From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Mon May 03 2010 - 06:22:29 EDT
Media Coverup on the Corporate Pillage and Destruction of sub-Saharan Africa
by Dr. P. Wilkinson
http://www.globalresearch.ca/coverStoryPictures/18947.jpg
<http://www.globalresearch.ca> Global Research, May 3, 2010
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Noting that periodically sub-Saharan Africa receives some attention in the
US and at least since Mr Clinton moved into the Big House has occasionally
been given attention by news and pundits-- of all persuasions-- I remain
struck by the determination to treat the events in the Congo Basin/ East
Africa as unique and detached deformities of the Dark Continent. Reporting
and commentary acquire more colour and sparkle but once squeezed into view,
reveal themselves to be the same dubious paste of unknown content. This
situation has by no means improved now that the Big House is occupied by a
man of Kenyan and Kansan descent. One example washed through the US liberal
journal, Atlantic, is an article by Samantha Powers. The writing to the Left
is not much better since with few exceptions her assumptions are shared
widely across the North American and European political spectrum.
Rwanda is not unique-- despite the attempts to wrap it in its very own "war
crimes tribunal" (ICTR). In fact the proper comparison for Rwanda is
Indonesia (1965) where a million odd were murdered at the insistence of US
and UK corporate interests represented by their governments overtly and
covertly. The US and its international harem of corporate-driven states used
the same tactics in Rwanda that they did when they gave Suharto the green
light to annihilate anyone who might be capable of continuing support for
the post-colonial nationalism of Sukarno. This is the genealogy that needs
to be reported: Congo's Lumumba (1960), Ghana's Nkrumah (1966), Indonesia's
Sukarno were just the most prominent personalities murdered or forced into
exile to prevent the people of their respective countries from attaining
independence and control over their own resources.
Despite the work by veterans like Stockwell, Agee, et al. who detail first
hand the USG function as enforcer of corporate control over the resources of
former colonies and dependencies or even the journalistic efforts of people
like Kwitney, Blum, and others to record the heinous conduct of corporations
that could be named, the "news" and "commentary" rarely takes even the
barest notice of what could be found in an hour's desk research. Banalities
are uttered about the government's dramatis personaewithout even checking
their official biographies-- which often enough show the slug-like slime
trail of their careers in corporate or covert action.
Just to take some typical examples, reporting of the diplomatic missions of
deceased General Vernon Walters and current US pro-consul in Central Asia,
Richard Holbrooke, involves routinely ignoring their ignominious careers
providing ground support US-sponsored terror regimes -- although this
information would have made their conduct for more comprehensible to the
reader. Sometimes the reporting is so myopic that the author has apparently
neglected to read anything else published in the same medium or as in the
case of one broadcaster reporting on a "colour" movement in Iran, neglected
to review even her own past reporting on the same subject.
Another curiosity is that in media obsessed with statistics there are rarely
if any cumulative reports of the death tolls. Reporting incidental daily
figures in isolation prevents anyone from grasping the volume or proportion
of deaths and casualties, either absolutely or relatively. Everyone can
quote 6 million Jews. Those with somewhat more circumspect mental faculties
include the 20 million who died because of the Axis invasion of the Soviet
Union. However who can say how many Africans have been murdered in the Congo
Basin. Never mind those who still dispute the number of deaths in the
"triangular trade". The Société Générale destroyed the records for the
Belgian contribution but despite almost constant UN presence in the region
there are no reliable totals. Those that are used pertain almost entirely to
the Rwanda case as if the rest of the Congo had been pacified since 1960.
Are we to believe that if we have no memory of African history then no one
in Africa does either? Of course the only parts of Africa that receive any
coverage are those where there is visible fighting. The "peaceful" plunder
of the remainder of the continent goes largely ignored.
Americans-- and as a result those bombarded with US media too-- are
saturated with stories about the extractive practices of the NSDAP regime
(well supported by all the major extractive corporations on the Allied
side). People here and in the US can repeat from memorising (to call it
memory would be gross distortion) often incomplete, inaccurate or downright
false statements about the operation of our government under the NSDAP. Yet
no one can say anything coherent about more than two centuries of vicious
extraction from Africa-- let alone the ongoing theft and murder. People
standing at the bar over a drink can chat away about "lampshades" made from
the skin of murdered KZ prisoners. Yet no one can say a word about the men,
women and children who were disfigured, tortured, murdered and robbed by
American and European corporations to supply free copper or other raw
materials for super-profits. A footnote some time ago explained that one of
the rare materials (coltan) in the Congo basin is a mineral needed for
cell-phone production. Do iPhone-linked liberals think about the corporate
mass murder in the Congo which contributes to their exclusive and stylish
24-7 reachability? Certainly almost no one reports about it. Roger Casement
was probably the last person to report the high crimes of the Congo in any
depth and he was destroyed as a person by the Belgian and British States
for doing it.
