TECHNOIR

by John Lasker

  Both a mining company and coltan broker, Eagle Wings was one of a handful of US companies accused of using child labor in one of their mines in eastern DRC. Eagle Wings was also an alleged business partners with an “elite network” of Rwandan military officers, politicos and businessmen. Accusations of child labor have bankrupted Eagle Wings, said the CEO. Put simply, after finding out his company had been charged by the UN, his customers abandoned him.

  But even if the mining companies have taken the brunt of the blame from RAID and the UN, some experts say there’s a whole other dynamic when it comes to who is to blame for the the PlayStation War.

  When the war started gaining serious traction in 1998, the race for every adult in the West to have a cell phone was well past the starting line. A computer in every household was also becoming a reality. And by the end of 2000, millions of Americans were still waiting for a PlayStation 2, a second-generation video game console, which SONY says was delayed due to manufacturing issues.

  To fulfill the mass personal-tech desire of hundreds of millions of Western consumers, SONY and other manufacturers needed miniature electric capacitors. Capacitors, of course, made with tantalum because of its ability to withstand extreme heat. So as multiple technological revolutions occurred in unison at the end of the 1990s, the worldwide demand for tantalum began to boil, causing its price to rocket. From the beginning of 1999 to the beginning of 2001, roughly two years, the price of tantalum on the international market went from US $49.00 a pound to $275.00 a pound. Again, at the end of 2000, millions were still waiting to purchase a PlayStation 2, which was delayed at the factory, said SONY, but they never admitted as to why. At the same time, the price of tantalum was skyrocketing because it was so hard to get.

  Experts keeping an eye on Rwanda reported, to no surprise, that the Rwandan army in 2000 and 2001 made at least $250 million by selling eastern Congolese coltan with the help of mining Western companies and metal brokers. In 2000, Rwanda as a nation produces 83 tons from its own mines, but finds a way to export a total of 603 tons, a figure reported by a prominent Rwandan bank.

  Several years later, American-based Kemet, the world’s largest maker of tantalum capacitors during the height of the PlayStation War, would swear off coltan from the Congo because of human rights violations and make their tantalum suppliers certify origins.

  “But it may be a case of too little, too late,” stated the UN Panel of Experts. “Much of the coltan illegally stolen from Congo is already in laptops, cell phones and electronics all over the world.”

  David Barouski, a researcher from the University of Wisconsin, says it is certain coltan from this conflict is also in SONY video game consoles across the world. “SONY’s PlayStation 2 launch (spring of 2000 to the end of that year) was a big part of the huge increase in demand for coltan that began in early 1999,” said Barouski, who has witnessed the chaos of eastern Congo firsthand. “Low supply with heavy demand means high prices for coltan and it byproducts.”

  He adds, “SONY and other companies like it, have the benefit of plausible deniability because the coltan ore trades hands so many times from when it is mined to when SONY gets a processed product, that a company often has no idea where the original coltan ore came from, and frankly don’t care to know. But statistical analysis shows it to be nearly inconceivable that SONY made all its PlayStation 2’s without using Congolese coltan.”

  SONY, on the other hand, does not say much about their tantalum use and whether they needed conflict coltan from the Congo to satisfy consumer demand for the PlayStation 2 in 2000. However, it still uses tantalum in its video game console parts, said Satoshi Fukuoka, a SONY spokesperson from Japan, to me in an e-mail. He added they are satisfied with responses from suppliers the tantalum they use is not “illegally mined Congo coltan”. This also goes for past purchases of tantalum parts as well, he said, but he did not specify how far back they began demanding parts without Congo coltan. Fukuoka said the PlayStation 2, PSP and PlayStation 3, “are manufactured mostly from independent parts and components that manufacturers procured externally.”

  He added, “The material suppliers source their original material from multiple mines in various countries. It is therefore hard for us to know what the supply chain mix is. I am happy to state to you that to the best of our knowledge, SONY is not using the material about which you have expressed concern.”

