The above caption, by Jacques Lowe, personal photographer to JFK, reads:
"On February 13 1961, United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson came on the phone. I was alone with the President; his hand went to his head in utter despair, "On, no," I heard him groan. The Ambassador was informing the President of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, an African leader considered a trouble-maker and a leftist by many Americans. But Kennedy's attitude towards black Africa was that many who were considered leftists were in fact nationalists and patriots, anti-West because of years of colonialization, and lured to the siren call of Communism against their will. He felt that Africa presented an opportunity for the West, and, speaking as an American, unhindered by a colonial heritage, he had made friends in Africa and would succeed in gaining the trust of a great many African leaders. The call therefore left him heartbroken, for he knew that the murder would be a prelude to chaos in the mineral-rich and important African country, it was a poignant moment."
[end quoting Kennedy A Time Remembered by Jacques Lowe]
As today's news stories describe the massacre of thousands in the Congo [April 2003] I remember Orwell and JFK, two of my favourite people. In 1984 Orwell told us that once Big Brother took control of the world (One World Government) it was divided into three Super-States and the Disputed Territories, over which the Super-States waged continuous war. The people of the Disputed Territories, which includes equatorial Africa, "were expended like so much coal or oil". Their nations were gutted for their "valuable minerals and important vegetable products".
Like so much else of what Orwell told us, he was accurate about the fate of Africa. Its nations have never had a chance to survive on their own without interference. However, had President Kennedy been allowed to live and enact his policies for Africa, that continent could be equal today to Europe and America.
During his fourteen years in Congress - as a Representative and a Senator - JFK developed an African policy that supported individual African nations winning their freedom from colonial powers like Britain, France, Belgium and Portugal. He believed that with American financial and technical support they would be able to eventually stand on their own two feet and repel any future aggressor.
JFK bravely spoke in Congress opposing even his own party when it came to freedom for Algeria from France and he had a strong desire to see the Congo gain its independence from Belgium. Even in the busy year leading up to his presidency JFK tried to help African movements for independence.
When 250 African students had managed to fund-raise enough money to pay their tuitions at American universities, JFK and his family personally and anonymously put up $100,000 to pay their air-fares to America. The USA government had refused to give the students aid.
But the closest African nation to JFK's heart was the Congo. JFK admired the popular, charismatic prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, who more than any other leader before or since, spoke for his nation's people and interests.
But, tragically - like what would happen to JFK three years later - Lumumba was assassinated by his political enemies with cooperation from the CIA. At first they attempted to kill him with anthrax in his toothpaste. But when that didn't work they resorted to assassination. Lumumba was kidnapped, imprisoned and brutally beaten first. JFK wasn't even told about Lumumba's death on January 17, 1961 (three days before JFK's inauguration as president) until almost a month later, at which time he reacted with total despair.
The story about JFK's relationship with the Congo and other African nations is a study in itself. A good place to start is with the book JFK: Ordeal in Africa, by Richard D Mahoney. If -- from somewhere in another realm -- JFK is aware of what's happening on Earth today, he's no doubt shedding tears for the Congo. ~ Jackie Jura
INSIDE COVER: No conviction was more basic to John F. Kennedy's foreign policy than his belief that America had to recognize the historic sweep of Third World nationalism. It was in Africa - one of the key crisis areas of the early 1960s - that Kennedy used the full powers of his presidency to influence the course of self-determination.
The story of JFK's African odyssey - told here for the first time - is set forth in penetrating detail by Richard D Mahoney. This is a compelling account of how foreign policy is made at the highest level and will influence any future judgment of the quality of JFK's statesmanship in the Third World.
The narrative is drawn from the raw materials of Kennedy's diplomacy: secret telephone conversatons (which no scholar has used before), the declassified minutes of White House meetings, State Department memoranda, and CIA and embassy cable traffic. From these sources, as well as more than 200 interviews with the principals involved, Mahoney reconstructs the full complexity of JFK's response to the momentous events of those years: the murder of Congolese Premier Patrice Lumumba, the death of United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, the demise of Kwame Nkrumah (the leading African nationalist of Kennedy's day), and the desperate stand of Portugeuse dictator Antonia de Oliveira Salazar in Africa. He unveils new information about the covert operations - both authorized and unauthorized - of the CIA...
