Post #2522050

On the repeated pattern of US-backed regime change in the struggle to control the earth's natural resources: "[He] feared that [Lumumba] was making a mistake when he made explicit his wish for the Congo to take control of its strategic resources. 'To be candid', he reflected with regret in 1966, six years after independence, Lumumba believed that 'the United States would not make him suffer the blow of Mossadegh if he persisted in wanting to sell raw materials to the countries of the East as well as to the West'. America, he added, was afraid of losing its exclusive monopoly to purchase strategic minerals—and would do anything to stop the loss. The reference to Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran's prime minister in 1951-1953, was intended by Kashamura to spotlight the danger to Lumumba. Mossadegh had been overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA and MI6 after he nationalised the Iranian oil industry previously owned by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now known as BP). Like Lumumba, Mossadegh had been democratically elected and was a champion of secular unity in his country. Decades later, in 2014, Jean Omasombo, a Congolese political scientist, commented on the importance of the Shinkolobwe mine at independence. 'The great powers', he said, 'were interested in the natural resources, the uranium in Congo. Neither the East nor the West wanted to give up the Congo' But only the West—in the shape of the United States—actually had something to give up." From White Malice by Susan Williams