Apartheid army's deadly secrets exposed

[Judi Lynn]

Apartheid army's deadly secrets exposed
29 minutes ago

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - A report detailing white South Africa's deadly military involvement during apartheid's dying days has been made public for the first time.

The Steyn report, compiled by a top apartheid general for South Africa's last white president, Frederik (FW) de Klerk, details how the army helped destabilise the country during the turbulent early 1990s.

"The report contains a list of military and other suspects, which, now that it is in the public arena, puts pressure on the authorties to bring the perpetrators to book," the Johannesburg-based Sunday Independent reported.

It lends credence to allegations during the time linking the apartheid army and police to various parastatal structures, commonly referred to as the "Third-force", who were orchestrating violence against liberation movements and ordinary black civilians.
(snip/...)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060430/ts_afp/safricamilitaryapartheidreport

[lostexpectation]

1. any you know where those gys are now

working in mercencry groups in Iraq and elsewhere....

[leveymg]

2. A lot of them went to English-speaking countries who gladly accepted them.

Like the US, UK and AUS. So did the Rhodesians with similar backgrounds. They were granted security clearances and went into their old line of work. One of them is accused of mailing anthrax to several liberal Democrats immediately after 9/11.

Talk about illegal immigrants and terrorists!

[MisterP]

5. including the mercs killed at the Falluja bridge, in whose name we leveled

the entire city

[Pavulon]

6. Google is free..

Stephen "Scott" Helvenston, Mike Teague, Jerko Zovko and Wesley Batalona were not SA immigrants.

Falluja was not leveled. It was not close to leveled.

It takes hundreds of b52's runs and thousands of rounds of 155 to reduce a city. This was not done.

Just saying facts are free of politics.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/fallujah-imagery9.htm&h=504&w=800&sz=79&tbnid=Xg-bG-bGWqV6dM:&tbnh=89&tbnw=142&hl=en&ei=ftdURLdfpphoq7aQhgE&sig2=__I50WvSuL1supwkId2Y3w&start=3&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfallujah%2Bpictures%2Baerial%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff%26rls%3DGGLG,GGLG:2005-20,GGLG:en%26sa%3DN

Has popups..

[saigon68]

17. The mercenaries got to "attend" the barbecue

[Judi Lynn]

7. Here are some photos of the town after it was rearranged:

http://209.97.202.24/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album34&page=1

"Leveled" seems to be the appropriate word. The images surely match the descriptions I've heard.

[Pavulon]

9. That is like showing the WTC

site and saying nyc was leveled. There are current aerial photos that show the real state if the city.

Unless you have an agenda that requires partial truth.




You think we reduced this entire grid set?

I'm sure we used the atom bomb and nerve gas too. The army was afraid to use CS gas in Bosnia HG. because they were worried about chemical weapons and the laws of war.

Obviously the city was damaged, but not razed to the ground.

[jukes]

12. to the innocent iraqis trapped there

your waffling over semantics wd be unhelpful and hypocritical.

don't you have to go manage your portfolio, or distribute leaflets, or inform on your neighbors or *anything* to do but insinuate yourself into a serious discussion about real issues amongst people concerned about injustice?

[Igel]

14. That appears to be changing the subject,

rather neatly.

Does that mean the point Pavulon was making is granted?

I felt sorry for the innocent Fallujans trapped there, but felt sorry for many before the US trapped them there. The reports that were coming out, even if only partially true, were bad. Oddly enough, they sound like just the reports coming out of Basra, Sadr City, Baquba, Tikrit, and other places, whether from the US/coalition or from human rights workers.

"Serious" discussions should be based on facts, not faith; on evidence, not rumor. To say that Fallujah was levelled is on par with the exaggerated reports of the "Jenin massacre" and with saying "Jenin was levelled." At some point one can no no longer be held to be merely mistaken, but must be understood either to be consciously engaging in falsehood or revelling in delusion. This weakens the arguer's credibility, and reduces him/her to a laughingstock in the 'reality-based community.'