  Nonetheless, when many think of an enormous US military disaster on the continent of Africa, tragic images of crashing Black Hawk helicopters and mutilated bodies in the streets of Mogadishu come to mind. But there is a group of independent journalists and researchers who say the U.S. military was also involved in the PlayStation War – a war that went largely unnoticed by the American mainstream media, and thus a majority of Americans.

  Those familiar with Rwandan and Ugandan invasions of the DRC say these so-called invasions turned into a free-for-all. A natural resource grab that arguably benefited the West the most. Yet did the US government secretly initiate the PlayStation War so resources such as coltan would flow out of the DRC at a dirt cheap price? It’s a theory millions of Congolese embrace.

  During his eight years, President Bush was pictured glad-handing Rwandan’s long-time president Paul Kagame several times. Kagame took power after the 1994 genocide. He came back to Rwanda, his homeland, to apparently save his ethnic tribe, the Tutsis, over the Hutus, who are alleged to have initiated the 1994 genocide. Oddly enough, for sometime before his triumphant return, Kagame was on American soil, working his way through a US military training program at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

  According to investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, helping the Rwandan military and its militias to invade the DRC at the onset of the PlayStation War in the mid-1990s were U.S. Special Forces, intelligence operatives, and Private Military Companies. The stated reason at the time for the invasion made by Kagame and the Rwandan government was to counter the remnants of the Hutus ethnicity, who had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Tutsi’s in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, and then escaped into eastern DRC. But independent journalists such as Madsen suggest the “Hutu problem” was actually a ruse for the resource grab. Madsen is the author of Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999; he’s also a former contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA).

  In 2001, Madsen testified before the U.S. Congress. His testimony shows how the U.S. Military was knee-deep in Africa’s PlayStation War.

  Madsen testified that in 1996, a Pentagon official told a House of Representatives subcommittee the U.S. military was helping train the Rwandan military, which invaded the DRC not long after. In 1998, the Pentagon was forced to admit that a twenty-man U.S. Army Rwanda Interagency Assessment Team (RIAT) was working in Rwanda before a second invasion of the eastern Congo, testified Madsen. Madsen stated the US National Security Agency at this time maintained a communications intercept station just miles from the eastern Congo border that intercepted military and government communications from the DRC and other opposing forces during the first Rwandan invasion.

  What could they have been listening to when it came to the eastern Congo? Could it be the troop movements of the DRC and the rebel groups that opposed the invading forces of Rwanda and also Uganda, considered another US proxy during those days?

  What was unquestionable during the Rwandan invasions of eastern Congo were the bloody murders of civilians, and in this particular conflict, men of the cloth. Citing French intelligence and Roman Catholic priests who were in the eastern Congo during the invasion, Madsen told Congress, Rwandan troops were probably to blame for the deaths of hundreds of Hutus and a small number of Hutu Catholic priests. It gets stranger: Madsen wrote in his book that DRC forces claimed to have discovered the bodies of two US Special Forces. The rebels said they were Americans; African-Americans to be exact.

  In addition to Madsen’s findings, investigators from Human Rights Watch discovered in 1995 the Pentagon had hired the Washington-based Ronco Consulting Cor
poration to work in Rwanda. Ronco, a company known for clearing land mines from war zones, was funneling military equipment, explosives and armored vehicles to the Rwandan military, even though Rwanda was under a U.N.-imposed arms embargo at the time.

  During the first Rwandan invasion of the DRC in the mid-1990s, besides going after Hutus guilty of taking part in the Rwandan genocide, Madsen said Rwanda government, run by Tutsis, wished to overthrow the DRC leader at the time, President Mobuto, because he supported the Hutus. Yet Madsen added Mobuto also did not support Western mining companies wanting to make millions off his country’s natural resources.

  “It is my observation that America’s early support for [Rwanda], had less to do with getting rid of the Mobutu regime than it did in opening up Congo’s vast mineral riches to North American-based mining companies,” Madsen testified.

