The Justice of God: Iraq Cry: African Cardinal

African Cardinal, Peter Turkson, a Vatican II false prophet standing on the sinking sand of Vatican II/Assisi promotion of Voodoo worship of the Devil - Pharaoh's Satanic sorceries and source of all of Africa's death and destruction, based on the Apocryphal-Pseudipigraphal seven seals of Moses.

The Justice of God: Iraq Cry: African Cardinal



Iraq Cry: African Cardinal


God and His Messiah Jesus Christ our Lord - our right and duty to witness to Him: Origin of Assisi Voodun connection | TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE: OUIDAH, BENIN - THE BIRTHPLACE OF VOODOO AND THEIR ANNUAL VOODOO FESTIVAL

The Satanic gods of voodoo and a pilgrim to their "sacred forest" of Ouidah in Benin, Africa

Dan - the serpent god (Satan, the Devil, the Serpent of Old) chief god of Voodoo

Dan  the Serpent god or Dangbe 

Dangbe at the entrance to the "sacred forest" of Ouidah in Benin, Africa

Ritual goat to be slaughtered and sacrificed to Dangbe, the Serpent  god - Satan

Goats and blood sacrifice to Satan, the Devil, the Serpent of Old, in Voodoo

   Pope Benedict meets Benin Voodoo worshipers at Ouidah 

Benediktos the Satanic Apostate False Prophet approving of Voodoo at the prime present day center of all Voodoo in the world, Ouidah, Benin, Africa
God and His Messiah Jesus Christ our Lord - our right and duty to witness to Him: Satan's false prophet - Illuminati cult - assassin


There are six major ethnic groups in Ghana where Peter Turkson is from: Ashanti, Ewe, Guma, Guan, Mole-Dagbani and Ga-Adangbe.

Serpent worship is rife throughout the entire of West Africa and has its origin in the sorceries of Pharaoh who opposed the True God and the True God's servant Moses.

This is what has destroyed - and is still destroying all of Africa.

God and His Messiah Jesus Christ our Lord - our right and duty to witness to Him: OBEAH: Afro-Caribbean Shamanism

God and His Messiah Jesus Christ our Lord - our right and duty to witness to Him: Egyptian-African pre-Christian Gnostic Witchcraft, the beginning of Voodoo and variants of Occultism

God and His Messiah Jesus Christ our Lord - our right and duty to witness to Him: Parousia of Jesus Christ Our Lord: The New Age - Satanic Occult Trap

God and His Messiah Jesus Christ our Lord - our right and duty to witness to Him: Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala through ‘Isa al-Maseeh in the Holy Spirit - Ruach Elohim, kannawn anawim Kyrie elieson Lord have mercy


God and His Messiah Jesus Christ our Lord - our right and duty to witness to Him: Timeline Vatican City:

2009 Oct 24, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Cardinal Peter Turkson (61) of Ghana to head the Vatican's justice and peace office, a high-profile post that cements his reputation as a possible future papal candidate. Turkson's appointment to his new post was announced at the end of a three-week Vatican meeting on the role of the Catholic Church in Africa. 
(AP, 10/24/09) 


BBC News - Benedict XVI in Benin: The Pope's growing African flock

Benedict XVI in Benin: The Pope's growing African flock

18 November 11 07:44 ET

By David Willey
BBC News, Benin

Why should Pope Benedict want to travel nearly 10,000km (6,000 miles) on a weekend visit to Africa?

The basic reason is that his Catholic flock in Africa has increased faster there than in any other part of the world during the past 50 years.

The Pope has just been forced to set up a new programme of evangelisation in Europe, where Catholics have been leaving the church in ever greater numbers.

In Europe there is a serious problem of renewing an ageing priesthood.

In West Africa his flock is flourishing, despite antagonism and even violence between Christians and Muslims in several countries. New vocations are booming.

The Ouidah Catholic seminary is the burgeoning training ground for new African priests who - 150 years after the first Catholic missionaries from Switzerland established themselves there - are prepared to reverse the missionary direction and carry out pastoral work among Europeans in Europe.

Voodoo heartland

But Ouidah is also a centre for traditional African religions. It is the heartland of Voodoo, whose rituals and beliefs travelled to the Caribbean and to South America, particularly Brazil, during the centuries when slavery depopulated West Africa.

There is still a Voodoo temple filled with sacred pythons in Ouidah, not far from the huge Catholic seminary.

Voodoo is a belief system with a culture which includes art, dance, music, rituals, medicine, and is expressed in several languages.

Nearly half the population of Benin still follow traditional African animist religions such as Voodoo. Many who have converted to Catholicism still refuse to abandon their former beliefs entirely.

The Catholic Church however has a problem with this. It is called syncretism, which means treating all religions on the same footing.

Right-wing Catholic traditionalists denounced the late Pope John Paul II for allegedly "consorting with Satan" when he invited an African animist to take part in his groundbreaking interfaith prayer for world peace in the Italian city of Assisi, the shrine of Saint Francis, back in 1986.

Pope John Paul's successor, Benedict, invited another African traditional religious leader to celebrate with him the 25th anniversary of that meeting only last month. But this time there were no public prayers together, only private meditation.

The Catholic Church, which cannot tolerate the idea of Protestants and Catholics sharing the same communion table, has even greater difficulty in reconciling the worship of Jesus Christ side-by-side with African animists offering libations to spirits of the forest.

Large retinue

The Pope travelled to Cotonou, the economic capital of Benin, with a larger retinue of advisers than usual on his travels.

All the senior Vatican Cardinals who work in the Roman Curia were invited by the pope to join him for the six-hour flight.

They included Cardinal Peter Appiah Turkson from Ghana, the head of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace, the body which monitors human rights records not only in African countries but around the world.

Cardinal Turkson is the first Ghanaian to be appointed to the highest rank of prelates in the Catholic Church. He is even considered to be a possible candidate to succeed Benedict XVI, when the 84-year-old pontiff dies.

Another member of the Pope's retinue is Bishop Barthelemy Adoukonou, a former student of the Pope at the University of Regensburg in Germany, where he taught theology. Monsignor Adoukonou, promoted to the rank of Bishop as recently as last month, is rapidly gaining influence as an adviser in the highest ranks of the Roman Curia.

Sick children

One of Pope Benedict's restricted number of engagements in Benin - but one to which he to which he attaches great importance - is a meeting with 200 sick and disabled children, who are looked after by Catholic missionaries.

He will address all the suffering children of Africa in a speech he plans to make where they live.

Another high point of Pope Benedict's visit to Benin will be a meeting with the head of state, members of the government and members of the diplomatic corps in the presidential palace.

