http://american_almanac.tripod.com/bushgold.htm
George Bush's "Heart of Darkness" --
Mineral Control and Africa
On Dec. 1, 1996, former President George Bush gave an
interview to {Parade} magazine, in which he stated: ``I
don't want to be at the head table anymore. I care about
being a good citizen. I don't join boards of directors,
and I don't go into business deals. I've had every
opportunity to join in putting a petrochemical plant in
Kuwait, a chance to make money. I haven't done it. The way
I make a living is giving speeches. Get paid a lot of
money for giving a speech. No conflict of interest.''
This statement was an outright lie; a lie that Sir
George Bush arranged to appear in the pages of a weekly
newspaper insert that reaches millions of households in
every part of the United States. George Bush does, indeed,
have a very important foreign corporate affiliation: In
May 1995, the Canada-based Barrick Gold Corp. created an
international advisory board around the personal
leadership of Bush, and Bush was designated ``honorary
senior adviser'' to that board--a legal fiction to
disguise the former President's active role as chief
business developer for the company.
What, then, is Barrick Gold Corp.?
- The destruction of Africa -
It is understandable that Bush did not wish to
advertise his ties to Barrick. The company is not only an
important corporate element of the London-centered Club of
the Isles and the British global raw materials cartel--a
British link that might prove embarrassing to Sir George,
at a point when Anglo-American relations remain at a low
point, and when British propaganda organs are leading an
all-out assault upon the U.S. Presidency. But, Barrick,
along with the South Africa-based Anglo American Corp., is
engaged in a strategic metals grab in Central Africa,
which is being abetted by the greatest genocide per capita
in modern times.
From April 1993, when Uganda's President Yoweri
Museveni, on behalf of London, launched the genocide of
the Hutu majority in Rwanda, through to the ongoing
invasion by the same Museveni-led forces in eastern Zaire,
Central Africa and the Horn of Africa have been turned
into a killing field. Local, British-sponsored
``countergangs'' have been unleashed to depopulate a
region that possesses the world's richest strain of
precious metal deposits, while a string of Club of the
Isles metals cartels, including Barrick, moves in for the
kill.
As you will read below, the invasion of eastern
Zaire, by the combined armies of Rwanda and Uganda, which
began in September 1996, coincided with the Barrick and
Anglo American metal grabs in the very same area. The net
result of the invasion, and the simultaneous launching of
an ``internal'' rebellion by longtime British provocateur
Laurent Kabila, was the depopulating of a string of camps
that were holding Rwandan Hutu refugees. Thousands of
those refugees were killed in the fighting between the
British-backed invaders and French-supported Hutu
guerrillas; at least another quarter of a million refugees
were driven into the wilderness, to face death by disease
and starvation; and another half a million fled back
across the border into Rwanda, to face likely
extermination at the hands of the Tutsi.
{EIR} first exposed this policy of genocide on Aug.
19. 1994, in a cover story titled ``The British Hand
Behind the Horror in Rwanda.'' Then, on Oct. 28, 1994, in
a {Special Report} titled ``The Coming Fall of the House
of Windsor,'' we revealed the existence of the
secretive Club of the Isles, the House of Windsor-led
oligarchical institution centered upon a tightly knit
alliance of European princely families, London-based
financial and insurance houses, and food and raw materials
cartels. The Club of the Isles in turn deploys the
resources of the global environmentalist movement, headed
by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF, formerly the World
Wildlife Fund), and its funding arm, the 1001 Club, as a
propaganda and paramilitary arm of their one-world ``New
Dark Age'' agenda.
Under the WWF umbrella, the British Crown has
built up a string of strategically located nature
preserves and national parks, which serve as
staging grounds for cross-border incursions, as training
grounds for terrorist gangs, and as command posts for
British ``former'' SAS commandos to direct the killings in
every part of sub-Saharan Africa.
As we document below, in joining the advisory board
to Barrick Gold, and throwing his political clout into
facilitating Barrick's worldwide strategic metals grab,
George Bush, has cast his lot with a collection of very
unsavory characters, including Barrick's chairman, Peter
Munk, and with the entire Canadian Bronfman gang.
Barrick and the South African Oppenheimer family's
Anglo American Corp. are at the cutting edge of a Club of
the Isles drive to recolonize a severely depopulated
African continent, by busting up the post-colonial
nation-states, beginning with Zaire; and then creating
privately owned micro-states, in which what is left of the
indigenous population is impressed into slavery. The
novelist Joseph Conrad described these conditions
graphically in his 1899 book {Heart of Darkness}. Unless
the oligarchy is stopped, Bush and his friends intend to
reimpose those conditions.
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British-backed the mining companies are stealing Zaire's patrimony
by Richard Freeman
When the forces of Uganda's President
Yoweri Museveni overran eastern Zaire in October 1996,
under the guidance of Baroness Lynda Chalker, the head of
Britain's Overseas Development Office, this military phase
was the culmination of an invasion of Zaire which had been
ongoing for the past three years: the theft of Zaire's
wealth and patrimony. Zaire, as a nation, is being
dismembered. Its various energy-rich provinces, including
Shaba and Kivu, are being encouraged to form separate
micro-states. Already, because of the economic dislocation
forced on Zaire over the past seven years, most of the
provinces act semi-autonomously from the central
government; for example, Shaba province issues its own
currency.
In the following report, we document some of the most
important features of this genocidal looting operation.
On Sept. 21, 1996, a tiny Toronto, Canada-based raw
materials company, Banro Resources Corp., obtained the
concession to mine gold in Zaire's central-east province
of Kivu. The rich concession starts in the town of Bukavu,
and extends southward. Bukavu was the site of one of the
major Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire, which was teeming
with half-starved women and children. Banro needed this
site cleared of people to begin its mining operations; the
clearing started with Uganda's invasion of Zaire in
mid-October. Banro appears to be a cutout for the Anglo
American Corporation, which is the world's biggest mining
company, and a key cog in the international oligarchy's
Club of the Isles raw materials cartel.
In August 1996, Toronto-based Barrick Gold obtained a
gold mining concession in Zaire's northeast province, Haut
Zaire, which reportedly covers 83,000 square kilometers.
The Hollinger Corp.-allied Barrick is chaired by Peter
Munk, and its strategy is shaped by the international
intelligence network of former U.S. President George Bush,
who is honorary senior adviser to its international
advisory board.
Also during 1996, the tiny Vancouver-based raw
materials company Consolidated Eurocan, headed by
international wheeler-dealer Adolf Lundin, began work on
exploiting the Tenke-Fungurume copper-cobalt mines in
Zaire's southernmost Shaba province, near the border with
Zambia, which has the richest cobalt reserves in the
world. Cobalt is a strategic metal, crucial in forming
alloys with steel and other metals, giving them great
strength and heat resistance. Some 40% of cobalt's use is
in aircraft gas turbine engines, and 10% is in magnetic
alloys. Consolidated Eurocan is purchasing the mining
property in phases, for a quarter of a billion dollars,
which is a ``song,'' for a property that could yield many tens
of billions of dollars in revenues. Consolidated Eurocan
is in a joint venture in this deal with Anglo American.
Simultaneously, over the past 18 months, the
American-based, Canadian-run American Mineral Fields, of
former DeBeers Diamond executive Jean-Raymond Boulle, has
obtained the Kipushi zinc mines in Shaba province, one of
the largest sources of zinc in the world; the Vancouver-
and Cayman Islands-based Panorama International has
obtained significant cobalt holdings in Shaba province;
and, Zaire's diamond company, MIBA (Zaire is one of the
three largest diamond producers in the world), has been
thrown open to bidding and takeover by foreign firms.
- The `Second Great Scramble' -
When Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame, the Rwandan defense
minister, recently called for a new Berlin Conference to
set new borders for African states--referring to the
1884-85 Berlin Conference of the imperialist powers which
ratified the national borders that are now in effect in
Africa--he had in mind the fragmentation of Zaire into
mini-states as a paradigm for all of Africa.
The first Berlin Conference occurred during what was
called the ``Great Scramble,'' during the 1880s and 1890s.
Imperialist Britain and France led the way, and were
joined by Belgium, Italy, and Germany, in grabbing up the
raw material wealth of Africa. The Berlin Conference
codified the Congo, which included present-day Zaire, as
the personal property of Belgium's King Leopold II.
Leopold II worked the Congo like a plantation, with brutal
methods. For example, Congolese Africans who did not meet
their production quotas had their arms amputated.
This time around, the British are making a move to
push the Belgians and French entirely out of Central
Africa, and, at the same time, they don't want to have the
expense of running a nation-state, an institution that
they don't like anyway. Rather, they deploy the companies
of their global raw materials cartel to buy up sections of
a country. They keep the people needed to run the mining
and related enterprises alive at subsistence levels, and
the rest of the population is treated as useless eaters,
left to starve or be butchered.
Driving the British actions this time, is another
``Great Scramble.'' The international financier oligarchy,
grouped around the House of Windsor, knows
that the world financial bubble--which they themselves
created--cannot be sustained, and will burst. They are
getting out of paper financial instruments and into hard
commodities: precious metals, such as gold; strategic
metals, such as cobalt and tantalum; base metals, such as
copper and zinc; energy supplies; and increasingly scarce
food supplies. They want to either own the physical
assets, or, better still, own the mine production facility
for these assets. As the price of the hard commodity asset
goes up, the oligarchy makes super-profits. At the same
time, they have finger-tip control over the minerals, food
stuffs, and so on upon which human life depends. They plan
to exercise a food- and raw materials-control dictatorship
in a post-collapse world.
The international oligarchy already owns extensive
raw materials holdings. But they now seek to obtain those
holdings in Africa, Ibero-America, and Asia, which they
don't control.
Mineral-rich Zaire is in their target sights. Zaire's
mineral belt is located in the eastern and southern part
of the country (see {{Figure 1}}). It is a crystalline
belt that runs alongside the Great Rift, a geological fault
running from the Jordan River Valley in the Middle East,
south through the Gulf of Aqaba, through Central Africa
(where Zaire is located), down to southern Africa.
- IMF, World Bank, financiers cut off credit -
Most of Zaire's raw materials holdings are owned by
the state, and President Mobutu Sese Seko has resisted
selling them to foreigners. A seven-year campaign,
including a total credit and aid cutoff of Zaire, has been
waged to force Mobutu to give in. At the center of the
campaign has been the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
the World Bank, and the international banks, which are run
by the same oligarchical forces that run the global raw
materials cartel.
