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“He says that in all of us there are two men—the clever man and the hero—and when the clever man comes on top, it is just as though we had killed our children. Each of us is both a blind man and a fool, and if the hero in us is bit of a fool, the clever man is always blind.” — Frank O'Connor on Yeats
The National Security State has so covered the collective hands of America in blood, they're now difficult to see or feel. 75 years of unaccountability has created a situation of violent incapacity, an incapability to do, even if what to do is first recognized. Sixty-three years after the CIA backed coup in Congo, a new book has arrived retelling the tale. The book is titled, The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination, by Stuart Reid. It deals with the overthrow of the Congo's first elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. In June 1960, Congo became independent from Belgium, Lumumba was elected, six months later couped, tortured, and killed.
The FT review still muddies the issue of responsibility, knowingly or unknowingly, practicing that greatest of National Security State skills, plausible deniability. However, in a recent piece, the book’s author states unequivocally, “Eisenhower’s directive did not appear to weigh heavily on his conscience. Having just become the first-ever U.S. president to order the assassination of a foreign leader.”
Lord, the unending lying, after six decades, the lying continues unabated. This republican cancer of untruth has spread from the National Security State across the entire power structure and American culture itself. Though I suppose it’s a little unfair to put all the blame on the National Security State, after all we're a century into advertising being the greatest conveyor of information across American society.
The Congo supplied most of the uranium used to fuel the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. “In 1947, ( the year the National Security State was institutionalized) according to figures from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. obtained 1,440 tons of uranium concentrates from the Belgian Congo (now DR Congo). The ore was exported from there in complete secrecy.” Congo supplied the nuclear jewel in the National Security State’s crown.
Today, the Congo remains one of the richest resource areas of the planet:
“Minerals found in Katanga include copper, cobalt, zinc, cassiterite (the chief source of metallic tin), manganese, coal, silver, cadmium, germanium (a brittle element used as a semiconductor), gold, palladium (a metallic element used as a catalyst and in alloys), uranium, and platinum. The region west of Lake Kivu contains cassiterite, columbotantalite, wolframite (a source of tungsten), beryl, gold, and monazite (a phosphate of the cerium metals and thorium).”
That's a who's who of essential elements for the tech industry.
The United Nations Environmental Program writes in Congo lie “minerals critical to the energy transition,” adding,
“The institutional history of the DRC is profoundly shaped by the extraction of resources—which has historically not benefitted local communities. This and other governance challenges have led to insecurity and poverty, which create the conditions for cycles of violence.”
The cycle of violence created with Lumumba's assassination detestable. He was replaced with American support by Mobutu Sese Seko, who brutally ruled for the next three decades. His post-Cold War fall from favor led to continuing war for another 3 decades, though Congo’s resources never stopped flowing out to the rest of the world. In Conrad's great 1899 literary creation on imperialism, Marlow laments the ethos that then and since ruled Congo,
“In the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe."
Today, the white sepulchral city no longer lies in Belgium, but in the United States, still leading into the heart of an immense darkness.
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Another good piece. Thank you!!