IMMEDIATE AND RADICAL-GOING TO THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM-INTERVENTIONS TO AID THE PEOPLE AND MITIGATE SUFFERING IN THESE AREAS COULD BE ACHIEVED IF THE CORPORATIONS WORKING THERE WERE HELD TO ACCOUNT.
But as long as people in the West gobble up the corporate do-nothing nonsense peddled by the IRC, CARE, Save the Children, Newsweek, the New York Times, the BBC and the International Crises Group, it is, indeed, hopeless.
Workers and communities in and around these mines suffer due to state orchestrated repression, chemical mining processes and toxic runoff, tuberculosis, immune disorders, racial discrimination and slavery. There are all the standard treatable maladies (typhoid, malaria, tetanus, polio, malnutrition) as well. However, such stories are off the agenda for the North American, European, Japanese, Australian and Israeli media corporations providing the mainstay of English language indoctrination meant to instill racial superiority and a vast ignorance and obliviousness that leaves westerns populations shaking their heads and wringing their hands and clicking their tongues, while all the while wondering "what is to be done?" It does not cross people's minds that their own hands are dirty, that their own consciousness has been falsified, that change is possible.
Lies, Lies, Those Slippery (Petroleum) Lies
German diplomat Albrecht Conze is the deputy political director of the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC). In an article in the German magazine Der Spiegel, after the first round of elections in August 2006, Conze "predicted" the inevitable return of white patronage in Congo.
"It is like being the Congo's foster parents," Conze said, suggesting that such patronage is a blessing, rather than the curse that it is to the people of Congo. Conze continued to misrepresent the Western plunder in Congo by saying, for example, that the U.S. government's interest in rebuilding Congo is limited. After all, he said, the deeply Catholic country "contains neither oil nor terrorists."
The above statement is consistent with the perpetual lies by powerful interests who benefit by always downplaying or hiding Congo's (Africa) wealth.
The first petroleum refinery in the Congo-owned by Societe Congolaise Italienne de Raffinage (SOCIR), a joint venture between the Congolese government and Ente Nazioale Idrocarburi, Italy's state-owned petroleum company-commenced production near the mouth of the Congo River in 1967. Under a five year contract signed in 1967, the crude for the refinery was supplied by Shell, Mobil, Petrofina and Texaco.
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