Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #324 Biological Warfare, AIDS, Ebola & Apartheid

Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2
REALAUDIO

Record­ed less than 48 hours before the 9/11 attacks, this pro­gram eeri­ly fore­shad­ows the anthrax attacks that fol­lowed 9/11—to date those attacks are unsolved. This broad­cast offers some pos­si­ble clues as to why. Exam­in­ing more of the polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal con­text sur­round­ing the late Dr. Lar­ry Ford, this pro­gram pro­vides a vista onto the over­lap­ping worlds of clan­des­tine fas­cist pol­i­tics, the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

1. The pro­gram begins with review of Dr. Ford’s work for Project Coast—an apartheid-era South African assas­si­na­tion pro­gram using chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons. (It is impor­tant to remem­ber that Ford had worked with, among oth­er ele­ments, the CIA. This makes his asso­ci­a­tion with ultra-right antigov­ern­ment and ter­ror­ist groups all the more omi­nous. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of a “nation­al secu­ri­ty coverup” is not one to be too read­i­ly dis­card­ed. His links to ele­ments of the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty may be used to obscure some of his oth­er activ­i­ties from pub­lic view. It is also worth not­ing that oth­er coun­tries appeared to have uti­lized assets involved in Project Coast in a fash­ion not unlike the Amer­i­can incor­po­ra­tion of Third Reich sci­en­tists and research under Project Paper­clip.)

“He [Irvine Cal­i­for­nia police detec­tive Vic­tor Ray] steered the inves­ti­ga­tion to Ford’s back­yard, where men in Androm­e­da Strain suits would evac­u­ate a neigh­bor­hood and haul away an arse­nal of tox­ins, germs, plas­tic explo­sives, and guns. In the process they unearthed a trail that stretched all the way from the CIA to apartheid-era South Africa and Dr. Wouter Bas­son, the man who ran the country’s clan­des­tine bioweapons pro­gram.”

(“The Med­i­cine Man” by Edward Humes; Los Ange­les Mag­a­zine; 7/2001; p. 3.)

2. Ford had links to racist orga­ni­za­tions and mili­tia-move­ment ele­ments, and may have offered them chem­i­cal and/or bio­log­i­cal weapons. His “microen­cap­su­la­tion” sys­tem for a pro­phy­lac­tic vagi­nal sup­pos­i­to­ry he was devel­op­ing might have “dual-use” in a bio­log­i­cal war­fare appli­ca­tion.

“The ques­tion still plagu­ing fed­er­al, state, and local inves­ti­ga­tors is a sim­ple but urgent one: what was Ford plan­ning to do with his germs and bioweapons exper­tise? The dis­cov­ery of mili­tia-move­ment and racist lit­er­a­ture among Ford’s papers has raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty that he offered bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal weapons to ter­ror­ist groups. Con­cerns have also mount­ed over a patent­ed fea­ture of his Inner Con­fi­dence sup­pos­i­to­ry: the microen­cap­su­la­tion of ben­e­fi­cial bac­te­ria. It turns out this archi­tec­ture could dou­ble as an ide­al deliv­ery sys­tem for bioweapons, allow­ing oth­er­wise frag­ile dis­ease organ­isms to be seed­ed vir­tu­al­ly any­where. Ford, in essence, had patent­ed the pre­scrip­tion for a per­fect micro­scop­ic time bomb.”

(Idem.)

3. Ford had told the fam­i­ly of a busi­ness part­ner that his work on behalf of the US nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment had includ­ed work on the Ebo­la and Mar­burg virus­es. As will be seen lat­er in the pro­gram, there is some sug­ges­tion that Ebo­la may have been uti­lized by the apartheid-era regime as part of Project Coast.

“Ford told the Rileys and oth­ers his sub­se­quent work for the mil­i­tary and the CIA includ­ed research on bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal weapons, con­sult­ing on Iraqi capa­bil­i­ties dur­ing the Gulf War, and sneak­ing into epi­dem­ic hot zones in Africa to gath­er sam­ples of such killer organ­isms as the Ebo­la and Mar­burg virus­es.”

(Idem.)

4. Review­ing more infor­ma­tion from FTR#317, the dis­cus­sion high­lights Ford’s work on AIDS pre­ven­tion for the apartheid-era gov­ern­ment. (South Africa has one of the high­est rates of HIV infec­tion in the world and many observers feel that AIDS threat­ens the very future of the coun­try.) Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, research on AIDS by the Broeder­bond under­scored the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the dis­ease could become a vehi­cle for the restora­tion of white suprema­cy in South Africa

“But the AIDS pre­ven­tion pro­gram was for whites in the mil­i­tary, not blacks. A secret rightwing South African orga­ni­za­tion, the Broed­er-bond, [sic] con­duct­ed stud­ies around this same time that sug­gest­ed the AIDS epi­dem­ic could make whites the major­i­ty in the future.”

(Ibid.; p. 8.)

5. In light of the activ­i­ties con­duct­ed by Ford and his com­pa­tri­ots from Project Coast, the uti­liza­tion of AIDS as a weapon of exter­mi­na­tion is not a pos­si­bil­i­ty to be too read­i­ly cast aside.

“Since then, through the new government’s Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion, which was formed to probe the abus­es of apartheid, infor­ma­tion has sur­faced about a secret South African bioweapons pro­gram. Code-named Project Coast, it was run by anoth­er Ford friend and finan­cial bene­fac­tor, Dr. Wouter Bas­son; [South African deputy sur­geon gen­er­al Dr. Niel] Kno­bel had admin­is­tra­tive over­sight. Basson’s alleged ties to hun­dreds of poi­son­ings and assas­si­na­tions in South Africa and in the neigh­bor­ing coun­tries of Ango­la and Zim­bab­we earned him the nick­name ‘Dr. Death’ in the South African press. Doc­u­ments indi­cat­ing he had arranged an off­shore bank account for Ford were found in Ford’s papers after his death.”

(Idem.)

6. Ford’s involve­ment with Project Coast may have bor­dered on the geno­ci­dal.

“The com­mis­sion uncov­ered evi­dence that whole vil­lages, includ­ing an Angolan set­tle­ment of sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple sus­pect­ed of har­bor­ing rebels, may have been dec­i­mat­ed by Project Coast weapons. This find­ing par­al­lels infor­ma­tion Nilsson’s ex-girl­friend pro­vid­ed: She said Ford more than once boast­ed of wip­ing out an entire Angolan vil­lage dur­ing a civ­il war.”

(Idem.)

7. Next, the pro­gram sets forth more infor­ma­tion about the his­to­ry of Project Coast. Dr. Stamps–Zimbabwe’s Health Minister–had some point­ed obser­va­tions about out­breaks of Ebo­la dur­ing that nation’s war of inde­pen­dence and his belief that they result­ed from Project Coast.

“ ‘I have my sus­pi­cions about Ebo­la too. It devel­oped along the line of the Zam­bezi Riv­er, and I sus­pect that this may have been an exper­i­ment to see if a new virus could be estab­lished to infect peo­ple. We looked on the sero­log­i­cal evi­dence on strange cas­es, includ­ing a fif­teen-year-old child which occurred in 1980. Noth­ing real­ly made epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sense. Do I have evi­dence? Only cir­cum­stan­tial. In fact, the Rhode­sian secu­ri­ty forces were more expert than the Nazis at cov­er­ing up evi­dence.’”

(Plague Wars: The Ter­ri­fy­ing Real­i­ty of Bio­log­i­cal War­fare by Tom Man­gold and Jeff Gold­berg; Copy­right 1999 [HC] by Tom Man­gold and Jeff Gold­berg; St. Martin’s Press; ISBN 0–312-20353–5; p. 220.)