  To this day, millions of Congolese blame the US for the PlayStation War. A belief mostly based on what is an obvious Western obsession with Congo minerals and the easy fortunes they make. But when it comes to America alone, Congo minerals historically were far more important than piles and piles of cash. Indeed, Congo minerals helped save Democracy from 20th century Fascism. During the Manhattan Project, the US military acquired uranium from a mine in the Congolese town of Skinkolobwe to build the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

  Keep in mind, Rwanda claimed their strategic maneuvers in eastern Congo over the last 15 years were so to pursue the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide, the Hutus. But according to Professor Yaa-Lengi, who runs the New York-based Coalition for Peace, Justice and Democracy in the Congo, millions of Congolese say Rwanda is not telling the truth. Many Congolese also believe Rwanda is a US proxy, says Yaa-Lengi, and that Kagame and his Tutsis, under influence of the Clinton administration, actually ignited the 1994 Rwandan genocide as part of plan to help the West loot the eastern Congo of its minerals.

  Echoing Yaa-Lengi are the Representatives of Chieftainships and Traditional Authority of the Congo, who have been circulating a web document that states “President William J. Clinton,” backed by multinational corporations, planned “this horrible war [the PlayStation War]” in order to steal Congo’s resources, a plan “supported by successive American administrations.”

  “Bill Clinton was behind the 1994 genocide,” Professor Yaa-Lengi said to me in 2010. “Millions of Congolese believe this, yes.”

  This is a mystery that may never be solved. But like the war in the eastern Congo itself, the price of coltan has since cooled and is being priced at levels pre-1999, as the demand for the “black gold” declines. Nevertheless, experts such as Barouski say another Congo resource will take its place as the next “hot commodity,” and the emergence of another African resource war will not be far behind.

  Here’s a brief time line of the PlayStation War

  1994: Genocide engulfs the central Africa nation of Rwanda as Hutu extremists, who represent the majority, try to eliminate the Tutsis minority. At the same time, participating in a US military training program at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Paul Kagame returns to his home country of Rwanda to lead the Tutsis, his ethnic tribe, over the Hutus. Kagame remains president of Rwanda to this day.

  1995: An investigator from Human Rights Watch discovers that Pentagon contractor Ronco Consulting Corporation, a company known for clearing land mines from war zones, is funneling military equipment, explosives and armored vehicles to the Rwandan military, even though Rwanda is under a UN-imposed arms embargo.

  1996: US troops are in Rwanda as its army and some proxy militias prepare to invade the eastern Congo to eliminate Hutu extremists alleged to have committed genocide in 1994. Officially, the Pentagon said the soldiers were there for “civilian affairs.” Later, in their own report to Congress, the Pentagon stated, besides basic military fundamentals, US military training included “psychological operations and tactical Special Forces exercises.” Rebel groups out of Uganda will also invade the eastern Congo this year.

  1998: Rwanda invades the eastern Congo a second time. Rwanda’s president Kagame, once again, claims they are after the “genocidaires” of 1994. Also in 1998, the Pentagon acknowledges that a twenty-man U.S. Army Rwanda Interagency Assessment Team (or RIAT) was working in Rwanda at the time of the second Rwandan invasion of the eastern Congo.

  1999: Rwandan troops and their rebel factions are now swarming throughout eastern DRC, a region dominated by the Virunga volcanic mountain chain. Hundreds of kilometers of the range are protected for the conservation of endangered species, like the mountain gorilla. But there is something within the mountains worth much more than eco-tourism. Coltan mines, and tons of stored coltan, are forcibly taken by the Rwandan military and their militias.

  2000: Rwanda produces 83 tons from its own mines, but finds a way to export a total of 603 tons.

  2003: Many of the warring parties, including the Rwandan government, sign the All Inclusive Agreement on the Transitional Government. The agreement marks a formal end to the combat and many troops do leave the country. Violence and human rights atrocities will continue in the eastern DRC, however, with no end in sight.

  2003: The UN releases its third and final report on the DRC, titled, “Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the DRC.” The report does not directly blame computer and mobile phone makers, but calls foreign traders “the engine of the conflict in the DRC.” Nevertheless, the UN says the high-tech industry’s demand for tantalum fueled the fever to mine coltan in the eastern Congo. The UN also says “elite networks” of Rwandans and foreigners intentionally kept the war going so to continue to exploit the DRC’s natural resources, which also finance the war.

