner as the Group Agro Pastoral (GAP), and this was later divided up amongst sons David and Elwyn (Daniel’s role in Congo is uncertain), who scooped up plantation after plantation, concession after concession, becoming involved in transportation, shipping, aviation, telecommunications, agriculture, logging and construction. Elwyn Blattner’s father-in-law, Shimon Razin, also runs a company, Safgaz, in Congo, when he is not in Tel Aviv, and the Blattners send their children to elite colleges in Europe. In 2003, Elwyn Blattner was President of the Communaute Israelite de Kinshasa.11

The Blattner empire today is perpetuating massive suffering in the interior, with slavery and all the abominations of paramilitary fiefdoms occurring on the Blattner plantations.12 None of this has been reported, but for those who wonder how the mortality rate in the interior of the Congo could be so high—a sudden flash of awakening with the release of the January 2008 International Rescue Committee statistics—the answer lies in the capitalist enterprises of the Elwyn Blattners, the Maurice Templesmans, the Etienne Davignons and Nicky Oppenheimers, and the IRC itself. The Blattners frequently travel back and forth from Congo to the United States, Belgium, Tel Aviv and South Africa. On August 2, 2007, for example, David Blattner and family attended a lavish Bar Mitzvah of friends in Israel held at the Sheraton Hotel in Tel Aviv. On the same day, the second of August, 2007, at least 1500 people died in the Congo.

What is the IRC’s relationship to the plantation slave-drivers and how did the IRC statistically figure the higher mortality rates on plantations run by the Blattner or George Forrest Groups in rural Congo?

It Takes a Village

By the late 1990s, the guarding of the diamond concessions in Zaire had ceased to operate under a single chain of command and had become increasingly militarized by thugs of all stripes. Atrocities mounted during the heaviest war years, but violence continues in these areas today.

Katanga has repeatedly been described as the province of “forgotten strife.” In the past decade alone, millions of people have been dispossessed of their livelihoods, their land, their futures and their lives, and the mining in Katanga and Mbuji-Mayi has been going on since the end of the Leopold era.

Entire villages have been sacked and burned by militias and in some almost every woman has been raped during military campaigns of the past few years.13 More than 5000 children have lived on the streets in the center of Mbuji-Mayi town in the past few years—yet another generation of Congolese leaders lost—and recent systematic massacres of street children have occurred at the hands of militias, political groups and security forces.14

How does the IRC mortality study factor in the deaths of street children murdered in Mbuji Mayi?

After a century of exploitation and slavery, we find the DRC’s huge state diamond firm, MIBA, consistently withholding payment of salaries to starving Congolese laborers and middle managers for months at a time. April and May 2007 saw strikes and protests leading to the Kabila government’s arbitrary arrest, detention and torture of trade union organizers like Leon Ngoy Bululu; police have also shot protestors.15 So-called ‘illegal’ diamond workers—disenfranchised local Congolese people forced into “criminal” activities to survive—were summarily executed on MIBA concessions in Mbuji-Mayi. The BBC, in August 2006 reported that MIBA security guards were sniping unemployed diamond miners.16 Of course, the BBC never gives us the deeper story, it is only for expedience and some interest somewhere that they are saying anything revealing at all.

Katanga is the Democratic Republic of Congo’s southernmost province, and it is the world’s richest mining metropolis, with the poorest people in the world. Part of the vast copper belt that stretches across northern Zambia and southern Congo, Katanga is home to unprecedented human misery. The Zambian copperbelt concessions over the border involve many of the same companies and interests mentioned above.17 But hundreds of billions of dollars are involved in these mining projects and they have no problems moving heavy equipment into the most rural areas, building runways, and shipping the product out.

IMMEDIATE AND RADICAL—GOING TO THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM—INTERVENTIONS TO AID THE PEOPLE AND MITIGATE SUFFERING IN THESE AREAS COULD BE ACHIEVED IF THE CORPORATIONS WORKING THERE WERE HELD TO ACCOUNT.

