Hoare, Denard, and their peers were not romantic adventurers. They were enablers of authoritarianism, extraction, and long-term instability whose consequences Africa still lives with. 12 🔚
#History #ColdWar #Africa #Mercenaries #Decolonisation #NeoColonialism #DRC #Mobutu #BobDenard
Hoare’s long association with Congolese dictator General Mobutu Sese Seko destroys the romantic narrative. #Mobutu was a kleptocrat whose rule hollowed out the state. Anyone helping keep him in power was complicit — full stop. 4)

However, I do remember this from vaguely 1975 and it was crystallized by the documentary #WhenWeWereKings which also has contributions from Mailer and others like #GeorgePlympton and goes into the build up to the fight which took place in #Zaire under #Mobutu.

The book is amazingly written and the way Mailer describes events is superb in my opinion. He really brings the training and the sparring (both literal and figurative between Ali and Foreman) to life. [Cont...]

The villa, which previously bore the name #Villa_del_Mare, is one of the most expensive in the world - estimated at 120 million euros . Previously, it was owned by the #African dictator #Mobutu and the #Russian billionaire #Shalva_Chigirinsky.

According to #French media reports, #Alina_Kabaeva sometimes rested on a three-hectare plot in a luxurious “dacha” with three swimming pools, a tennis court and a helipad.

#ukraine #putinisamasskiller #putinisawarcriminal @kardinal691

Midwestern Marx on TikTok

@Zhentauo #congo #lumumba #belgium #mobutu

TikTok

1960-1965: #Congo
In 1960, the Republic of the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) declared its independence from Belgium and democratically elected its first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. Shortly after he assumed power, President Joseph Kasavubu pushed him out of office amid a Belgian military invasion. Worried that the ensuing unrest provided fertile ground for Soviet incursion, the CIA encouraged and assisted attempts to kill Lumumba, arguing he was a communist leader akin to Castro. The CIA helped facilitate Lumumba’s capture in 1960 and assassination in 1961.
“This action precipitated the Congo Crisis (1960–1965), a period in which military leader Mobutu Sese Seko consolidated power in the country. In 1965, the #CIA supported Mobutu’s coup to take over the Republic of the Congo in the name of preventing the spread of communism. #Mobutu became a #dictator who ruled the country until 1997.”

https://www.history.com/news/us-overthrow-foreign-governments

#Africa #HumanRights#Covert#Corporatism#Corporatocracy#Corruption#Capitalism#Colonialism

10 Times America Helped Overthrow a Foreign Government

The US has long facilitated regime change to support its own strategic and business interests.

HISTORY
Among other stupid things, #CharlesMichel replies, about money of the the #EU - #Tunisia #migration deal and Tunisia's notoriously bad record on human rights, that "This is not for Tunisia, this is for the Tunisian people" ( 8:20 in the interview). Like history showed us with #Mobutu in #Zaire / #Congo , give money to a dictator and it will surely benefit first and foremost the people of the country

@bikejourno

#Freedoms? What freedoms are you talking? Your #freedom as the #colonizer, in a #neocolonialist world? #USA (and his provinces: #Europe, #Japan, #UK...) have last the last century promoting governments, starting wars, coup d'état, etc taking care just of the #economic interest of their #ruleClass: #Pinochet, #Mobutu, #Marcos, etc.

Please, just read anything different to the #World Lords' #propaganda.

You are not talking in the name of the most part of the World, who has living in poverty forever, since ever...

#Amin shifted from being a pro-Western ruler enjoying considerable support from Israel to being backed by Libya's Muammar #Gaddafi, Zaire's #Mobutu Sese Seko, the Soviet Union, and East #Germany.