On June 29, 1960, Zaire obtained its independence
from Belgium, although, as with many African countries, it
was only a partial independence, because the countries
were kept in economic backwardness. In the case of Zaire,
in 1961, its first elected President, Patrice Lumumba, was
assassinated. Mobutu, who had been an Army general, was
made President in 1965. In 1967, he declared that all the
minerals in Zaire's subsoil belonged to Zaire, and
nationalized the foreign mining holdings, which meant
principally Belgium's two all-powerful companies, Union
Miniere and Societe Generale. According to
one source, ``The Belgians were so angry at Zaire that they
took with them all their records and plans needed to
mine.''
Despite difficulties, and while never enjoying true
economic developments that would have brought a decent
standard of living to Zaire's now 40 million people, Zaire
nonetheless was able to harness and mine some of its
immense raw materials wealth. A sample of what Zaire
accomplished can be gleaned from the report of the
{Minerals Yearbook}, published by the Bureau of the Mines
of the U.S. Department of Interior (Vol. III). In 1988,
among the world's raw materials mining countries, Zaire
held the following rank, for the following commodities:
Cobalt -- world's largest producer and exporter
Diamonds -- 2nd in the world
Copper -- 5th in the world
Tin -- 12th in the world
Zinc -- 20th in the world
Zaire also mined other commodities, such as
barite, boron, magnesium, and gold. Because of
historical ties, Zaire shipped a good amount of these
goods to Belgium. In the 1960s, in order to run its mining
operations, Zaire created the state-owned La
Generale des Carrieres et des Mines du Zaire,
which is known by its acronym, Gecamines. One of its other
important state-owned companies was based in Kivu
province, the Societe Miniere et Industrielle de
Kivu, known by its acronym Sominki.
When Belgium granted Zaire independence, it
bequeathed to Zaire about $5 billion in debt, which
Belgium had run up. By the late 1980s, Zaire's debt stood
at about $8 billion--a large debt for a small economy
based on raw materials and food, but no manufacturing.
Zaire got further and further behind on its debt payments,
and finally defaulted on most of it in the early 1990s.
This was the excuse that the banks wanted. They
demanded that Zaire pay the debt, but also, joined by the
World Bank and others, demanded that Zaire ``democratize''
its government and, especially, privatize its state-owned
raw materials mining concerns. Privatization had three
components: slashing the social services provided to
miners by law, laying off half the workforce at Gecamines,
and selling more than half of the different properties of
Gecamines and Sominki to foreign investors. Secessionist
movements were started in Shaba province; the net effect
would be to dismantle the Zairean state.
The banks organized an international credit cutoff,
meaning that Zaire could not get the money to purchase
mining machinery, spare parts, and other essential
imports. The West had always denied Zaire technology
transfer, as long as the raw materials wealth was
primarily in Zairean hands. Around 1993, the World Bank
and IMF declared a credit cutoff to Zaire. A senior source
at the U.S. Geological Survey reported on Nov. 27, 1996,
that the World Bank and its loan guarantee agency, the
Multi-Lateral Investment Guarantee Corporation (MIGA),
recommended to Zaire that it would not get new money until
it agreed to ``modernize,'' that is, privatize, its mining
operations, by selling off sections of state holdings.
At about the same time, the governments of Belgium,
France, and the United States cut off all official
government aid to Zaire.
Currency warfare was unleashed in 1990, and has
continued to this day. At one point, the Zairean currency,
the zaire, depreciated from a few new zaires to the
dollar, to 3,250 to the dollar. This devaluation meant
that Zaire earned almost nothing for its foreign exports.
As the U.S. Geological Survey source explained, ``The
economy went down the tubes. Mining production today is
10% of what it was in the late 1980s. Because of the
economic dislocation, most of the provinces are operating
on their own.'' Indeed, between 1987 and 1993, cobalt
production fell 82%, and copper production fell 90%. As a
result, exports of minerals and metals, which accounted
for three-quarters of Zaire's foreign exchange earnings,
dried up. Zaire's ability to service the debt, should it
choose to do so, disappeared.
The conditions of life for the population worsened,
in a country in which living conditions were already bad.
In 1990, only 39% of Zaireans had access to safe drinking
water. Infrastructure is virtually nonexistent. In 1994,
Zaire's infant mortality rate was 111 deaths per 1,000
live births, i.e., an 11% infant death rate, more than 13
times that in the United States. In 1992, the last year
for which figures were available, 335,000 Zairean children
under the age of five died. In 1994, life expectancy in
Zaire was 53 years, lower than in 1990.
Under this assault, President Mobutu opened the door
to privatizing Zaire's patrimony, although still not at a
rate fast enough to satisfy the World Bank vultures.
- The corporate invasion -
At the heart of the invasion of Zaire's mining
properties, are the Canadian mining companies and the
Oppenheimer family-run Anglo American Corp., which often
takes the Canadian companies under its wing in joint
ventures. The Canadian mining companies started an
invasion of Zaire in 1994, which reached a flood tide in
1996. This was the opening shot of the ``Second Great
Scramble.'' The Canadian mining companies represent forward
beachheads for the Commonwealth-centered British Empire
(see {EIR Special Report,} May 24, 1996, ``The Sun Never
Sets on the New British Empire''). Behind the companies,
lurks the shadowy presence of the Oppenheimer family's
Anglo American Corp., the linchpin of the Club of the
Isles' raw materials cartelization strategy.
We look at three examples. First, the takeover of
Sominki, in Kivu province, by Toronto-based Banro Resource
Corp.
Zaire has three eastern provinces: Haut Zaire, in the
northeast; Kivu, in the center-east; and Shaba (formerly
Katanga), in the southeast. Kivu province is second in
richness of raw materials, after Shaba. The leading mining
concern in Kivu is the Societe Miniere et
Industrielle de Kivu, or Sominki. Sominki was formed in
1976 as an amalgamation of nine companies that had been
operating in Kivu province since the early 1900s. It
operates 47 mining concessions, encompassing an area of
10,271 square kilometers.
In 1996, Banro Corp. of Toronto bought 36% of
Sominki, raising some of its money for the purchase by
floating shares in Singapore. Banro was previously a small
financial institution, with little apparent aptitude for
mining. The impression is that it was reconfigured as a
company for the special purpose of this purchase, perhaps
acting as a front for someone. (Who that someone is, will
become clear.)
Another large chunk of Sominki was bought by the
Belgium-based company Mines D'or du Zaire, or MDDZ. Owning
60% of MDDZ is Cluff Mining Co. of London, and controlling
65% of Cluff is Anglo American Corp., the world's largest
mining company and a key component of the Club of the
Isles.
On Sept. 21, 1996, Banro and MDDZ announced their
merger, with Banro selling its shares to MDDZ. The new
Banro-MDDZ company consolidated a 72% stake in Sominki,
while the government of Zaire holds 28%. The Banro-MDDZ
entity has announced that it plans to acquire that 28%
from the government. The overall enterprise is essentially
a vehicle for Anglo American.
According to various Banro corporate reports and news
releases, Banro was anxious to get its mining operations
started as quickly as possible. However, the Sominki
mining zone that Banro acquired started in the town of
Bukavu, the center for the major camp for Rwandan refugees
who had fled to Zaire, with nearly a million people. To
get mining started, the entire zone would require
clearing. Suddenly, as Uganda launched its invasion of
eastern Zaire, near Bukavu, in mid-October, there was
firing on the Bukavu refugee camp, supposedly against
``Hutu rebels'' who were hiding there. The military attack
on the camp forced hundreds of thousands of refugees to
flee Kivu province, back to Rwanda. But, who did the
firing? While a clear answer is not forthcoming, it may
have involved portions of the newly acquired Sominki
apparatus itself. For, in acquiring Sominki, Banro did not
just acquire a company; it acquired the effective
governmental structure of the entire Kivu province.
According to a Banro corporate press release,
``Sominki owns an extensive infrastructure which includes
repair shops, machine shops, electrical shops and a large
fleet of Land Rover vehicles. In addition, it operates six
hydroelectric sites, a number of air strips, and 1,000
kilometers of roads. Sominki is virtually self-sufficient.
The company has about 5,000 employees.'' The release added,
``In fact, Sominki is {the de facto government providing
all the essential services for the Kivu Province}''
(emphasis added).
Banro/Anglo American effectively stole a good chunk
of the government of Kivu. This is the British
model for the Second Great Scramble. As a mining
company, Sominki has its own explosives supplies and
access to weapons, i.e., it has the capability to carry
out such an attack, or is in a commanding position to
influence, those who fired on the refugee camps.
The second example, is that of American Mineral
Fields (AMF), which is based in Hope, Arkansas, but run
from Canada. AMF has acquired from Gecamines the Kipushi
copper-zinc mine, one of the world's premier copper-zinc
mines, located in Shaba province (copper and zinc are
often mined together). The Belgians developed Kipushi and
began mining in 1925. At its peak in 1988, the Kipushi
mine produced 143,000 tons of zinc, and 43,000 tons of
copper. Its total known and probable reserves stand at 22.6
million tons, grading 2.1% copper and 13.8% zinc.
AMF is the brainchild of its owner, Jean-Raymond
Boulle, a former executive for DeBeer's Diamonds. In turn,
AMF signed an agreement with Anglo American, which allows
Anglo American to invest up to $100 million in any AMF
venture in Shaba province, representing up to a 50% equity
stake in the venture, including the Kipushi mine. Once
again, ubiquitous Anglo American shows up.
The third example, is that of tiny Consolidated
Eurocan of Vancouver. In 1996, Eurocan finalized a deal
that will allow it to purchase from the state mining
company Gecamines, a 55% interest in the Tenke-Fungurume
copper-cobalt deposits. Eurocan will pay a quarter of a
billion dollars over 72 months for its stake, but the
stake is worth potentially tens of billions of dollars in
revenues. According to a Eurocan spokesman on Dec. 18,
Tenke-Fungurume, located in Shaba province, represents the
largest operating cobalt reserves in the world. It has
geological reserves of 222 million tons of copper and
cobalt, with potential reserves of 1 billion tons.
Consolidated Eurocan is owned and run by Canadian
wheeler-dealer Adolf Lundin. One U.S. mining source
reported, ``There is no way that Eurocan can develop the
mines on its own. It doesn't have the capabilities. It
will have to sell off shares to established mining
companies, most likely Iskor and Gencor, to work the
properties.'' Iskor and Gencor are both South African
companies, and part of the British raw materials cartel.
