- The Constant Gardener: A movie gets it right about Africa
and international conspiracies to hurt and kill the innocent. The screen
adaptation of John Le Carre's thriller, The Constant Gardener, gets two
thumbs up from this veteran of covering Africa's victimization by multinational
corporations, weapons smugglers, and the "misery industry." The
movie's main plot is a scheme by a consortium of international pharmaceutical
companies to use AIDS and tuberculosis-infected Africans as human guinea
pigs: plying them with untested drugs with fatal side effects. The conspiracy
is sanctioned by the highest levels of the British government, professional
"do-gooder" aid organizations, and corrupt African government
officials in Kenya and Zimbabwe. There is even a reference to a Mossad
agent who is apparently involved in the conspiracy with a Kenyan government
minister. The Constant Gardener finally tells the true story of what is
happening in Africa.
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- As Americans continue to bury their dead from what has
been a series of government sanctioned errors of commission and omission
with the Hurricane Katrina disaster, it cannot be overstated that similar
wanton indifference to and involvement in Africa's suffering has been the
unofficial policy of the United States and Britain for decades. Africa's
Holocaust has propelled the names Darfur, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Niger,
Somalia, Zaire/Congo, and Angola to front pages around the world. The Constant
Gardener reminds us that these actual human catastrophes were not born
in Africa but crafted and engineered from corporate board rooms, private
millionaire clubs, and government executive offices from Washington, DC
and New York to London and Houston. John LeCarre's writings are not mere
speculation, they are based on years of dealing with the significant movers
and shakers in the world's official and unofficial intelligence networks.
In other words, he knows what he's writing about.
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- The incessant role of some international aid agencies
and religious organizations in Africa's woes is The Constant Gardener's
greatest exposé. It is something this editor personally witnessed
in Rwanda after that nation's U.S. and British-triggered presidential assassinations
in 1994 by the U.S.-Anglo client, the Rwandan Patriotic Army, and the resulting
(and expected) genocide. The Constant Gardener reminded me of what I saw
in Rwanda and on which I reflected upon in my book, Genocide and Covert
Operations in Africa 1993-1999:
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- "Driving through downtown Kigali one is struck by
the numerous aid agencies, all having their own compounds, local and expatriate
staffs, and vehicle fleets."
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- "The 'assistance industry' is lucrative for some
people. One expert, R. M. Connaughton, described the situation when new
aid organizations arrived on the scene following the tragedy of 1994: 'To
those agencies and NGOs that had been in Rwanda from the beginning of the
troubles, the new Klondikers in the newly-arrived NGOs were true participants
in the gold rush.' Connaughton quotes Geoff Loane, the deputy head of the
Red Cross in Nairobi: 'It was convenient and rewarding for some people
to be there . . . and they did not necessarily bring the best resources.'
According to Connaughton, one Christian organization from Virginia sought
to eradicate cholera through the laying on of hands. He also claimed the
number of NGOs in Goma as numbering around one hundred. Connaughton adds:
'Significantly, the newly-arrived NGOs brought with them attitudes of the
military . . . in the heat of the crisis.'"
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- "Rwanda is almost totally subservient to the indefinite
provision of aid from the rest of the world as well as dictates from the
Pentagon and Uganda's [President] Museveni. In the history of American
assistance to developing nations, Rwanda is far from a success story. The
U.S. military forces in Rwanda seem far more interested in providing training
for the blood-stained RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front] than in helping the
unfortunate people of that nation." [Source: Genocide and Covert Operations
in Africa 1993-1999, Lewiston, NY and Lampeter, Wales: Mellen Press, 1999].
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- Which brings me to the subject of the neo-cons who have
also nested in the Democratic Party. Rwanda and the Washington- and London-supported
covert operations that resulted in the deaths of perhaps as many as 5 million
people in that country and neighboring Congo and Burundi occurred during
Bill Clinton's presidency, although the initial plans began as early as
1989 under George H. W. Bush and his Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. At
the time of the Rwandan genocide, U.S. inaction was primarily due to then
US ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright and her assistant Jamie Rubin
(married to CNN's Christiane Amanpour). The Albrights and Rubins of the
Clinton administration would have everyone believe that the claptrap propaganda
in Hotel Rwanda (the same hotel, Hotel des Mille Collines, where I stayed
in Rwanda) is what actually happened in 1994 . . . that the genocide was
merely triggered by the "crash" of a presidential aircraft carrying
two African presidents and their staffs and not by a multiple SAM-16 missi
- It is interesting to note that Jamie Rubin, who was a
foreign policy adviser to John Kerry's presidential campaign, has recently
signed a deal with neo-con Rupert Murdoch's Sky Television to host an hour-long
nightly show called "World News Tonight." Shortly after Peter
Jennings' death, the neo-cons have expropriated his ABC News program's
name to spew forth more propaganda aimed at confusing the masses. Jennings
had it right about many parts of the world, including the Middle East and
Africa. Rubin has it wrong, very wrong.
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- However, the motion picture industry, as we have seen
with Fahrenheit 911 and other movies, continues to provide us with facts
through cinematic presentations, bypassing the international news network
barons who continue to shovel propaganda masquerading as news down our
collective throats.
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- http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
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