8a. Dr. Stamps’ obser­va­tions were sig­nif­i­cant and pre­scient, because the sub­se­quent inquiry into Project Coast revealed that the project had been active in neigh­bor­ing coun­tries that had fought against black major­i­ty rule at the same time as the apartheid regime.

“Stamps is speak­ing weeks before the remark­able evi­dence was pre­sent­ed by South African sol­diers and sci­en­tists at the 1998 Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Commission’s hear­ings on South Africa’s covert bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram. The Health Min­is­ter doesn’t know just how close to the truth he is.” (Idem.)

8b. Stamps bemoans the infec­tion of wild ani­mals with anthrax:

“Stamps begins to talk gloomi­ly about the revived epi­dem­ic of anthrax which now stalks his land. ‘Even the wild ani­mals have been infected—antelopes, ele­phants . . .’ The voice trails off, then picks up again. ‘We’ve asked the Amer­i­can Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol to come and help us, but they work only on a cost plus basis and my bud­get is small.’”

(Idem.)

“We talk about the anthrax. ‘If you can destroy a person’s cat­tle, you can destroy his liveli­hood,’ he says. ‘If you can kill a few peo­ple in the process, then you can sub­ju­gate a large num­ber of peo­ple. And the stuff lasts for­ev­er. That is the evil of bio­log­i­cal war­fare.’ Who brought it in? Stamps picks up a cake knife and points to the south. ‘Where do you think? South Africa, of course.’”

(Idem.)

9. Nico Palm—a for­mer engi­neer in the South African Defense Force—provided the authors of Plague Wars with a pri­ma­ry source. “Gert,” as he chose to be called, dis­cussed his use of bio­log­i­cal weapons dur­ing the bor­der wars of the 1980’s.

“Palm says he has a pri­ma­ry source who used bio­log­i­cal war­fare against the ene­mies of South Africa dur­ing the covert bor­der strug­gles of the 1980’s . . . Gert teas­es with some hints about his per­son­al back­ground, but not enough to make an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. ‘I was recruit­ed by [Wouter] Bas­son,’ he says casu­al­ly. ‘I had the same rank and sta­tus, I was a colonel.’”

(Ibid.; pp. 250–251.)

10. “Gert” dis­cussed the method­ol­o­gy of covert infec­tion uti­lized by Project Coast and some of the infec­tious agents used.

“The bac­te­ria and virus­es, he says, were deliv­ered in con­tain­ers and used in north­ern Namib­ia. Bac­te­ria were placed into a water source ‘wher­ev­er you iden­ti­fy one, or wher­ev­er you iden­ti­fy one des­tined for human con­sump­tion’.”

(Ibid.; p. 251.)

“ ‘When Hep. [Hepati­tis] A was used, we had to make sure that the oper­a­tors had a gam­ma glob­u­lin injec­tion first. Cholera was pret­ty wide­ly used also. I used it. I per­son­al­ly was involved in the East­ern Trans­vaal against FRELIMO in Mozam­bique. We placed the cholera upstream . . . we looked for areas, and you don’t have to be a rock­et sci­en­tist to work this out, where they didn’t fil­ter the water or don’t clean it—places where there was no chlo­ri­na­tion, so you drop it in and prod it.’”

(Ibid.; pp. 251–252.)

11. Accord­ing to “Gert,” the actu­al “homme-de-main” who was select­ed to do the dirty work, was usu­al­ly a civil­ian who was viewed as “dis­pens­able.”

“Who did this? Sol­diers? ‘No, no, no, no. Nev­er, nev­er did it hap­pen by ordi­nary sol­diers. You can’t blame any of the nor­mal forces for that. Although some­times some of our own sol­diers did get infect­ed by the cholera that we put in the water.’”

(Ibid.; p. 252.)

“ ‘This is what I’m say­ing, usu­al­ly the guy who did it, who placed it, was dispensable—he would have been very well select­ed, he’s some­one you can com­pro­mise, he’s either on drugs, or he drinks too much, or he’s got his hand in the cook­ie jar. That was all done here in Pre­to­ria.’ Who did the selec­tion? Bas­son him­self? ‘He select­ed the guy with the crim­i­nal back­ground . . . It was a crim­i­nal oper­a­tion. The guy would wear civil­ian clothes.’”

(Idem.)

12. Cor­rob­o­rat­ing some of Dr. Stamps’ sus­pi­cions con­cern­ing Ebo­la, “Gert” dis­cussed the use of that virus and the relat­ed Mar­burg virus in Project Coast. “Gert” also implies that US sci­en­tists from Ft. Det­rick (Dr. Ford?) were involved with a Zairi­an out­break.

“ ‘Look, I know what one of the very, very, very secret spe­cial­ized units had. We had to test it. And that was viral cap­sules that were specif­i­cal­ly relat­ed to Con­go fever and the hem­or­rhag­ic fevers.’ Ebo­la? ‘Yes.’ So Gert is begin­ning to cor­rob­o­rate Dr. Stamp’s sus­pi­cions in Harare that Ebo­la and Mar­burg, although indige­nous, were also arti­fi­cial­ly seed­ed into South­ern Africa. Bas­son, says Gert, was involved in all this. (when the last ter­ri­ble Ebo­la out­break occurred in Kik­wit, Zaire, as late as 1995, Gert claims that Bas­son was there, unof­fi­cial­ly. Twen­ty years ear­li­er, when the vil­lage of Yam­buku in north­ern Zaire wit­nessed one of the first major Ebo­la out­breaks, two South African sci­en­tists were there, alleged­ly work­ing hand in glove with US mil­i­tary per­son­nel from Fort Det­rick.)”

(Ibid.; p. 253.)

13. As “Gert” made clear, these virus­es were for offen­sive use by South Africa.

“Slow­ly, patient­ly, Gert con­fess­es that these ter­ri­ble virus­es were ‘researched’ for offen­sive use by South Africa. Next, he talks ellip­ti­cal­ly about ‘tak­ing out’ cer­tain ene­my units, even though these actions had no mil­i­tary val­ue. It was done in order to find the one sol­dier who, accord­ing to mil­i­tary intel­li­gence, had con­tract­ed an hem­or­rhag­ic fever. These sick peo­ple would then be evac­u­at­ed from the bor­der areas to South Africa, ‘to see what the effect was, obvi­ous­ly.’. You want­ed to see what the effect because you had sown the dis­ease? ‘For sure . . . I can tell you that I know of this thing because I did it myself. I did the evac­u­a­tions. It was up in East­ern Ango­la, we’re talk­ing mid-eight­ies.’”

(Idem.)

14. Adding sin­is­ter depth to the back­ground of the AIDS research that Lar­ry Ford engaged in, “Gert” dis­cuss­es the delib­er­ate infec­tion of human tar­gets with HIV.

“Gert lifts anoth­er veil. ‘There was some HIV tam­per­ing,’ he says. Mean­ing? ‘I mean all you have to do is get one covert guy, he’s HIV pos­i­tive, he’s of the area. You get him to infil­trate the whole town and screw the whole lot . . . get him out and shoot him.’ Was that real­ly done? ‘If I tell you, it was obvi­ous­ly done. Look, I was a wild guy. At one stage, I worked with the police, I worked with nation­al intel­li­gence, I worked with mil­i­tary intel­li­gence, I worked with Sev­enth Med, I worked with every­body. I was nev­er iden­ti­fied, because only a very few peo­ple knew where I was posi­tioned.’ Was Bas­son your boss? ‘No, it was high­er up, both mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal. [sic]’”

(Idem.)