About 3,000 people are expected to attend and Pope Benedict plans another keynote speech, in which he will refer to the many human rights abuses in Africa.

He will refer also to the role of the Church during the democratisation of the country, following Marxist rule after its independence.

Here, he also plans to greet some local leaders of traditional African religions who have been invited for the occasion.

Vatican Radio has produced its first music CD on the occasion of the Pope's African visit.

Five thousand copies will be distributed to representatives of local churches. It is called Afrika Tenda Amani and has been recorded by two popular West African musicians Papa Wemba and Bonga.

John Paul II praises voodoo worship

Documents for your files  PROGRESSIVIST DOCUMENT OF THE WEEK JPII Praises Voodoo Worship Meeting with a voodoo high-priest on February 4, 1993 during his visit to Benin, John Paul II gives the rationale to justify voodoo worship according to the principles of Vatican II. It is the first time in History that a Pope praised a worship that explicitly worships the Devil. At right, page 4 of L'Osservatore Romanoand photocopies of the first part of John Paul II's greeting in Italian. Below, our translation of the part highlighted in yellow. Dear friends, I am pleased to have this occasion to meet you, and I very cordially greet you. As you know, I came to Benin principally to visit with the Catholic community, to encourage it and confirm it in the faith. However, I have always thought that contact with persons who belong to other religious traditions is an important part of my ministry. Indeed, the Catholic Church is favorable to dialogue: dialogue with Christians of other churches and ecclesial communities, dialogue with believers of other spiritual families, and dialogue even with those who do not profess any religion. The Church establishes positive and constructive relations with persons and human groups of other creeds for a reciprocal enrichment. Vatican Council II …. recognized that there are truth and good, seeds of the Word, in the various religious traditions. … These provide the foundations for a fruitful dialogue, as the Apostle Paul said to the first Christians: “Everything that is true, noble, just, pure, amiable, honorable, whatever is virtuous and deserves praise, let all these things be the object of your thinking.” From this comes our approach of respect [toward you]: respect for true values wherever they are, and overall respect for the man who looks to live these values that help him set aside fear. You are strongly attached to the traditions which your ancestors transmitted to you. It is legitimate to be grateful to the ancestors who transmitted to you the sense of the sacral, faith in a one and good god, the taste for celebrations, and consideration for moral life and harmony in society. (John Paull II, Greeting to a Voodoo high-priest of Benin, published under the title "La libertà religiosa è un diritto inalienabile," in L'Osservatore Romano, February 6, 1993, p. 4) Related Topics of Interest    JPII Meets a Voodoo "High-priest" in Benin    John Paul II Greets a Voodoo "Priest" in Assisi    JPII Being "Exorcized" by an Indian Priestess    John Paul II Receives a Ritual "Blessing" from an Indian Shaman    JPII Being "Blessed" by a Hindu Religious Woman    Pagan Divinities Worshipped in a Catholic Church    Various Pagan Sects Worship False Gods in Assisi    Assisi Gathering Meets under the Pagan Symbols    Indian Mass Includes Pagan Symbols    JPII Dons a Feathered African Headdress

Central and North Africa with Ghana highlighted

At bottom of this article "Celebrating 50 Years of Vatican II, Sept. 28" just below :  'Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace: "Vatican II and the Challenge of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation in Africa"' and "Cardinal Turkson Presiding"

Celebrating 50 Years of Vatican II, Sept. 28 | Duquesne University

Celebrating 50 Years of Vatican II, Sept. 28

September 28 - September 29, 2012

• 10:00 am
• Various Locations at Duquesne

Challenges and Contributions of the African Church

Friday, Sept. 28 - Morning: Power Center Ballroom

10 a.m.: Why Celebrate 50 years of Vatican II; Challenges/Contributions of the African Church

• Laurenti Magesa: Preconciliar, Conciliar and Post-conciliar African Theology
• Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor, From Theology in Africa to African Theology

Friday, Sept. 28 -  Afternoon: Wolf Auditorium, Bayer Hall

1 to 2:30 p.m.: Interreligious Dialogue

• Michael McCabe - Interreligious Dialogue, Impact on the World and African Church

2:30 p.m. Coffee Break

2:30 to 3:45 p.m. Marriage and Family

• Benezet Bujo (Fribourg-Suisse): Vatican II and the Challenge of Marriage and Family in Africa and the World
• Response (Challenge/Counterpoise) (David T. Ngong, Alabama): Vatican II, Marriage-procreation, and Childless Marriage of Christians in Africa

4 to 5 p.m. Panel Discussion

Saturday, Sept. 29

2 to 4 p.m. Presentation - Pappert Lecture Hall, Bayer Learning Center

• Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson,President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace: "Vatican II and the Challenge of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation in Africa"

5:30 p.m. Conference Mass - University Chapel, Administration Building

• Cardinal Turkson Presiding

The Excavator: Cardinal Peter Turkson - Witness

FEBRUARY 16, 2013

Cardinal Peter Turkson - Witness

An excerpt from "Who will be the next pope? The contenders for Vatican's top job":

A TV star, "people's person" and a "wonderful" priest, the Ghanaian cardinal emerging as a strong favourite for the papacy is described by colleagues in glowing terms. Peter Turkson, who is president of the Vatican's pontifical council for justice and peace, was made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2003 after serving for almost 30 years as an ordained priest. Continued. . .

Video Title: Cardinal Peter Turkson - Witness. YouTube Video Description - [Channel: saltandlighttv]:

Cardinal Peter Turkson - Archbishop emeritus of Cape Coast (Ghana) and currently President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. A priest since 1975, Cardinal Turkson holds a doctorate in Sacred Scripture and served as seminary professor before becoming Archbishop of Cape Coast. Cardinal Turkson has been involved in ecumenical dialogue, governmental work in the area of sustainable development, and is a leading voice in the area of peace and justice issues on the international level.

The Gospel and Social Teaching: On Poverty, Human Development and Church Ministry

Cardinal Peter Turkson: Conservatism's Cape crusader - Profiles - People - The Independent

Is the world ready for a black Pope? Many would say it has been ready for so long that it is growing a little impatient. Cardinal Peter Turkson, of Ghana, is in no doubt. "Why not? We've had Kofi Annan as Secretary General of the United Nations... he had his problems, but he did it. Now we have Obama in the United States. So if, by divine providence, God would wish to have a black man as pope, I say thanks be to God!"

