[Dance Spree] WAKE-UP AND SMELL THE OIL!: We Must Take Emergency Action
keith harmon snow
keith.harmon.snow at gmail.com
Mon Oct 2 17:33:17 EDT 2006
EMERGENCY ACTION REQUIRED:
WAKE-UP AND SMELL THE OIL!
Call to Protest Mythmakers on "Genocide" and Sweatshop Promoter—
New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof at Amherst College on October 3.
Please circulate, forward, and post. Students -- please circulate.
This announcement calls for a protest of the Nicholas Kristof lecture
planned for Tuesday Oct. 3 at Amherst College at Johnson Chapel at
6:30 PM. Nicholas Kristof is willingly deceiving the American public
and openly calling for slavery in Africa. Any concerned about torture
must demand a stop to this racist militarist campaign disguised as
"humanitarian" in nature.
In at least 20 major pieces that have appeared in the New York Times,
columnist Nicholas Kristof has peddled disinformation about "genocide"
in Darfur, Sudan. Kristof is promoting a corporate military line that
seeks to overthrow the government of Sudan and seize strategic
resources.
Nicholas Kristof is also aggressively advocating that ruthless
multinational corporations should set up sweatshops in Africa to
exploit poor black people. Claiming that "only no exploitation is
worse than exploitation." Kristof is furthering the racist discourse
that suggests that Africans "choose and would prefer to be exploited"
rather than "abandoned" to their own fate: being Africans in Africa.
This is dishonest, deceptive, and blatant racism, and it is not far
from the immoral and unethical agenda of pharmaceutical companies that
intend to use live Africans for experimentation.
Nicholas Kristof hides the fact that multinational corporations are
already involved in slavery all over Africa, and the public relations
campaigns that Kristof serves @ New York Times never illuminate the
pitiful slavery, despair and death which insures that diamonds, gold,
coffee, chocolate, timber, oil and countless other natural resources
are freely pillaged from Africa, while markets are expropriated, the
environment is destroyed, and local people die like flies. Kristof
hides the massive extractive mining operations ongoing in Africa,
including coltan and cobalt, two of the most strategic resources found
in abundance in the Congo and Zambia. Most of this infrastructure of
exploitation operates under the protection of private military
companies—mercenaries—and clandestine "rebels"—proxy armies—that are
funded, armed and trained by corporate interests connected to the US,
UK, Europe an Israel—and even to trustees and alumnae of Amherst
College.
Like erstwhile Sudan "expert" and Smith College English Professor Eric
Reeves, Nicholas Kristof is intellectually dishonest. Both dismiss the
resource grab for Darfur—the geopolitical flashpoint of the entire war
for Sudan. Even New York Times insider, bureau chief and journalist
Howard French, author of Africa: A Continent for the Taking, concedes
that Dr. Eric Reeves is willfully dishonest.
The AU forces themselves are trained and armed by the US and Israel.
AU forces from Rwanda have committed massive war crimes and crimes
against humanity in their own regions. Dyncorp and Military
Professional Resources Inc., two ruthless Pentagon-connected mercenary
outfits, are training Nigerian troops loyal to the Obasanjo
Government, and these shock troops are at war with the indigenous
people of the Niger River Delta: that too is all about oil.
In Darfur, NATO provides ground and air support for AU troops ever
categorized as "neutral" and "peacekeepers," but AU troops are another
fighting force involved in the conflagration. Sudan is at war on three
fronts, and each involves countries with a significant US military
presence and ongoing programs: Uganda, Chad, Ethiopia. War in Sudan
involves both US covert operations and U.S. and Israeli trained
"rebel" factions coming in from South Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia and
Uganda. US military objectives in Darfur—and the Horn of Africa more
widely—are also being served at present by the US/NATO backing of the
African Union.
The Judeo-Christian front against Sudan is linked to right-wing think
tanks and policy institutes in the USA, including Zionist groups and
the Christian Coalition, and the "genocide" theme has its origins in
these institutions, not in the realities on the ground in Sudan. These
religious groups, with backing from the Holocaust industry in the US
and the Jewish Affairs Council, from Henry Kissinger and Samantha
Power, have today constituted a massive public relations campaign in
an ongoing Holy War against the Islamist government of Khartoum. This
is an affront to Holocaust victims and survivors, and it is all about
money.
Of course, innocent men, women and children are caught in the middle,
the victims of this nasty Western covert operation aimed—as Dr. Eric
Reeves from Smith College has advocated—at regime change in Sudan. The
Government of Sudan is no saint, but this is no campaign of good
versus evil, as it is universally portrayed.
In their many columns and forums advertising the "genocide" in Darfur,
these advocates of military invasion hide from the public the evidence
of a massive resource grab in the Darfur region and the country as a
whole. At stake in Sudan are vast petroleum reserves coveted by
Exxon-Mobil, Total, Halliburton, Schlumberger and Chevron, and the
entire Darfur region is one vast concession that is being fought over
today. Almost the whole of Sudan is awash in oil: see it for your
self on the oil industry maps at www.traprockpeace.org and
www.allthingspass.com. Israel seeks to control the uranium reserves of
Darfur. Coke and Pepsi and Pfizer and Merck and Unilever (owns Ben &
Jerry's) seek to control the Gum Arabic plantations of Darfur: home to
some 80% of world supply and the best quality Gum Arabic in the
world—and the source of USAID research projects in the 1980's that
were cancelled when the Sudanese decided to control their own destiny
and their own resources.
