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Trump’s ‘sure to fail’ Congo Peace Deal all about Stealing Resources

8 Aug, 2025 15:33 By Mustafa Fetouri, at Home Africa via thefreeonline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-HiU

While the Doha agreement offers hope for DR Congo devastated by conflict, it is impossible the ‘ceasefire’ will hold.

FILE PHOTO. Lynsey Addario.. shared with thanks

Peace-mining: this US-mediated deal focuses on resources, not stability

On July 19 in Doha, under the watchful eyes of US and Qatari diplomats, representatives of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the March 23 Movement (M23) rebel group signed a ‘Declaration of Principles’ on a peace agreement.

The document, vague in substance but rich in optics, was immediately hailed by US President Donald Trump’s camp as a diplomatic victory. Trump’s Africa adviser, Massad Boulos, said the “the most important article of the agreement is the affirmation of state control in rebel-held territories.” That of course is still to be worked out in the coming weeks.

For Trump, the moment was one of those testaments to his deal-making prowess, echoing the grandstanding that accompanied his earlier, more theatrical moves in the Middle East.

But behind the celebratory headlines lies a far murkier reality. DR Congo remains a country engulfed in complex, overlapping conflicts, with M23 being only one of over 120 armed groups operating in the eastern provinces. The idea that a ceasefire agreement – mediated thousands of miles away in a Qatari hotel – could magically resolve the decades-long insecurity in this mineral-rich region is at best naive, and at worst, deliberately misleading.

‘If I could just ask your name and country’

Terror and torture in the ‘heart of darkness’, the world’s only private colony

The involvement of the US – particularly under transactional Trump – raises troubling questions. While any effort to mediate a ceasefire in one of the world’s most neglected war zones merits scrutiny, the Trump administration’s sudden engagement in the DR Congo appears driven less by concern for human suffering or regional stability and more by economic opportunity.

Trump as president has never visited Africa, including his first term. What’s more, his attitude toward the continent has been widely criticized as dismissive: In 2018 he referred to several African nations as “s**thole countries” during a White House meeting, drawing broad condemnation.

Last month, during a luncheon with the presidents of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal at the White House, Trump grew visibly impatient as the leaders spoke. When it was Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo’s turn, Trump interrupted with: “Maybe we’re gonna have to go a little bit quicker than this because we have a whole schedule,” and added, “if I could just ask your name and country, that would be great.”

The debt noose: Why does Africa remain trapped?… Stealing a continent: How the plunder of Africa has evolved

Though delivered in the guise of a schedule constraint, the remark was widely characterized as humiliating. It reduced these heads of state to nameless, interchangeable participants – highlighting a deeply transactional approach and a lack of respect for African leaders and their agendas.

Cobalt mines in Congo where kids dig for $2-a-day …

Mining peace

DR Congo is one of the most resource-rich countries on the planet. Its eastern region, the focal point of the latest ceasefire, holds vast reserves of cobalt, coltan, gold, and lithium – minerals essential to electric vehicles, smartphones, and advanced military systems.

As global demand for these resources soars, Washington has grown increasingly uneasy over China’s dominance in the DR Congo’s mining sector. Trump’s sudden push for the US involvement in Congolese ‘peacebuilding’ is better understood as a strategic bid to secure Western access to these critical minerals.

Just two weeks earlier, he hosted a separate signing ceremony at the White House for what was billed as a broader agreement between Rwanda – allegedly the main backer of M23 – and the DR Congo.

Israel’s Genocide is Big Business – How it Works- the Face of a Future we must Stop-

US corporations and military planners welcome the ‘legal maneuver space’ Israel has opened up for them to profit from warfare that slaughters and starves civilians

by Jonathan Cook at jc.substack shared Aug 5, 2025 via thefreeonline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-HhH Telegram t.me/thefreeonline/3785

‘Wounded child, no surviving family’

Israel’s genocide is big business – and the face of the future

The Financial Times revealed this month that a cabal of Israeli investors, one of the world’s top business consulting groups and a think-tank headed by former British prime minister Tony Blair had been secretly working on plans to exploit the ruins of Gaza as prime real estate.