That was Turkson back in 2009, during a Vatican press conference. And now, after the resignation of Benedict XVI, he has no trouble seeing himself in the frame. Shows of diffidence and modesty are the standard reactions to questions of this sort (though, with hindsight, Benedict's disclaimers back in 2005 seem to have been only too sincere), but that is not the Ghanaian's style. "It would certainly mean a lot if I had to be pope," he mused this week. "If I was elected pope it would signal a lot of [personal] change, very big change in a lot of regards... It is going to be a life-changing experience, and I think that is what it has been for Benedict and those who have gone before us. The challenge will also be with the individual to want to make his mark, not trying to fit into anybody's shoes but finding his own shoes to wear."

Remarks like this may give an impression of arrogance, but Turkson has plenty of reason to consider himself a plausible candidate. Created a cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2003, he was promoted by Benedict to one of the Roman Curia's top jobs, president of the pontifical council for justice and peace, in 2009, a sure sign of preference, and he has a finger in any number of other Vatican pies. Before that he was named relator, or general secretary, of the Church's second Synod for Africa.

However, a howler the Cardinal committed last year may have damaged his chances: at a meeting of senior Vatican figures last October, he showed a video on the subject of Muslim demographics, predicting that the far higher Muslim birthrate would soon lead to large parts of Europe, including France, being taken over by Islam. The video sparked an uproar which got worse when it emerged that it had been lifted from YouTube and was larded with dodgy statistics.

He did not take long to admit that he had made a mistake. "I understand that I chose the wrong video to stress the point of my concern," he said soon afterwards. And he claimed that his reason for showing the video was completely misunderstood. "For me to attack Islam would be to attack my own family," he maintained. "My paternal uncle was a Muslim and he took care of me when I was a boy, and when he grew old I took care of him until he died. The point was not to be anti-Islam. Absolutely not! The point was to highlight the demographic situation as a result of the anti-life tendency and culture in the Western world where, as I see it, there is a great need to apply the values of the kingdom of God to the social order." In fact, Turkson has urged Catholics to study the Koran, as an aid to better understanding.

Born in the village of Nsuta-Wassaw in western Ghana in 1948, he was christened Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson and brought up speaking Fante, one of seven languages he went on to master. His roots were humble, his mother selling vegetables in the local market while his father – with symbolism as obvious as the boy's given name – was a carpenter.

His prospects were transformed by his schooling at St Teresa's Seminary in the village of Amisano, which describes itself as "the cradle and nerve centre of priestly formation in Ghana... forming future shepherds after the Lord's own heart". He went on to study Theology at a seminary in New York, where he moonlighted as a cleaner in a bank, leading to a ludicrous brush with the law. A friend of his in the city, Dr Joseph Marrota, an orthopaedic surgeon, recalled that a passer-by had spotted him roaming through the closed bank and called the cops. "It was 8 or 9 o'clock and they wanted to know what he was doing there," Marrota told the New York Daily News. "He told them the truth, that he was cleaning the bank. They were going to arrest him and he had to call the cleaning service. He almost got taken away."

Dr Marrota compared him to the last pope-but-one. "Like John Paul II, he's an outdoorsman, an athlete, a physically powerful man," he said. "He has that unbelievable combination of intellect, character and charisma." He said that Turkson requires only four hours of sleep a night and, unlike many other Princes of the Church, is thoroughly at home with his iPod and iPad.

After New York, he returned to St Teresa's Seminary with his Master's degree and taught there for a spell, following in the footsteps of the future Ghanaian president, Kwame Nkrumah. The effect of the place on the two men seems to have been similar: Nkrumah recalled in his autobiography: "As a teacher of these young novices, I, too, had to observe the strict rules of the seminary and my life at Amisano was quiet and lonely... but it was certainly during this period that I regained the religious fervour to such an extent that I formed the idea of taking the vocation to the priesthood myself." In 1975, Turkson was duly ordained, then pursued his studies further at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.

Since then, his ascent of the clerical ladder has been sure, and his promotion to cardinal by John Paul II was proof that Francis Arinze, the Nigerian cardinal who for many years was spoken of as being of papal material, now had a serious African rival. This week, Turkson suggested that Arinze, despite sharing top billing with him in one or two bookmakers' lists, was no longer in the running. "Before I got here [to Rome], there was a young African cardinal called Arinze from Nigeria," he told the Daily Telegraph, "and at every conclave everybody was talking about him as an emerging candidate. Arinze is now 80 and actually there is no way he can participate in the conclave..."

There are plenty of other papabile cardinals beside the Ghanaian, and Vatican watchers are all too familiar with the Roman proverb, "He who goes into the conclave a Pope comes out a cardinal." But supposing Turkson were to make the grade, what sort of a pope would he be?

Liberal Catholics hanker for a pontiff who would relax the Church's policy on issues such as gay marriage and abortion, but Turkson, like practically all the front-runners, is not going to be that man: the majority of the 118 voting cardinals were appointed by John Paul II and Benedict, both stalwart conservatives who had no wish to encourage more permissive attitudes. Like most African Catholics, Turkson is hostile to a liberal approach to these questions, describing Europe's falling birthrate as a product of its "anti-life culture". His ambition to, as he puts it, "apply the values of the kingdom of God and the gospel to the social order" places him directly in the line of the present Pope and his predecessor. Referring to the video that got him into trouble, he said that he showed it "to illustrate this reality in the Western world and to emphasise that if we do not evangelise the social order, it is capable of giving rise to all kinds of problems for society".

Within the rather narrow spectrum of views found in the Vatican, however, he is seen as a moderate. "A smart, hard-working and charming prelate... he's destined to be an ecclesiastical star even if he never takes over the Church's top job," Vatican watcher John Allen wrote in America's National Catholic Reporter in 2009. "Theologically, he's seen as a moderate: for example, Turkson has signalled openness to the argument that condoms might be appropriate for couples where one partner is HIV-positive and the other isn't, on the logic that the intent in that case is not to prevent pregnancy but to prevent disease."

Many outside the church would see that as a tragically myopic understanding of the argument for condom use in Africa. But it may be the best that the Catholic Church, in its present form, can come up with.

A Life In Brief

Born: Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, 11 October 1948, Nsuta-Wassaw, Ghana

Family: His mother sold vegetables at a market while his father worked as a carpenter. He is the fourth of ten children.

Education: Studied at St Teresa's Seminary in Amisano, Ghana, before attending St Anthony-on-Hudson Seminary in Rensselaer, New York where he graduated as a Master of Theology.

Career: He was ordained to the priesthood in 1975. After working as a professor and vice-rector at various seminaries, in 1987 he attended the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and received a doctorate in Sacred Scripture. In 1992 he was appointed archbishop of Cape Coast in Ghana and in 2003 John Paul II made Turkson a Cardinal. He is the frontrunner to succeed Benedict XVI as the next Pope.

