Posted by:
Anonymous [
x] - (69.4.229.---)
Date: March 20, 2005 01:03PM
You know the world is complex but when talking of Africa you think really simple minded like the guy who uses his brain from the ninth grade to try to have an intelligent conversation about a vast continent such as Africa.
Here's an article:
AFTER four decades, Africa's holocaust still continues. But, who really cares? The British author, Joseph Conrad, wrote on what he had seen during his travels to Africa then, "the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience".
Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Central Africa's Great Lakes' District, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Liberia, Nigeria, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Swaziland and Zimbabwe are victims of their wealth. One cannot exclude South Africa and Namibia from that list, as they still suffer the consequences of colonialism and apartheid. In fact, both countries' economies are still exclusively owned and controlled by foreign interests.
Interestingly, all mentioned countries rate among the wealthiest as far as strategic resources are concerned. Yet, it is the formerly poorest nations of the European Community, who benefit hugely, by retaining economic control over their "former" colonies. Add to that club of neo-imperialists the new member, the exporter of "neo-liberal democracy, capitalism, human rights and freedom of the media, freedom of association and independence of the judiciary", the exporter of "wars; international awards; third rate, amoral television soapies; Hollywood; NGOs and influential foundations" - currently the world's most ambitious and brutal conqueror - the United States of America.
Particularly gold and diamonds have been mined through wars, wildcat prospecting, well-networked smuggling, straight theft, coercion and political collusion. Due to their nature of high-value and low bulk a robber-economy attracts adventurers and shady operators like cow-dung attracts flies, as observed among others, by Wayne Madsen in his book 'Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993 - 1999' and Janine Roberts in her book, 'Glitter & Greed, the Secret World of the Diamond Cartel'.
For the "civilized" western G-7 and their benefactors to wear diamonds and gold, back their bullion with gold, make their manufacturing industries boom in the "global village" and to benefit from the energy of Africa's oil and gas, Africans pay the highest price - they pay with their lives and loss of land.
"It is simple. Unless you give us back our nationhood, you can never claim your own." Those were wise words from the late Aboriginal leader in Australia, Rob Riley, whose people, the Aborigines were almost wiped out by the criminal colonizers, all "Christians" by their own admission.
Those words could also have come out of tens of millions of mouths of Africans, whose continent had not just been conquered by slave traders, colonial powers and neo-imperialists, but abused to the extent that in the 21st Century the 'international western community' could be held responsible in any international court of law for complicity in plundering, raping and mass killings, war mongering and character assassination, therefore perpetuating history's largest holocaust in a clearly structured way.
This evil mission continues - the higher the chaos in Africa, the higher the profits from the strategic resources in Africa.
Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, aptly said "let us not forget that the equivalent of a tsunami happens every week in Africa".
May I enlighten you? - The author, Adam Hochschild writes in his book, "King Leopold's Ghost", a historic research on Belgium's colonizing of the Congo, "the worst of the bloodshed in the Congo took place between 1890 and 1910". Hochschild referred to the killing of well over ten million Congolese in the space of twenty years of colonial occupation.
Today, Belgium's capital, Brussels, is also the head office of the European Community. Its other city, Antwerp, is Europe's diamond-center. However, Belgium does not produce a single carat of a diamond.