But as long as people in the West gobble up the corporate do-nothing nonsense peddled by the IRC, CARE, Save the Children, Newsweek, the New York Times, the BBC and the International Crises Group, it is, indeed, hopeless.

Workers and communities in and around these mines suffer due to state orchestrated repression, chemical mining processes and toxic runoff, tuberculosis, immune disorders, racial discrimination and slavery. There are all the standard treatable maladies (typhoid, malaria, tetanus, polio, malnutrition) as well. However, such stories are off the agenda for the North American, European, Japanese, Australian and Israeli media corporations providing the mainstay of English language indoctrination meant to instill racial superiority and a vast ignorance and obliviousness that leaves westerns populations shaking their heads and wringing their hands and clicking their tongues, while all the while wondering “what is to be done?” It does not cross people’s minds that their own hands are dirty, that their own consciousness has been falsified, that change is possible.

Lies, Lies, Those Slippery (Petroleum) Lies

German diplomat Albrecht Conze is the deputy political director of the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC). In an article in the German magazine Der Spiegel, after the first round of elections in August 2006, Conze “predicted” the inevitable return of white patronage in Congo. “It is like being the Congo’s foster parents,” Conze said, suggesting that such patronage is a blessing, rather than the curse that it is to the people of Congo. Conze continued to misrepresent the Western plunder in Congo by saying, for example, that the U.S. government's interest in rebuilding Congo is limited. After all, he said, the deeply Catholic country “contains neither oil nor terrorists.” 18

The above statement is consistent with the perpetual lies by powerful interests who benefit by always downplaying or hiding Congo’s (Africa) wealth.

The first petroleum refinery in the Congo—owned by Societe Congolaise Italienne de Raffinage (SOCIR), a joint venture between the Congolese government and Ente Nazioale Idrocarburi, Italy’s state-owned petroleum company—commenced production near the mouth of the Congo River in 1967. Under a five year contract signed in 1967, the crude for the refinery was supplied by Shell, Mobil, Petrofina and Texaco.19 Petroleum exploration occurred heavily off the Atlantic coast after 1968; production began in 1976 involving Chevron, Mobil, Unocal, Royal/Dutch Shell, Agip, TotalFinaElf, Teikoku Oil and the Japan National Oil Company. Recent onshore exploitation near the refinery involves Total, Pan Ocean Energy (UK) and Addax Petroleum (Canada).

The heartland of the Congo also has petroleum, and this is part of the reason for the unfathomable terrorism involving Western enterprises and agents and the concomitant rates of mortality in the interior. Petroleum reserves were discovered (but left dormant) by Chevron in the Equateur rainforest in the late 1970’s.20 By 1997 this vast concession—known as Cuvette Centrale for the former petit province—was held by Trillion Resources Ltd., established in Vancouver in 1987.21 The company is involved in exploration throughout Africa in association with Canadian mining companies such as Nickelodeon Minerals Inc., Oliver Gold Corporation and Skeena Resources Ltd. In DRC its activities have also involved mining in Katanga with DRC parastatal Gecamines. There is no doubt that Trillion and Chevron interests supported certain factions in Congo’s wars.

In Eastern DRC, petroleum under Lake Albert is being tapped on the Ugandan side by Canada’s Heritage Oil & Gas, Tullow Oil and Hardman Resources, supported by the organized crime syndicates involved with the Uganda “government,” which is itself another syndicated crime ring run by the Ugandan military, General James Kazini, and Museveni’s half-brother Salim Saleh. Further south near Goma and Bukavu, Lake Kivu is targeted by U.S. companies, working through the current dictatorship in Rwanda, for its massive methane reserves.

“This is an oil country,” the new Congo’s newly created Oil Minister Lambert Mende was quoted by Reuters to say, “not because of our current small production, but because there is major potential… Quite modestly, we expect nothing less than three billion barrels of reserves, and it's certainly more than that.” Reuters in July 2007 confirmed that onshore reserves remain untapped and largely unexplored in Equateur province in the north as well as under Lake Albert and Lake Tanganyika along the eastern border.22

As always, the exploiters try to minimize the awareness of the resources they are targeting. Contrary to the statement by MONUC’s German diplomat Albrecht Conze—as the Congolese, Rwandan and Ugandan people know all too well—the “terrorists” are all over Central Africa, even if some of them have never visited the country.