It was from his office at Smith College in the late 1990's that Dr.
Eric Reeves decided that "genocide" was being committed in South Sudan
(not Darfur). This was NEVER substantiated, because it wasn't true.
Indeed, the "genocide in Darfur" claims originated from USAID
operative Roger Winter, who has been feeding Dr. Reeves, and the theme
first appeared based on Dr. Reeve's imaginative, but corporatized
agenda advocating Holy War against the government of Khartoum. In this
Holy War the victims have always been the Christians of the
"beleaguered" south—where the US has maintained a massive covert war
through their proxy forces the Sudan People's Liberation Army. Indeed,
SPLA leader John Garang was trained at Ft. Benning Georgia, the School
of America's killing and torture academy. Never have Reeves or Kristof
publicized the atrocities committed by this or any other
western-backed faction, and it is true today of their writings on
"genocide" in Darfur: never are the US interests identified, never is
anyone from the West involved, never are the clandestine military
crusaders held accountable for their role in dismembering Sudan and
wiping out her people. We instead get Nicholas Kristof holding up
photos of dead and decaying bodies—the Secret Genocide Archive—that
have been taken completely out of context. Like a criminal hiding his
own role in a killing, Kristof—on the "irrefutable" pages of the New
York Times points the American public toward the Government of Sudan
and screams: they did it.
While the media has widely sold the "genocide" theme, progressives in
the US have widely bought it. This includes women's organizations,
peace activists, religious groups, even Amy Goodman and Michael Moore.
For experts on Sudan, Amy Goodman continues to look to Dr. Eric Reeves
and Samantha Power, and she knows better. Democracy Now! recently ran
a speech by Madeleine Albright about the importance of "humanitarian"
intervention in Darfur. Albright's mentors include Zbigniew Brzezinski
and Henry Kissinger, and she ran the Clinton show for the invasions of
both Yugoslavia and Congo. These are war criminals. Amy Goodman is
failing us, and when she appears at My Holyoke Wednesday night she
deserves to be challenged as well.
George Clooney illustrates the Pentagon's power over Hollywood. Turns
out that the agency with the lucrative contract for Clooney's
publicity and management, Creative Artists Agency, was founded by
William Haber, who is also on the board of directors of Save the
Children, another agency with multimillions-of-dollars-of-business
concerns in the Sudan/Chad conflict. These institutions won't benefit
the people of Sudan, they are tools of foreign policy. It's no
coincidence that Save the Children gets funding from Exxon-Mobil to
build a road connecting to the Darfur area, or that George Clooney has
suddenly become concerned about starving Africans. If George Clooney
really cared about human life he would think twice about investing in
another three billion dollar entertainment complexes, with strip tease
poles planned for every room, in places like Las Vegas. If women's
groups care about the rights and freedoms of women, they should
challenge George Clooney, not applaud him.
While using the face of suffering as a tool to manipulate the US
public, these advocates of "intervention" in Sudan are not revealing
their hidden agendas, or the people and organizations that they are
linked to, or advocating for. Indeed, "humanitarian" relief in Sudan
is a billions of dollars business, and the World Food Program, for
example, is merely a conduit for dumping of polluted, spoiled, or
surplus grain stocks, often genetically modified, purchased by the
USDA from nasty agribusiness corporations like Cargill and Archer
Daniels Midland. This is why people are starving to death.
Any just accounting of events in Africa should instead challenge
Amherst College students to explore and expose the role of trustees
and alumnae like Edward N. Ney—a member of the board of directors of
Barrick Gold Corporation, a G.H. W. Bush interest. Barrick is behind
the brutal war in neighboring Congo—where at least seven million
people have died—and is currently plundering gold reserves in nine
Third World Countries (six in Africa). Barrick directors also include
former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and former US Senator
Howard Baker. Barrick Gold interests are clearly connected to the
ongoing campaign to deconstruct Darfur and dole out he resources.
Amherst College affiliate Edward N. Ney is also the director of
Burston-Marsteller, perhaps the world's most secretive and massive
public relations corporation. Their product? PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT.
Wake-up and smell the oil, and take appropriate action to hold the US
and Israel accountable for war crimes in Darfur, Sudan, and every
neighboring country in the region. Boycott the New York Times, and its
agents, for what they are: purveyors of deception, despair and death.
For the innocent victims,
keith harmon snow
www.allthingspass.com
413 626 3800
****************************
keith harmon snow has worked on the Horn of Africa as a consultant on
genocide and humanitarian aid for the United Nations (2005), and he
worked in Ethiopia, Sudan and the Congo as a human rights researcher
and genocide investigator for Genocide Watch (2004, 2005) and
Survivors Rights International (2004, 2005). A journalist and
four-time PROJECT CENSORED award-winner, keith has also worked
extensively (2004-2006) with the multinational peacekeeping forces of
the United Nations Observers Mission for Congo (M.O.N.U.C.). In 2001
he reported from the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, and he
has worked or reported from 17 countries in Africa. In 2006 he has
been working in Congo and Afghanistan: keith.harmon.snow at gmail.com
<http://www.althingspass.com > .
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