15. As set forth in FTR#317, Dr. Ford was (accord­ing to an Air Force Acad­e­my report) part of an under­ground, extragov­ern­men­tal net­work that aimed at con­tin­u­ing the work of Project Coast and the goals of the apartheid regime.

“The Air Force report quotes tes­ti­mo­ny from a Swiss intel­li­gence agent who laun­dered mon­ey for Bas­son and who describes a world­wide con­spir­a­cy involv­ing unnamed Amer­i­cans. ‘The death of Dr. Ford and rev­e­la­tions of his South African involve­ment,’ the report states, ‘[rais­es] the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a right-wing inter­na­tion­al net­work, [still] unit­ed by a vision of South Africa once again ruled by whites.’”

(“The Med­i­cine Man;” Los Ange­les Mag­a­zine; 7/2001; pp. 8–9.)

The pos­si­bil­i­ty that this under­ground orga­ni­za­tion might unleash its bio­log­i­cal ter­ror on the Unit­ed States was fore­shad­owed by some of the state­ments made by Ford and his asso­ciates.

“They say he [South African trade attaché Gideon Bouw­er] raved about the abil­i­ty to keep whites in pow­er through bio­log­i­cal war­fare, and he hint­ed at being part of a sep­a­rate agenda—some sort of extragov­ern­men­tal con­spir­a­cy, like the one described in the Air Force report, that had plans to unleash bio­log­i­cal agents world­wide on South Africa’s ene­mies if the need should ever arise. ‘Just be ready,’ Fitz­patrick remem­bers Bouw­er warn­ing him cryp­ti­cal­ly, then ask­ing, ‘How fast could get your daugh­ter out of the coun­try if you had to?’ ‘I have to be hon­est,’ Fitz­patrick says. ‘Gideon could be a great guy. But there was some­thing dan­ger­ous about him. And when he start­ed talk­ing about that mas­ter plan, about what a great ser­vice Ford had done for his coun­try, and about get­ting out of the coun­try, it gave me chills.”

(Ibid.; p .9.)

16. Ford’s alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion in the extragov­ern­men­tal and appar­ent­ly fas­cist under­ground milieu assumes added sig­nif­i­cance when eval­u­at­ed against the post-apartheid “Third Force.” The “Third Force” was a pow­er­ful, dead­ly and (by those famil­iar with it) respect­ful­ly feared under­ground exten­sion of the apartheid/Broederbond pow­er axis. (As will be seen lat­er on in this pro­gram descrip­tion, Mandela’s fear that Project Coast and the “Third Force” might be con­nect­ed was not with­out foun­da­tion.)

“In the end it was British rep­re­sen­ta­tives who decid­ed to approach Pres­i­dent Man­dela, with a min­i­mum of fan­fare, to advise him that he was inher­it­ing an ugly bio­log­i­cal assas­si­na­tion pro­gram from the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions. Mandela’s first reac­tion was: ‘Oh my God!’ He was ini­tial­ly ter­ri­fied that the South African ‘Third Force’ ele­ments, includ­ing such orga­ni­za­tions as Eugene Terre’ Blanche’s ultra right-wing and fanat­i­cal AWB, might lay their hands on it.”

(Plague Wars; pp. 272–273.)

17. The “Third Force” was not a periph­er­al orga­ni­za­tion.

“The most deter­mined of these whites came to be known as ‘The Third Force’. They com­prised not the mad neo-Nazi right, but revan­chist politi­cians and hard men in the mil­i­tary, and the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and civil­ian intel­li­gence agen­cies, and the myr­i­ad covert action groups involved in fight­ing clean or dirty, inter­nal­ly or exter­nal­ly, to main­tain white suprema­cy.”

(Ibid.; p. 266.)

18. The afore­men­tioned Nico Palm described this post-apartheid under­ground orga­ni­za­tion in more detail, refer­ring to it as “Die Organ­isas­ie” and “the Spi­der Net­work.” With the links between the Third Reich and the Broeder­bond and with the vig­or­ous post­war pres­ence of Third Reich émi­gré ele­ments in the Third Reich, it seems prob­a­ble that “Die Organ­isas­ie” retains con­nec­tions to the Under­ground Reich.

“Palm spoke enig­mat­i­cal­ly of ‘Die Organ­isas­ie,’ a pulp fic­tion nom de guerre (which he calls, even more melo­dra­mat­i­cal­ly, the ‘Spi­der Net­work’). It is a group of white South Africans who wait patient­ly for he demise of the ANC gov­ern­ment and a return to the old days. They are not the mad pseu­do-Nazis of the far right, but some­thing far more orga­nized, well financed, and patient. Oth­er peo­ple know them as ‘The Third Force.’ We are to hear of them time and again from ex-sol­diers like Nico Palm all the way up to South Africa’s deputy defense min­is­ter, Ron­nie Kas­rils. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, files have also been opened by MI5 in poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant union of like-mind­ed South African right-wingers. All of them are ex-pats now liv­ing in the Unit­ed King­dom, who may sup­port the desta­bi­liza­tion of any black South African gov­ern­ment.”

(Ibid.; p. 250.)

19. Those famil­iar with “Die Organ­isas­ie” regard it with a mix­ture of fear and respect.

“It is with in this con­text that Gert now rais­es the ques­tion of Die Organ­isas­ie. He is clear­ly appre­hen­sive of its pow­er, and it is the only moment he appears tru­ly con­cerned. ‘These are peo­ple who take no pris­on­ers,’ mut­ters Nico [Palm]. Gert grim­ly nods his head.”

(Ibid.; p. 254.)

20. Dr. Lar­ry Ford’s asso­ciate and super­vi­sor in Project Coast—Wouter Basson—was no stranger to “Die Organ­isas­ie.”

“We recall there was, in the doc­u­ments found at his [Basson’s] home, a fax from Britain. It stat­ed that should Bas­son ever find him­self in trouble—real trouble—there was a safe house ready for him not half-an-hour from Lon­don. All he had to do was to make his own way to Heathrow. The sig­na­ture on the fax had been whit­ed out. In fact, the mes­sage had been sent by a for­mer Rhodesian/South African cit­i­zen who now lives and works in West Lon­don, who was once very close to Bas­son, and worked with him on the bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram. He is ex-Spe­cial Forces, and linked to Die Organ­isas­ie. Now he is a busi­ness­man, mar­ried with fam­i­ly, whose per­ma­nent res­i­dence is in Lon­don.”

(Ibid.; p. 281.)

21. The final ele­ment of dis­cus­sion con­cerns Basson’s appar­ent con­nec­tions to “Die Organ­isas­ie.” Juer­gen Jacomet—a for­mer Swiss intel­li­gence oper­a­tive who had worked with Basson—reflected on the motives for Basson’s involve­ment in an “Ecsta­sy” deal.

“So what was Bas­son up to that night? He says sim­ply that he was framed. Anoth­er ver­sion has that he did it pure­ly for per­son­al gain; there is a third expla­na­tion, that it was a mix­ture of per­son­al gain and help­ing to raise funds for the Third Force, of which Bas­son is con­sid­ered to be a mem­ber.”

(Ibid.; p. 277.)

“Basson’s pos­si­ble con­nec­tions with the Third Force were ellip­ti­cal­ly referred to by Juer­gen Jacomet, the for­mer Swiss mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agent who worked with Bas­son on mon­ey-laun­der­ing aspects of Project Coast in Europe . . .”

(Idem.)

22. The pro­gram details Jacomet’s rela­tion­ship with Bas­son and the apartheid regime.

“In fact, back in the mid-1980’s, the Swiss agent had first worked with Gen­er­al Lothar Neeth­ling, South Africa’s Police Foren­sic chief, deliv­er­ing arms to South Africa, in an exten­sive sanc­tions-bust­ing arrange­ment. Neeth­ling intro­duced Jacomet to Bas­son, and the two men became friends. Bas­son often vis­it­ed Jacomet at his Berne home. Even­tu­al­ly, Jacomet trav­eled to South Africa on sev­er­al occa­sions to help Bas­son and Neeth­ling in the dirty wars of the 1980’s.”