The secret consortium appears to have been seeking practical ways to realise US President Donlad Trump’s “vision” of Gaza as the “Riviera of the Middle East”: transforming the small coastal enclave into a playground for the rich and an enticing investment opportunity, once it can be ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian population.

A/HRC/59/23: From economy of occupation to economy of genocide – Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (Advance edited version)

Meanwhile, the UK government has declared Palestine Action a terrorist organisation – the first time in British history that a direct-action campaign group has been banned under Britain’s already draconian terrorism legislation.

Notably, the government of Keir Starmer took the decision to proscribe Palestine Action after lobbying from Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons maker whose factories in the UK have been targeted by Palestine Action for disruption. Elbit supplies Israel with killer drones and other weapons central to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

These revelations came to light as the United Nation’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, published a report – titled “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” – exposing Big Business’ extensive involvement in, and profits from, Israel’s crimes in Gaza.

In an interview with US journalist Chris Hedges, Albanese, an expert in international law, concluded: “The genocide in Gaza has not stopped, because it is lucrative. It’s profitable for far too many.”

Albanese lists dozens of major western companies that are deeply invested in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.

This is not a new development, as she notes. These firms have exploited business opportunities associated with Israel’s violent occupation of the Palestinian people’s lands for years, and in some cases decades.

The switch from Israel’s occupation of Gaza to its current genocide hasn’t threatened profits; it has enhanced them. Or as Albanese puts it: “The profits have increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of genocide.”

The special rapporteur has been a growing thorn in the side of Israel and its western sponsors over the past 21 months of slaughter in Gaza..

Read Report here Advance edited version English:Word-Francesca Albanese

That explains why Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, announced soon after her report was issued that he was imposing sanctions on Albanese for her efforts to shed light on the crimes of Israeli and US officials.

Revealingly, he called her statements – rooted in international law – “economic warfare against the United States and Israel”. Albanese and the UN system of universal human rights that stands behind her, it seems, represent a threat to western profiteering.

Window on the future

Israel effectively serves as the world’s largest business incubator – though, in its case, not just by nurturing start-up companies.

Rather, it offers global corporations the chance to test and refine new weapons, machinery, technologies, data collection and automation processes in the occupied territories. These developments are associated with mass oppression, control, surveillance, incarceration, ethnic cleansing – and now genocide.

In a world of shrinking resources and growing climate chaos, such innovative technologies of subjugation are likely to have domestic, in addition to overseas, applications. Gaza is the corporate world’s laboratory, and a window into our own future.

In her 60-page report, Albanese writes that her research “reveals how the forever-occupation has become the ideal testing ground for arms manufacturers and Big Tech… while investors and private and public institutions profit freely”.

Her point was underscored by the Israeli arms firm Rafael, which issued a promotional video of its Spike FireFly drone that showed it locating, chasing and killing a Palestinian in what it called “urban warfare” in Gaza.

As the UN special rapporteur points out, quite aside from the issue of genocide in Gaza, western companies have been under a legal and moral obligation to sever ties with Israel’s system of occupation since last summer.

That was when the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, ruled Israel’s decades-old occupation was a criminal enterprise based on apartheid and forcible transfer – or what Albanese refers to as policies of “displacement and replacement”.

Instead, the corporate sector – and western governments – continue to deepen their involvement in Israel’s crimes.

It is not just arms manufacturers profiting from the genocidal levelling of Gaza and the occupations of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Big Tech, construction and materials firms, agribusiness, the tourism industry, the goods and services sector, and supply chains have also got in on the act.

And enabling it all is a finance sector – which includes banks, pension funds, universities, insurers and charities – keen to continue investing in this architecture of oppression.

Albanese describes the mosaic of companies partnering with Israel as “an eco-system sustaining this illegality”.

Help Noor and Amal survive the genocide in Gaza…. How it worked!|

Escaping scrutiny

For these corporations and their enablers, international law – the legal system Albanese and her fellow UN rapporteurs are there to uphold – serves as an impediment to the pursuit of profit.