Thus, these Canadian companies, in some cases
stalking horses for Anglo American, are gobbling up
Zaire's gold, copper, zinc, and cobalt reserves.
Add to this, the Barrick Gold purchase of a huge
concession in Haut Zaire, and the fact that there is now
discussion of opening up the major government-owned
diamond mining company, Societe Miniere de
Bakwanga (MIBA), to foreign investors. MIBA accounts for
40% of Zaire's official diamond exports. The remaining 60%
are developed by artisanal miners, i.e., prospectors, who
then sell the gems to ``Israeli diamond buyers and to
[international gem dealer] Maurice Templesman,'' according
to a knowledgeable source. The Belgian-born Tempelsman,
who squired around Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis before she
died, is an international tycoon. He is former president
of the U.S. Africa Society, a group that is influential in
the shaping of U.S. government Africa policy.
- The Anglo American paradigm -
Anglo American Corp. offers a foretaste of how a
world without nation-states, run by the financier
oligarchs, would operate. It was formed in 1917. Financing
for, and investments into Anglo American and its
associated companies, came from the Rothschild bank and
J.P. Morgan. The South Africa-based Anglo American,
through cross-ownership shares, owns DeBeers Centenary and
DeBeers Consolidated (which together control the Central
Selling Organization, that markets and controls 80% of the
world's diamonds), and the Luxembourg-based Minerals and
Resources Corp. (Minorco) mineral holding company. In
South Africa alone, Anglo American owns more than 1,600
companies, where it is the world's leading gold producer,
the world's leading platinum producer, the world's leading
diamond producer, and much else.
The Oppenheimer family runs the Anglo American Corp.
empire. Cambridge University-educated Harold Oppenheimer
was chairman until 1982, and still reportedly makes all
important decisions. His son Nicholas is the leading
family member in the company. The Oppenheimer family
members are in the 1001 Club, the tightly knit, elite
society that brings together oligarchs, financiers, raw
materials company executives, and billionaires to
coordinate strategy worldwide. Barrick Gold chairman Peter
Munk is a member of the Club, as are many other heads of
the world's top mining companies. The Club is closely
intertwined with the World Wide Fund for Nature of
Britain's Prince Philip.
Though the Oppenheimers publicly professed to be
critics of South African apartheid, they fundamentally
supported and benefitted mightily from its existence,
which allowed them to run their mines as slave-labor
plantations.
But the Anglo American Corp. empire extends to every
mineral-producing country in Africa and the world, and it
continues to grow. In October 1996, Anglo upped to 26% its
ownership stake in the London-headquartered, Zimbabwe
(formerly Rhodesia)-centered Lonrho raw materials company,
which had been run by Tiny Rowland. In turn, Lonrho owns a
30% ownership stake in the Ashanti Mines in Ghana, which
represents the richest operating goldfield outside of
South Africa. Anglo American has been trying to purchase
the state-owned CVRD company of Brazil, which controls the
Gran Carajas mining project in Brazil. With everything
from iron and copper to precious minerals, some estimates
put its worth at more than $1 trillion. According to one
report, Anglo American is trying to buy what remains of
Zaire's Gecamines, after everything else has been sold
off.
But the full global reach of Anglo American only
becomes clear when viewed in conjunction with the holdings
of the London-based Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ), the world's
second largest raw materials producing company. RTZ was
formed in the 1870s by China opium trader Hugh Matheson,
who was a principal in the Hongkong-based firm Jardine
Matheson. The Rothschilds have a significant stake in the
company. Queen Elizabeth II is also a significant investor
in RTZ. Anglo American and RTZ combined control a stunning
percentage of the Western world's most important raw
materials (see {Table 1}).
The Anglo American-RTZ combination anchors the House
of Windsor's raw materials cartel. {EIR} showed in its
Sept. 15, 1995 issue, that the House of Windsor cartel
controls, overall, 59.5% of world gold production, 78% of
world platinum production, 25% of copper, 55% of alumina
bauxite, 64% of cobalt, 42% of manganese, 39% of chromium,
and so on.
Thus, Anglo American and the Canadian companies
integrated into the process of taking over Zaire, are out
to extend the power of the raw materials cartel. If they
succeed, there will be no nation-state: Only a portion of
the population, that permitted to slave for the mining
companies' operations, will remain; the rest will be
written off. As is shown by the treatment of the Rwandan
refugees in Kivu province, who were either starved,
butchered, or simply moved away to make way for mineral
production, the mining companies do not care about human
lives, only about their profits and their geopolitical
control.
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`Heart of Darkness' -- A glimpse at colonialism in action
by Linda de Hoyos
On Aug. 18, as the Rwandan Patriotic Front
began its armed attacks on the camps of Rwandan refugees
in Zaire, the London {Observer} published an op-ed by
Norman Stone, which went straight to the heart of British
policy for Africa. Citing the horrific strife in Rwanda
and Burundi, Stone bluntly stated: ``For
re-imperialization now begins to make sense again, and the
Europeans would be in a good position to push through some
sort of international mandate. This was what happened over
a century ago, and you can argue that the problems of
Africa were made infinitely worse than they needed to be
because the process was brought prematurely to an end. The
world today has a ghostly similarity to that of a century
ago.''
Many Africans who remember the pre-independence days
would not agree with Stone's exultation of colonial rule.
The reality of imperialism was not highly publicized,
however; even as late as the 1960s, on the eve of
independence for most countries, life expectancy in
most African countries was generally under 30 years of age. One
writer who had a first-hand view of colonialism and
depicted it was the Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad.
In 1889, Conrad traveled the Congo River as master of the
ship {Otago.} In 1899, Conrad wrote about his journey
through the Belgian Congo, in {Heart of Darkness.} Belgian
colonial rule, which was run directly by and for the
Belgian monarchy, was notoriously harsh. Conrad relates
that the porters for a group of ``pilgrims'' were not given
food each day, but handed a nine-inch piece of wire, which
they were supposed to exchange for food with area
Africans--a form of payment by which they starved. Under
colonial rule, the Congo River Basin had been turned into
no less than a giant concentration camp, in which people
were worked to death, as Conrad described:
- An `Inferno' -
``A continuous noise of the rapids above hovered over
this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of people,
mostly black and naked, moved about like ants.... They
were building a railway....
``A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head.
Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path.
They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full
of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with
their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins,
and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I
could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like
knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and
all were connected together with a chain whose bights
swung between them rhythmically clinking.... All their
meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated
nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They
passed me within six inches, without a glance, with ...
complete, deathlike indifference....
``At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to
stroll into the shade for a moment; but no sooner within
than it seemed to me I had stepped into the gloomy circle
of some Inferno. The rapids were near, and an
uninterrupted, uniform, rushing noise filled the mournful
stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a
leaf moved, with a mysterious sound--as though the tearing
pace of the launched earth had suddenly become audible.
``Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees
leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half
coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the
attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine
on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the
soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And
this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn
to die.
``They were dying slowly--it was very clear. They were
not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing
earthly now--nothing but black shadows of disease and
starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom.
Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the
legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial
surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened,
became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away
and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air--and
nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of the
eyes under the trees. Then, glancing down, I saw a face
near my hand. The black bones reclined at full length with
one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose
and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant,
a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs,
which died out slowly. The man seemed young--almost a
boy--but you know with them it's hard to tell. I found
nothing else to do but to offer him one of my good Swede's
ships's biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed
slowly on it and held--there was no other movement and no
other glance.
``Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles
sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped
on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and
appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead,
as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about
others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse,
as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I
stood horror-struck, one of these creatures rose to his
hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards the
river to drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in
the sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and
after a time let his woolly head fall on his breastbone.
``I didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and I
made haste towards the station.''
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1.6 million dead: `Just a drop in the bucket'
by Linda de Hoyos
{EIR} estimates that since October 1990, when
the Ugandan Army under the rubric of the ``Rwandan
Patriotic Front'' first invaded Rwanda, at least 1.6
million people have died in the wars that the British
blueprint for East Africa has instigated. Another 2
million people have been uprooted and displaced, although
this is a very conservative figure.
This count is derived as follows:
1990 invasion of Rwanda by Uganda:
150,000-200,000 killed;
One million displaced to the Nyacyonga refugee camp
outside Kigali. There are reports of large-scale murders
carried out in the north at that time.
1993 attempted coup against Burundi government of
President Melchior Ndayaye:
100,000 killed.
1993-96 continuing civil war in Burundi:
150,000-200,000 killed.
1994 invasion of Rwanda by the Rwandan Patriotic
Front:
1 million slaughtered in mass melee between Hutus and
Tutsis;
2 million displaced and forced to flee the country;
200,000 refugees die of cholera and disease at
refugee camps in Zaire in summer 1994.
1996 Ugandan-Rwandan-Burundi invasion of Zaire:
Totals unknown, however:
-- 600,000 refugees remain unaccounted for inside
Zaire. It is not known how many of these are now dead, but
in early November, aid workers estimated that up to 10,000
would die per day if they were left without assistance.
Those remaining in the Zairean bush, have received very
little, if any, assistance so far.
-- 1,000 refugees have been slaughtered in Burundi
by the military, according to Amnesty International and
the United Nations. This does not include those killed in
fighting between the military and Forces for the Defense
of Democracy.
-- There are continuing reports in the Western
media, such as the Associated Press on Nov. 21 and the
Belgian {De Standaard} on Nov. 25, that forces under the
nominal command of Laurent Kabila and the Rwandan Armed
Forces culled out men and boys from the refugees before
their return to Rwanda, and also in Zairean cities and
towns under their control.
In total, the imperial land grab of East Africa by
George Bush's Barrick Gold et al., even excluding the
invasion of Zaire, has cost the lives of 1.6 million
Burundians and Rwandans, out of a total population for
both countries of only 13 million. In per-capita terms,
this would be the equivalent of a slaughter of 31 million
Americans.
- The Malthusian cover story -
It has become a standard ruse among the practitioners
of mass murder in Africa to justify their policies with
the Malthusian myth that, since Africa has too many people
anyway, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Africans
are part of a necessary ``solution'' to the
``overpopulation problem.'' Such claims were heard in July
1994, for instance, by the British case officer for East
Africa, Baroness Lynda Chalker, Minister of Overseas
Development, the self-identified mentor of Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni. Speaking to the Royal Society
of London on July 11, 1994, as Hutu refugees were dying of
cholera in Goma at the rate of 20,000 a day, Chalker
declared: ``The density of population in Rwanda is one
reason why the scale of that tragedy is so enormous.''