Conze’s behavior epitomizes white supremacy masked by “humanitarianism” and “peacekeeping” in Africa. The “peacekeeping” operations of MONUC, like the “humanitarian” or misery industry, are merely well-cloaked disguises for more predatory capitalism with the added insidiousness of a supposed and self-righteous “higher moral purpose” that allows the exploiters in the West to celebrate our “goodness” and our “humanity” and to claim that our hands are clean and, of course, that we care. But this is big business and nothing else. To question such things are themselves written off as complete heresy, and that is why MONUC does not take any notice of such writings as this one: good journalists produce tripe for Harper’s, they don’t point the finger at modern day conquistadors and attach blame to the names of U.N. officials, corporate executives, or high society philanthropists and diamond tycoons.

MONUC officials say nothing of substance about mining in Congo, which proceeds in parallel with the bloodletting, arms trading and extortion. For example, Anvil Mining has been involved in massacres in DRC.23 Anvil directors include former U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Brown, who served at U.S. embassies in Brussels, Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville and South Africa. Brown was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa (1987-1989) under George Schultz and George H.W. Bush and then Director of Central African Affairs (1980-1981). Meanwhile, the former top internal intelligence and security chief of the United Nations Observer’s Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) has been worked for Anvil mining in Katanga since 2006.24

With top MONUC security officials taking high paying jobs with companies involved in the atrocities, one begins to see the nature of an organized, armed, free-for-all for Congo’s resources.

This journalist reported in July 2007 that MONUC officials were accepting kickbacks from warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba, and there is evidence of MONUC collusion with other individuals capitalizing on war and plunder in Congo.25 In December 2007, it was reported that a special task force for the United Nations “uncovered a pervasive pattern of corruption and mismanagement involving hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for fuel, food, construction and other materials used by U.N. peacekeeping operations.” 26

But this is the tip of the iceberg and the United Nations actions are weak and, often enough, meaningless. Finally, the MONUC mission in Congo institutionalizes the inequality and suffering endured by Congolese people by maintaining double standards about labor and employment packages provided to MONUC employees who live in the host country: In August 2007 a major “stop work” strike was undertaken by Congolese nationals in the MONUC system due to the entrenched and continued injustices served on Congolese people working for the mission, in comparison with the more comprehensive employment packages provided to expatriate foreigners. The strike was almost entirely unreported by the MONUC public information offices. The international press—in keeping with their role as gatekeepers of suffering in Congo—investigated nothing and, in the end, they only parroted the official line.27

Unmanned Aerospace Vehicles

The United Nations and European Union Forces (EUFOR) involved in Congo are there to secure corporate resources and insure profits through military domination. Yet the cover story is hammered into the Western “news” consuming consciousness as a “humanitarian” or a “peacekeeping” mission.

Advanced technologies like Israel Aircraft Industries/Belgian Hunter UAVs (Unmanned Aerospace Vehicles) intelligence platforms are now used by Belgian defense forces in flying operations over Congo.28 Two UAVs have crashed in Kinshasa, killing one Congolese person and wounding 10 others, and the Israeli-Belgian fleet has deployed three more UAVs. Belgian Defense command indicates that the UAVs are to “collect information on road traffic and crowd activities.” 29 But the statement is a euphemism for maintaining the status quo of suffering, starvation, torture and dispossession in Congo, while further enhancing foreign military domination and expansion.

Three cheers for the rogue Congolese soldier with the battered Kalashnikov AK-47 whose single shot at one of the EUFOR’s robotic UAVs flying overhead (at 1200 feet) penetrated the wing joint, pierced a structural weak point and caused the wing to crumble and the UAV to crash. Of course, the poor man has disappeared into the dungeons of hell in Kinshasa, and he will go down in history as a criminal, rather than a hero whose expression of frustration and misery manifested in shooting down a $10 million dollar Israeli weapon with a pop gun.