He says: "If God would wish to see a black man also as pope, thanks be to God."

They say: "He is a wonderful person, very down to earth and humble. He has that human touch." (The Rev Stephen Domelevo, the Ghana Catholic communication office)

Palestine Cry: Mass Depopulation, Genocide, WW3 Link to the SatMass Depopulation, Genocide, WW3 Link to the Satanic New World Order - its threats and neglects

Tech_Journal: Mass Depopulation, Genocide, WW3 Link to the Satanic New World
Order - its threats and neglects

Mass
Depopulation, Genocide, WW3 Link to the Satanic New World Order - its threats
and neglects

Zionism is evil (which has nothing to do with the prophets
of God in the Old Testament) and Christian Zionism is evil (which has
nothing to do with Our Lord Jesus Christ and his faithful Christians).
These: Zionism and Christian Zionism,  are both
Satanic heresies.

http://www.paltelegraph.com/columnists/peter-eyre/5207-mass-depopulation-genocide-ww3-part-1-the-link-to-the-new-world-order

http://www.paltelegraph.com/columnists/peter-eyre/5336-mass-depopulation-genocide-ww3-part-2-the-satanic-new-world-order

http://www.paltelegraph.com/columnists/peter-eyre/5489-mass-depopulation-genocide-ww3-part-7-new-world-order-threats-neglects

Also see:

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Tech_Journal:
Mass Depopulation, Genocide, WW3 Link to the Satanic New World Order - its
threats and neglects

Peter Eyre - his site is here: Peter Eyre's Space

Mass
Depopulation, Genocide, WW3 Link to the Satanic New World Order - its threats
and neglects

____________________________________________________________________________



Tech_Journal:
The devil a murderer from the beginning for he is a liar and the father of
lies: Mercury, Vaccines and the Global Population Control Agenda - PART 1 -
YouTube

Mercury,
Vaccines and the Global Population Control Agenda - PART 1 - YouTube

Tech_Journal:
Earth at night - count the lights - lots of space on earth! - See the
proof of the DEPOPULATION of Africa in the
lack of any light at night throughout the vast major portion of the
continent.

• Africa - the forgotten continent - Part 3
• Africa - the forgotten continent - Part 2
• Africa - the forgotten continent - Part 1
• The Plunder and Depopulation of Central Africa - US & World Elite Planning to Depopulate Middle East & North Africa

ANTICHRIST - KING OF THE NORTH, KING OF THE SOUTH - THREE HORNS CUT OFF - ONE SHALL REIGN OVER ALL

click on picture

Africa - the forgotten continent - Part 3

Africa - the forgotten continent - Part 1

Africa - the forgotten continent - Part 2

Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe [Paperback] Gerard Prunier (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 6, 2011 | ISBN-10: 0199754209 | ISBN-13: 978-0199754205 | Edition: Reprint

The Rwandan genocide sparked a horrific bloodbath that swept across sub-Saharan Africa, ultimately leading to the deaths of some four million people. In this extraordinary history of the recent wars in Central Africa, Gerard Prunier offers a gripping account of how one grisly episode laid the groundwork for a sweeping and disastrous upheaval.

Prunier vividly describes the grisly aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, when some two million refugees--a third of Rwanda's population--fled to exile in Zaire in 1996. The new Rwandan regime then crossed into Zaire and attacked the refugees, slaughtering upwards of 400,000 people. The Rwandan forces then turned on Zaire's despotic President Mobutu and, with the help of a number of allied African countries, overthrew him. But as Prunier shows, the collapse of the Mobutu regime and the ascension of the corrupt and erratic Laurent-Désiré Kabila created a power vacuum that drew Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and other African nations into an extended and chaotic war. The heart of the book documents how the whole core of the African continent became engulfed in an intractible and bloody conflict after 1998, a devastating war that only wound down following the assassination of Kabila in 2001. Prunier not only captures all this in his riveting narrative, but he also indicts the international community for its utter lack of interest in what was then the largest conflict in the world. 

The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa

This collection of essays explores the contemporary crises in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo-Kinshasa, offering important new insights into the cycle of genocidal violence, ethnic strife, and civil war that has made the Great Lakes region of Central Africa the most violent on the continent.

The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa

René Lemarchand

2008 | 344 pages | Cloth $59.95 | Paper $27.50
Political Science | African-American/African Studies
View main book page

The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa

René Lemarchand

344 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 illus.
Paper 2009 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2090-2 | $27.50s | £18.00 | Add to cart
Ebook 2011 | ISBN 978-0-8122-0259-5 | $27.5s | £18.00 | About | Add to cart
A volume in the National and Ethnic Conflict in the 21st Century series
View table of contents and excerpt

"René Lemarchand ranks among the top Africanist political scientists of his generation, unmatched in his depth of knowledge about the African Great Lakes. He brings to The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa a broad comparative perspective as well as decades of close observation of the political evolution of the Great Lakes region."—M. Crawford Young, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Endowed with natural resources, majestic bodies of fresh water, and a relatively mild climate, the Great Lakes region of Central Africa has also been the site of some of the world's bloodiest atrocities. In Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo-Kinshasa, decades of colonial subjugation—most infamously under Belgium's Leopold II—were followed by decades of civil warfare that spilled into neighboring countries. When these conflicts lead to horrors such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide, ethnic difference and postcolonial legacies are commonly blamed, but, with so much at stake, such simple explanations cannot take the place of detailed, dispassionate analysis.

The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa provides a thorough exploration of the contemporary crises in the region. By focusing on the historical and social forces behind the cycles of bloodshed in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo-Kinshasa, René Lemarchand challenges much of the conventional wisdom about the roots of civil strife in former Belgian Africa. He offers telling insights into the appalling cycle of genocidal violence, ethnic strife, and civil war that has made the Great Lakes region of Central Africa the most violent on the continent, and he sheds new light on the dynamics of conflict in the region.

Building on a full career of scholarship and fieldwork, Lemarchand's analysis breaks new ground in our understanding of the complex historical forces that continue to shape the destinies of one of Africa's most important regions.

René Lemarchand is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Florida.

Table of Contents

Preface

PART I. THE REGIONAL CONTEXT
Chapter 1. The Geopolitics of the Great Lakes Region
Chapter 2. The Road to Hell

PART II. RWANDA AND BURUNDI: THE GENOCIDAL TWINS
Comparative Perspectives
Chapter 3. Ethnicity as Myth
Chapter 4. Genocide in the Great Lakes: Which Genocide? Whose Genocide?