So perhaps it is dangerous to publish the whole story-- not the one that
focuses on the Tarzan-vision of Africans-- when talking about Rwanda,
Burundi, and Congo. Authors who are fixated on the violent results rather
than the chain of causality, make the same mistakes repeatedly. But maybe
these are not mistakes. Maybe this is the real purpose of such articles, to
confirm the prejudices with spice. Mr Clinton's "apology" for neglecting the
Rwanda crisis had nothing to do with being "black" in even the most absurd
sense of this deceit, reported by at least one commentator. Like most US
presidential posing it was duplicitous.
The massacres were not the tragic rage of peasants in factional warfare but
the orchestrated assault on broad swathes of the population with machetes
bought en masse and deployed by death squads of the same calibre US and UK
governments have organised in every part of the world to murder and
demoralise rural populations. Neither Clinton needed to know any of this.
Whether Mr Clinton did is also immaterial. His posturing was part of the
campaign in part orchestrated by the institutions like the IRC to sell a new
brand of "missionary"-style intervention to defend corporate plunder.
In the 19th century Christian missionaries were sent into target countries--
usually with generous support by whatever companies had a financial interest
in the territory. The provocation of aggressive and caustic Christendom
normally triggered resistance and such resistance was then marketed at home
as brutal native savagery against "peaceful Christian missionaries". (In
fact it could be argued that the sole reason why Christendom is so
obsessively described as "peace-loving and humble" at home is to mask its
thousand-year history of filthy, brutal, self-righteous greed.) Thus the
protective forces of the sending State acquired a pretext for invasion and
slaughter, followed by occupation of the targeted lands and enslavement of
the local labour. Today this doctrine and strategy is called "humanitarian
interventionism". While in the Big House, Mr Clinton was its principal
missionary. People like the Bush presidents spared us the hypocrisy of
humanitarianism, preferring the more overt language of "full spectrum
dominance" and "global war" etc.
There is still no common coherent recognition of US imperial policy in Asia
starting with the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth. Yet only by taking seriously
the emergent US vision of Japan as a base for US force projection fed by the
rice bags from Korea and Indochina (elaborated esp. in Vol. 2 of Bruce
Cumings Origins of the Korean War) can one grasp the tenacity of US
aggression in the region. In Latin America there was at least nominal
independence so the actions there are properly treated as invasions and
subversion. None of this has really stopped and when it did, was rarely more
than for "the pause that refreshes"-- soft drink diplomacy, so to speak.
Before it was the "white man's burden" and "manifest destiny". Then it
became development and anti-communism. Now it is "humanitarian intervention"
and "globalisation". These are all re-branding for the same vicious, greedy
practices of an elite raised in filth and hypocrisy, to put it nicely. As
Noam Chomsky has often said (see also an interview posted to GR) there is a
tendency to focus on governments as if they were the only actors in
international affairs. This has not been the case at least since the British
crown chartered the Honourable East India Company in 1708.
The reporting today reminds me of an experience I had in the not too distant
past. For whatever reason, mainly habit, I have used the same brand of white
toothpaste for decades. Periodically the packaging and labelling are changed
so that it is impossible to detect from the now five or six different
variants of toothcare substance under the same brand the plain white paste
that I have been using since I was a child. I cannot say whether this
toothpaste is of particularly high quality but it has the least repulsive
taste and feel of all the stuff I have had to try on various occasions in my
life. No one in the store could tell me which of the packages contained
plain white toothpaste. Of course the same product is still made but in the
pathological determination to disguise a standard product with novelty even
the name is changed at varying intervals. The machine for marketing this
firm's product cannot grasp the notion of clear and consistent labelling for
its standard product(s). In fact there is no interest at all in selling
products which one can understand and/ or identify.
That is the way most people write about current events-- especially those
which are not new but comprise standard products produced more or less the
same for decades or centuries. There is no interest in the reader
recognising the product for what it is. The reader has also become addicted
to this planned ignorance and no longer even asks about the genuine product
content-- happy as he or she is to see new packaging, the more sparkling the
better.
It would be an enormous assistance to readers to identify the product in
consistent and clear ways rather than presenting and re-presenting the
"events" as if they were new, simply because of the need to dazzle with new
packaging (presidential or ambassadorial as the case may be).
Some stores here and probably in the US offer the option of disposing of the
outer packaging of an item bought-- at the checkout before leaving the
store. One idea is to encourage the store to reduce the amount of packaging
the customer is obliged to take home and to aggregate the collection of such
waste and recyclables. But the question remains-- why should the packaging
be necessary in the first place? Well maybe before writing an article about
a "news" product, the same question ought to be asked: why is the "news"
packaging needed? Much fuss is made about government secrecy but this is
truly exaggerated. The main reason people are misinformed is not government
secrecy but the continuous re-packaging of low-fact paste and its witting
and unwitting distribution by lazy or somnambulant journalists and pundits.
Maybe the most ecological way to inform readers is to write the story, the
history, without the dazzle and sparkles designed to distract-- to allow the
reader to see the facts on the shelf plainly.
That would be an enormous improvement in the original product indeed.
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