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While Bush/Cheney waged war in far-away countries, the developing world of China and the Gulf States invested (bought) influence in South America and the dark African Continent. The US and Obama is two decades late to the new colonizing powers in third world countries. The new appointment of Russ Feingold as envoy to the African Great Lakes Region, will he work at the direction of Ms Susan Rice? Great move Obama!
Problem in the Congo fp story by BooMan
I am glad that Russ Feingold agreed to be the U.S. Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and I’m glad that he is trying to raise awareness about the 5.4 million people who have died in the region since the mid-1990s.
!Enough – the project to end genocide and crimes against humanity.
Open Letter to the New U.S. Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region, Russ Feingold [pdf]
Gulf Arab states to launch $2 bln agriculture fund
DUBAI (Reuters) Oct. 11, 2009 – Gulf Arab states will pour $2 billion into a new agricultural fund in coming months to secure food supplies by buying stakes in existing agricultural firms, an executive involved in the fund’s creation said on Sunday.
Gulf countries mainly reliant on food imports, have ramped up efforts to secure food supplies through buying farmland in developing nations or buying stakes in agriculture companies.
The new Arab agricultural holding company will be part of the broader Arab Authority for Agriculture Investment and Development (AAAID), an organisation made up of 20 Arab and African states all keen to lock in food supplies.
“We are now at a stage where the holding company is being established and the name will be announced soon,” Rajagopal Ramamoorthy, director of financial investments at AAAID, told Reuters.
“The $2 billion fund has already been approved since January and the money basically comes from members of the Gulf states…to buy listed and unlisted food companies in the Middle East and Africa.”
Jewish Neocons (and Susan Rice) Adopt Rwandan Dictator, Kagame.
Continued below the fold …
Wealthy Gulf investors warm to Africa
(Reuters) Jan. 2, 2013 – The report by Reuters indicates that timing of Africa’s economic boom is fortunate for the Gulf: it is occurring just as high oil prices give Gulf countries plenty of money to invest in it.
The International Monetary Fund , IMF, estimates that the Middle East’s oil exporters posted a combined surplus in trade in goods and services of about $400 billion [pdf] last year. Much of that money is being ploughed back into foreign assets; while the bulk still goes into Western assets such as US Treasury bonds, more is going to emerging markets such as Africa.
Although complete, timely data on Gulf investment in Africa is not available, analysts believe it follows the same general trend as bilateral trade, with a time lag.
Annual trade between the Middle East and Africa has grown fivefold to $49 billion over the past decade, from $10 billion in 2002, according to Standard Chartered Bank.
Jewish Neocons Adopt Rwandan Dictator, Kagame.
(Tikun Olam) – The entire enterprise appears to be an unseemly alliance between a dictator looking to cleanse his reputation and a bunch of grasping neo-con Jews who are desperate to change the subject from Israel’s horrible PR in the world press. Besides killing political opponents, Kagame is playing an instrumental role in another regional genocide: Congo. Over 4-million have been killed by the various rebel armies operating on its territory. Uganda and Rwanda are among the most prominent supporters and suppliers of these rebels. Such an event offers Kagame a wonderful PR opportunity.
Israel’s Role in Rwandan Genocide
Israel, as a seminal article in Maariv pointed out, played both sides against the middle in the Rwanda civil war. Even before the slaughter commenced in 1994, Israel was supplying weapons officially to the Hutu-led government, which used them to fight against rebel forces under Kagame’s command. Israeli arms suppliers continued covertly selling to the genocidal militias who murdered 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis. This from the book The Arms Fixers:
“Seven large cargoes of small arms worth $6.5 million were flown from Tirana [Albania] and Tel Aviv between mid-April and mid-July 1994 to the [Interahamwe] forces as they carried out the genocide, even during the time when the mass killings were being reported daily by the international news media.”
Leibowitch-Dar’s article exposes the key role that one of these Israeli black-market weapons dealers played in the genocide.
- ○ Genocide charges filed on Paul Barril, France’s arms supplier to Rwanda
○ Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Genocide
U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice Questioned on U.S. Role in Rwanda/Congo Violence
(NY Times) Dec. 21, 2012 – Aides to Ms. Rice acknowledge that she is close to Mr. Kagame and that Mr. Kagame’s government was her client when she worked at Intellibridge, a strategic analysis firm in Washington. Ms. Rice, who served as the State Department’s top African affairs expert in the Clinton administration, worked at the firm with several other former Clinton administration officials, including David J. Rothkopf, who was an acting under secretary in the Commerce Department; Anthony Lake, Mr. Clinton’s national security adviser; and John M. Deutch, who was director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Payton Knopf, a spokesman for Ms. Rice, initially declined to comment on whether her intellibridgework with Rwanda at Intellibridge (bought by Eurasia Group in 2005) affected her dealings with the country in her present job as an ambassador. But on Monday, Mr. Knopf said: “Ambassador Rice’s brief consultancy at Intellibridge has had no impact on her work at the United Nations. She implements the agreed policy of the United States at the U.N.”
Two months ago, at a meeting with her French and British counterparts at the French Mission to the United Nations, according to a Western diplomat with knowledge of the meeting, Ms. Rice objected strongly to a call by the French envoy, Gerard Araud, for explicitly “naming and shaming” Mr. Kagame and the Rwandan government for its support of M23, and to his proposal to consider sanctions to pressure Rwanda to abandon the rebel group.
“Listen Gerard,” she said, according to the diplomat. “This is the D.R.C. If it weren’t the M23 doing this, it would be some other group.” The exchange was reported in Foreign Policy magazine last week.
A few weeks later, Ms. Rice again stepped in to protect Mr. Kagame. After delaying for weeks the publication of a United Nations report denouncing Rwanda’s support for the M23 and opposing any direct references to Rwanda in United Nations statements and resolutions on the crisis, Ms. Rice intervened to water down a Security Council resolution that strongly condemned the M23 for widespread rape, summary executions and recruitment of child soldiers. The resolution expressed “deep concern” about external actors supporting the M23. But Ms. Rice prevailed in preventing the resolution from explicitly naming Rwanda when it was passed on Nov. 20.