Albanese notes that the business sector can escape scrutiny by shielding behind other actors.

Israel and its senior officials are on notice for committing genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

When she wrote to 48 companies to warn them that they were colluding in this criminality, they either responded that this was Israel’s responsibility, not theirs, or that it was for states, not international law, to regulate their business activities.

Russians Special Forces storm into center of Pokrovsk Fortress City- Donetsk ‘liberation’ April 2026?

Ukrainian Lines Shatter in Pokrovsk as Russian Special Force finally Smashes into Streets of the City, joining up with Infiltrators and Saboteurs – The final anti-nazi victory in Pokrovsk was on 8 Sept 1943 when 13K defenders /civilians died.– Pokrovsk could be liberated again by the anniversary! -Wiki

update 3/8/2025 by southfront.press/ wikipedia Pokrovsk via thefreeonline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-Hgs Telegram- t.me/thefreeonline/3757.

Russians cross road and break through to Pokrovsk

The thunder of Russian artillery echoes through the streets of Pokrovsk as the city teeters on the brink of collapse. Stormtroopers of the Russian Armed Forces, advancing with precision and overwhelming firepower, have infiltrated the urban center, shattering part of Ukrainian defenses and sending shockwaves through Kyiv’s crumbling frontlines.

After Pokrovsk.. The Race to complete ‘liberation of Donetsk’ – in April 2026?

If we calculate the rate of Russian conquest from Avdivka to Pokrovsk it could take a year or more to ‘liberate’ the rest of ethnic Russian Donetsk Oblast. However if we calculate including the acceleration of capture, the exhaustion of Ukrainian soldiers and the increase of Russian resources, etc, then Donetsk could be fully occupied in 6 months and reconstruction could begin. Along with already Luhansk, and a large part of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson occupied, that could be enough basis for a realistic compromise Peace Deal – in April 2026, earliest, excluding massive NATO reinforcements.

What was once another fortified Ukrainian fortress is now a battleground where Russian troops are advancing in a key district, while desperate Ukrainian commanders scramble to plug the widening gaps in their lines.

July 31st Russian breakthrough

Geolocation proven map: 48.27223 37.15417- Russian Pokrovsk breakthrough ‘not just a raid’. – simplicius76 3rd August 25… ‘It’s likely that the city will be bisected in some way, with eastern portions left to be captured first’.

Pokrovsk stands on the brink. With Russian forces infiltrating the city center, cutting supply lines, and encircling Ukrainian troops. The fall of this key fortress now appears inevitable, although normal Russian tactics are to slowly isolate and throttle resistance, avoiding mass casualties..

The broader implications are undeniable, the loss of Pokrovsk will pave the way to Mirnograd (Dimitrov) and further unravel Ukraine’s defensive efforts across Donbass. Victory in Donbass is a key necessity in Russia’s minimum demands for a ceasefire.

Houthis now attack any Israel-linked ship & blockade Haifa Port/ Tel Aviv Airport to protest Gaza Genocide

Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East after 9 yr war and famine by Saudis/US/UAE and now ongoing bombing by Israel/USA. In solidarity with Gaza ‘Palestine2’ hypersonic missiles are developed in underground bunkers..

On 28 July, 2025 23:52 main text by Home WorldNews via thefreeonline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-HfP Telegram t.me/thefreeonline/3712

Note. we use the term ‘Houthis’ to describe the massively popular Ansarallah Movement. SAVE GAZA KIDS.. – VIVA HOUTHI HEROES!

The Iranian-backed Houthi terrorist group in Yemen has released footage of their attacks against as well as the sinking of the Liberian-flagged and Greek-owned cargo vessel, M/V Eternity C, earlier today in the Southern Red Sea. Significant damage to the ship can be seen prior to… pic.twitter.com/yC8Erot8EU
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) July 9, 2025

The Houthis attack the cargo ship Magic Seas in the Red Sea, July 8, 2025. © Houthi Media Center

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have vowed to attack all commercial vessels connected to Israeli ports, regardless of their country of origin, despite blitz bombing by the US and Israel killing thousands of civilians.

