This is a hasty post, as the date had crept up on me unawares, but when I’d clicked into TRNN, and had been reminded. I’d been working on a CIA wth? diary, but this seemed more timely, considering…
(the transcript) In part:
JAISAL NOOR: We also asked him to respond to a recent major investigation by Bloomberg and the Pulitzer Center titled, “With his family fortune at stake, President Kabila digs in.” The article finds that Kabila has enriched his family to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars while many Congolese live in poverty.
KAMBALE MUSAVULI: Kabila is no angel. I mean, this is not new information for the Congolese people, maybe for the documentation from Bloomberg. Bloomberg is validating Congolese, what we’ve been saying for decades — he’s been around in the DRC as the President for 16 years now. Kabila has been, from day one, accumulating wealth.
It is surprising that now that the United States is intending to remove Kabila, they’re not on the same side anymore, that this information is coming to light. So I would not just be very harsh on Kabila since … speaking about the wealth that he has and the 70(?) companies that he has, the many permits that he has, I would be much more critical of people who have enabled him to do so. He has visited the United States many times, he has met both Presidents many times, he has business interests in the United States.”
This is the Bloomberg investigation that Noor mentioned, and yes, Obama had ‘…5 Most Atrocious Dinner Guests at the US-Africa Leaders Summit’ in August of 2014, including Kabila (Mother Jones).
This is all so jarring to me, especially given that the MSM are covering it, and even HRW is tweeting about it. But as to his contention that “the United States is intending to remove Kabila”, I just ain’t seein’ it.
afternoon of 12/20/2016: wohn wonh…. snooooze
Still, the Guardian had reported yesterday that ‘Congo on a knife-edge as opposition leader calls for Kabila to step down’; Moise Katumbi says president will become an ‘illegitimate’ ruler if he does not relinquish power at midnight.
“‘Government officials blame the opposition for the lack of progress in reaching a settlement and accuse western powers, which have tried to pressure Kabila to make concessions by imposing sanctions on key members of his entourage, of “a neo-colonial mindset”.’
Over the weekend tens of thousands of armed police and paramilitaries were deployed on to streets across the country, while armoured vehicles protected at strategic points in key towns and cities.
In September more than 60 people died when security forces opened fire on an opposition march.
There were unconfirmed reports of scores of detentions. Organisations such as Lucha and Filimbi favoured by young, educated opposition activists appear to have been particularly targeted. Gloria Sengha, a prominent member of Lucha, has been missing for the past three days, friends and family told local media. The 23-year-old lawyer was last seen in Kinshasa, Her current whereabouts were unknown, they said.
Human Rights Watch, the campaign group, said it had received credible reports of at least 42 people arrested in Goma, the eastern city, on Monday morning.”
Is this a rare case in which HRW gets it right? Or is something else afoot? Could it be as simple as if there’s a full-blown insurrection that the mining bidness would be impaired? So many diamonds and gold, as well.
For background: Café Babylon: ‘Kambale Musavuli: Empire Feeds on Congo’s Treasure; AFRICOM’s increasing missions’, April 26, 2016
I’m not even sure what to feature from it, perhaps this? Yeah , Amnesty, but still…
‘Report highlights plight of DRC’s ‘cobalt children’, Al jazeera
Western firms turn blind eye as child miners toil in dangerous conditions for precious “battery” mineral, Amnesty says. (with video)
and: ‘Patrice Lumumba: Remembering ‘Africa’s Che Guevara’ It’s a crime that has haunted the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since 1961 – the death of Patrice Lumumba, murdered with the help of the CIA and Belgium. To date no one has been punished for the crime. dw.com
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
lurch offers some cogent advice, fook him veddy much:
1 hr ago
@JohnKerry Dec 10
On Human Rights Day, we recommit to the truth all human beings are endowed with equal and inalienable rights. http://go.usa.gov/x8pw5
good solstice morning to all. dec. 21 is the same day that kabila was supposed to have left office. the longest night could have been growing shorter in congo after today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo
During the period of 1885–1908, millions of Congolese died as a consequence of exploitation and disease. In some areas the population declined dramatically – it has been estimated that sleeping sickness and smallpox killed nearly half the population in the areas surrounding the lower Congo River.[22] A government commission later concluded that the population of the Congo had been “reduced by half” during this period,[21] but determining precisely how many people died is impossible, as no accurate records exist.
…….
This combination has caused widespread endangerment of local fauna, and has forced humans to trudge deeper into the wilderness in search of the desired animal meat. This overhunting results in the deaths of more animals and makes resources even more scarce for humans. The hunting has also been facilitated by the extensive logging prevalent throughout the Congo’s rainforests from both corporate logging, and farmers clearing forest land for agriculture. Logging allows hunters much easier access to previously-unreachable jungle terrain, while simultaneously eroding away the habitats of animals.[58] Deforestation is accelerating in Central Africa.[59]
check out this wiki article’s “violence against women” section for more fun reading.
and then there’s this:
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/12/21/city-d21.html
welcoming developments for the 9 million people in Kinshasha and the like.
here, here’s a nursery rhyme the US military can teach the children of the Congo in its preparation to reproduce the siege of Stalingrad around the globe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad#Cannibalism
“A dystrophic walked along
With a dull look
In a basket he carried a corpse’s arse.
I’m having human flesh for lunch,
This piece will do!
Ugh, hungry sorrow!
And for supper, clearly
I’ll need a little baby.
I’ll take the neighbours’,
Steal him out of his cradle.”
“hell is probable,” as Capt Ahab said. those military assholes are in love, completely in love, w/the spectacle of death. the siege of leningrad is a model to be emulated & reproduced, as in fallujah, aleppo, tripoli, et al, and its conditions a source of celebration. sacrificing the kids to Moloch to lay waste the earth. turning the planet into a nightmarish hell-scape.
reading that wsws article brings to mind Delilo’s “End Zone.” Hannibal Lector & John Wayne (sic) Gacy ain’t got shit on these people.
whooosh. did it say what sort of ‘exploitation’ and disease? yes, the violence against women section is likely what prompted the creation of the song above. freakily quiet twitter feed, but if cells and other comms have been shut down…who’s there to cover the story. i wonder? but srsly: why is there any media attention being paid now? not to mention HRW’s mentions?
yeah; i’ve been writing up the army war college piece since yesterday, and yes: i yam slow, but i also get distracted easily. ;-). some sick minds they have, eh? but oof on the nursery rhyme. please bring it later if you would…
thanks for commenting; i’d been wondering if y’all had been kidnapped by santa er somethin’.
this was the time of King Leopold, so can’t have been good. somewhat OT, but the western victory narrative presents the rise of Hitlerite fascism as an aberration in western history, an exercise in mysterious indefinable “evil,” precisely by ignoring all the King Leopolds the west has produced over the last 500 years or so.
i tried to find it again on twitter. but on congo friends account was mention of students tearing down statue of king leopold. googling, all i could find was a similar event from 1967 under sese seco, another brutal tyrannical ruler of congo. go figure. remember he renamed the nation ‘zaire’ under his rule?
a brief part of his wiki: “Leopold extracted a fortune from the Congo, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labour from the natives to harvest and process rubber. Under his regime millions of the Congolese people died; modern estimates range from 2 to 15 million, with a consensus growing around 10 million. Human rights abuses under his regime contributed significantly to these deaths. Reports of deaths and abuse led to a major international scandal in the early 20th century, and Leopold was ultimately forced by the Belgian government to relinquish control of the colony to the civil administration in 1908.”
this blew me away, though; dunno why: “Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf. He used explorer Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, an area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
as in: “doctor livingston, i presume?”