Similar sentiments are standardly voiced at the U.S.
State Department. Dick Cornelius, of the State Department
Office of Population, Refugees, and Migration, told a
journalist in July 1994:
``The people dying at the moment are not the main
issue. I mean, 50,000 people dying of cholera is
alarming--but on the grand scale of things, looking at the
impact on population in Africa and the region, it's a drop
in the bucket.''
Then, on Dec. 17, 1996, U.S. Assistant Secretary of
State for Global Affairs Timothy Wirth laid the blame for
the war in East Africa on ``overpopulation.'' Speaking to a
conference sponsored by the Center for National Policy
Wirth declared:
``Population pressure in Rwanda underlaid a great part
of the problems that were faced in the conflict between
the Tutsis and the Hutus, there were no places to let off
steam--you know, you had eight and a half children per
woman being born in a country that was the most
cultivated, intensely cultivated--in all of Africa.''
The agricultural cultivation of the country, it
should be noted, isn't a problem for Rwandans, but it {is}
a problem for the mining operations now seeking to control
the entire Great Rift Valley. Wirth did not mention the
name Barrick Gold, but he did indicate why ``population''
is a problem for Barrick Gold et al.:
``If you ever flew over Rwanda, you see that every
inch of land is cultivated. Burma and China pale in
comparison to Rwanda; no matter what the political
problems are, the fact is the population of Rwanda will
double in 25 years, where are you going to put these
people? How are you going to feed them? We can discuss the
political problems all you want, but what do you do
next?|... There are too many people competing for too few
resources.''
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Inside story: the Bush gang and Barrick Gold Corporation
by Anton Chaitkin
Barrick Gold, caught scrambling for loot amid the
corpses in Zaire, is a corporate front for the George
Bush-allied covert political apparatus. The Canada-based
Barrick is Bush's only known current business enterprise.
The company, which Bush now personally leads, was created
by Bush's political partners--British elite narcotics
financiers, and arms traffickers and money launderers.
Using the influence of this political faction,
Barrick acquired important interests, first in the United
States, then in Canada and South America. In South
America, as Barrick boasts in its 1995 annual report, the
company has an aggressive, long-term approach, with mines
and projects established in strategic locations in
Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. ``Almost
two-thirds of the exploration and development drilling
budget will be spent in South America, where the company
has decided to focus its efforts,'' the annual report
states. In addition, with its intended conquests in
Indonesia and Africa, the firm now says it aims to move
from third to first among the world's largest gold mining
companies.
We present here the results of {EIR'}s investigation
of the Bush company, centering on the following principal
figures:
George Herbert Walker Bush:
whose father was a
partner in the powerful London-controlled private banking
firm Brown Brothers Harriman. Relevant to the Barrick
story, Bush was U.S. vice president and chief of covert
operations in the Reagan-Bush (1981-89) administration,
and U.S. President (1989-93). As a former President and
power broker, Bush is Barrick Gold Corp.'s chief lobbyist,
a stockholder in Barrick, and honorary senior adviser to
Barrick's international advisory board.
Adnan Khashoggi:
a Bush-allied Saudi billionaire
and arms trafficker, founder of the Barrick Gold Corp.;
famous for his illegal weapons sales to Iran.
Peter Munk:
a business failure who became a
protege of the British royal family, and Khashoggi's
partner. Munk is chairman of Barrick Gold Corp.
Brian Mulroney:
Canadian prime minister (1984-93)
and George Bush's errand boy; Barrick Gold lobbyist and
director, Bush's lieutenant on the Barrick international
advisory board.
Barrick Gold was founded in Toronto, Canada, in 1983.
The majority investment in the firm was held by Khashoggi
and his arms-trafficking partners, who were just then
gearing up the Iran-Israel-Nicaragua guns and cocaine
tangle which would explode in 1986 as the ``Iran-Contra''
scandal.
The nominal chief of Barrick Gold was Peter Munk, a
Hungarian Jewish immigrant who had repeatedly ``died'' as
a businessman, only to be repeatedly revived by princes
and principalities. This much of Munk's story is before
the public in a biography that was written and published
with Munk's support, entitled {Peter Munk: The Making of a
Modern Tycoon,} by Donald Rumball (Toronto: Stoddart
Publishing Co., 1996). It vaguely describes Munk's public
disgrace, his self-exile in London, and his sudden rise to
near-billionaire status, ending with Munk's invitation to
George Bush became honorary senior adviser to the
board, created in May 1995.
- The Clairtone heist -
Peter Munk first became notorious in Canada in the
late 1960s, as the beneficiary in an insider trading
scandal. Munk and a partner named David Gilmour owned an
audio equipment manufacturing company that had been
heavily subsidized by the province of Nova Scotia. Munk
and Gilmour quietly dumped 29,000 shares of Clairtone
stock in 1967, just before publication of the company's
financial report tipped off other investors that the
company was failing. After Munk sold at $9 per share, the
stock plunged to $1.
Dr. Morton Shulman, a member of the legislative
assembly of the province of Ontario, asked government
representatives if Munk would escape with his money and no
legal consequences (see Ontario Legislative Library record
of Ontario provincial parliamentary debate on June 3,
1969).
Ontario Minister of Financial and Commercial Affairs
H.L. Rowntree responded that a court had been requested to
order the Ontario Securities Commission ``to commence an
action in connection with [Munk's] Clairtone Sound Company
... for an action in the name of the company for the
accounting of profits allegedly made by him by reason of
the improper use of inside information.''
But there was no government action, and Munk would
indeed escape. A Clairtone stockholder named John
Adams, who had lost about $5,500, had filed a legal action
against Munk. Munk hired attorney Charles Dubin, whom
Shulman described as ``a lawyer who acts for the
Conservative Party whenever there is an embarrassment to
be covered up.... He is amazingly good at covering up
Conservative scandals.... And Charles Dubin ... knew
exactly how to go about subverting the law in this case.''
Shulman reported that Munk's attorney gave Adams
$35,000 as a settlement, on Adams's agreement not to make
the case public. Then, ``the lawyer for Adams and Charles
Dubin went into the Judge's chambers ... [and] requested
the judge to remove the papers from the registrar's office
and keep them in his own private chambers, which the judge
did.''
Charles Dubin, Munk's inventive attorney, the fixer
for Mulroney's Conservative Party, became Ontario's chief
justice, and only recently retired.
The disappearance of legal papers in the Munk case
discouraged other stockholders from going after Munk. But
the resulting scandal made him a pariah in Canada, and
Munk moved to London to start a new life.
- `Dope, Inc.' puts Munk back together -
The sister of Munk's partner, David Gilmour, had
married one of the Vansittarts, a family high in the
Anglo-Dutch aristocracy. Munk's approved biography reports
that this Vansittart activated the formidable Sir Henry
Keswick, who made arrangements to lift Munk into a new
career. Keswick's family merchant banking firm, Jardine
Matheson, had long been the British Empire's leading,
out-in-the-open organizer of Asian illegal narcotics
trafficking and drug-money-laundering. (Keswick, Jardine
Matheson, and their cohorts are central figures in {EIR'}s
book {Dope, Inc.} (Washington, D.C.: Executive
Intelligence Review, third edition, 1992.)
Jardine Matheson made Munk the chief executive of a
Bahamas-registered hotel corporation called Southern
Pacific Properties (SPP), with Jardine money, and
Jardine's chief executive, David Newbigging, as a
director. Then, Jardine's historical dope partner, the
Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O),
joined the Munk enterprise; P&O's Lord Geddes himself
joined Newbigging on the Munk-SPP board. In future years,
as Munk rose to world prominence in the gold business, the
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. and the Royal Bank of Canada,
two ``Dope, Inc.'' financial agencies, would provide credit
in the billions of dollars for Munk's expansion.
Munk-SPP became a giant hotel owner in Australia and
the South Pacific islands, and seized control of the
Travelodge chain.
Munk's rise in Australia was aided by his lifelong
close association with fellow Hungarian emigre Sir
Peter Abeles, Australia's transport mogul. Munk's
stepfather had been secretary and assistant to Abeles's
father in Vienna in the late 1940s. Abeles is reportedly
known in Europe as ``the White Knight,'' in reference both
to his British knighthood, and his reported large role in
the cocaine trade. Jonathan Kwitney, in {The Crimes of
Patriots} (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987), reports that,
after Abeles encountered labor union problems in his
American business, Abeles gave to gangster ``associates of
... the most powerful Mafia leader in the United States
... a 20% stake in his U.S. operations.'' His partners were
indicted for hiding his payments, but Abeles refused to
come to America to testify, and charges were dropped.
- Khashoggi, Barrick, and the ayatollahs -
In 1974, Munk signed an investment partnership
agreement with arms-trafficking billionaire Adnan
Khashoggi of Saudi Arabia. According to Munk's approved
biography, the new alliance was cemented when Munk and
Khashoggi were summoned to the London headquarters of
Peninsular and Orient. P&O's hereditary boss was Lord
Inchcape, whose predecessor in the 1920s (also Lord
Inchcape) had directed Britain's India Commission to
continue the Empire's opium production.
Munk later told his biographer that he was
nervous--Khashoggi was late and perhaps ``the P&O directors
wouldn't wait for us and it would seriously harm the
relationship. It was already remarkable that they should
have a Jew and an Arab together in their dining room.''
But, the mighty Lord Inchcape convinced Khashoggi to
plunge in, and Khashoggi now provided most of the cash for
the Munk enterprise.
Since this arrangement was sealed back in the 1970s,
Munk has grown in favor as London's creature. He became a
regular skiing partner of Prince Charles, who recently
attended the opening of a Munk speculative real estate
venture (a factory outlet mall) in Germany. Munk is a
member of the elite ``1001 Club,'' co-founded by Prince
Philip, a worldwide grouping of aristocrats, bankers, and
speculators who support a radical anti-industrial,
``pro-environmentalist'' looting strategy, and who provide a
lion's share of the funding for Prince Philip's World
Wildlife Fund.
The first Khashoggi-Munk-London venture was an
attempt to build a 10,000-acre ``jet set'' resort complex
immediately adjoining the Egyptian pyramids. As the scheme
threatened to destroy the entire historical/archeological
area, it evoked mass protests, and could not be forced
through. Munk sued Egypt's government, and was eventually
awarded $17 million by an international referee.