(Idem.)

23. Jacomet hypoth­e­sizes that Bas­son would not have engaged in the Ecsta­sy deal for prof­it.

“Now, sit­ting in a qui­et West Lon­don gar­den on an ear­ly spring day in 1998, Jacomet relax­es with cof­fee and cig­a­rettes and dis­cuss­es the arrest of Bas­son and the Ecsta­sy alle­ga­tions. He scoffs at the prospect of his friend being a prof­i­teer­ing drug deal­er. ‘It makes absolute­ly no sense if you know him. It makes no sense tat he would mix with street deal­ers. If it hap­pened at all, there must be a high­er inter­est.’ Such as? ‘It might be to pro­cure mon­ey to sup­port a cer­tain group which rep­re­sents the inter­ests of South Africa and wants the return of a white-dom­i­nat­ed gov­ern­ment.’”

(Ibid.; pp. 277–278.)

24. In dis­cussing the Third Force, Jacomet express­es the same fear of the orga­ni­za­tion that we have already wit­nessed.

“Jacomet, now ner­vous, is pressed to expand a lit­tle. ‘There is a group of peo­ple here in Lon­don, he says. ‘One could call them the friends of South Africa. They have it in mind to see a strong white South Africa again. There are Amer­i­can con­nec­tions too. [Empha­sis added.] They need funds, and it is pos­si­ble that the drug busi­ness has helped them. You know, it would real­ly be very fool­ish of me to talk more about this. They are seri­ous peo­ple.’ Jacomet search­es for the pop­u­lar expres­sion, and, remark­ably, finds the same apho­rism used by Gert about the same peo­ple. ‘They don’t take pris­on­ers,’ he says final­ly.”

(Ibid.; p. 278.)

25. In dis­cussing the Third Force, Jacomet makes a ref­er­ence to “an Amer­i­can” who worked with Bas­son. This may very well be a ref­er­ence to Ford.

“And who are ‘they’? Jacomet men­tions some well-known South African names—men pre­vi­ous­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Third Force activ­i­ties. He also refers to an Amer­i­can name known to Britain’s MI5 for his alleged involve­ment with Bas­son in mon­ey laun­der­ing, sanc­tions bust­ing, and bio­log­i­cal agents pro­cure­ment. [Empha­sis added.] Once again, Die Organ­isas­ie is men­tioned in respect­ful tones, and, once again, the details remain scant and elu­sive. Jacomet remains silent.”

(Idem.)

26. The dis­cus­sion con­cludes with rumi­na­tion about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Under­ground Reich, uti­liz­ing some of the appar­ent con­nec­tions evi­dent in the rela­tion­ships of Dr. Lar­ry Ford, might very well launch a bio-ter­ror strike against the Unit­ed States. Once again, one should note in that con­text that this broad­cast was record­ed less than forty-eight hours before 9/11/2001.

Discussion

3 comments for “FTR #324 Biological Warfare, AIDS, Ebola & Apartheid”

  1. good after­noon. when are you going to make your infor­ma­tion avail­able to post on face­book, twit­ter etc.? thank you.taif’tul’islam‑p.o.box 338-compton,ca.90223

    Posted by MUHAMMAD ABDULLAH | November 18, 2010, 4:22 pm
  2. Oh look at that: Pres­i­dent Trump decid­ed to pro­mote a far right hoax meme about the mass killing of South African white farm­ers. This appeared to be in response to Fox News host Tuck­er Carl­son run­ning on seg­ment on a pro­pos­al by South Africa’s pres­i­dent to expro­pri­ate some of the farm land that his his­tor­i­cal­ly over­whelm­ing­ly held by white farm­ers. The pro­pos­al is still under debate and there has been no mass seizure of land. But that did­n’t stop Tuck­er Carl­son from run­ning a seg­ment on his show claim­ing that the South African gov­ern­ment had start­ed “seiz­ing land from his own cit­i­zens with­out com­pen­sa­tion because they are the wrong skin col­or.” Trump then upped the crazy by claim­ing that there’s been “large scale killing of farm­ers.” The killings of farm­ers and farm work­ers is actu­al­ly at a 20 year low accord­ing to sta­tis­tics put out by a South African farm­ers asso­ci­a­tion.

    Both Trump and Carl­son echo the nar­ra­tive cur­rent­ly being pro­mot­ed inter­na­tion­al­ly by far right South African groups who are try­ing to ral­ly inter­na­tion­al sup­port. And as we’re going to see, one of these groups, AfriFo­rum, has been par­tic­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful at this. Not only have they received sup­port from far right US fig­ures like Alex Jones, Ann Coul­ter, and Mike Cer­novich, and Tuck­er Carl­son. But they also took a trip to Wash­ing­ton DC back in May that includ­ed vis­its with Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor John Bolton, Ted Cruz, the Cato Foun­da­tion, the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, the Inter­na­tion­al Repub­li­can Insti­tute, and USAID.

    First, here’s an arti­cle about Trump tweet­ing out the “large scale killing of farm­ers” lie last week in response to Carl­son’s seg­ment false­ly claim­ing there was already wide­spread seizure of white farm­ers’ farm­land:

    The New York Times

    Trump Cites False Claims of Wide­spread Attacks on White Farm­ers in South Africa

    By Kimon de Greef and Palko Karasz
    Aug. 23, 2018

    CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Pres­i­dent Trump wad­ed into South Africa’s pro­pos­al to seize land from white farm­ers, say­ing in a post on Twit­ter late Wednes­day that he had asked Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo to “close­ly study” the “the large scale killing of farm­ers” — a claim dis­put­ed by offi­cial fig­ures and the country’s biggest farmer’s group.

    I have asked Sec­re­tary of State @SecPompeo to close­ly study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expro­pri­a­tions and the large scale killing of farm­ers. “South African Gov­ern­ment is now seiz­ing land from white farm­ers.” @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews
    — Don­ald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2018

    Mr. Trump’s com­ment came after the Fox News host Tuck­er Carl­son pre­sent­ed a late-night pro­gram on South Africa, includ­ing land seizures and homi­cides, and described Pres­i­dent Cyril Ramaphosa as “a racist.”

    The tweet gives promi­nence to a false nar­ra­tive pushed by some right-wing groups in South Africa that there have been numer­ous seizures of white-owned land and wide­spread killings of white farm­ers. Some of those groups have brought their claims to the Unit­ed States on lob­by­ing trips.

    On Thurs­day, the South African min­is­ter of inter­na­tion­al rela­tions, Lindi­we Sisu­lu, described the tweet as “regret­table” and “based on false infor­ma­tion.” The gov­ern­ment said it would seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Unit­ed States Embassy, and Ms. Sisu­lu planned to “com­mu­ni­cate with Sec­re­tary of State Michael Pom­peo on the mat­ter through diplo­mat­ic chan­nels.”

    The gov­ern­ment has said expro­pri­at­ing farms is nec­es­sary to deal with long­stand­ing inequities and that only unused land would be sub­ject to seizure, sug­gest­ing that land that is being active­ly farmed would be safe.

    In a coun­try still strug­gling with the effects of apartheid and wide­spread eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty decades after Nel­son Man­dela became the country’s first black pres­i­dent, Mr. Trump’s tweet was like­ly to inflame the divi­sive landown­er­ship debate.

    Are there wide­spread killings of farm­ers?

