Officially known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the central African country has a 25-mile (40-km) coastline on the Atlantic Ocean but is otherwise landlocked. It is the second largest country on the continent; only Algeria is larger. The capital, Kinshasa, is located on the Congo River about 320 miles (515 km) from its mouth. The largest city in central Africa, it serves as the country’s official administrative, economic, and cultural centre. The country is often referred to by its acronym, the DRC, or called Congo (Kinshasa), with the capital added parenthetically, to distinguish it from the other Congo republic, which is officially called the Republic of the Congo and is often referred to as Congo (Brazzaville).
Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960. From 1971 to 1997 the country was officially the Republic of Zaire, a change made by then ruler Gen. Mobutu Sese Seko to give the country what he thought was a more authentic African name. “Zaire” is a variation of a term meaning “great river” in local African languages; like the country’s current name, it refers to the Congo River, which drains a large basin that lies mostly in the republic. Unlike Zaire, however, the name Congo has origins in the colonial period, when Europeans identified the river with the kingdom of the Kongo people, who live near its mouth. Following the overthrow of Mobutu in 1997, the country’s name prior to 1971, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was reinstated. Congo subsequently was plunged into a devastating civil war; the conflict officially ended in 2003, although fighting continued in the eastern part of the country.
The World Health Organization says a new polio outbreak in Sudan is linked to an ongoing vaccine-sparked epidemic in Chad — a week after the U.N. health agency declared the African continent free of the wild polio virus. In a statement this week, WHO said two children in Sudan — one from South Darfur state and the other from Gedarif state, close to the border with ...
A slew of high-tech companies including Apple, Google, and Tesla are being sued by a group of Congolese families whose children allegedly died or were severely injured while mining cobalt that is used to produce lithium-ion batteries found in smartphones and electric cars. The human rights organization International Rights Advocates filed the suit Sunday in a Washington, D.C. federal court on behalf of 14 families from ...
It is exceedingly rare for the public health community to admit to any problems with vaccination. Every so often, however, circumstances force officials into making just such an acknowledgment. The current debacle seeping out into the news—which is actually a long-running tale minted anew—is that oral polio vaccines are “spawning virulent strains” of polioviruses. The alarming surge in vaccine-derived polio cases presents vaccine planners with a ...
Six Christians, including three women and a 9-year-old child, have died in an attack in the largely Christian village of Kalau near the city of Beni in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The attack that sent almost 500 Central Africans fleeing for their lives lasted four hours from 7 pm to 11 pm. According to field sources, the attackers–part of the ...
The United Nations is once again in the global spotlight for the most heinous crimes imaginable — the massive, systematic rape of innocent children perpetrated by child rapists working for the UN and various "aid" agencies. In a report released on July 31, 2018, the U.K. Parliament's committee overseeing foreign aid found that the rape and sexual abuse of children by UN officials and “aid” workers ...
Tutsi forces from Rwanda and Uganda, supported by the U.S.A., invaded Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in August of 1998 in a coup d'etat to overthrow President Joseph Kabila whom they installed into power a year previous. One may recall that Mobutu Sese Seko (born Joseph-Desiré Mobutu) was put in power by the CIA in 1965. At independence he was a Sargent in the ...
Paul Kagame took power in Rwanda after an alleged "Rwandan Genocide." This massacre of almost 1 million Rwandans now appears to have been a C.I.A.-fabricated eugenics program that also served as a false flag pretext. This pretext provided the cover to seize control of rare earth minerals in the resource-rich neighboring Congo. Those minerals are critical for the manufacturing of computers, military surveillance devices, aerospace, defense, ...
On September 18 1961, the Ndola United Nations DC-6 crashed in what is now Zambia, killing Dag Hammarskjöld — the second Secretary-General of the United Nations — and 15 others. Hammarskjöld’s death occurred en route to cease-fire negotiations. A British-run commission of inquiry blamed the crash in 1961 on pilot error. A later UN investigation rubber-stamped its findings. Case closed? Not so fast. The findings of ...
US plans to eliminate Patrice Lumumba went as high as the President himself. On August 25, 1960, a subcommittee of the National Security Council known as the Special Group met. Thomas Parrott, the secretary of the Group, began the meeting by outlining the CIA operations that had been taken by ‘mounting an anti- Lumumba campaign in the Congo,’ and the meeting ended with the group “not ...
The Congo gained independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960, and immediately a struggle for power took place between individuals, tribes and political groups. As conflict spread, Belgium was drawn in to protect its mineral investments, as well as the United States, keenly aware of the Congo’s vast resource wealth. Again, the United States framed events as being the threat of a Communist takeover, with CIA ...
Officially known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the central African country has a 25-mile (40-km) coastline on the Atlantic Ocean but is otherwise landlocked. It is the second largest country on the continent; only Algeria is larger. The capital, Kinshasa, is located on the Congo River about 320 miles (515 km) from its mouth. The largest city in central Africa, it serves as the country’s official administrative, economic, and cultural centre. The country is often referred to by its acronym, the DRC, or called Congo (Kinshasa), with the capital added parenthetically, to distinguish it from the other Congo republic, which is officially called the Republic of the Congo and is often referred to as Congo (Brazzaville).