Khashoggi and his associates, backers of the British-
and Bush-linked faction of the arms trade, created
Barrick Petroleum Corp. in 1981, registered as a Delaware,
U.S.A., corporation. Junior partner Munk, having returned
from London, set up a parallel ``Barrick Resources'' in
Canada.
But Munk's name was anathema to Canadian investors.
So, Khashoggi was brought in to lend his prestige to Munk.
Khashoggi made a televised publicity tour of the Toronto
stock exchange, and announced that he had purchased 10,000
(Canadian) Barrick shares. At that point, in fact,
Khashoggi, his brother, and their international associates
already controlled the company, partially through
Khashoggi's Lichtenstein-U.S.A. conglomerate, ``Triad.''
Munk was now launched as a corporate chairman in
Canada. But this first Barrick, an oil development firm,
went bust and lost all its money.
In 1983, the Khashoggi-led group formed the gold
company whose name was soon changed to Barrick Gold Corp.
Sheik Kamal Adham was reportedly one of the new company's
founding co-owners. Adham, the chief of Saudi
intelligence, had coordinated royalist guerrillas in
Yemen, with British arms secretly provided through
Khashoggi.
Beginning in 1985, Khashoggi borrowed $21 million,
using his Barrick stock as collateral, for the covert
transfer of arms to Iran for the Bush-North group, during
an official U.S. arms embargo against the Khomeini regime.
Khashoggi made Donald Fraser, the Toronto-based
businessman who allegedly provided the loan from his
Cayman Islands company, president of Khashoggi's Triad
American holding company.
Khashoggi used the Monte Carlo office of the Bank of
Credit and Commerce International to launder money for
Iran arms sales. Barrick Gold Corp. co-founder Kamal Adham
was later prosecuted for fraud in the BCCI case, and paid
a $100 million fine.
Khashoggi's Saudi royal piggybanks also underwrote
George Bush's Central American ``Contras'' adventures,
making payments through the Swiss Bank Corp. and a Cayman
Islands bank, totalling about $27 million.
When the Iran and Contra scandals blew up in 1986,
U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese linked the two scandals
in a Nov. 25 public revelation. The next day, Munk
announced a shareholders' meeting to decide on an urgent
restructuring plan. A new organization emerged, keeping
the Khashoggi group in control, but easing Khashoggi out
of the limelight and making Munk the sole public
figurehead. Personnel were shifted into the Canada
organization out of Khashoggi's Triad operations in Utah.
Tariq Kadri, Khashoggi's longtime attorney, was made
president of the Horsham holding company that was put over
Barrick.
As the U.S. Congress took up the arms-for-drugs
investigation and other trails leading to Vice President
Bush, Khashoggi became too hot for the Canadian
partnership, and the Khashoggi group's shares were
officially sold off. Khashoggi was himself arrested in
1989, in a fraud case involving the Philippines' Marcos
regime. Taken from Switzerland and jailed in New York,
Khashoggi was bailed out with a $4 million check from his
partner, Peter Munk.
- Bush cashes his gold chips -
In 1986-87, at the height of the Iran-Contra
controversy, the Barrick Gold Corp. acquired the
Goldstrike property in Nevada for $63 million. The land,
proving to hold $10 billion in gold, was the property of
the U.S. government. Bush was elected President in 1988,
and his administration put through a special
dispensation--applied only to the Barrick Gold Corp.--to
speed up the normal procedures for a mining company to
take official title (``patent'') to the land.
With the Bush Goldstrike intervention, Barrick Gold
shot up from insignificance, to world power status, and
Bush himself climbed onboard.
President Bush's ambassador to Canada (1989-92),
Edward N. Ney, had been for many years a Bush political
operative and an international coordinator of Bush's
``privatized'' intelligence activities. In 1992, Ney quit as
ambassador and became a director of the Barrick Gold Corp.
The following year, Brian Mulroney resigned as
Canadian prime minister. Mulroney was the most unpopular
Canadian politician; but, in power, he had directly aided
Barrick's international ventures, and had worked closely
with Bush to force through free trade agreements. Munk
immediately hired the former prime minister as a Barrick
step-'n'-fetchit. The approved biography explains Munk's
point of view:
``Mulroney [was] the unhappy lightning rod for the
angst of a whole nation, in office and out. Munk was well
aware of these feelings toward his new recruit.... After
nine years trotting around the world to meet world
leaders, he had incomparable access to Presidents and
prime ministers in all the key spots.... Mulroney arranged
the necessary access to the key decision makers. Munk was
starting to salivate at the prospect of an inside track
into the huge Chinese territory.''
Mulroney has been paid over $300,000 per year by Barrick.
Barrick announced in May 1995, that a new
international advisory board was being assembled, under
the leadership of ``honorary senior adviser'' George Bush,
the former U.S. President, who, like Mulroney, had
recently lost his job at the hands of the voters.
On Nov. 27, 1996, the French newspaper {Le Monde}
leaked the news that Barrick had been granted a concession
to prospect for gold in Zaire--a lead which prompted the
present {EIR} Barrick investigation. Canadian newspapers
that same day reported that Barrick Gold had convinced the
government of Indonesia to award to Barrick control over
the world's largest gold find, and that {George Bush and
Brian Mulroney had personally done the heavy lobbying} to
accomplish this.
The Indonesia deal is indeed startling. The small
Canadian mining company Bre-X Minerals Ltd. had intended
to develop the Busang gold mine, on East Kalimantan.
Suddenly, the government announced that it demanded that
Barrick Gold Corp. be cut in to a 75% ownership stake in
the mine, which is estimated to hold 57 million ounces of
gold, with a current estimated value over $20 billion.
{EIR} contacted Placer Dome Inc., a rival company
which has been bidding for the right to develop a share of
the Busang mine. A Placer Dome spokesman would make no
comment on Barrick Gold, saying only, of his own firm, ``We
are a gold mining company, not a political organization.''
The U.S. Republican Party, of course, has been
attempting to use President Clinton's fund-raising
relationship with Indonesian supporters as a scandal to
break the President. Former President Bush, meanwhile, has
been reportedly telling world leaders, privately, that the
Clinton Presidency is destroyed; that his son, Texas Gov.
George W. Bush, will be the next President, reviving the
Bush dynasty; and that, therefore, leaders would be smart
to work with him now.
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Barrick's barracudas
In announcing the creation of Barrick Gold Corp.'s
international advisory board on May 3, 1995, Barrick
Chairman Peter Munk said, ``They will be providing
strategic advice on geopolitical issues affecting
Barrick.'' In fact, they are components of the
geopolitical dirty tricks apparatus centered around former
President George Bush. The following is a brief profile of
key members of Barrick's international advisory board and
its board of directors:
George Bush:
serves as ``Honorary Senior Adviser.''
Brian Mulroney:
prime minister of Canada from
1984 to 1993. Mulroney became prime minister after
backers of the Nicaraguan Contras helped knock out his
competitor, Joe Clark. There were no serious
investigations of the `Iran-Contra' Canadian connection.
Mulroney sacrificed his political career by talking
Canadians into accepting Bush's North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA). Though Canadian banks benefitted,
350,000 industrial jobs were lost, and Mulroney became the
most hated man in Canada. In the 1993 elections, Canadians
voted out all but 2 of his party's 169 members of
Parliament.
In 1994, Mulroney's phone calls to the Presidents of
Chile and Argentina, and the prime minister of China,
helped Barrick move into gold mines in those nations. His
``advice'' was rewarded with $1.2 million in stock options
and $300,000 in fees. Rev. Sun Myung Moon rewarded
Mulroney and Bush for their vouching for him in
Ibero-America in November 1996. Mulroney, a board member
of Archer Daniels Midland, ran ADM's internal
``investigation'' of its price-fixing scandal.
Howard H. Baker, Jr.:
(R-Tenn.) served in the U.S.
Senate from 1967 to 1985, and was Reagan's chief of staff
during 1987-88. He is on many corporate boards and runs a
lobbying firm, which includes Barrick among its clients.
Paul G. Desmarais, Sr.:
is the richest man in
Canada, and a member of Her Majesty's Council for Canada.
He runs Power Corp. of Canada--which generates political
power. He serves on many boards with Maurice Strong, a top
operative of Prince Philip's World Wide Fund for Nature.
For example, Desmarais and Strong are Honorary Director
and Honorary Chairman, respectively, of the China-Canada
Business Council. Desmarais used his contacts in China to
win electricity-generating contracts for Power Corp., and
to obtain gold concessions for Barrick. Desmarais is
part-owner of Europe's largest private TV network, the
banking Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, and Belgium's Petrofina
oil giant. As a Commander of Belgium's L'Ordre de Leopold
II, it seems natural for him to be involved with Barrick
in recolonizing the former Belgian Congo.
Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.:
was president of the Urban
League from 1971 to 1981, when former Democratic National
Committee chairman Robert S. Strauss recruited him to
become a senior partner in his law firm. Jordan is
influential in the Democratic Party and in corporate
America.
Andro'nico Luksic:
is a Chilean oligarch who was a
big winner in Chile's Thatcherite sell-off of state
assets. He is building a South America-wide banking empire
as the local partner for Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the
central bank of the opium trade, and for Spanish banking
interests. They have snapped up banks in Chile, Argentina,
and Peru--countries which Bush would like to integrate
into a Western Hemisphere Free Trade Accord. In 1994,
Barrick acquired 500 square miles of Chile's El Indio
gold, silver, and copper district, containing 9.5 million
ounces of gold. It also has mines in Peru, Argentina,
Bolivia, and Venezuela.
Peter Munk:
a member of the 1001 Club (see article, p.|19.
Karl Otto Pohl
was president of the Bundesbank, Germany's central
bank, from 1980 to 1991; he was a top official of the International
Monetary Fund and Bank for International Settlements, and is a
member of Germany's Social Democratic Party.
Jose E. Rohm:
manager of Argentina's private
Banco Central de Negocios, is an expert in turning the
privatization of state assets to personal advantage.
Robert M. Smith:
the only real gold miner in the
bunch; chief operating officer of Barrick Gold.
- The board of directors -
Edward N. Ney:
Bush's appointee as ambassador to
Canada (1989-92), is a Barrick director. Ney became CEO of
Young and Rubicam in 1970, where he fired one-third of the
staff, and built it into the world's biggest ad and public
relations agency. He supervised George Bush's 1988 ad
campaign, including the infamous racist ``Willie Horton''
ad. As ambassador, he helped jump-start the NAFTA
initiative of Bush and Mulroney, with propaganda
saturation from Y&R's Burson-Marsteller division, which he
now controls. Burson-Marsteller is a veritable private
diplomatic service, with agencies in 34 countries.