    The num­ber of killings of farm­ers, includ­ing farm work­ers, is at a 20-year low, 47 in the fis­cal year 2017–18, accord­ing to research pub­lished in July by AgriSA, a farm­ers’ orga­ni­za­tion in South Africa. That is down from 66 dur­ing the fis­cal year before. The fig­ures were con­sis­tent with a steady decline of vio­lence since a peak in 1998, when 153 were killed.

    South Africa record­ed 19,016 mur­der cas­es from April 2016 to March 2017, accord­ing to the South Africa Police Ser­vice. The nation­al mur­der rate last year was 34.1 per 100,000 peo­ple, but the num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing on farms is not ful­ly known, which makes com­par­isons dif­fi­cult.

    Most offi­cial sta­tis­tics do not break down homi­cides by race.

    “There is no offi­cial crime cat­e­go­ry called ‘farm attack’ or ‘farm mur­der,’ ” accord­ing to Africa Check, a local fact-check­ing orga­ni­za­tion.

    Some white South Africans say they believe that farm killings are under­re­port­ed, polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed and part of a con­spir­a­cy to rid the coun­try of white res­i­dents. AfriFo­rum, a right-wing minor­i­ty rights group, has lob­bied inter­na­tion­al­ly — includ­ing in Wash­ing­ton — to draw atten­tion to farm homi­cides and what it calls the “racist theft” of land.

    “Nobody is dis­put­ing that peo­ple liv­ing and work­ing on farms and small hold­ings are the vic­tims of vio­lent and often bru­tal attacks and mur­ders,” said Kate Wilkin­son, a senior researcher at Africa Check. “What is dis­put­ed is whether they face an ele­vat­ed risk ver­sus aver­age South Africans.”

    Does the South African gov­ern­ment want to seize land?

    Yes.

    Mr. Ramaphosa announced on Aug. 1 that the gov­ern­ing African Nation­al Con­gress (A.N.C.) would move ahead with a pro­pos­al to change the country’s Con­sti­tu­tion and allow the expro­pri­a­tion of some land with­out com­pen­sa­tion.

    Land reform is a high­ly divi­sive issue in South Africa, where whites own dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly more pri­vate land than the black major­i­ty in both urban and rur­al areas.

    What is its argu­ment for doing so?

    Mr. Ramaphosa has said that speed­ing up what he described as land reform will bol­ster eco­nom­ic growth and agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion.

    More fun­da­men­tal­ly, the gov­ern­ment has argued, return­ing land to black South Africans would make the coun­try — which has one of the largest income gaps in the world — more just. Resolv­ing to sup­port land redis­tri­b­u­tion with­out com­pen­sa­tion was “a call to action to deci­sive­ly break with the his­tor­i­cal injus­tice of colo­nial, apartheid and patri­ar­chal pat­terns of land own­er­ship, and to build a South Africa that belongs to all,” the A.N.C. said in a state­ment in May.

    In an op-ed arti­cle pub­lished by The Finan­cial Times on Thurs­day, Mr. Ramaphosa wrote: “As the World Bank has observed, ‘South Africa’s his­tor­i­cal, high­ly skewed dis­tri­b­u­tion of land and pro­duc­tive assets is a source of inequal­i­ty and social fragili­ty.’ ”

    He also said in Jan­u­ary, “We can make this coun­try the Gar­den of Eden.”

    With­in the A.N.C., a fac­tion aligned with for­mer Pres­i­dent Jacob Zuma has strong­ly pushed for land seizures. Mr. Ramaphosa, a for­mer busi­ness­man regard­ed as more mod­er­ate, has promised that land expro­pri­a­tion will not threat­en eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty or agri­cul­tur­al out­put, although the gov­ern­ment has not spec­i­fied how the process will work.

    A series of hear­ings on the sub­ject has been held in the provinces in the past cou­ple of months, as Par­lia­ment weighs chang­ing the law. The issue is expect­ed to loom large in nation­al elec­tions next year.

    Has the gov­ern­ment changed the Con­sti­tu­tion?

    Not yet.

    Dur­ing Wednesday’s broad­cast, Mr. Carl­son said Mr. Ramaphosa had start­ed “seiz­ing land from his own cit­i­zens with­out com­pen­sa­tion because they are the wrong skin col­or.” But that is not true. Mr. Ramaphosa’s pro­pos­al requires a par­lia­men­tary motion and has not yet become law although some ver­sion is expect­ed to pass.

    South Africa’s Con­sti­tu­tion already allows for land expro­pri­a­tion below mar­ket val­ue, “per­haps even at zero val­ue,” not­ed Andries du Toit, the direc­tor of the Insti­tute for Pover­ty, Land and Agrar­i­an Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West­ern Cape.

    “Why has the state not already used these pro­vi­sions? The answer in part seems to be that expro­pri­a­tion is very dif­fi­cult — you are head­ing for a process where the final deci­sion will be made by a court, not the gov­ern­ment,” Mr. du Toit said.

    A cam­paign by right-wing groups bears fruit

    Some right-wing groups in South Africa, like AfriFo­rum, have pushed the false nar­ra­tive that there have already been numer­ous seizures of white-owned land.

    The groups have drawn sup­port from con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can com­men­ta­tors such as Alex Jones, Ann Coul­ter and Mike Cer­novich, who in 2016 tweet­ed that “white geno­cide” was “real” in South Africa.

    Lead­ers of AfriFo­rum vis­it­ed Wash­ing­ton in May and met with Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz and mem­bers of the Cato Insti­tute. A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of AfriFo­rum also appeared on Mr. Carlson’s show in May, gen­er­at­ing much chat­ter among the group’s sup­port­ers on social media.

    Mr. Carl­son, who has often used inflam­ma­to­ry lan­guage on issues of race on his show, has become one of Mr. Trump’s favorite Fox News hosts. Mr. Trump him­self has made many racial­ly explo­sive remarks, and polit­i­cal ana­lysts say they expect him to con­tin­ue using that lan­guage to firm up sup­port among his con­ser­v­a­tive vot­er base, which includes vocal white nation­al­ists and white suprema­cists.

    Mr. Trump appar­ent­ly sin­gled out Mr. Pom­peo in the tweet because Mr. Carl­son had read aloud what Mr. Carl­son called an “unbe­liev­able state­ment” from what he called “Mike Pompeo’s State Depart­ment.” The state­ment was a long and nuanced expla­na­tion of the department’s per­spec­tive on land own­er­ship in South Africa, and it said that the coun­try had a “strong democ­ra­cy” and was engaged in an “open process” over the land ten­sions.

    After read­ing it, Mr. Carl­son mocked the state­ment.

    Anoth­er rightwing group from South Africa, the Suid­lan­ders, toured the Unit­ed States last year, meet­ing with David Duke, a for­mer leader of the Ku Klux Klan, among oth­ers.

    ...

    In reac­tion to Mr. Trump’s tweet this week, Patrick Gas­pard, a for­mer Amer­i­can ambas­sador to South Africa, said on Twit­ter: “The Pres­i­dent of the US needs polit­i­cal dis­trac­tions to turn our gaze away from his crim­i­nal cabal, and so he’s attack­ing South Africa with the dis­proven racial myth of ‘large scale killings of farm­ers.’ This man has nev­er vis­it­ed the con­ti­nent and has no dis­cernible Africa pol­i­cy.”

