Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Blood Diamonds, Darfur, Congo, and Somalia
Keith Harmon Snow has an important new article that greatly expands on a topic I first touched upon almost 14 months ago in "Blood Diamonds"--the Israel Connection. Snow's article is "Gertler's Bling Bang Torah Gang: Israel and the Ongoing Holocaust in Congo (Part 1)." On the subject of Congo, please also check out his recent article "Over Five Million Dead in Congo? Fifteen Hundred People Daily? Behind the Numbers Redux: How Truth is Hidden, Even When it Seems to Be Told".
I've written several posts dealing with Darfur and Snow has a couple of good articles on that subject, too. See "The United States' War in Darfur" and "Darfurism, Uganda & U.S. War in Africa: The Spectre of Continental Genocide".
Staying in Africa, late last December Sadia Ali Aden wrote "The 'War on Terror' and the Humanitarian Crisis in Somalia". The current crisis in Kenya seems partly related to the US-backed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops in 2006. Last Saturday, the Independent (UK) published an article entitled "Somalia: The World's forgotten catastrophe" that focuses mainly on Somalia but also discusses how the US and Kenya figure into the conflict. Here's the intro: "According to the UN, the worst catastrophe in Africa is not taking place in Kenya, or even Darfur. Fifteen years after the disastrous Black Hawk Down incident, Somalia has more refugees than any country in the world"
Please see also "In Somalia, a reckless U.S. proxy war" in the International Herald Tribune. This article is 14 months old but it highlights the US role. Note that both articles say that the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which is one of the groups at the center of the current conflict, was hatched in Nairobi, Kenya at US behest in 2004. Last year, Human Rights Watch reported "Kenya, Ethiopia, the United States and the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia cooperated in a secret detention program for people who had fled the recent conflict in Somalia ... In a March 22 letter to the Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Human Rights Watch detailed the arbitrary detention, expulsion and apparent enforced disappearance of dozens of individuals who fled the fighting between the Union of Islamic Courts and the joint forces of the Transitional Federal Government and Ethiopia from December 2006 through January 2007."
I've written several posts dealing with Darfur and Snow has a couple of good articles on that subject, too. See "The United States' War in Darfur" and "Darfurism, Uganda & U.S. War in Africa: The Spectre of Continental Genocide".
Staying in Africa, late last December Sadia Ali Aden wrote "The 'War on Terror' and the Humanitarian Crisis in Somalia". The current crisis in Kenya seems partly related to the US-backed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops in 2006. Last Saturday, the Independent (UK) published an article entitled "Somalia: The World's forgotten catastrophe" that focuses mainly on Somalia but also discusses how the US and Kenya figure into the conflict. Here's the intro: "According to the UN, the worst catastrophe in Africa is not taking place in Kenya, or even Darfur. Fifteen years after the disastrous Black Hawk Down incident, Somalia has more refugees than any country in the world"
Please see also "In Somalia, a reckless U.S. proxy war" in the International Herald Tribune. This article is 14 months old but it highlights the US role. Note that both articles say that the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), which is one of the groups at the center of the current conflict, was hatched in Nairobi, Kenya at US behest in 2004. Last year, Human Rights Watch reported "Kenya, Ethiopia, the United States and the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia cooperated in a secret detention program for people who had fled the recent conflict in Somalia ... In a March 22 letter to the Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Human Rights Watch detailed the arbitrary detention, expulsion and apparent enforced disappearance of dozens of individuals who fled the fighting between the Union of Islamic Courts and the joint forces of the Transitional Federal Government and Ethiopia from December 2006 through January 2007."
Labels: Africa, Congo, Darfur, diamonds, Empire, Somalia, Sudan, War