Rwanda
Chapter 5. The Rationality of Genocide
Chapter 6. Hate Crimes
Chapter 7. The Politics of Memory
Chapter 8. Rwanda and the Holocaust Reconsidered

Burundi
Chapter 9. Burundi 1972: A Forgotten Genocide
Chapter 10. Burundi at the Crossroads
Chapter 11. Burundi's Endangered Transition

PART III. THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO: FROM FAILED STATE TO FRAGILE TRANSITION
Chapter 12. A Blocked Transition: Zaire in 1993
Chapter 13. Ethnic Violence, Public Policies, and Social Capital in North Kivu
Chapter 14. The DRC: From Failure to Potential Reconstruction
Chapter 15. The Tunnel at the End of the Light
Chapter 16. From Kabila to Kabila: What Else Is New?

Notes

Index

Africa - the forgotten continent - Part 2

Africa - the forgotten continent - Part 1

Sudan - vast ancient land of North-Central Eastern Africa

Genocide in Darfur

Darfur is in the western part of Sudan, bordering on Libya, Chad, and the Central African Republic.

Darfur is a region in Sudan the size of France. It is home to about 6 million people from nearly 100 tribes. Some nomads. Some farmers. All Muslims. In 1989, General Omar Bashir took control of Sudan by military coup, which then allowed The National Islamic Front government to inflame regional tensions. In a struggle for political control of the area, weapons poured into Darfur. Conflicts increased between African farmers and many nomadic Arab tribes.

In 2003, two Darfuri rebel movements- the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM)- took up arms against the Sudanese government, complaining about the marginalization of the area and the failure to protect sedentary people from attacks by nomads. The government of Sudan responded by unleashing Arab militias known as Janjaweed, or “devils on horseback”. Sudanese forces and Janjaweed militia attacked hundreds of villages throughout Darfur. Over 400 villages were completely destroyed and millions of civilians were forced to flee their homes.

In the ongoing genocide, African farmers and others in Darfur are being systematically displaced and murdered at the hands of the Janjaweed. The genocide in Darfur has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over 2,500,000 people. More than one hundred people continue to die each day; five thousand die every month. The Sudanese government disputes these estimates and denies any connection with the Janjaweed.

The Sudanese government appears unwilling to address the human rights crisis in the region and has not taken the necessary steps to restrict the activities of the Janjaweed. In June 2005, the International Criminal Court (ICC) took the first step in ending impunity in Darfur by launching investigations into human rights violations in Darfur. However, the government of Sudan refused to cooperate with the investigations.

On March 4, 2009 Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, became the first sitting president to be indicted by ICC for directing a campaign of mass killing, rape, and pillage against civilians in Darfur. The arrest warrant for Bashir follows arrest warrants issued by the ICC for former Sudanese Minister of State for the Interior Ahmad Harun and Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb. The government of Sudan has not surrendered either suspect to the ICC.

Darfuris today continue to suffer and the innumerable problems facing Sudan cannot be resolved until peace is secured in Darfur. According to UN estimates, 2.7 million Darfuris remain in internally displaced persons camps and over 4.7 million Darfuris rely on humanitarian aid. Resolving the Darfur conflict is critical not just for the people of Darfur, but also for the future of Sudan and the stability of the entire region.

Petroleum and Empire in North Africa. NATO Invasion of Libya Underway

SUDAN
(Darfur is the giant block 12 concession on the left side.)

Petroleum and Empire in North Africa. NATO Invasion of Libya Underway

Muamar Gaddafi Accused of Genocide

By Keith Harmon Snow

Global Research, March 02, 2011

allthingspass.com 2 March 2011

Are events unfolding in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt more about petro-terrorism or about freedom and democracy? How much oil is there in North Africa? Who is in control of that oil? What is the relationship between the West and Muamar Gaddafi? Is he really the terrorist we’ve all been led to believe he is? Who is the Libyan “opposition” and who are the “rebels” we read about?

Presented with this story are petroleum industry concessions maps **  for North Africa that people might want to ponder in between the Western propaganda on Libya. Amidst the full-court press of propaganda presented by the western media and State Department disinformation apparatus we find that Muamar Gaddafi is even accused of committing genocide against his own people. Are there double standards at work?

An original photograph; backside text reads: Al Haji Amin (centre) is introducing military senior officers to his brother Col. Gaddafi, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command of Arab republic of Libya, shortly on arrival at Gulu Airfield [norther Uganda] to perform the official handing over of aircrafts to Uganda Airforce, March 3, 1974.

From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli

On September 1, 1969 the pro-western regime that had ruled in Libya was overthrown by Colonel Muamar Gaddafi and his officers. At the time, Libya was home to the largest US Air Base (Wheelus Air Base) in North Africa. Agreements between the USA and Libya signed in 1951 and 1954 granted the USAF the use of Wheelus Air Base and its El Watia gunnery range for gunnery and bombing training and for transport and bombing stopovers until 1971. During the Cold War the base was pivotal to expanding US military power under  the Strategic Air Command, and an essential base for fighter and reconnaissance missions. The Pentagon also used the base — and the remote Libyan desert — for missile launch testing: the launch area was located 15 miles east of Tripoli. Considered a ‘little America on the shores of the Mediteranean’, the base housed some 4600 US military personnel until its evacuation in 1970.

With the discovery of oil in Libya in 1959, a very poor desert country became a very rich little western protectorate. US and European companies had huge stakes in the extremely lucrative petroleum and banking sectors, but these were soon nationalized by Gaddafi. Thus Libya overnight joined the list of US ‘enemy’ or ‘rogue’ states that sought autonomy and self-determination outside the expanding sphere of western Empire. Further cementing western hatred of the new regime, Libya played a leading role of the 1973 oil embargo against the US and maintained cooperative relations with the Soviet Union. Gaddafi also reportedly channeled early oil wealth into national free health care and education.

Many of the concessions in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt involve state-owned oil companies. The US/European/Israeli nexus seeks to dislodge state-ownership — to whatever extent it actually exists — and dislodge any Chinese workers or companies involved in the oil exploitation, and replace these with western companies and western agents. 

[1]
ALGERIA & TUNISIA OIL SECTOR MAPS 
(Note the HUNT OIL Concession in the lower right, in NIGER: HUNT OIL is out of Texas.)

At one time Gaddafi played around with Idi Amin, but his ties to other despots — such as Tony Blair and George H. W. Bush — are far more notable, though far less advertised. Remember that Gaddafi has served the prerogatives of imperialism for years, even while being presented as the world’s premier terrorist. 