The Belgian military described the man as a “lone gunmen with a known criminal record.”30 But the hubris of this statement defies articulation when we remember the known criminal records of the white men involved in devastating Congo, then Zaire, and now Congo, since the arrival of Henry Morton Stanley and his blood-rubber and hand-chopping-off enterprises in the 1870’s.

Where is the international rescue committee?

As of January 2008 there are consistent reports of starvation in Kinshasa, and reports of arbitrary arrest and illegal detention of men, women and children at security facilities, including underground torture centers, and this is certainly true all over the country. As of December 2007, those arrested as a “security threat” and held incommunicado in these Kinshasa dungeons include: Mimi Mboyo (19) and child (jailed >18 months); Angele (17) and child (jailed >24 months); Mianda Kadogo (19) and child (jailed >11 months); Nicolette Mukungu (20) and child (jailed >20 months); Bokungu (21); Olga (20) and child (jailed >13 months); Edjoka (29). The main security facilities in Kinshasa are Camp Tshiatshi, the Central Prison at Makala, Camp Kokolo, and the underground dungeon known as “corridor of death.” 31

Notes

1 See: Keith Harmon Snow, “Darfurism, Uganda, and U.S. War in Africa,” November 11, 2010, .

2 Biography, J. Stapleton Roy, Freeport McMoRan web site.


3 Major Thomas P. Odom, Dragon Operations: Hostage Rescues in the Congo, 1964-1965, Leavenworth Papers No. 14, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (1988?), .



4 keith harmon snow, “Congo’s President Joseph Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?” Toward Freedom, November 13, 2007,
.



5 See: Edward S. Herman, “Genocide Inflation is the Real Threat,” Z-Net, Oct. 26, 2007.



6 Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Books, 1999.



7 See, e.g., Eric Thomas Chester, Covert Network: Progressives, the International Rescue Committee, and the CIA, M. E. Sharp, 1995.



8 On Mobutu in Tel Aviv see: “Mobutu and Israel,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1, Autumn, 1985: pp. 171-175.



9 Jerry Funk, Life is an Excellent Adventure: An Irreverent Personal Odyssey, Trafford, 2003.



10 Bryan Mealer, “The River Is A Road: Searching for Peace in Congo,” Harper’s, October 2007.



11 Kadima 010, June-September 2007,
.



12 keith harmon snow, human rights research and investigations in Congo, 2004-2007.



13 “DRC: Katanga’s Forgotten Strife Displacing Thousands,” IRIN, August 3, 2005.



14 What Future? Street Children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Human Rights Watch, April 2006,
.



15 See: “ICEM protests Congo’s Transport, Diamond Injustices,” International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Worker’s Union, May 7, 2007, InBrief/2243-ICEM-protests-Congo%E2%80%99s-Transport-Diamond-Injustices>.



16 “Diamond miners killed in DR Congo,” BBC News, 7 August 2006,
2/hi/africa/5254006.stm+%22MIBA%22+%22illegal+miners%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4>.



17 Personal investigation, Ndola, Zambia copperbelt mines, 2000.



18 Hans-Jürgen Schlamp, “Congo’s Future: A Western Protectorate in Africa?” Speigel Online, Aug. 17, 2006.



19 Minerals Yearbook Area Reports: International 1968 Bureau of Mines, 1970: 215-216.



20 Private investigations and site viewing, Mbandaka, DRC, 2007.



21 See: Annual Report of Consolidated Trillion, October 8, 1999. Trillion Resources was renamed Consolidated Trillion Resources in 1999, and it had merged with US.-based Viceroy Explorations Ltd. by 2002.



22 Joe Bavier, “Congo to audit oil sector, first time in 10 years,” Reuters, July 3, 2007.



23 Norm Dixon, “Congo Massacre: Australian mining company's managers indicted,” Green Left Review, November 4, 2006 .



24 His name is known, but he threatened to track down and break the author’s legs if he is revealed.



25 keith harmon snow, “Behind the Scenes: Warlord’s Deadly Battle in Congo,” August 9, 2007,
.