    ———-

    “Trump Cites False Claims of Wide­spread Attacks on White Farm­ers in South Africa” by Kimon de Greef and Palko Karasz; The New York Times; 08/23/2018

    “I have asked Sec­re­tary of State @SecPompeo to close­ly study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expro­pri­a­tions and the large scale killing of farm­ers. “South African Gov­ern­ment is now seiz­ing land from white farm­ers.” @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews
    — Don­ald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2018”

    That was what Trump decid­ed to tweet last week: he’s going to ask Mike Pom­peo to look into farm seizures and the large scale killing of farm­ers. And it appears to be in direct response to a seg­ment on Tuck­er Carl­son’s Fox News show the pre­vi­ous night. Because of course Trump is a big fan of Tuck­er Carl­son, one of Fox’s bare­ly-cryp­to-white nation­al­ist hosts:

    ...
    Mr. Trump’s com­ment came after the Fox News host Tuck­er Carl­son pre­sent­ed a late-night pro­gram on South Africa, includ­ing land seizures and homi­cides, and described Pres­i­dent Cyril Ramaphosa as “a racist.”

    The tweet gives promi­nence to a false nar­ra­tive pushed by some right-wing groups in South Africa that there have been numer­ous seizures of white-owned land and wide­spread killings of white farm­ers. Some of those groups have brought their claims to the Unit­ed States on lob­by­ing trips.

    ...

    Mr. Carl­son, who has often used inflam­ma­to­ry lan­guage on issues of race on his show, has become one of Mr. Trump’s favorite Fox News hosts. Mr. Trump him­self has made many racial­ly explo­sive remarks, and polit­i­cal ana­lysts say they expect him to con­tin­ue using that lan­guage to firm up sup­port among his con­ser­v­a­tive vot­er base, which includes vocal white nation­al­ists and white suprema­cists.

    Mr. Trump appar­ent­ly sin­gled out Mr. Pom­peo in the tweet because Mr. Carl­son had read aloud what Mr. Carl­son called an “unbe­liev­able state­ment” from what he called “Mike Pompeo’s State Depart­ment.” The state­ment was a long and nuanced expla­na­tion of the department’s per­spec­tive on land own­er­ship in South Africa, and it said that the coun­try had a “strong democ­ra­cy” and was engaged in an “open process” over the land ten­sions.

    After read­ing it, Mr. Carl­son mocked the state­ment.
    ...

    And, of course, the real­i­ty is that the killing of farm­ers and farm work­ers in South African is at a 20 year low, accord­ing to research put out by a South African farmer’s orga­ni­za­tion:

    ...
    Are there wide­spread killings of farm­ers?

    The num­ber of killings of farm­ers, includ­ing farm work­ers, is at a 20-year low, 47 in the fis­cal year 2017–18, accord­ing to research pub­lished in July by AgriSA, a farm­ers’ orga­ni­za­tion in South Africa. That is down from 66 dur­ing the fis­cal year before. The fig­ures were con­sis­tent with a steady decline of vio­lence since a peak in 1998, when 153 were killed.
    ...

    It’s impor­tant to note that, while there South African gov­ern­ment is debat­ing whether or not to expro­pri­ate farm land — which will inevitably dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact white farm­ers since they hold the vast major­i­ty of the land — that pro­pos­al has­n’t actu­al­ly become law:

    ...
    Has the gov­ern­ment changed the Con­sti­tu­tion?

    Not yet.

    Dur­ing Wednesday’s broad­cast, Mr. Carl­son said Mr. Ramaphosa had start­ed “seiz­ing land from his own cit­i­zens with­out com­pen­sa­tion because they are the wrong skin col­or.” But that is not true. Mr. Ramaphosa’s pro­pos­al requires a par­lia­men­tary motion and has not yet become law although some ver­sion is expect­ed to pass.

    South Africa’s Con­sti­tu­tion already allows for land expro­pri­a­tion below mar­ket val­ue, “per­haps even at zero val­ue,” not­ed Andries du Toit, the direc­tor of the Insti­tute for Pover­ty, Land and Agrar­i­an Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West­ern Cape.

    “Why has the state not already used these pro­vi­sions? The answer in part seems to be that expro­pri­a­tion is very dif­fi­cult — you are head­ing for a process where the final deci­sion will be made by a court, not the gov­ern­ment,” Mr. du Toit said.
    ...

    But that has­n’t stopped far right groups like AfriFo­rum from wag­ing an inter­na­tion­al lob­by­ing cam­paign to pro­mote the notion of mass killings of farm­ers and frame the land expro­pri­ate pro­pos­als as the “racist theft” of land. And in AfriFo­rum’s case, that inter­na­tion­al lob­by­ing effort has been wild­ly suc­cess­ful, espe­cial­ly in the US:

    ...
    Some white South Africans say they believe that farm killings are under­re­port­ed, polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed and part of a con­spir­a­cy to rid the coun­try of white res­i­dents. AfriFo­rum, a right-wing minor­i­ty rights group, has lob­bied inter­na­tion­al­ly — includ­ing in Wash­ing­ton — to draw atten­tion to farm homi­cides and what it calls the “racist theft” of land.

    “Nobody is dis­put­ing that peo­ple liv­ing and work­ing on farms and small hold­ings are the vic­tims of vio­lent and often bru­tal attacks and mur­ders,” said Kate Wilkin­son, a senior researcher at Africa Check. “What is dis­put­ed is whether they face an ele­vat­ed risk ver­sus aver­age South Africans.”

    ...

    A cam­paign by right-wing groups bears fruit

    Some right-wing groups in South Africa, like AfriFo­rum, have pushed the false nar­ra­tive that there have already been numer­ous seizures of white-owned land.

    The groups have drawn sup­port from con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can com­men­ta­tors such as Alex Jones, Ann Coul­ter and Mike Cer­novich, who in 2016 tweet­ed that “white geno­cide” was “real” in South Africa.

    Lead­ers of AfriFo­rum vis­it­ed Wash­ing­ton in May and met with Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz and mem­bers of the Cato Insti­tute. A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of AfriFo­rum also appeared on Mr. Carlson’s show in May, gen­er­at­ing much chat­ter among the group’s sup­port­ers on social media.

    ...

    Anoth­er rightwing group from South Africa, the Suid­lan­ders, toured the Unit­ed States last year, meet­ing with David Duke, a for­mer leader of the Ku Klux Klan, among oth­ers.
    ...

    In oth­er words, it’s not just Tuck­er Carl­son and Don­ald Trump fol­low­ing the lead of groups like AfriFo­rum. Major right-wing insti­tu­tions appear to be on board with this decep­tion cam­paign.

    And AfriFo­rum’s suc­cess in lob­by­ing the US gov­ern­ment was­n’t lim­it­ed to meet­ing with Ted Cruz dur­ing their trip to the US back in May. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, the group got to meet with offi­cials at the Inter­na­tion­al Repub­li­can Insti­tute (which receives US gov­ern­ment fund­ing), USAID (at their DC head­quar­ters too), and Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor John Bolton:

    The Huff­in­g­ton Post

    Ted Cruz Staff, USAID Met With Group That Called Apartheid A ‘So-Called’ Injus­tice
    Lead­ers of AfriFo­rum, an Afrikan­er rights group, also posed for a pic­ture with nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er John Bolton.

    By Jes­si­ca Schul­berg and Akbar Shahid Ahmed
    05/11/2018 05:20 pm ET

    WASHINGTON — The lead­ers of a South African group that has referred to apartheid as a “so-called” his­tor­i­cal injus­tice recent­ly toured Wash­ing­ton and met with top mem­bers of the U.S. gov­ern­ment, includ­ing offi­cials at the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment and staffers for Sen. Ted Cruz (R‑Texas). They even bumped into nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er John Bolton.

    AfriFo­rum, an Afrikan­er rights orga­ni­za­tion, pro­motes the idea that white peo­ple in South Africa are under attack by that country’s gov­ern­ment. It has been try­ing to spread its mes­sage inter­na­tion­al­ly.

