Photo by foto_morgana : http://www.flickr.com/photos/devriese/sets/72157594519310903/ © All rights reservedKeith Harmon Snow, 9 February 2008, produced an article (Dissident Voice : Gertler’s Bling Bang Torah Gang) which makes the following points:
Maurice Templesman is one of the top funders of Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Families like Templesman, Oppenheimer, Gertler and Steinmetz are associated with mining companies in the Congo.
In 2007 there was fighting in the Congo between Jean-Pierre Bemba and Joseph Kabila. Each wanted to be the one who could make money from deals with the mining companies.
Most ordinary Congolese earn less than a dollar a day and any attempts at strikes are likely to be put down with violence.
According to an article at CorpWatch, 25 April 2001, CorpWatch : Africa: U.S. Covert Action Exposed :
Declassified memos and cables between former U.S. presidents and State Department officials over the last four decades named Mr. Tempelsman with direct input in the destabilization of Congo, Sierra Leone, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Rwanda and Ghana.
He earned his stripes with western powers in the overthrow of Ghana's first elected president, Kwame Nkrumah, and the CIA-backed assassination of Congo's first-elected president, Patrice Lumumba, documents reveal.
As late as 1997, Mr. Tempelsman was named in the ongoing cover-up of U.S.-CIA covert support of the former president of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC]), Mobuto Sese Seko, who died in exile in 1997 after the overthrow of his regime by recently assassinated Congolese President Laurent Kabila.
Mr. Tempelsman is named as the agent in charge of selling off the gross excess of the strategic diamond stockpile in the United States that was used to fund the deceased dictator's exploits.
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2 comments:
I'm a big supporter of Obama. I'm also dismayed that he would knowingly accept money from Templesman despite the man's dark history in Congo. Though he made a poor judgment, Obama is the only presidential candidate with some interest in Congo. He seems to be concerned about the conflict and the rape of Congolese women. If he becomes president, I hope he will be actively involved in Congo, much like he was in Sudan.
For what it's worth, Maurice Templesman was Jacqueline Onassis's (quite generous) companion for the last several years of her life........
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