The CIA has long wanted to eliminate and replace Muamar Gaddafi. President Reagan bombed Tripoli, killing Gaddafi’s infant daughter: the United States bombing of Libya (code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon) comprised the joint USAF, Navy, and Marines air-strikes against Libya on April 15, 1986. The US CIA brought down the Lockerbie Pan Am 103 flight over Scotland in 1988 and blamed this on Gaddafi. 

In recent years Gaddafi has played along with the western fiction of Al-Queda, though it seems likely that some of the true mercenaries in Libya today are ‘Al-Queda’ terrorists trained by the United States to serve US interests in places like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and now Libya. However, the CIA has always had their sites on Gaddafi. 

Libyan currency 2009

Note the double standard in how the western press presents the accusations of Gaddafi using mercenaries, as if it is something unique to Gaddafi and Libya, and not something we ever do. 

National front for the Salvation of Libya

In almost all western media accounts, the so-called “opposition” in Libya includes the unspecified, unnamed, unidentified “rebels” of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL). These are not innocent ‘pro-democracy’ protestors who began with a ‘peaceful sit-in’ as reported by the New York Times and uncritically repeated everywhere else. 

Reportage of atrocities in Darfur, Sudan (2003-2011) and Rwanda (1990-1994) was always blamed on the governments (Omar Bashir in Khartoum and Juvenal Habyarimana in Kigali) with no context to the foreign backed insurgency and intervention occurring, which in both cases involved the US, UK and Israel. Similarly, in Libya today, there is no context or history to the FNSL ‘rebels’: they are categorically presented as the good guys, no matter that they seem to have appeared out of thin air. No one explains who these people are who are cited by the New York Times or CNN or Democracy Now as sources.

Street scene in Tripoli, September 2009.

The FNSL was part of the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition held in London in 2005, and British resources are being used to support the FNSL and other ‘opposition’ in Libya. The FNSL was actually formed in October 1981 in Sudan under Colonel Jaafar Nimieri– the US puppet dictator who was openly known to be a Central Intelligence Agency operative, and who ruled Sudan ruthlessly from 1977 to 1985. The FNSL held its national congress in the USA in July 2007. Reports of ‘atrocities’ and civilian deaths are being channeled into the western press from operations in Washington DC, and the opposition FNSL is reportedly organizing resistance and military attacks from both inside and outside Libya.

Italy and France are also said to be backing these opposition groups, as the Italian and French oil companies AGIP and ELF and others seek to chop off and eat their pieces of the predatory pie. The US, Britain and Israel seek to insure control of the petroleum sector in advance of competitor corporations from other European countries.

National Endowment for (non) Democracy

In 1983, the Pentagon, USAID, US State Department, and the CIA were all involved in the creation and implementation of ‘Project Democracy’ – National Security Decision Directive 77 (NSDD 77) — and this led to the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy. After that, many of the tactics used in covert interventions were shifted away from the CIA and onto the NED, whose involvement with covert operations and foreign interventions are nonetheless well-established.

A ‘soft’ intervention CIA front, the National Endowment for Democracy has been deeply involved in Libya along with the CIA fronted Freedom House (under their Blue Umbrella program and others). These entities have backed ‘opposition’, supported propaganda campaigns and so-called ‘pro-democracy’ movements, and are known to be involved with backing armed insurgents and interventions.

NED works its overt intelligence sector magic through four organizations under its (own) umbrella: National democratic Institute; International republican Institute, Center for Private Enterprise, and the AFL-CIO’s American Center for International Labor Solidarity.  NED is closely aligned with US foreign policy interests and achieves its mission through the revolving doors between US Government and the NED Board of Directors. 

Some of these NED directors include: former US Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger (Nixon) and Madeleine Albright (Clinton), former US Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci (Reagan), former National Security Council ChairZbigniew Brzezinski (Carter), former NATO Supreme Allied Command in Europe, General Wesley K. Clark (Clinton), and the current head of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz (George W. Bush).

Freedom House is supportive of NED programs but has been around since its creation by Elanor Roosevelt and they have been very active against Libya. Freedom House is funded by, amongst others, UNILEVER Corporation, USAID, and the US Information Agency (USIA). Freedom House, in alliance with USIA, has provided covert and overt “Radio Free’ disinformation programs all over the world since at least 1952: e.g. Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia. 

Past and present Freedom House trustees include: former CIA director R. James Woosley; former national security adviser (at the time of the US invasion of Congo-Zaire) Anthony Lake; Harvard professor Samuel Huntington; UNILEVER executive Ned Bandler; CIA insider Andrew Young; former Joseph Mobutu confidant and national security insider Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick; former NED director and International Crisis Group trustee Zbigniew Brzezinski; USAID intelligence operative J. Brian Atwood (USAID administrator who oversaw the US-backed genocide against millions of Hutu refugees in Zaire, 1996-1998) and many more.

Freedom House is also very likely affiliated with the phantom US Office of Strategic Information (OSI), formed after September 11, 2001. OSI is said to have been reorganized, with all its original functions reassigned to the Office of Global Communications, Information Awareness Office (IAO), and the newly reactivated Counter-Disinformation/Misinformation Team (Counter-Information Team). However, then Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld issued statements affirming that the OSI’s operations would continue.

Rogue State Painted with Blatant Propaganda

In the ABC LITELINE report FNSL Leader Speaks from Washington we find the Washington monument in the background for an interview with an Arab agent being used by the western propaganda system as a credible source — but with zero explanations of who he is or why his claims might be false. 

FNSL operative Irahim Sahad speaks freely, making any claim he likes, and nothing he says is challenged or counter-balanced. Sahad suggests that the UN Security Council MUST be convened to stop the genocide being committed by Gaddafi against his own people. Ibrahim Sahad’s bias is unveiled by such statements as “The UN Security Council was convened when just one man was killed in Lebabon — so it should be convened to address the most brutal use of live ammunition, heavy arms and mercenaries.” The claim employs a double-standard, saying in short that Lebanese lives are worth more than Libyan, which is not at all the case, and that the United Nations takes serious one man’s life in Lebanon, so they should take far more serious the monumental loss of life [claimed] in Libya.

Here are some of the media’s rallying cries making headlines everywhere the English language is used: 

* Gaddafi killing his own people! 
* West worried that Gaddafi may use Nerve Gas!
* Heavy Weaponry Used Against Civilians!
* Heavy Arms Used in Libyan Crackdown!
* Gaddafi Committing Crimes Against Humanity!

The death tolls in Iraq, Afghanistan and Congo — by US/NATO/ISRAELI forces — far surpass anything that might have occurred in Libya. Meanwhile, most ‘news’ on Libya is based on false accusations and false assertions — such as the THREAT of nerve gas being used. 