The Houthis, who occupy the capital Sanaa and all Yemen except for the Aden area and Eastern desert, have been targeting ships in the Bab el Mandeb Strait, a vital maritime route linking the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Yemen erupts in protest as US strikes again target Houthi positions

The Houthis act in popular solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, having themselves suffered a nearly 10 year blockade, invasion, bombing and famine.

Military spokesman Ameen Hayyan announced the latest escalation in a televised address, describing it as a new phase of the group’s campaign.

Jihadists in suits and ties are still jihadists – Syria needs women-led Revolution-

The HTS government is of known jihadists consolidating their power with genocide of non Sunnis, building up a system of sex slavery and forced marriage, and must be stopped!

by riseup4rojava / Kongra Star on 25 July 25 via thefreeonlineat https://wp.me/pIJl9-HeH Telegram t.me/thefreeonline/3682

📖 NEW ANALYSIS: Syria now – jihadists in suits and ties are still jihadists – https://t.me/International_Rev/11063

🟡 Read our new analysis of the political situation in Syria.

🟡 Focuses on the rise of HTS to power and their efforts to keep it by building a fundamentalist Islamic state

🟡 Read to understand more about HTS, Ahmed al-Sharaa (Jolani), the genocide of Alewi people in Latakia, the massacre of Druze people in Sweida, and the war on women in Syria.

see also..Rojava Revolution and the dangers it is facing July 16, 2025 – Kongra Star

We have seen many great tricks in the Middle East and today in Syria we see another. State leaders and their national media have transformed men once seen as Islamist fascists into respectable politicians.

The US removed HTS from the terrorist list, took the $10 million bounty off al-Sharaa’s head and they became the “Syrian Transitional Government”. But make no mistake.

These are the men of al-Nusra and ISIS. Men who murdered hundreds of civilians, raped hundreds of women, assassinated women leaders like Hevrîn Xelef, and sold women as sex slaves. And they have not changed. This diplomatic face of jihadism reflects a change in tactics, but the ideology remains: to impose Islam with violence for power.

Hevrîn Xelef, Kurdish leader murdered by SNA jihadists

Background

In 2016, al-Nusra split from al-Qaeda. It was dissolved when it joined with other jihadist groups to form Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (“Organization for the Liberation of the Levant”).

HTS declared itself on 28 January 2017, with Ahmed al-Sharaa (also known as al-Jolani) as its emir and overall military commander. With the support of the Turkish-backed SNA (Syrian National Army) HTS took control of Idlib in 2018, a city in north-western Syria, between Aleppo and Latakia. Here they established their “Syrian Salvation Government” under Islamic law.

In Idlib, Turkey’s support allowed HTS to keep control and gain experience in state building and governance.

Attacks on women were a basis for this state building. They used both law and culture to erase them from public life and present house-bound care takers and mothers as the ideal woman.

Women must be fully covered and can only be in public with a male guardian. Many women attend university in Idlib but they can only study religion and domestic skills and take jobs in women-only environments like girls schools and women’s health.

Not all these restrictions are legal, but breaking any of them risks harassment, intimidation and arrest and openly protesting them is heavily punished.

With its strength from Idlib, HTS launched its offensive in November 2024 and overthrew the Assad regime. Videos and pictures from the beginning showed many HTS and SNA fighters carrying ISIS flags and wearing ISIS badges on their military uniform. When the Assad Regime fell, HTS suddenly started talking about a “Syria for all Syrians”. At the same time they created their new government.

Now

The project of this new government is clear in its leadership, constitution and actions. The proposed constitution declares Syria as an “Arab Republic”, with Islamic law as its legal system and Arabic as its official language. It also gives al-Sharaa dictatorial powers.

For example, only Jolani can appoint ministers and judges and there are no processes to challenge these decisions.