    Dur­ing their meet­ings in Wash­ing­ton, AfriFo­rum CEO Kallie Kriel and deputy CEO Ernst Roets hand­ed out copies of Roets’ book Kill the Boer, which push­es the con­tro­ver­sial claim that white farm­ers are being sin­gled out for sys­tem­at­ic vio­lence in South Africa.

    On Wednes­day, Kriel and Roets met with USAID offi­cials at the agency’s Wash­ing­ton head­quar­ters. It’s unclear whether the offi­cials were aware of AfriForum’s views pri­or to the meet­ing.

    “USAID meets with a wide vari­ety of orga­ni­za­tions to gath­er per­spec­tives on polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, social, and devel­op­ment trends in coun­tries where we oper­ate,” a spokes­woman for the U.S. Embassy in Pre­to­ria, South Africa, wrote Huff­Post. “USAID pro­grammed approx­i­mate­ly $258 mil­lion in FY 2017 resources in South Africa for pro­grams that strength­en small busi­ness­es, cre­ate employ­ment, improve job skills, pro­mote basic edu­ca­tion, com­bat gen­der-based vio­lence, and pro­mote HIV/AIDS care, pre­ven­tion, and treat­ment.”

    ...

    Also on Wednes­day, Kriel and Roets posed for a pho­to with Bolton at a Fox News stu­dio, accord­ing to Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil spokesman Robert Pal­ladi­no. Bolton did not know the AfriFo­rum lead­ers, Pal­ladi­no added. But the duo tried their best to make an impres­sion: They gave Bolton a copy of Roets’ book and post­ed the pic­ture on Twit­ter.

    Great turn of events: With a bit of luck @ErnstRoets and I met John Robert Bolton, USA Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor to @realDonaldTrump. We also gave him a copy of Ern­st’s new #KillThe­Boer­Book on #Far­m­Mur­ders & #Expro­pri­a­tion­With­out­Com­pen­sa­tion in SA. @afriforum #AfriFo­ru­mUSA . pic.twitter.com/CIEIqmyA3O— Kallie Kriel (@kalliekriel) May 9, 2018

    AfriFo­rum, which describes itself as a civ­il rights group, was formed in 2006 as an out­growth of a white trade union. It focus­es on the rights of Afrikan­ers, a South African eth­nic group large­ly descend­ed from Dutch and French Huguenot set­tlers. The orga­ni­za­tion has 280,000 dues-pay­ing mem­bers, accord­ing to Roets.

    Although AfriFo­rum does not typ­i­cal­ly make explic­it­ly racist state­ments, it often uses mis­lead­ing or false data to char­ac­ter­ize South Africa as a coun­try in which white peo­ple are oppressed. When a South African land reform schol­ar tweet­ed sta­tis­tics that under­cut its claims about attacks against white farm­ers, Roets appeared to threat­en her in a rant post­ed last Sat­ur­day on YouTube.

    “Vio­lent crime is a seri­ous prob­lem on farms, as it is in some urban areas in South Africa, but there is no indi­ca­tion that it is any­thing oth­er than ordi­nary crime, and it cer­tain­ly doesn’t jus­ti­fy a nar­ra­tive of delib­er­ate tar­get­ing of whites on the basis of their eth­nic­i­ty,” said Nic Dawes, a deputy exec­u­tive direc­tor at Human Rights Watch. “AfriFo­rum uses the lan­guage of rights in pur­suit of an agen­da which is real­ly about pre­serv­ing white priv­i­lege in South Africa and else­where.”

    A quar­ter-cen­tu­ry after the end of white-minor­i­ty rule in South Africa, the country’s white pop­u­la­tion still owns 72 per­cent of pri­vate­ly held farm­land and a mere 10 per­cent of South Africans own 90 per­cent of the nation’s wealth. The post-apartheid gov­ern­ment has bought up land for redis­tri­b­u­tion and assigned it to new own­ers, on the grounds that many were descend­ed from black South Africans who unjust­ly lost their prop­er­ty dur­ing the colo­nial era and white rule.

    But the idea of allow­ing the gov­ern­ment to con­fis­cate land with­out com­pen­sa­tion has gained trac­tion amidst pub­lic dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the gov­ern­ing African Nation­al Con­gress par­ty. In Feb­ru­ary, the South African Par­lia­ment called for con­sti­tu­tion­al reform that might per­mit such ini­tia­tives to boost black land own­er­ship.

    AfriFo­rum and oth­ers have seized on the idea of “land expro­pri­a­tion” as evi­dence of white South Africans being unjust­ly per­se­cut­ed. They also claim that ongo­ing attacks on white farm­ers are racial­ly moti­vat­ed rather than part of the country’s broad­er prob­lem with vio­lent crime. Roets described the notion of expro­pri­a­tion with­out com­pen­sa­tion to Huff­Post as if it were an immi­nent pol­i­cy change, rather than a pro­pos­al up for debate.

    Experts on the South African sit­u­a­tion say it’s unlike­ly that com­mer­cial­ly vital white-owned farms will actu­al­ly be seized and sug­gest the dis­pute is being exag­ger­at­ed for polit­i­cal rea­sons.

    AfriForum’s lead­ers trav­eled to the U.S. — stop­ping in Texas and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. — to raise aware­ness about vio­lence against farm­ers and land expro­pri­a­tion, Roets said.

    The AfriFo­rum lead­ers also took their mes­sage to the stu­dio of pro-white nation­al­ist Fox News com­men­ta­tor Tuck­er Carl­son and to the halls of Con­gress, where they met with staffers in Cruz’s office and “at least one” mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Roets said. He declined to name the mem­ber.

    We had a very con­struc­tive meet­ing in the office of Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz today. #AfriFo­ru­mUSA@afriforum @kalliekriel pic.twitter.com/cGr8lRG5aW— Ernst Roets (@ErnstRoets) May 10, 2018

    In addi­tion, Roets and Kriel tweet­ed about meet­ings at the Cato Insti­tute, a lib­er­tar­i­an think tank; the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, a con­ser­v­a­tive think tank; and the Inter­na­tion­al Repub­li­can Insti­tute, a democ­ra­cy pro­mo­tion non­prof­it that receives U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing.

    “We agreed that rule of law and prop­er­ty rights are essen­tial com­po­nents of eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment,” Mar­i­an Tupy, a senior pol­i­cy ana­lyst at Cato, told Huff­Post in an email. “Con­verse­ly, expro­pri­a­tion with­out com­pen­sa­tion is incom­pat­i­ble with tran­quil­i­ty and pros­per­i­ty. [The] inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty should do what it can to dis­suade [the South African] gov­ern­ment from embrac­ing cat­a­stroph­ic poli­cies that destroyed Cuba, Venezuela and Zim­bab­we.”

    Asked about AfriForum’s appar­ent­ly dis­mis­sive com­ment about apartheid being a “so-called” his­tor­i­cal injus­tice, Tupy said there “should be no doubt that apartheid was a his­tor­i­cal injus­tice” — and then sug­gest­ed there were sim­i­lar­i­ties between the cur­rent South African gov­ern­ment and the apartheid regime.

    “The cur­rent poli­cies of [the South African] gov­ern­ment are explic­it­ly racist, because not all South African cit­i­zens are treat­ed equal­ly before the law (some peo­ple are favored over oth­ers, as was the case under apartheid),” Tupy wrote.

    Roets dis­putes that AfriFo­rum ever ques­tioned whether apartheid was an injus­tice. In his telling of the sto­ry, an AfriFo­rum legal rep­re­sen­ta­tive used the phrase “so-called ‘his­tor­i­cal injus­tice’” to refer to an argu­ment from the oppos­ing side dur­ing a court case over remov­ing Afrikaans street names. The phrase was tak­en out of con­text, Roets told Huff­Post.

