<html> <head> <style> P { margin:0px; padding:0px } body { FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY:Tahoma } </style> </head> <body><div style="direction: ltr;">SWIMMING UPSTREAM IN KONGO   Inbox        keith harmon snow show details         Mar 24 (1 day ago) Hello In 1895 King Leopold began a reign of terror in Congo. is man, Henry Morton Stanley was hired off teh New York Post to oversee the exploitation of gold, rubber and ivory. All the while Leopold proclaimed a humanitarian campaign to stop slavery in Congo, using teh international media. Stanley had soldiers fo the Force Publique cut off peoples hands and bring them back to show for every bullet that was used to enforce the very slavery that Leopold instiututed. Three weeks ago my collegaue and I landed on some of the earliest plantation sites in rural Congo. While there is today an internatinal media campaign to stop teh suffering and war in Congo, American and British companies are profiting from slavery on these plantations. We got the story. We traveld downriver to remote plantations, interviewed the people, and the management, and finalized a research project I began in 2004. Timber is being stribbed to the tune of over $6 million dollars a day - at te one site we visited (and there are perhaps a hundred such sites). We visited more loging concessions, run by Americans, and documented how the communal forests are being felled against the local people: no longer do they even bother signing treaties with cheifs who cannot read: they just take and take. We got the story. WWF rubber stamps the process. They have their little community puppet projects -- its all a sham -- but the people can see right through it. If they complain the military is sent in -- WWF knows this -- and they are arrested. When they asked me what they can do I told them... But this is the death knell on global climate mayhem... And now we have just come from Goma, where we traveled into the remote bloddied bush to meet with soldiers and document mining. While WWF and cerain gorilla conservations organizations are proclaiming development and education and healthcare for local peoples -- the reality on the ground is very diferent and brutal. This is the nouveau imperialism. Gorillas and chimps and hippos and rhinos-- its not about saving endangered species, as the interviews with insiders will show. (see: <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_georgian_070305_miserable_eyes_in_th.htm" target="_blank">http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_georgian_070305_miserable_eyes_in_th.htm</a> ) We have got some amazing stories to tell. This, again, is the culmination of 3 years research and negotiations of Congo. Now we are in Bunia, the heart of bloody Ituri, and we will leave Monday for King Leopold's Gold Mines. Thing is, George Herbert Walker Bush moved to control these mines in concert with the war to overthrow the long-time US ally Mobutu Sese Seko. That was 1996. For the next decade -- to now -- the gold mines establish under Leopold were explored, mapped, and targeted by multinatinal companies, including GHW Bush's Barrick Gold. We are trying to get there. Want an expose on how Barrick entered the fray? Nearby is the Uganda border and on the Uganda side is a mercenary oil company that is also working in Iraq. We're talking Texas oilmen in both cases -- Barrick Gold , its partners Moto gold, and the mercenary firms on the Uganda side -- and a contract in partnership with big, bad Bechtel. There are several UK firms and some former officials from teh Clinton Administration. These areas are in war still, though intemittent in Congo -- and the war in Northern Uganda is raging. In the US press you get only heetical African lunatic tribes capturing children -- on the ground -- like Darfur -- its all about oil (uaganda and Congo) and gold (Congo) in these areas. Its remote, there are kidnappings and shootings. We need a fixer -- at 30$ a day, minimum, to negotiate the militia, the Congolese military, and the local languages.  We are down to only $600 between us -- two white independent journalists -- and daily costs are at least $35 for room, food, and -- a big one -- water. Its hot here, and water is costing us at least $6-10 a day to keep safe.  