[UpInArms]

15. "My solution is change the channel," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said

Siege of Fallujah

The Marines and coalition officials say they doubt many civilians have been killed in Fallujah and promise that their rules of engagement limit civilian casualties. "My solution is change the channel," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said earlier this week, after being asked about TV images of dead Iraqi civilians.

"The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources, that is propaganda, and that is lies."

While the fog of battle makes it difficult to get to the bottom of their differing accounts, the political impact of the television images and of what most Iraqis deeply believe can't be denied.

"You can't remove the picture of graves from the soccer field in Fallujah,'' says the CPA adviser. "But we can trying to start shifting the environment in a positive direction by focusing on economic improvements that might win people over."

[MisterP]

16. is this the same creature who said that, if Iraqi parents were upset

about their childrens' deaths...they should just have more?
A Marine officer told his soldiers Satan lived in the city and they were going to find him and drive him out.
I also think the bridge mercs were implicated in the eradication of Black villages in South Africa. So I guess the military gave them a fitting going-away present, killing thousands of people.
All thus plus the "Pray for our Emperor" leaflets the military gets, and we're turning into 30s Japan.

[saigon68]

18. The Mercenaries were waiting for a Rose Petal Parade

[jukes]

19. wasn't i

changed the subject, was it?

"serious" discussions should be based on impact; on compassion for the victims rather than excuses and obfuscation. metaphor is often used in "serious" discussions; it does not reduce the honesty of such discussion, unless it is the obvious jingoistic, faith-based rhetoric used by the administration and it's tawdry little apologists. yes, the american victims that suffered harm, despite how well armed, trained, or paid for being in harm's way are tragic; it's a tragedy as well as a travesty that they are there to begin with. that pales in comparison to the innocent civilian population; unarmed, non-combatant men, women, and children, that was slaughtered in that city.

if we weren't there then the tragic devastation that we as a nation are responsible for, wd not have occurred.

that said, the "reality-based community" you seem to claim title to, often laughs while the helpless cry.


you really should go pat yourselves on the back for your cleverness elsewhere. to make light of the situation in this sub-thread, or the original post, is distastefully ignorant. apologists seldom have faced the carnage you so lightly dismiss. they merely profit by it. they are heartless, cowardly merchants, short-changing the world and feeling superior in their safe little havens. you belong elsewhere. perhaps in fallujah!

[WhiteTara]

20. I don't know about them, but Jack Abramoff

is going to prison. He lobbied to keep them in power. He probably helped them get citizenship in the U.S.

[Vidar]

3. A major source of Blackwater et al., no doubt.

[UpInArms]

4. Abramoff was involved in SA's apartheid

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/04/true_colors_abr.html

True Colors: Abramoff and Apartheid

Jack Abramoff "was a willing asset of the apartheid government" and may have learned some of his lobbying techniques from South African intelligence members working against Nelson Mandela and the antiapartheid movement. I wonder if any of the members of congress accepting money from Abramoff or his clients were aware of this relationship:

The Making of a Lobbyist, by Ken Silverstein, Harpers: Before Jack Abramoff was sentenced on charges of fraud ..., his friends sent character references to the court to show the kindler, gentler Abramoff—a man who would get you a drink of water or help you look for a lost hamster, a basically good person who lost his moral compass after getting caught up in the high-stakes world of Washington lobbying. But Abramoff's career in apartheid South Africa shows that he never had a moral compass at all.


David Margolick's recent Vanity Fair profile of Jack Abramoff omits a key part of the story, whitewashing Abramoff's past service on behalf of South Africa's apartheid government. Margolick wrote that in the mid-1980s Abramoff went into “show business” and produced Red Scorpion, “an anti-Communist parable filmed in Namibia” ... But saying that Abramoff was in show business is like describing Jeffrey Dahmer as a man who “dabbled in nouvelle cuisine.” Red Scorpion was not simply a sloppy piece of propaganda; it was a project of South African military intelligence, and Abramoff, according to my sources, was a willing asset of the apartheid government.