J. Trevor Eyton:
known as ``Canada's most powerful businessman,'' brokers
the incestuous relations among the Club of the Isles' families
which are based in Canada. Eyton started his career in
British intelligence's Argus-Hollinger nexus, next to media
magnate Conrad Black. Since 1979, he has managed Brascan and
other entities for the Bronfman family. He was appointed a
Canadian senator as a reward for channelling the Bronfmans'
money into buying the 1984 election for Mulroney's party, and
to help get the Bush- and Mulroney-backed NAFTA three-way accord
with the United States and Mexico through the Canadian
Parliament. When the Bronfmans fused with Barrick, Eyton
joined its board.
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Anglo American Corp. set to grab Brazil's CVRD?
Engineers, geologists, and other officials who
work at Brazil's strategic mining and industrial
corporation Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD),
suspect that the South African firm Anglo American
Corp. may have been already secretly selected as
CVRD's buyer. The state-owned CVRD, located in the
mineral-rich Amazon region, is scheduled for
privatization early in 1997. When President Fernando
Henrique Cardoso traveled to South Africa in late
November, he was accompanied by CVRD President
Francisco Schettino, and together they met in
Johannesburg, South Africa, with top executives of the
Oppenheimers' Anglo American.
Brazilian nationalists perceive the CVRD
privatization as a giveaway of a national treasure to
foreign usurers, whose only goal is to loot the
country's mineral wealth, and strip Brazil of its
sovereignty. Opponents of the privatization have denounced
the fact that government officials have leaked strategic
secrets to bidders regarding CVRD's operations. {O Globo}
journalist Marcio Moreira Alves warned on Nov. 28 that
control of CVRD would give Anglo American Corp. ``an immense
competitive advantage, besides opening to it the iron
mining market, where it is the only large mining
company not present [in Brazil].... The activities of
Anglo American in Brazil ... represent barely 1.7% of
its business, but multiplying that could provide it an
escape route, in case of any accident along the way in
the country [South Africa] where it is
headquartered.''
Anglo American has an ugly history in Brazil. On
Dec. 4, {Monitor Mercantil} documented that Anglo
American closed down three mines and fired 3,000 of
5,000 miners employed at its mine in Cuiaba, in Matto
Grosso state. Those workers not fired were paid a
pitiful average of 350 reals (about $340) a month.
Even worse was the situation at another Anglo American
mine in neighboring Nova Lima, in Minas Gerais:
alarming unemployment, stagnation of the local
economy, high accident rates, and 4,500 miners
afflicted with work-related diseases. Because of the
high death rate among miners, {Monitor} reported, the
city of Raposos, right next to Nova Lima, has the
highest percentage of widows in all Brazil. ``Is this
the `inevitable' modernization which Fernando Henrique
Cardoso preaches for the country?'' the daily
asked.--{Cynthia Rush}
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bush consorts with Moonies,criminals in Ibero-America
Sir George Bush's five-nation tour of
Ibero-America on Nov. 20-25, 1996, was an organizing
offensive with an ``I'm in charge here'' message. In
every speech, not only did he demand implementation of
a Western Hemisphere Free Trade Accord (WHFTA), which
he had set into motion as President, but he also made
clear that his dynasty--his sons--were the important
politicians of the future with whom people will have
to deal. William Clinton is just an unfortunate
interruption in the Bush drive for a ``new world
order,'' he implied. Bush hasn't hidden the fact that
he's raising large amounts of money to buy the
Presidency in the year 2000, for his son George W.
Bush, now governor of Texas.
The man who financed Bush's power-play in
Ibero-America is the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, head of the
Unification Church, with documented ties to gun- and
drug-trafficking, money-laundering, and other
nefarious activities. Thus, it is no surprise that
Bush used his Ibero-American jaunt to champion the
British colonial doctrine of free trade, and
to attack, as he did in Peru, the Clinton
administration's anti-drug policy.
Everywhere he went, Bush tried to promote his
image as a still-powerful former President and
policymaker. But he didn't have an easy time of it,
not least because of his ties to the filthy Moon
empire, but also because he is under investigation back
home for his role in directing the crack-cocaine flow
into the United States in the 1980s to fund the
Contras' war in Nicaragua. In every country, he was
greeted by advertisements and press articles
denouncing him and Moon for their crimes. Some of the
coverage was taken straight from {EIR}. In Peru, Bush
became so unhinged by this publicity, that he had
Peruvian police arrest three organizers of the
Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIA) who used
{EIR} materials to leaflet against his presence.
His trip to Peru was arranged by Interbank, whose
managing director, Ismael Benavides, led the campaign
against a new banking law. Interbank is partly owned
by Nicholas Brady, Bush's former treasury secretary
and good friend who accompanied him in Lima. The
proposed new bank-regulation law includes provisions
against drug-money-laundering, for which the Clinton
administration has been organizing in discussions with
the Peruvian and other Ibero-American governments.
During his 30-hour visit to Lima, Bush promoted
Interbank, leading Peru's {Si} magazine to remark on
Nov. 26 that Bush's trip was the banks' ``last card''
against the banking law.
Bush was received by the Presidents of Venezuela,
Brazil, and Peru during his tour, and he was even
housed at the Presidential residence in Buenos Aires
at the invitation of Argentine President Carlos Menem.
He also made a point of meeting with Venezuela's
former President and convicted felon, Carlos Andreas
Perez, a criminal who shares Bush's policy outlook
of smashing the nation-state. Perez's ties to the
Cali drug cartel have been documented by {EIR}.
Whenever possible, Bush also praised former Mexican
President and now-fugitive Carlos Salinas de Gortari,
for helping him to consolidate the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The crowning point of the tour, and the one which
gained the most notoriety, was the ceremony for the
founding of Reverend Moon's new newspaper, {Tiempos
del Mundo}, in Buenos Aires. As the featured speaker
at the event, Bush received a 6-figure fee. Publicity
surrounding the event was so hot, however, that
President Menem did not appear. His advisers
recommended that he not be seen in public with Moon.
And no wonder. Moon told the diners: ``When you were
kids, did you ever taste the cooties from your nose?
Were they sweet or sour? Why didn't you feel they were
dirty? Because that's a part of your body. The Rev.
Moon has discovered something that no one else had
thought about,'' said Moon. ``When you defecate, do
you use a mask? This is no laughing matter, this is
serious,'' said the Korean would-be Messiah, for whom
``the dividing line between heaven and hell is located
... in the sexual organ. I want you all to center on
the unique sexual organ, the unchangable sexual organ,
and that you use it as the foundation to search for
God.'' Bush accompanied Moon to Montevideo, Urugay,
were the Korean cult leader led an ``evangelization
seminar'' for 4,200 Japanese maidens, who are being
sent to spread Moon's gospel throughout Ibero-America.
Also speaking at ``The Americas in the 21st
Century'' seminar in Buenos Aires were two other
prominent Bushmen: Bush's partner in Barrick Gold,
former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and the
point man for Bush's Contra operation at the State
Department in the 1980s, former Assistant Secretary
Elliott Abrams.
Mulroney predicted that ``One day NAFTA will
integrate all the nations of America,'' but only if
the United States leads the effort. ``The tendency
which accuses the U.S. is dangerous,'' he said, adding
that the 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami began to
turn that around. Abrams, once known as ``Mr.
Narc-Contra,'' called for a war to defeat those who
oppose NAFTA: The United States ``now must understand
how much its future depends on Latin America, and has
to open up.... We have to stop the United States from
retreating. There is always someone who loses, and
those who lose, fight; they must be defeated so that
free trade can advance.''--{Cynthia Rush}
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Bush's letter abets Barrick's golddigging
by Gail G. Billington
On Nov. 26, 1996, the small Canadian mining
company Bre-X Minerals released a ``guidance'' from the
government of Indonesia, which requested that Bre-X sell
the majority of its 80% holding in what {Maclean's}
magazine called the ``mine of the century,'' the Busang
goldmine in East Kalimantan state, to Barrick Gold. By
Dec. 17, Umar Said, secretary general of Indonesia's
Ministry of Mines and Energy, reported that Bre-X and
Barrick had reached an agreement, whereby Barrick would
take 67.5% to Bre-X's 20.25% share in Busang, and
Indonesia would retain a 10% stake. Overnight, Barrick had
outmaneuvered several other contenders, such as Placer
Dome, to emerge as perhaps the world's premier
golddiggers. Busang is currently valued at $21 billion,
with estimated gold deposits of 57 million ounces, but
which could end up nearer to 100 million ounces.
According to a Houston-based spokesman for Barrick's
``honorary senior adviser,'' former President George Bush, a
Sept. 19, 1996 personal letter from Bush to Indonesian President
Suharto clinched Barrick's advantage on the Busang mine
deal. Bush's personal intervention was first revealed in
the Dec. 21-23 {Financial Post,} a Toronto-based paper
controlled by Bush's media ally Conrad Black, who, in the
same issue, declared Barrick CEO Peter Munk ``newsmaker of
the year.''
Bush spokesman Jim McGrath confirmed the {Financial
Post} story, describing Bush's Sept. 19 letter as ``a
private letter between friends,'' which mentioned Bush's
high regard for Barrick. ``He wrote one letter ... and
that's it,'' McGrath told a journalist. ``There were no
phone calls [to Suharto].''
By early November, Barrick CEO Munk landed in Jakarta
to handle negotiations. The Nov. 29 Toronto {Globe and
Mail} suggested that Munk may have been seconded by
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who spent
several hours with Suharto in bilateral talks following
the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila,
less than 48 hours before Indonesia's guidance was made
public. An industry source told the Dec. 2 {Northern
Miner} that there is no question that Munk interfered in
Bre-X's Indonesian operations, ``and, in doing so, has
placed a gun at Bre-X's head ... because Munk ... wants
this thing so bad he can taste it.''
No one is saying how much Barrick will pay Bre-X for
its stake in Busang, although Barrick is expected to foot
the $1.3-1.5 billion cost of constructing the mine. But
Busang has already started earning money for Barrick,
thanks to stock-market speculation in Barrick's favor, and
to Bre-X's detriment.