The ‘international community’ repeatedly enforced or renewed sanctions against Libya in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2004, it was established that Washington and London were grossly exaggerating claims of Gaddafi’s development of nuclear and chemical weapons. In Afghanistan the US is using weapons of mass destruction and has been since the invasion of 2001: these include phosgene and uranium weapons. A deeper issue might be the loss of certain nuclear weapons, as claimed by sources in London, which reportedly went missing from US/NATO stocks. Claims are that these weapons made their way into teh hands of British arms dealer John Bredenkamp, a long time crony of the Robert Mugabe gang in Zimbabwe, and that they may have been sold to Libya, Yemen or North Korea.

[2] 
LIBYA

[2a] 
LIBYA
Map SIRTE BASIN

Muamar Gaddafi Sides with Empire

“[T]he fundamental problem and issue before the people in the region is that the US rulers seek imperial control and imposition of semi-colonial country-selling regimes; the more autocratic and brutal, the better from the point of the US imperialism that is unrelenting history,” reports Ralph Schoenman, in  ‘US Imperialism Against Democratic ME’. “Every time the population is given the opportunity to shape its own destiny, to seek its national independence, to seek its own control over its own resources, to seeks its own sovereignty and determination of its own future, that is incompatible with the US imperialism. 

When Barack Obama was accepted by the US people as the new president, Gaddafi praised Obama and described Obama’s  White House housesit as “a victory against racism” and he urged the first Black U.S. president “to lead his country boldly and with integrity.”

“The Black people’s struggle has made tremendous advances against racism in America,” Gaddafi said. “It was God who created color. Today President Obama, son of a Kenyan father, a true son of Africa, has made it in the United States of America.”

At a speech he gave in his private tent in Tripoli in September 2008, Gaddafi rambled and muddled and zipped his all-over-the-place speech up as quick as he began. Is he a desert mystic? Did he write the infamous “Green Book” or was it ghost-written? Is his rambling speech emblematic of his propensity to try to please, to do what he likes, to be careful not to say the wrong thing, while being unable to remain silent when the hypocrisies of the west are (or were) thrown up in his face?

Pentagon Invasion Already Underway 

The US will use any propaganda necessary to whip up American fervor over Gaddafi and justify Pentagon or MI6 or NATO operations. US and British warships sit off the coast of Libya — and they don’t sit there idly. The imposition of a ‘no-fly’ zone means that US/NATO planes can do as they like, with the understanding that what we are really talking about are possible bombing and fighter sorties against Libya.

US troops have already moved ashore in Libya, joining the ‘opposition ‘ and ‘rebel’ forces in ‘rebel’ controlled territories. The US, France and Britain have already set up Bases in Libya.
The recent report noted that British and US special forces entered Libyan port cities of Benghazi and Toburk on February 23 and 24.

US covert operatives have been on the ground for weeks, in not much longer, whether they have entered by sea (SEALS) or by way of Niger, where the US has openly published information about its covert operations. (See, for example, the travelology reports by former U.S. Special Forces now ‘journalist’ Robert Kaplan in America’s African Rifles a Pentagon massaged and approved propaganda feature in the pro-war Atlantic Monthly). Any opportunity to attack, destabilize, invade will be exploited by the Pentagon.

Of course, as this is written the US media is preparing the ground for the English news consuming masses to see the Pentagon invasion as a “humanitarian” mission in Libya. There is nothing humanitarian about the Pentagon, and there has never been.

[3] 
Egypt

The Desert Mystic

Libya is a country of approximately 6 million people, having a huge geographical area but low population density. Claims that Gaddafi has uplifted his people over the course of his 40 year dictatorship are false. Poverty is high throughout the country, and in Tripoli there are the obvious signs of capitalism: overcrowding, traffic, environmental pollution and destruction of nature. However, Gaddafi’s “Green Book” — if in fact it was written by him — is worth reading. Had it been written by most anyone else who is opposed to the expansion of western empire with all its horrors, it would be more widely appreciated.

Gaddafi has funded Pan-African organizations and individuals, some of whom have very noble missions and serve to challenge the downtrodden, while he has also funded some armed factions involved in unjust wars or destabilizations. Gaddafi has funded Louis Farrakan and the Nation of Islam. He has funded Jean Pierre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), the rebellion also backed by Yoweri Museveni, responsible for a very definitive genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

 

Human Rights Watch has reported that international arms dealer Victor Bout illegally shipped weapons into Congo-Zaire, picking them up in Libya and delivering them to Rwandan Hutu forces. However, Human Rights Watch is deeply compromised when it comes to reporting and not reporting the facts — or selectively reporting them — on Central Africa. If Gaddafi did supply or facilitate the provision of arms to Hutu insurgents in Congo, it may be one of the more reasonable actions he took: e.g. the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) are forever misaligned by the Pentagon and its propaganda minions precisely because they fought against the illegal invasion of Rwanda by Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni. Meanwhile, it is Rwanda, Uganda and their foreign multinational corporate allies that are responsible for the preponderance of killing in Central Africa (not the FDLR). 

According to Amnesty International, another selective human rights organ serving western interests, Gaddafi also reportedly armed Sudanese in Darfur — long before the current conflict began in 2003 — to fight against western backed interventions in Chad and Sudan.

Gaddafi reportedly owns land in Zimbabwe and may flee there or to other countries where repressive control is maintained in service to western interests. 

Muamar Gaddafi is/was the most recent chairman of the African Union, another elite organization designed to serve western exploitation — or run by a cabal of thieves, at the very least, who all have the goods on each other, and so none will ever challenge the way things are — while the people, the masses of Africa, everywhere suffer. 

The African Union (AU) signed on with Washington for the devastating neo-liberal trade and tarifs agreement known euphemistically as the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The AU special report on genocide in Rwanda was a complete whitewash serving US/UK interests and protecting dictators Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni. The AU has also been slammed by African leaders for inaction and silence in various developments on the continent. 

Former AU chairman have included some of Africa’s most criminal dictators, such as Dennis Sassou Nguesso, who has reigned with absolute military brutality in the Republic of Congo for some 20 years (with a gap from 1992-1997). Gabon’s present ruler Albert-Bernard Bongo is the son-in-law of Dennis Sassou-Nguesso, and both have been sustained with millions of Elf petrol dollars (see, e.g., keith harmon snow: The Crimes of Bongo). Sassou-Nguesso’s elite Cobra militia were also trained by French advisers and, like Colonel Joseph Mobutu, Sassou-Nguesso relied on Israeli security and intelligence for protection.