Humanitarian Aid from Hell: Extermination of Palestinians hyped as Help

Israel and America want to ‘benevolently’ put 2 million Gazans into a concentration camp and complete their evil Genocide with tacit complicity of State elites worldwide

by @tarikcyrilamar tarikcyrilamar. at substack.com via RT and thefreeonline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-Hd7 Telegram- t.me/thefreeonline/3616

The Gaza genocide is special. And not in one but two regards.

As has often been observed, this is the first genocide in history that is, in essence, livestreamed. No genocide before has been committed under the eyes of the world like this one. And second, the Gaza genocide is undermining and, in effect, devastating whole moral and legal orders – or at least longstanding claims to them – in an equally unprecedented way.

These two peculiarities are related: The only way the world as a whole could have tolerated the Gaza genocide for almost three years now is by stubbornly disregarding fundamental norms, both written and unwritten.

For instance, almost no state – with the exception of Yemen (under de facto control of the Ansar Allah movement or Houthis) – has even tried to comply with its binding and clear obligations under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, namely to “prevent and punish” the crime of genocide.

No one with the power – alone or with others – to do so, not in the Middle East, not beyond it, has come to save the Palestinian victims of the Gaza genocide in the only manner that would work: By stopping their Israeli murderers by massive force.

Yet the small but still disproportionately influential part of the world that calls itself the West has gone beyond merely failing to act. That’s because, whether the West is a civilization once shaped by Christianity or not, for a long time now, its true inner core has been hypocrisy.

And during the Gaza Genocide, the West’s compulsive need to rationalize even its most vicious actions into acts of virtue covered by ‘values’, has led to a new peak of absolute moral and intellectual perversion:

Precisely because the West has not only abandoned the Palestinian victims but is actively co-perpetrating this genocide together with Israel, its elites – in politics, culture, the media, the police, and judiciary – have made a sustained, obstinate effort to radically alter our sense of right and wrong, from specific legal norms down to our intuitive and widely shared understanding of limits never to be crossed.

Waging, for example, a so-called ‘war’ by killing or injuring – often maiming for life – over 50,000 children (as of May 2025)? A ‘war’ in which we receive one reliable testimony after another that many of these children are targeted deliberately, including by drone operators and snipers? A ‘war’ in which starvation, medical deprivation, and the promotion of epidemics have all been deployed equally deliberately? In the West, we are told to call this ‘self-defense’.

Indeed, we are asked – with great insistence, to say the least – to believe that this form of mass-murderous, infanticiding ‘self-defense’ is something to be proud of, even vicariously: The mayor of Berlin, Kai Wegner, for instance – notorious for his suppression of any signs of resistance to Israeli genocide – has just declared that city hall will keep flying the Israeli flag.

In the same depraved spirit, the establishments of the West hand out punishment – from vicious police beatings to crippling lawfare to international sanctions – not to the perpetrators and accomplices of the Gaza genocide, in Israel and elsewhere, but to those who resist it in solidarity with its Palestinian victims.

Protesters, journalists worth their salt, and even a UN special rapporteur are treated like criminals, even terrorists for actually standing up against the crime of genocide, as – just yesterday, it seems – we were all officially supposed to do. But ‘never again’ has been turned into ‘definitely again, and as long as the murderers want, since they are Israelis and our friends’.

It is in this context of a reversal of morality, law, and meaning so complete the overused term ‘Orwellian’ for once really applies that we can understand what is now happening to the concept of ‘humanitarian’ action.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica’s back-to-basics definition, a humanitarian is a “person who works to make other people’s lives better,” for instance, by trying to end world hunger. Since modern humanitarianism already has a history of two centuries, historians, such as Michael Barnett in his ‘Empire of Humanity’, have delivered more complex accounts.

Critics have long denounced humanitarianism’s limits and even flaws. For French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, it is what’s left when a more optimistic humanism decays: A sort of bleak emergency response, a sign that the world has gotten worse, again.

In particular, during the post-Cold War decades of American hubris – misnamed the ‘unipolar moment’ – humanitarianism often allied with Western imperialism. In the war of aggression against Iraq that started in 2003, for instance, humanitarian organizations became servants to the aggressors, invaders, and occupiers.