Several outstanding issues remain to be clarified,
including appeasing Bre-X's stockholders and sorting out
multiple claims to the three Busang fields by Bre-X's
Indonesian partners. The Dec. 21-23 {Financial Post}
reported that Bush also sent a letter to Bre-X's
stockholders, assuring them that Barrick would give them a
fair deal. However, one group of shareholders has retained
the services of law firms Lang Michener in Vancouver, and
Baker and Botts in Houston, the latter the family firm of
Bush's secretary of state, James Baker III.
Industry sources say the Barrick/Bre-X split only
covers the two richest fields, Busang II and III. Bre-X
has a work contract and a local partner for Busang I,
which is estimated to contain only about 2.6 million
ounces of gold. The local partner, PT Askatindo Karya
Mineral, will get a 2.25% share as a result of the
Barrick/Bre-X split, but Jean Anes, of the Indonesian
Consulate in Toronto, told the Dec. 23 {Northern Miner}
that Bre-X ``still has to give 10% to their local partner,''
presumably to cover Askatindo's 10% claim to Busang II and
III. A fourth party, businessman Jusuf Merukh, has a 10%
undisputed claim to Busang I, and a 40% claim to the two
richer sectors, and has threatened to sue.
Barrick has made out like bandits on Busang, while
Bre-X has been bullied by the ``big boys.'' Indonesia's
headaches over Busang will continue, in part because
resentment of Barrick's high-society, knuckle-dragger
profile is likely to fuel a nasty press campaign in which
Bush would be more than happy to see Indonesia played as
the scapegoat for damages to Bre-X et al.
The irony is that it is Bush-linked press in the
United States, such as Bush's favorite Moonie paper, the
{Washington Times,} and the {Wall Street Journal,} which
have carried the most visceral attacks on Indonesia in
their coverage of the ``Riadygate'' connection to the
Democratic National Committee's fundraising, and gave the
most fawning praise of the Nobel Peace Prize award to East
Timor terrorist spokesman Jose Ramos-Horta in October,
1996.
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George Bush's $10 billion giveaway to Barrick Gold
by Mark Sonnenblick
In 1985-86, Barrick Gold Corp. paid two other
mining companies $63 million for a small working Nevada
mine, called Goldstrike. Within a few years, it was found
to contain 24.6 million ounces of gold, worth about $10
billion. Goldstrike was on federal property. Under
existing legislation, designed in 1872 to populate and
bring development to the West, miners could operate on
federal land for free, once they had filed a claim. They could
obtain full legal title to the land at $5 an acre, upon
completion of a long and expensive process called
``patenting.''
In 1992, however, pressure was building for a new
mining law to require that those given federal properties
pay a royalty, a certain percentage of what they mine each
year. As expected, when the Clinton administration took
office in 1993, it sought a 12.5% royalty. At that rate,
the 25 major mine claims then in the process of being
privatized, would eventually yield an estimated $10.75
billion to the U.S. Treasury.
Mining companies caused a major jam-up at the Bureau
of Land Management, as they rushed to obtain patents
before Congress applied royalties. By 1992, the long
waiting line at the BLM Nevada office made it doubtful
that many mines would get over the critical hurdle in the
patent process in time. It would normally take several
years for a mine of Goldstrike's size and complexity to
complete the process, a BLM source commented, and the
average during the previous four-year period was 10.3 months.
But, Barrick made it in only 4.8 months.
Barrick filed its applications for 1,144 acres of
land in March and April 1992. That summer, a pilot
program for ``expedited processing'' of Nevada patents was
instituted by BLM chief Delos Cy Jamison, a Republican who
had been appointed to that post by President George Bush
in 1989. Jamison concocted this speed-up procedure with
the BLM Nevada state director, without informing his own
staff. ``Bells went off in my head when I heard about it,''
a former BLM staffer told {EIR.}
Philip M. Hocker, president of the Mineral Policy
Center, an environmentalist outfit, testified to a
Congressional subcommittee on March 11, 1993: ``Under a new
and unpublicized `pilot project,' the BLM allowed Barrick
to hire outside mineral examiners to perform the
evaluation of `discovery' on Barrick's mining claims. The
specialists who determined whether these claims should be
patented for $5 per acre received payment for their work
directly from the company which wanted a `yes' answer.
This is a flagrant conflict of interest, which BLM is not
only allowing, but encouraging. Barrick is the only
company to complete this process so far.''
Only Barrick got expedited treatment. Its patenting
was rushed through in record speed; the BLM district
manager approved the report of the outside consultant
hired by Barrick the day after it was filed, in February
1993. Other companies remained stuck in the BLM backlog.
- `The gold heist of the century' -
As soon as he took office, Interior Secretary Bruce
Babbitt called the Barrick deal ``the gold heist
of the century.'' He swore he would make sure the taxpayers
received something for federal gold. He slapped a de facto
moratorium on new patents, by abolishing the expedited
process and requiring that he personally approve each
patent.
Babbitt's office held up Barrick's patent, on the
dubious grounds that its pumping would harm an endangered
species. In August 1993, Barrick sued in U.S. District
Court in Nevada. The verdict in favor of Barrick came
through in March 1994. Babbitt immediately granted the
patent, made a big show of indignation, and abandoned all
pretense of ending mining giveaways.
The approved biography of Peter Munk explains a bit
of what happened: ``For much of 1993, [Munk] spent a lot of
time in the District of Columbia ... lobbying. At that
stage Brian Mulroney, Canada's former prime minister, had
just joined the Barrick board and he immediately went down
to Washington to establish contact with key senators,
using his close relationship with George Bush to good
advantage.''
Once Barrick had clear title to Goldstrike, Barrick
lobbyists worked with Hocker and other environmentalists
for ``reform'' legislation that would impose royalties on
companies which had not cleared the patent hurdle (on
Sept. 29, 1994, royalty legislation was killed in a
House-Senate conference). And, with unrestricted property
rights over the $10 billion Goldstrike, Barrick Gold had
the collateral for the explosive worldwide expansion it
suddenly began, months after the patent was
granted.
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Profile: Laurent Kabila: A mercenary for free marketeers
by Linda de Hoyos
It came as no surprise for Zaireans when Laurent
Kabila, head of the ``Alliance of Democratic Forces for
Liberation'' in Zaire, held a press conference to vow his
commitment to ``reform the Zairean government and to
install a free-market economy.''
Kabila also announced that his forces would not seize
any mineral concessions held in Zaire by foreign
companies. To the contrary, Kabila's adviser Jean Kabongo
told the press Dec. 5, ``Those companies will be able to
operate as normal. Just as long as they pay their taxes to
us, the taxation will not affect their operations. We do
not want them to leave, we need them to operate the
mines.'' Kabongo said that the Alliance is also eager to
open up more diamond mines to foreign interests. ``In
Kasai, more diamonds must be mined, the country's mineral
wealth exploited. We are going to try and throw the area
open to government-sponsored mining licenses in Kasai in
areas that have not yet been explored.''
These pronouncements have confirmed the view of many
Zaireans that Kabila is no more than a mercenary for
foreign mining interests in eastern Zaire, specifically
for interests such as Barrick Gold, Anglo American, and
Societe Generale of Belgium.
Although Kabila for years dubbed himself a Marxist,
he has taken the ``Damascus Road'' to embrace the ``magic of
the marketplace,'' in the same fashion as his longtime
associate, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. As Kabila's
spokesman in Belgium, Gaetan Kakudji, explained to a
reporter for {La Libre Belgique} on Nov. 5, ``Our Marxism
dates back to the Cold War: You had to adopt a political
color according to whichever bloc was helping you.... The
[Berlin] Wall has fallen. The important thing is to
rebuild the economy. Our social project is based on a
market economy.''
Kakudji's admission that ``political color'' is
secondary to whoever is ``helping you,'' is the key to
Kabila's long-standing career as a mercenary. Born in
Manono in North Shaba province in Zaire, Kabila first went
into action as a mercenary for the renegade Independent
State of Katanga, established on July 11, 1960, by Moise
Tshombe, on behalf of Belgian mining interests. The chief
instigator of the Katanga uprising was the Union
Miniere du Haut Katanga, which was then the world's
third largest producer of copper, and the world's chief
producer of cobalt. Belgian profits from Union Miniere
were in excess of 3.5 billion Belgian francs in 1959.
Belgium was naturally anxious that this profit not revert
to any independent Congo government. The export duties
paid to the Congolese government in 1959 by the Belgian
company constituted 50% of the government's revenue. Once
the Independent State of Katanga was established, this
money went to Tshombe, to pay his mercenary forces, which
included Kabila.
Later, Kabila fought the Zairean central government
in the Mulele uprising in eastern Zaire in the 1960s,
alongside fellow gun-for-hire Che Gueverra. As the
province most rich in mineral wealth in Zaire, Shaba
province has long been a target for secession. Kabila has
participated in each bid--first in 1960-61; then in ``Shaba
I'' and ``Shaba II,'' in 1977 and 1978, respectively, when
mercenaries attacked Shaba from Angola; and again in the
mid-1980s. Between times, Kabila also worked as a
mercenary in Angola. Among his mercenary bosses has been
the famous Belgian mercenary Bob Denard.
- Nyerere `Kindergartner' -
However, the reason that Kabila has been tapped again
for this latest venture is because of his strong ties to
the British Commonwealth countries in Africa, say
well-informed Zairean sources. Kabila is a member of the
``Nyerere Kindergarten,'' having received his political
training in Tanzania under the tutelage of former
Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, along with Ugandan
President Museveni and John Garang, head of the marauding
Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA). Even today,
Kabila is known to travel on a Tanzanian passport.
Kabila spent years of exile in Rwanda, Zambia, and
Tanzania. After Museveni came to power in Uganda in
1986--with the help of Nyerere--Kabila was a frequent
visitor to Kampala.
Sometimes the mercenary business is slow. According
to various sources, during the 1970s and 1980s, Kabila
would organize some ``help'' for himself from Moscow, by
staging fake uprisings and mercenary operations in
outposts in Uganda, photographing the staged incidents and
placing the photos in his own ragtag newspaper for
publicity.
Now, Kabila has been picked up as the ``commander'' for
the invasion of Zaire by forces from Rwanda and Uganda. To
the extent his forces have anything to do with Zaire, they
are composed of Banyamulenge, who are Tutsis from Rwanda who have
lived in Zaire, and {who returned to Rwanda} in 1994, to
join the Rwandan Patriotic Front takeover of the country
from Uganda. According to even British sources, Kabila's
troops speak Kinyarwanda (the language of Rwanda), or
English with Ugandan or Rwandan accents. Military
discipline is supposedly modeled on that of Paul Kagame's
Rwandan Patriotic Army. As the {Washington Post} noted on
Nov. 2, Kagame admitted that some of his soldiers had
joined the ``rebel'' troops in Zaire. In short, Kabila is
the ``Zairean'' face for the Rwandan-Ugandan force that
invaded Zaire in mid-October.