The AU’s alliance with NATO began long ago, and it saw expanded joint military operations in Sudan, where the AU served as NATO’s “African face” for US/UK and Israeli military interventions in the war for Darfur. For example, forces fighting for the NATO interests, commanded and commandeered under an AU banner, came from Paul Kagame’s Rwanda Defense Forces (formerly called Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army) responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Uganda, Rwanda, DR Congo and, then, Darfur. Rather than condemning western military expansion and different forms of AFRICOM or CIA-backed terrorism, for example, the AU backs the western war of annihilation in Somalia, involving Ugandan troops trained by US Special forces, and the Pentagon’s expansion in Ethiopia, and support for dictator Meles Zenawi there. Ethiopia is the site of an ongoing genocide against the Annuak, Omo and Orono people — and no one has reported the atrocities in the blood drenched oil-rich Ogaden basin there. What say the AU? 

In AFRICA: Global NATO Seeks to Recruit 50 New Military Partners, journalist Rick Rozoff reports: “A recent article in Kenya’s Africa Review cited sources in the African Union (AU) disclosing that the 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] is preparing to sign a military partnership treaty with the 53-nation AU.” Rozoff explains that this is a likely maneuver against the spread of Chinese interests in the continent.

According to Black Commentator editor Glen Ford, who traveled to Tripoli in 2008, Gaddafi on the Outs, the man who ruled this not-so-little North African dictatorship is about finished. 

[5] 
SUDAN
(Darfur is the giant block 12 concession on the left side.)

And Now, The Gaddafi Genocide

Claims made by Libyan ‘opposition’ and reported in the western press that Gaddafi is committing genocide against his own people represent the height of western arrogance and hypocrisy. At this very moment the wars being prosecuted by the USA and its allies, including Japan, Europe, Israel, South Africa, Canada and Australia, far dwarf the ‘atrocities’ committed in Libya. While we have no credible reporting about who is killing, who is opposition, how many dead, etc., out of Libya, we have credible report after credible report establishing that the US and its allies have perpetrated massacres, tortures, and other atrocities, in the millions of people, in Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan – for a short list.

The claim of genocide here, akin to the one-sided charges against former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, or against Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, are one more clear example of the Politics of Genocide delineated in great detail by this writer and others. Reports in western media — provided, again, by the FNSL and other western intelligence, covert operations or psychological operations flak organizations — are filled with harsh language and characterizations not seen in reporting on or by western military campaigns. For example, in many western reports we can find, such as Gruesome Footage Proves Libya Using Heavy Arms makes claims that “newspapers obtained shocking footage of corpses with bodies blasted off and several torsos in Libyan hospitals.”  

So there are several torsos. That is not quite genocide. Where are the images? If such images of death and destruction do appear it will be in sharp contrast to the complete whiteout on dead bodies in the Pentagon’s other theaters of war, in the eastern Congo or Somalia, or in Afghanistan. 

Images of dead bodies can be produced and published but these are easily stripped of context. How do western audiences and propaganda consumers know that these are authentic and not recycled images of protests from Yemen or Bahrain dumped into the western press (with their willing acknowledgment) by Britain’s MI-6, as has been alleged? Al-Jezeera shows its true western colors by not reporting much of anything, and that certainly not critical of western manipulation or involvement. 

We saw the tactic of collecting dead bodies and skeletons used in Rwanda by the Pentagon-s agents of teh Rwandan Patriotic Front, and in Darfur and South Sudan, where journalist Nicholas Kristof produced some dead shriveled bodies from some desert somewhere and claimed these were from the New York Times’  Secret Genocide Archives. The atrocities were committed, we are told, by President Omar al-Bashir and the government of Sudan. 

However, there is never any mention of US military involvement, mercenaries (Pacific Architects and Engineers, Dyncorp, others) on the ground in Sudan. Dead men tell no tales, or dead women: these dead bodies are as likely dead from US or Israeli backed ‘rebels’ — the Justice and Equality Movement or Sudan Liberation Army backed by the US, NATO, Israel and our puppet dictator in Uganda.

Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni greets the entourage of foreign mercenaries Tony Buckingham and others as part of the Heritage Oil & Gas / Sandline International meetings to secure oil concessions in the bloody Semliki basin bordering eastern Congo and northern Uganda: both sites of legitimate genocides. 

The double-standards and outright lies can be seen quickly, if one knows there are deeper truths, by examining propaganda produced by the International Crisis Group, or such propaganda tracts as Smith College English teacher Eric Reeves’ A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments  in the Darfur Genocide  — where there is not one reference to Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni and his Pentagon assisted backing of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), in South Sudan, and Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), in Darfur, in all of the 386 pages.

Western mercenaries that have been deeply involved, and remain so, in some of the world’s bloodiest conflicts, in coup d’etats, in massacres and other atrocities, include British mercenary Tony Buckingham — whose mercenary past is legendary — founder of Heritage Oil & Gas, a petroleum company linked by Buckingham to mercenary firms Branch Energy and Sandline International. Buckingham was also a partner in the infamous Executive Outcomes, with former British SAS soldier-of-misfortune Tim Spicer — the recipient of massive Pentagon contracts in Iraq. Heritage director General Sir Michael Wilkes retired from the British Army in 1995 and is a former Middle East adviser to the British government and a member of the Army Board. Wilkes commanded Britain’s Special Air Services (SAS) regiment and was director of Special Forces. Heritage Oil has exploited opportunities in Mali, Uganda, Republic of Congo, Oman and Iraq.

Heritage Oil & Gas map of operations in Iraq.

In short, almost everything in the western press on the crises in Libya is slanted by some faction, or interest, or it is tainted by western arrogance, or by anti-imperialist ideology (of ‘solidarity’), even in the case of the alternative media. There is very little accurate reporting of any kind (but some good work linked or cited herein).

This report is just another incomplete picture of an incomplete puzzle — but it seeks to penetrate through and expose the ongoing western media campaign for what it is: a psychological operation against the masses of earth’s people who have not and do not benefit from the nasty policies and actions implemented to serve a very small and elite group of people. 

People wishing to support the legitimate grievances and actions for freedom and truth in Libya should challenge the western terrorist apparatus out of Washington, DC, Tel Aviv, Brussels, London and Ottawa.   

Prayers for the true innocent civilians in Libya, and across the region. 

keith harmon snow traveled to Tripoli, Libya in 2009 and stayed about 3 days while attending the “2009 International Conference of the Green Book supporters” as a member of the US Delegation invited by former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia Mckinney (D-GA).

** Maps are from a petroleum industry map of all Africa produced in 1996: much has changed since then, only for the worse, in terms of oil and gas expansions.