We have a small backup in Kinshasa but the city is in a war right now -- renewed fighting between dictators -- and the little we have cant be transferred to us here becuase people are being shot in banks and bullets riddle buidlings -- the city is again destroyed.... If I can get a few donations I can transfer some cash by Western Union. We are already skipping meals. This, again, is an area where millions of Congolese and Uganda civilians have died in the past ten years. The fixer is our ticket to secruity -- can you help out? A $30 donation covers our fixer for one day and we need about 7 days in the field. The fixers get $100 a day for CNN and BBC -- but we will talk them down to $30 a day to work with us -- money that BBC and CNN and New York Times have and can afford to throw around. If you want independent news, if you want the truth, please help out if you can. If you dont like the Bush Dynasty and want to see some hard news documenting their role in plunder and pillage -- yet again -- please help out if you can. Donatins can be made through <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.allthingspass.com/" target="_blank">www.allthingspass.com</a> -- or by check to keith harmon snow at 6 Hyde Hill Road Williamsburg MA 01096. Of course, I wouldnt be here at all if not for those people who have helped out in the recent and/or distant past. Thank you. I'm trying to make a difference, doing the best I can. I hope, the Congolese put their hope in me, and I put my hope in you. I recently challneged the Congo Global Action Coalition -- see my challenge below. They are purportedly trying to bring peace and justice to Congo. But they do not report on the true thieves; or the true theivery -- they are always blaming the victims -- the people of Congo who, most of the time, suffer in silence, and die out of sight.. The Congolese on the plantations, in the forest, around the gold mines are being paid as little as 1000 francs Congolese (2$) per month. After 100 years there is nothing -- no health care, no development, and everything is poise dto have exactly the same now. Its all being covered over by propaganda. But you cannot eat propaganda, and you cannot eat hope, and you cannot live on 2$ a month. And people do not. Its like Mobutu. Who made Mobutu possible? Who benefited under Mobutu? The same players and some new ones, as are involved today. But all we hear is the one word dismissal of decades of exploitation: MOBUTU (did it). What is to be done? What could be done? It was Mobutu. It is finished. Hardly. It is just beginning. In solidarity blessings keith p.s. Don't miss my upcoming expose (co-athored) on BLOOD DIAMONDS. Watch for my soon to be published interview with Hotel Rwanda hero Paul Rusesabagina. -- where he confirms that genocide in Rwanda did NOT happen as it has been told -- and indeed is happening now. And please be sure to read my expose on Darfur -- OIL IN DARFUR? COVERT OP IN SOMALIA? THE NEW OLD HUMNITARIAN WARFARE IN AFRICA. p.s.s. So here's my challenge sent last week to the big humanitarian organizatins -- becuae they have no trouble getting the press to turn out for their public relations -- at refugess camps, with some white savior always standing ready... I will swim across -- traverse' -- the Congo river, and back, to raise awareness of the plight of the people of Congo. The river is wide and the currents dangerous -- ask any Congolese. The water is dark and deep (up  to 20 meters) and the snakes and crocodiles deadly. There are prehistoric electric fish like you aint never seen, eels and other unimaginables, and massive barges steaming down river with Congo's forests on them. And there are river blindness and trypanosomiases and malaria and parasites and mysterious fevers and worms and social maladies as prehistoric as is Mr. Kansteiner's thinking... If the Congo Coalition organizations really care about the people of Congo all they need do is insure that the Western press will cover the "event" en masse. That's it. Its easy. The IRC and CARE and UNICEF have no problem getting press coverage of "refugee crises" -- always advertising their logos and some white person as the medical savior-- so they have the capacity to organize a little press coverage of some white man swimming across the Congo's very heart of darkness. I will do it at three places along its long path, on three different days, swimming alone or with a crowd. We all know perfectly well that sometimes all it takes is some monumental (sic) feat (sic) of courage (sic) by some crazy old (47) white mazungu swimming across some wild primordial African river to bring attention to the maladies of Africa. In the true memory of Lord Jeffrey Amherst and Henry Morton Stanley -- and legitimately for the people of Congo, not against them. keith harmon snow </div> -- All things pass, so too will i keith harmon snow USA: 413-626-3800 <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.allthingspass.com/" target="_blank">http://www.allthingspass.com</a> <a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.stopexcision.net/" target="_blank">http://www.stopexcision.net</a> </body> </html>