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British revive old blueprint for Africa
by Linda de Hoyos
``This time, let Zaire fall apart,'' was the
headline under which Conor Cruise O'Brien, a United
Nations envoy to Zaire in the early 1960s, wrote a
commentary on Zaire appearing in the Nov. 19 {Times} of
London, the semi-official mouthpiece for the British
Foreign Office. Applauding the ``Tutsi rebel rout'' of
Rwandan Hutu refugees, O'Brien says that the issue now is
what will happen to the ``huge state of Zaire.'' ``Zaire's
condition now,'' he says, ``appears to be terminal, and
international efforts to preserve its integrity will only
increase the agonies of its peoples. It should be allowed
to assume such shapes as the energies and aspirations of
its various peoples may eventually assign to it. The
energies of international diplomacy should be confined to
holding the ring, and discouraging the
internationalization of the tremendous internal
conflict.''
As O'Brien is well aware, he is speaking way after
the fact. The division of Zaire has been long-standing
policy, and the conflict has already been
internationalized by virtue of the fact that Zaire was
invaded in mid-October 1996 by a military force combined
of Ugandan, Rwandan, and Burundian troops, with the
backing, through Uganda, of British intelligence.
O'Brien's demand for ``letting Zaire go'' has
accordingly been stated in more honest terms by the Tutsi
Rwandan Patriotic Front, now ruling in Kigali, Rwanda.
Rwandan Foreign Minister Anastase Gasana and Defense
Minister Paul Kagame have called for a ``Berlin II'' to
re-divide the territories of Africa, in imitation of the
1885 Berlin Conference of the colonial powers to divide
the known African lands. The Rwandese have declared openly
that the Tutsi ``Banyamulenge'' of eastern Zaire are welcome
to return to Rwanda, but ``they should bring their land
with them.'' Although Rwandan Foreign Minister Gasana says
that a Berlin II should show ``respect for the current
borders of all states,'' he equivocates, stating that the
major purpose of such a conference must be to ``examine the
consequences of Berlin I on the cultural, social, and
economic fronts, and so forth, to prevent there being
stateless people at our borders, but it is not a matter of
calling the borders into question.''
- Museveni is our man -
But schemes for redividing the region were put forth
far earlier by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, and is
the motivation for the Ugandan Army invasion of
Rwanda in 1990, and again in 1994. Among eastern Africans, it is
understood that Museveni wants to carve out a ``Hima
empire'' from southern Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and
eastern Zaire. This might appear as a pipe dream, but it
appears to coincide with foreign interests--notably
British. British Minister of Overseas Development Lynda
Chalker has advertised her own close relationship to
Museveni, underscored by frequent visits to Uganda. The
idea of Museveni's regional hegemony has also found favor
in the State Department. A former ambassador of one of the
Great Lakes countries recalls how he was called into the
State Department East Africa desk in 1994--right before
the April 6 downing of the plane carrying Rwandan
President Juvenal Habyrimana--and asked who he thought the
political leader of the region should be. His first
answer, Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko, was rejected.
His second answer, Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, was
also incorrect--suggesting to him by process of
elimination that the State Department was promoting
Museveni as their man.
The geopolitical idea is similar to the actual line
of functioning of the erstwhile UN multilateral military
force, that was supposed to deliver aid to the ``routed''
refugees of eastern Zaire in November and December. The
peacekeeping force was not to go through Kinshasa or
Zaire--despite the fact that there are 600,000 refugees
still remaining in central, not eastern, Zaire--but
through Entebbe, Uganda, and Kigali, Rwanda. The
Anglo-American mining interests now scrambling for the
gold and extraordinary mineral wealth of eastern Zaire,
want to direct their operations through the same route.
The reason is the looters' paradise Museveni has turned
Uganda into--endless tax holidays and full repatriation of
profits of fully owned foreign ventures.
As O'Brien is fully aware, the British have long had
their eye on eastern Zaire. In his own account, {To
Katanga and Back--A UN Case History,} written in 1962,
O'Brien, who was in the Irish foreign service and was a
special UN envoy to the Congo, relates that the British
firmly backed the cause of the secession of Katanga.
O'Brien reports a newspaper account at the time:
``President Tshombe [of Katanga] received the British
Consul ... who came to convey the sympathy of their
government to the Katangese cause.'' At that time, London
wanted to seize control of Shaba province's mineral wealth
through Rhodesia. Although Leopold II of Belgium had taken
sovereignty over Shaba at Berlin I, the Belgians had not
occupied it. Britain's roving imperialist Cecil Rhodes was
on his way to establish dominion over the territory, when
the Belgians woke up. A deal was struck whereby British
capital would get a slice of the profit from Shaba's
exploitation. But even as late as 1961, there was renewed
talk of attaching ``Katanga'' to Rhodesia.
With Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, out of the picture,
British intelligence, for whom O'Brien speaks, is honing
in on the region once again. This time through Museveni's
Uganda, the country where life expectancy for Africans has
fallen the fastest in the last decade, but where profits
for British financial interests have risen the fastest.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3958
The Geopolitics behind the Rwandan Genocide: Paul Kagame accused of War Crimes
by Michel Chossudovsky
Paul Kagame accused by French Court
A French judge has issued arrest warrants for nine close aides of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, in relation to the shooting down of the plane carrying Rwanda's former president Jouvenal Habyarimana in 1994. .
French judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere has accused Kagame of ordering the shooting down of the plane, which contributed to triggering the 1994 ethnic massacres and genocide.
The court case in France should serve to clarifying the role of the RPF.
Major General Kagame, who led the RPF insurrection, was supported by the US and Britain.
The official version of the Rwandan Genocide is that it was triggered by ethnic conflict in the context of what was characterised as a "civil war".
Below are selected excerpts of my May 2000 article entitled Installing a US Protectorate in Central Africa, which documents Paul Kagame's role in the shooting down of the plane and the events which led up to the Genocide.
According to the testimony of Paul Mugabe, a former member of the RPF High Command Unit, Major General Paul Kagame had personally ordered the shooting down of President Habyarimana's plane with a view to taking control of the country. He was fully aware that the assassination of Habyarimana would unleash "a genocide" against Tutsi civilians. RPA forces had been fully deployed in Kigali at the time the ethnic massacres took place and did not act to prevent it from happening:
The decision of Paul Kagame to shoot Pres. Habyarimana's aircraft was the catalyst of an unprecedented drama in Rwandan history, and Major-General Paul Kagame took that decision with all awareness. Kagame's ambition caused the extermination of all of our families: Tutsis, Hutus and Twas. We all lost. Kagame's take-over took away the lives of a large number of Tutsis and caused the unnecessary exodus of millions of Hutus, many of whom were innocent under the hands of the genocide ringleaders. Some naive Rwandans proclaimed Kagame as their savior, but time has demonstrated that it was he who caused our suffering and misfortunes… Can Kagame explain to the Rwandan people why he sent Claude Dusaidi and Charles Muligande to New York and Washington to stop the UN military intervention which was supposed to be sent and protect the Rwandan people from the genocide? The reason behind avoiding that military intervention was to allow the RPF leadership the takeover of the Kigali Government and to show the world that they - the RPF - were the ones who stopped the genocide. We will all remember that the genocide occurred during three months, even though Kagame has said that he was capable of stopping it the first week after the aircraft crash. Can Major-General Paul Kagame explain why he asked to MINUAR to leave Rwandan soil within hours while the UN was examining the possibility of increasing its troops in Rwanda in order to stop the genocide?44
Paul Mugabe's testimony regarding the shooting down of Habyarimana's plane ordered by Kagame is corroborated by intelligence documents and information presented to the French parliamentary inquiry. Major General Paul Kagame was an instrument of Washington. The loss of African lives did not matter. The civil war in Rwanda and the ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives.
Despite the good diplomatic relations between Paris and Washington and the apparent unity of the Western military alliance, it was an undeclared war between France and America. By supporting the build up of Ugandan and Rwandan forces and by directly intervening in the Congolese civil war, Washington also bears a direct responsibility for the ethnic massacres committed in the Eastern Congo including several hundred thousand people who died in refugee camps.
US policy-makers were fully aware that a catastrophe was imminent. In fact four months before the genocide, the CIA had warned the US State Department in a confidential brief that the Arusha Accords would fail and "that if hostilities resumed, then upward of half a million people would die". 45 This information was withheld from the United Nations: "it was not until the genocide was over that information was passed to Maj.-Gen. Dallaire [who was in charge of UN forces in Rwanda]." 46
Washington's objective was to displace France, discredit the French government (which had supported the Habyarimana regime) and install an Anglo-American protectorate in Rwanda under Major General Paul Kagame. Washington deliberately did nothing to prevent the ethnic massacres.
When a UN force was put forth, Major General Paul Kagame sought to delay its implementation stating that he would only accept a peacekeeping force once the RPA was in control of Kigali. Kagame "feared [that] the proposed United Nations force of more than 5,000 troops… [might] intervene to deprive them [the RPA] of victory".47 Meanwhile the Security Council after deliberation and a report from Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali decided to postpone its intervention.
The 1994 Rwandan "genocide" served strictly strategic and geopolitical objectives. The ethnic massacres were a stumbling blow to France's credibility which enabled the US to establish a neocolonial foothold in Central Africa. From a distinctly Franco-Belgian colonial setting, the Rwandan capital Kigali has become --under the expatriate Tutsi led RPF government-- distinctly Anglo-American. English has become the dominant language in government and the private sector. Many private businesses owned by Hutus were taken over in 1994 by returning Tutsi expatriates. The latter had been exiled in Anglophone Africa, the US and Britain.
The Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) functions in English and Kinyarwanda, the University previously linked to France and Belgium functions in English. While English had become an official language alongside French and Kinyarwanda, French political and cultural influence will eventually be erased. Washington has become the new colonial master of a francophone country.
Several other francophone countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have entered into military cooperation agreements with the US. These countries are slated by Washington to follow suit on the pattern set in Rwanda. Meanwhile in francophone West Africa, the US dollar is rapidly displacing the CFA Franc -- which is linked in a currency board arrangement to the French Treasury.
For the complete article written in May 2000, see below.
Michel Chossudovsky, 23 November 2006