It started when Abramoff, as Chairman of the College Republican National Committee, visited South Africa in 1983. There, he came to know Russel Crystal, a South African intelligence asset who headed a government-funded student front group. Presumably, it was Crystal who in 1986 brought Abramoff in as the first chairman of the International Freedom Foundation (IFF)—a seemingly independent right-wing group headquartered in Washington, D.C., that was effectively run from Johannesburg and given the code name “Pacman” by South African intelligence. I spoke to a source who was intimately familiar with the IFF... “The South Africans needed front men,” he told me. “Abramoff was identified early on as an ambitious, up-and-coming American conservative who could be useful.”

The IFF/Pacman advocated for the contras in Nicaragua and the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. But its primary interest was South Africa, and much of the group's energy was spent attempting to discredit Nelson Mandela and the global antiapartheid movement, ... and building support for Jonas Savimbi, the loopy but murderous Angolan faction commander backed by Washington and Pretoria...

...more...

[Judi Lynn]

8. It's tremendous seeing this information making its way out.

So Abramoff, like Cheney, was a Mandela hater.

Right-wingers are so good at hatred and death. Their corruption is only slightly destructive, compared to the absolute evil of their murderous hatred.

Just some more scum mucking around in countries they should have never bothered, exploiting and harming people who are none of their business. Typical Republican aspiration to greatness: butting into things that don't concern them, spreading unbearable grief and suffering.

I appreciate the information you posted. Thank you.

[teknomanzer]

10. Birds of a feather flock together. n/t

[UpInArms]

11. in the DU Research Forum, there is an Abramoff research thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_oet&address=358x597

about 3/4ths of the way down, you will find lots about Abramoff's connection with apartheid in South Africa - a company called IFF

The International Freedom Foundation (IFF)

The article is a limited hangout that doesn't mention the South African Institute of International Affairs, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, or the Council on Foreign Relations. The article has a picture of Secretary of State George Shultz shaking hands with Oliver Tambo, the late exiled leader of ANC, at the State Department in 1987. The article mentions that people like Henry Kissinger were invited to International Freedom Foundation seminars to deliver keynote speeches. Among those in attendance was former CIA director William Colby. Shultz, Kissinger and Colby were members of the Council on Foreign Relations. The article talks about Americans who were on the board of Directors of the IFF, and who worked for the IFF in South Africa. Nearly every man mentioned was a United States Intelligence agent at one time or another. Do former United States intelligence agents, continue working as agents even after they become elected government officials, or are appointed to the US Department of State?

A list of some of the people mentioned in the story with locations and dates of intelligence service follows:

SHULTZ GEORGE P (Council on Foreign Relations Member) Panama 1984, Grenada 1984, Libya 1986

KISSINGER, HENRY A (Council on Foreign Relations member ) South Africa 1969-1977, Philippines 1972, Indonesia 1975, Angola 1976, Britain 1976, Chile 1976,China 1989-1997

<snip>

If the International Freedom Foundation is a front for Intelligence organizations do their publications contain information telling intelligence agents what to do?

Why didn't Newsday connect the International Freedom Foundation to the Council on Foreign Relations? Did the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigate the Council on Foreign Relations/Royal Institute of International Affairs/South African Institute of International Affairs role in creating the racial tension, hatred and genocide in South Africa? If they did, what were their findings? If they did not, don't you think it is about time they did? The Newsday article follows:

<snip>

The International Freedom Foundation, founded in 1986 seemingly as a conservative think tank, was in fact part of an elaborate intelligence gathering operation, and was designed to be against apartheid's an instrument for "political warfare" against apartheid's foes, according to former senior South African spy Craig Williamson. The South Africans spent up to $1.5 million a year through 1992 to underwrite "Operation Babushka," as the IFF project was known.

...more...

and lots more.

Thanks for posting this Judi Lynn - people just don't understand how deeply the hate runs through the GOPpiggies.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Thanks for sharing that IFF link. There's so much to learn so quickly

It's almost painful learning about this group, who's connected, what they've been doing. Good grief.

The more people who know about this crap, the better it's going to be. Ripping away their cover is completely necessary. Monsters.

[Blue_Tires]

21. k+r

like saigon68, i have been continually disgusted by the use of taxpayer-supported merc in Iraq and elsewhere in the world

[saigon68]

22. Kick back to you