by Oui
Thu Apr 17th, 2025 at 08:48:48 AM EST
Belgium gained independence in 1830 after being part of the Netherlands.
The Belgian Revolution and the Dissolution of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1830-1839)
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The Speech that Got Patrice Lumumba Killed | Africa Network |
The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination
My diary ...
Confronting Dark Colonial Past In Congo | 20 June 2022 |
The CIA killed #PatriceLumumba
CIA chief of The Congo Larry Devlin and Allen Dulles in Washington... They kept his death from the newly inaugurated JFK knowing his horror at Lumumba assassination...
Tell the Truth @guardian
Lumumba's blood on US hands
"Dead, living, free, or in prison on the orders of the colonialists, it is not I who counts. It is the Congo, it is our people ... History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations will teach, but that which they will teach in the countries emancipated from colonialism and its puppets... a history of glory and dignity."
-- Patrice Lumumba, letter to his wife, October 1960.
From leaked and declassified State Department CIA cables between Washington and Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) in the period leading to the assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Emery Lumumba, it is evident his blood can be traced to the hands of the US government:
Continued below the fold ...
August 18, 1960.
President Dwight Eisenhower, chairing a National Security Council (NSC) meeting at the White House, orders CIA director Allen Dulles to kill democratically elected Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Minutes of this NSC meeting document that "it was finally agreed that planning for the Congo would not necessarily rule out 'consideration' of any particular kind of activity which might contribute to getting rid of Lumumba."
January 17, 1961.
Patrice Emery Lumumba, prime minister of the Republic of the Congo, after being arrested and suffering a series of beatings, is clandestinely shot dead at Elisabethville and his body dissolved in acid, with no trace of evidence left behind.
June 10, 1975.
Robert H. Johnson, official notetaker at the 18 August 1960 National Security Council meeting at the White House tells the US Senate Intelligence Committee that he vividly recalls "Eisenhower turning to CIA director Allen Dulles in the full hearing of all those in attendance and saying something to the effect that Lumumba should be eliminated. That came across to me as an order for the assassination of Lumumba, who was then at the center of political conflict and controversy in the Congo."
Colonial Empires of Europe and Human Rights advocacy ...
Africa and the West | EuroTrib by Richard Drayton on Aug 20th, 2005 |
On Jerome's example, I offer here as a diary my article ...
The wealth of the west was built on Africa's exploitation | The Guardian - 20 Aug. 2005 |
Britain has never faced up to the dark side of its imperial history
Britain was the principal slaving nation of the modern world. In The Empire Pays Back, a documentary broadcast by Channel 4, Robert Beckford called on the British to take stock of this past. Why, he asked, had Britain made no apology for African slavery, as it had done for the Irish potato famine?
Easily to be considered the Black Holocaust
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Personal African possession of King Leopold II - Congo Massacre/Genocide | Forgotten History |
KATANGA
United Nations: Death of Dag Hammarskjöld
The UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld arrived in Katanga on the 12th for talks with Katanga authorities and Belgian representatives concerning the modalities of the withdrawal of the Belgian troops and the deployment of the UN Force. [Photo shows him] at Elisabethville airport prior to his return in Leopoldville.
Mr. Hammarskjöld, whose name is on buildings in and around the United Nations headquarters in New York, was an iconic Swedish diplomat, the organization's second secretary general and a strong advocate for decolonization in Africa.
He is the only person to have been posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and was described by President John F. Kennedy as "the greatest statesman of our century."
Mr. Hammarskjöld was in his eighth year in the job when he was killed at 56 while flying to Ndola on the night of Sept. 18, 1961, for negotiations to end secession and civil war in the neighboring mineral-rich Congolese province of Katanga.
Hammarskjöld had arranged to meet with the Katangese separatist leader, Moïse Tshombe, whose forces were backed by Western political and mining interests not eager for Mr. Hammarskjold to succeed.
Dag Hammarskjöld described by President John F. Kennedy as "the greatest statesman of our century
The Legacy of Dag Hammarskjöld | Columbia University |
"I realize now, that in comparison to [Dag Hammarskjöld], I am
a small man. He was the greatest statesman of our century."
--John F. Kennedy
On 14 March 1962, six months after Hammarskjöld's death, President John F. Kennedy invited Sture Linnér [a Hammarskjöld aide], who had by now left the Congo and was at UN headquarters in New York, to the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. He told Linnér that he wanted to apologize for the pressure that had been put on Dag to implement US policy in the Congo--a pressure which Dag had refused to heed.
The Secretary-General's strategy had been straightforward: `I do not intend to give way to any pressure, be it from the East or the West; we shall sink or swim.' Equally clear were his instructions to Linnér: 'Continue to follow the line you find to be in accordance with the UN Charter.'
Kennedy explained to Linnér the reasons for US opposition to Dag's policy in the Congo. For his own political survival, said the President, he [Kennedy] had felt obliged to heed the deep aversion towards Communism and left-wing views, which even after McCarthy's heyday played an important role in American politics. He then said that because it was now too late to offer an apology to Hammarskjöld, he wished to do so to Linnér. `I realise now,' said Kennedy, that in comparison to [Dag], I am a small man. He was the greatest statesman of our century.'
Diaries @BooMan on Dag Hammarskjöld and violations of the UN Charter by the CIA and American Foreign Policy.
Spy Scandal Redux | by Real History Lisa - 25 Dec. 2005 |
One if the many great mysteries ... could be resolved by opening intelligence dossiers of South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States.
UN Extends Dag Hammarskjöld Investigation | 28 Dec. 2019 |
Robbing the Congo II: Unspeakable richness | by Sirocco @BooMan - 2006 |
That is one way of looking at it. Another was succinctly put by Richard H. Davis in his book The Congo and Coasts of Africa (1907), based on travels in the country that was then King Léopold's personal fiefdom: "Happy is the country without a history!"
The Congo has had no such luck. As recounted in the first installment of this series, four centuries of slave trade had already left a devastating impact on the societies of the Congo at the dawn of the colonial period. Yet the worst was still to come. The historian Robert Egderton:
King Léopold II Who then was this tyrant of the rain forest, now to be honored with statues by the descendants of his hapless victims? Léopold II of Belgium, a first cousin of Queen Victoria known for his sly and deceitful nature, was an unlikely imperial ruler. He was, after all, the purely titular monarch of a tiny country barely four decades old, composed of two ethnic factions and faced with a constant threat of annexation by greater powers.
Rwanda, M23 Tutsi rebels and the conflict in Congo explained | Al Jazeera - 2 March 2025 |
In just a few weeks, the M23 rebel group has taken control of a large area in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, including Goma and Bukavu. What's happening? What does Rwanda have to do with it? And how does it relate to the decades-long conflict in this region?
Armed groups install 'parallel administration' in DR Congo, Security Council hears
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M23 rebels, Congo riches and war in the DRC Explained | Channel 4 News |
Unfortunately the artist depicting the reality across the global community is still Picassos ... fascism on the move, never to be defeated by right and justice.