  2006: At this stage of the conflict, journalists and other activists are reporting that the combatants in the eastern Congo are turning on the Congolese women. Thousands are raped, and as reported by the Independent, the barrels of firearms are placed in the vaginas of those raped, and the trigger pulled.

  2009: Laurent Nkunda, a rebel leader who has a stronghold in eastern Congo and who is suspected of stealing resources out of the DRC for years, is captured by the Rwanda government. It is an ironic event: Nkunda had long been suspected of being a Rwandan stooge; with Rwanda considered by many to be an African puppet of the US.

  2010: The U.S. continues to maintain strong ties with Rwanda. The U.S. State Department states US assistance to Rwanda “has increased four-fold over the past four years.”

  Chapter 7

  Space Bombers from Hell

  Obliterating Osama bin Laden in under two hours

  It is the year 2017, and a loaded United States bomber flying high above Beijing receives the order for a preemptive strike against China. But this is no ordinary bomber. It’s flying at an altitude of 80 miles, just outside the atmosphere. And this is no video game. It is part of an annual war game held at the Air Force’s Space Warfare Center at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado.

  “Every year, for the last several years, a preemptive first strike is made by the U.S., and the weapon used is the military space plane,” says Bruce Gagnon, director of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. It was Gagnon who first reported extensively on the Space Warfare Center’s war game.

  Gagnon continues to keep a close eye on the Pentagon’s space-weapons lust. Since 2001, billions of defense dollars have been pumped into an already hefty space-weapon research budget. Because the US Air Force predicts some of the most critical battlefields of the 21st century won’t even involve dirt.

  Space and cyberspace, says Air Force brass, is where wars of the future will be won or lost. And while “Battlesats” and space mines could become robotic soldiers of Earth’s lower orbits, it is the Space Planes, or Space Bombers, that could become the special forces of space. If completed, the US Space Bomber should have the dual capability of fighting within our atmosphere and in space. And unlike drones and UAV’s – quickly becoming the workhorses in Afghanistan and other War o
n Terror hotspots – a Space Bomber will be able to strike anywhere on the globe within 120 minutes or less. Drones, on other hand, have to be in-theatre to strike just as fast. The US Space Bomber will have this lightning-strike capability because it will already be in orbit, placed there months or even years beforehand. Thus it will continuously be circling the globe – waiting for orders.

  And all one has to do to see a Space Bomber in action, is look to the skies near Los Angeles. In 2006, for example, an unmanned prototype US Space Plane called the X-37 took flight from the Mojave Airport and Spaceport, roughly 50 miles north of Los Angeles. The unmanned X-37 was secured under the belly of an exotic corporate plane called the White Knight and was released from 37,000 feet. It was the space plane’s initial atmospheric “free flight” – and also its first crash. The X-37 was directed by remote control to land at Edwards Air Force Base near Los Angeles, but overshot the landing and busted up its nose.

  “At one time, it was going to replace the Space Shuttle,” says Gagnon of the X-37, which looks like a smaller version of the Space Shuttle. In fact, it is nearly quarter the size of the Space Shuttle, with a wingspan of 15 feet. The Shuttle replacement plan was scrapped, however. In 2004, NASA handed over the X-37 to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the Phantom Works at Boeing, a major aerospace defense contractor racing to develop space weapons with millions of taxpayer dollars.

  At Mojave, management bristled when I asked them whether military research is on the upswing within their hangers. There are no military offices at Mojave Airport and Spaceport, nor have they inked any contracts with the military, they said. But they admit that DARPA and other military personnel work onsite.

  “Mojave Spaceport is a civilian aerospace test center for non-vertical launch space vehicles,” said Spaceport general manager Stuart Witt. “On occasion, small numbers of military personnel, civil servants, and contractors operate from Mojave Airport. Several tenants perform on government contracts utilizing integrated teams. In the past, DARPA and other government agencies have operated projects from here.”