Before long, Lumumba’s enemies closed in: on 5 September, Kasavubu illegally dismissed Lumumba as prime minister, citing his decision to involve the Soviets in Katanga. Gizenga, too, was dismissed. When Lumumba was later arrested, Andrew Djin, Nkrumah’s envoy to the DRC, intervened to secure his release but the damage was already done. On 14 September, Mobutu announced that the army had seized power and suspended civilian rule; Kasavubu hurriedly signed a decree to legalise Mobutu’s military dictatorship. The Soviet and Czech embassies were closed and their diplomats expelled. Susan served in this capacity for the release of the government documents relating to the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 and its impact on the Commonwealth. A photograph from January 1975, reprinted in Telepneva’s book, shows Neto, Roberto and Savimbi at the signing of the Alvor Agreement, which set the terms for a transitional government in Angola: an arrangement that split power equally between the three liberation movements. Any hope of peace was shortlived. In a closed session of the Soviet Solidarity Committee in June 1975, Petr Manchkha, another second generation mezhdunarodnik and head of the Africa section of the International Department, argued (correctly) that the MPLA was caught up in a ‘serious international imperialist conspiracy’ involving the US, South Africa and Zaire. On 14 October, South Africa launched a full-scale armoured invasion from South-West Africa (now Namibia). In contrast, leaders like Guinea’s Sékou Touré were considered enemies. Arguing for a referendum rejecting continued dependency from France, he declared in 1958:

It is difficult to know how great an impact the CIA truly had on the Congolese civil war, as it is difficult to know whether its plot to assassinate Lumumba ultimately had any success. According to the Congressional Church Committee, which began to investigate CIA malfeasance in the 1970s, the CIA did not kill him. But Williams distrusts the committee's findings. She focuses a full chapter on justifying her belief that American intelligence had a clandestine hand in Patrice Lumumba's death. Although she cannot prove this point — her argument hinges, ultimately, on a CIA asset's gas-reimbursement paperwork, a finding too small to be conclusive — she effectively calls the Church Committee's findings into question. Though at first I didn't like the sort of scattergun approach.. I grew to appreciate it as it almost felt like the author was making sure I was paying attention. As a child of parents born in the middle of all that was going on I found myself tracing the many dates to where my family was, or what my parents must of been doing at whatever age they were, etc. which I enjoyed. I enjoy history and enjoyed learning more about the details of what was happening.. maybe my personal infatuation with understanding more about my home country led it but I was ready to learn more. The appreciation I have for Nkrumah and those who did what they could for the democratically elected leaders of the DRC has grown. There are always times you learn about people in high or low spaces that play a great part.. passionately defending the truth no matter what the consequence to be is admirable. There was a lot of stabbing last week. A lot of nonwhites are stabbing Whites, with intent to kill....

Digital Yearly

A deeply distressing history of CIA involvement in plots to eliminate certain regimes in Africa, particularly in the Congo and Ghana, just as the countries shook off European colonial rule in the mid-20th century. The book also jumps time quite often and would benefit from date ranges at the heading. Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash at at least three different points in the book. This book has one of the most misleading titles of all time. It seems like it’s going to be a sweeping geopolitical history of post WW2 Africa in relation to the Breton-Woods institutions, US state department, and CIA. Something along the lines of William Blum’s Killing Hope, but with a somewhat narrower focus. Malice then goes on to suggest that Dahl pestered wife Patricia Neal for sex when she was partially paralyzed after suffering a series of strokes and a three-week coma. What he leaves out is that Roald enabled a near-100% recovery by forcing Pat through a rigorous physical therapy protocol at a military base. He also resurrected Pat’s career, getting her roles in films and TV commercials. (Ayn Rand sighting here! Pat’s role in the film of The Fountainhead gives us another opportunity to see the AR bobble-head bounce up again.) Honestly I stumbled into the book. I was in search of a book that talked about post colonial independence of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and more specifically the hand that external groups and governments that had a hand in (my opinion) derailing the country... that was my hope. I anticipated for a book so dense to talk about more than the few countries it did, but I wasn't too disappointed with what I did read/listen to.

A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet. Hurst and Co in the UK; Jacana in South Africa; Columbia University Press in the USA (later Oxford University Press in the USA). That’s interesting. Several other people have already told me that napolean wasn’t very good. The... Prize Recipients". Windham Campbell Prizes 2023. Windham Campbell Prizes . Retrieved 21 April 2023. The U.S. went to some lengths to conceal this, maintaining that their uranium came from Canada and, in the Second World War, labelling barrels of uranium being exported from Congo as cobalt. It is plausible, Williams argues, that this practice of talking about cobalt as code for uranium continued after the war, which reveals discussions in the CIA and U.S. government about securing continuing access to the uranium mine in Congo’s Katanga province in the face of Congolese independence. Katanga’s secession from Congo after the election of Lumumba in 1960 is unlikely to have been a coincidence. Neocolonialism

Paper presented at ‘Sowing the Whirlwind’: Nuclear Politics and the Historical Record, a conference held by ICWS/SAS we had been dining, and with relish, with the original of that serpentine incarnation, the Devil himself, romping in our post-colonial Garden of Eden and gorging on the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge. give impetus to oppressed peoples all over the world. I think it will have worldwide implications and repercussions–not only for Asia and Africa, but also for America … At bottom, both segregation in America and colonialism in Africa are based on the same thing–white supremacy and contempt for life (p.13). Exposes the astonishing extent of the CIA’s activities across central and west Africa in the 1950s and early 60s.’ — The Observer