More than anything else, this book gives us an intimate portrait of JFK - as an inquiring young congressman on tour in insurgent Asia in 1951, as a senator privately counseling African nationalists while publicly accusing the Eisenhower administration of siding with the beleaguered European powers, and finally, as a president, torn between his sympathy for the cause of African freedom and his fear of undermining the Atlantic alliance at a time of bitter rivalry with the Soviet Union.
This is a dramatic, highly revealing study, important not only for the light it sheds on a key chapter of recent history, but also for the lessons it carries for our own day.
KILLING GADDAFI LIKE JFK-LUMUMBA
'State of war' in eastern Congo (Kabila & UN forces support Hutus who kill Nkunda-supported Tutsis). BBC, Sep 1, 2007
CONGO WRONG ON NKUNDA
Congo FDLR aim to destabilise Rwanda (unleashing terror & murder). NewTimes, Aug 27, 2007. Go to HUTUS HATE RWANDA IN DARFUR & 17.Falsification of Past
LUMUMBA-LIKE LAURENT NKUNDA
Congo struggling to stay in one piece (Kabila blames problems on Nkunda, a Congolise Tutsi protector). New Vision, Aug 24, 2007
GOMA CAMP MAFIA HUTU HOTEL
27. GOMA'S LUMUMBA VOLCANO and CONGO IS LUMBUMBA LAND
Looting and anger in Congo capital ("all we want is for the president not to be chosen through weapons"). BBC, Aug 23, 2006. Go to 6. Superstates Disputed Territory ("inhabitants reduced to status of slaves, are expended like coal or oil")
Congo on brink of genocide (UN doing nothing as in Rwanda). Telegraph, May 12, 2003
Go to 6.Disputed Territories and CANADA'S TRAUMATIZED SOLDIERS
JFK FIRED CIA DULLES
JFK fired Allen Dulles (from the CIA in 1961 after discovering his role in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Allen Dulles served on the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination of JFK in 1963. Allen Dulles' brother was Secretary of State under Eisenhower when the United States did nothing to help anti-communist uprisings in East Germany (1953) and Hungary (1956)
link now works: DODD & DULLES VS. KENNEDY IN AFRICA, by Jim DiEugenio
MIDNIGHT IN THE CONGO (The Assassination of Lumumba and the Mysterious Death of Dag Hammarskjold), by Lisa Pease
* IRC: Congo Civil War Kills 3.3 Million, Associated Press, Apr 7, 2003
NAIROBI, Kenya - More than 3 million people have died during Congo's civil war, the vast majority from malnutrition and disease, a relief organization said Tuesday. The International Rescue Committee said in a report that at least 85 percent of the 3.3 million deaths were from easily treatable diseases and malnutrition. "This is a humanitarian catastrophe of horrid and shocking proportions," George Rapp, president of the New York-based organization said. Previous IRC studies put the death toll at around 2.2 million. A U.N. official dealing with Africa said an accurate account of the number of dead is impossible, but the toll of two million had been widely accepted. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity. The IRC said the humanitarian disaster has been caused in part by the forced displacement of people fleeing fighting and the collapse of the country's health system. The Congo war began in August 1998 and at one point drew in armies from six other African nations. But the rescue committee said there are grounds for hope because deaths from violence apparently had dropped by as much as 90 percent since a survey carried out in 2001. The organization also said a South African-brokered peace process has resulted in a power-sharing agreement and the withdrawal of most foreign forces. But the IRC said fighting continued in eastern Ituri province and urged diplomatic and humanitarian action in the face of "the magnitude of this crisis."
JFK ASSASSINATION PUZZLE PIECES
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