26 Colum Lynch, “U.N. Combats Peacekeeping Staff Corruption,” Washington Post, December 18, 2007.



27 “Local U.N. workers strike in Congo over conditions,” Reuters, August 23, 2007.



28 Israel Aircraft Industries UAVs operate in 15 countries; .



29 “Belgium Resumes Congo UAV Operations after Belgian-B is Shot Down,” Flight International, August 15, 2006. Israel’s Rafael Armament Authority is teamed with Lockheed-Martin and Northrop Grumman on advanced missiles and aerospace productions: see Mark A. Loral et al, Going Global? U.S. Government Policy and the Defense Aerospace Industry, RAND, 2002.



30 “IAI-Eagle-B Hunter UAV”:
http://belmilac.wetpaint.com/page/IAI+-+
Eagle+B-Hunter+UAV+(Unmanned+Aerial+Vehicle)?t=anon>.



31 Private communications from Kinshasa, DRC, December 2007.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

BIOTECHNOLOGY, GENETICS, HUMAN CLONING & THE FUTURE OF MANKIND...


TECHNOCALYPS is a frightening non-fictional documentary about the grim and dark future of mankind in the third millenium resulting from scientific and technological progress in the field of biotechnology, genetics, cloning, robotics, artificial intelligence, computer technology, nanotechnology, etc. on the one hand, and spiritual & moral bankruptcy on the other...

What is painfully obvious is that science divorced from morality and spirituality is a mortal recipe which will annihilate human life and all life on the planet.

As Einstein and Martin Luther King lucidly said:

" It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. MORALITY is of the highest importance, but for us, not for God. If we are good only because we fear punishment and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."

Albert Einstein

" Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power; we have guided missiles and misguided men...; if we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values: that all reality hinges on MORAL foundations and that all reality has spiritual control...The Moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice."

Martin Luther King

And as Billy Meier - the true prophet of the New Age - has prophetically written in the Henoch Prophecies:

Horrifying weapons and a possible world war

Due to the fault of scientists, enormous power will be seized by the power-hungry and their military, their warriors and terrorists, and power will be seized as well through laser weapons of many types, but also via atomic, chemical and biological weapons. Also concerning genetic technology, enormous misuse will occur, because this will be unrestrainedly exploited for the purposes of war, not lastly due to the cloning of human beings for warring purposes, as this was practised in ancient times with the descendants of Henoch in the regions of Sirius.

However, this will not be all of the horrors; as besides the genetic technology and the chemical weapons, far worse and more dangerous and more deadly weapons of mass destruction will be produced and will be used. The irresponsible politicians will unscrupulously exercise their power, assisted by scientists and obedient military forces serving them, who together hold a deadly sceptre and will create clone-like beings which will be bred in a total lack of conscience and will be scientifically manipulated to become killer machines. Division by division and devoid of any feelings, they will destroy, murder and annihilate everything.

If the Third World War will actually happen—as calculations and observations appear to indicate to be probable now and also during the approaching few decades—then, as now, the civilian population will above all have to bear the brunt of the enormous suffering in tremendous numbers in this entire catastrophe and, last but not least, the fault of the irresponsible scientists who by cloning will create human machines for military purposes, devoid of conscience and feelings, and will create immensely deadly and all-annihilating computer-like weapons. At the same time, the danger could become reality that the human combat machines, the military clones, will gain their independence and under their own management will bring death, devastation, destruction and annihilation to the human beings of Earth and to the planet.

...evil military powers will wreak havoc with computerised and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, whereby it will also happen that computerised weapons become independent and cannot be controlled any longer by human beings. Overall, this is the most important part of Henoch's prophecies.

You can read the entire Henoch Prophecies on this blog at the following link:

http://yajnacentre.blogspot.com/2009/08/prophecies-predictions-for-humanity-for.html

Please click on the title link above to view the documentary.