    Some in Wash­ing­ton appear to be per­suad­ed by Roets’ nar­ra­tive. “It is my under­stand­ing that AfriFo­rum did not refer to ‘so-called’ injus­tices of apartheid; that we all agree that apartheid was an unjust sys­tem; that the words ‘so-called’ were lift­ed out of con­text to besmirch the rep­u­ta­tion of AfriFo­rum; and that a non-racial soci­ety based on indi­vid­ual, not group, iden­ti­ty ought to be the goal in South Africa,” Tupy wrote in an unprompt­ed fol­low-up email that includ­ed Roets on the cc line.

    But in its com­plaint lay­ing out the facts in the court case, AfriFo­rum “repeat­ed­ly refers to the Municipality’s attempts at cor­rect­ing ‘so-called ‘his­tor­i­cal injus­tices of the past,’” two judges on the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court of South Africa wrote in a 2016 judg­ment.

    Roets has also referred to apartheid as a “wool­ly con­cept,” a com­ment he stands by. “What I mean by that is that it is a term that every­one is talk­ing about, but if you ask peo­ple what it means, every­one would give a dif­fer­ent answer,” he said. “Racism is also a wool­ly con­cept, democ­ra­cy is also a wool­ly con­cept, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is a wool­ly con­cept.”

    Asked what apartheid meant to him, Roets said it was a “sys­tem of cat­e­go­riz­ing peo­ple accord­ing to the col­or of their skin and it was a sys­tem that failed mis­er­ably.” But he argued that the cur­rent South African gov­ern­ment is engaged in the same kind of “gov­ern­ment social engi­neer­ing.”

    Far-right groups in South Africa are work­ing hard to win sup­port abroad. They’ve received help from U.S. and Cana­di­an com­men­ta­tors like Alex Jones, Ann Coul­ter, Mike Cer­novich and Lau­ren South­ern who have pushed their nar­ra­tive of white per­se­cu­tion.

    AfriForum’s work has helped “feed the efforts of the con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists and hate net­works that hope to cre­ate a glob­al­ized nar­ra­tive of white vic­tim­hood,” Dawes of Human Rights Watch said. “The anti-immi­grant and racist sen­ti­ment they ped­dle is too often inform­ing the pol­i­cy agen­das of gov­ern­ments and polit­i­cal par­ties out­side South Africa.”

    Ear­li­er this year in Aus­tralia — a pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion for the near­ly half-mil­lion white South Africans who have emi­grat­ed since apartheid end­ed — Home Affairs Min­is­ter Peter Dut­ton pledged to issue fast-track visas to white farm­ers he called “per­se­cut­ed.” The Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment back­tracked after offi­cial com­plaints from South Africa and a Unit­ed Nations state­ment urg­ing Aus­tralia to save visas for peo­ple in greater need, like the hun­dreds of refugees it has detained off­shore.

    AfriForum’s vis­it to the U.S. was a suc­cess, Roets said.

    He appeared hap­pi­ly sur­prised by his group’s abil­i­ty to land meet­ings with Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment offi­cials. “We achieved much more than we thought we would — in terms of how we were received, in terms of the peo­ple we met with, who we were able to get in touch with,” he said.

    ...

    ———-

    “Ted Cruz Staff, USAID Met With Group That Called Apartheid A ‘So-Called’ Injus­tice” by Jes­si­ca Schul­berg and Akbar Shahid Ahmed; The Huff­in­g­ton Post; 05/11/2018

    Far-right groups in South Africa are work­ing hard to win sup­port abroad. They’ve received help from U.S. and Cana­di­an com­men­ta­tors like Alex Jones, Ann Coul­ter, Mike Cer­novich and Lau­ren South­ern who have pushed their nar­ra­tive of white per­se­cu­tion.”

    Inter­na­tion­al sup­port is what AfriFo­rum is seek­ing and that’s exact­ly what it got dur­ing it’s vis­it to the US, in spades. Because if you’re look­ing for inter­na­tion­al sup­port for your cause, you could hard­ly do bet­ter than a meet­ing with USAID offi­cials at the agen­cy’s head­quar­ters:

    ...
    AfriFo­rum, an Afrikan­er rights orga­ni­za­tion, pro­motes the idea that white peo­ple in South Africa are under attack by that country’s gov­ern­ment. It has been try­ing to spread its mes­sage inter­na­tion­al­ly.

    Dur­ing their meet­ings in Wash­ing­ton, AfriFo­rum CEO Kallie Kriel and deputy CEO Ernst Roets hand­ed out copies of Roets’ book Kill the Boer, which push­es the con­tro­ver­sial claim that white farm­ers are being sin­gled out for sys­tem­at­ic vio­lence in South Africa.

    On Wednes­day, Kriel and Roets met with USAID offi­cials at the agency’s Wash­ing­ton head­quar­ters. It’s unclear whether the offi­cials were aware of AfriForum’s views pri­or to the meet­ing.

    “USAID meets with a wide vari­ety of orga­ni­za­tions to gath­er per­spec­tives on polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, social, and devel­op­ment trends in coun­tries where we oper­ate,” a spokes­woman for the U.S. Embassy in Pre­to­ria, South Africa, wrote Huff­Post. “USAID pro­grammed approx­i­mate­ly $258 mil­lion in FY 2017 resources in South Africa for pro­grams that strength­en small busi­ness­es, cre­ate employ­ment, improve job skills, pro­mote basic edu­ca­tion, com­bat gen­der-based vio­lence, and pro­mote HIV/AIDS care, pre­ven­tion, and treat­ment.”
    ...

    Beyond that, they met with John Bolton, Trump’s Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor dur­ing their appear­ance at Fox News Stu­dios, where they also met Tuck­er Carl­son. Note how Bolton’s spokesman tries to play dumb by assert­ing that Bolton did not know the AfriFo­rum lead­ers, the kind of answer that says noth­ing about whether or not Bolton knew what the group was all about:

    ...
    Also on Wednes­day, Kriel and Roets posed for a pho­to with Bolton at a Fox News stu­dio, accord­ing to Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil spokesman Robert Pal­ladi­no. Bolton did not know the AfriFo­rum lead­ers, Pal­ladi­no added. But the duo tried their best to make an impres­sion: They gave Bolton a copy of Roets’ book and post­ed the pic­ture on Twit­ter.

    Great turn of events: With a bit of luck @ErnstRoets and I met John Robert Bolton, USA Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor to @realDonaldTrump. We also gave him a copy of Ern­st’s new #KillThe­Boer­Book on #Far­m­Mur­ders & #Expro­pri­a­tion­With­out­Com­pen­sa­tion in SA. @afriforum #AfriFo­ru­mUSA . pic.twitter.com/CIEIqmyA3O— Kallie Kriel (@kalliekriel) May 9, 2018

    ...

    The AfriFo­rum lead­ers also took their mes­sage to the stu­dio of pro-white nation­al­ist Fox News com­men­ta­tor Tuck­er Carl­son and to the halls of Con­gress, where they met with staffers in Cruz’s office and “at least one” mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, Roets said. He declined to name the mem­ber.
    ...

    So while it appears that Pres­i­dent Trump’s recent procla­ma­tions were due to him par­rot­ing Carl­son’s show, it’s worth keep­ing in mind that John Bolton may have also been whis­per­ing in his ear.

    They even even with the Cato Insti­tute, Her­itage Foun­da­tion, and the Inter­na­tion­al Repub­li­can Insti­tute (which receives US gov­ern­ment fund­ing). So this real­ly was like the right-wing red car­pet treat­ment for this group:

    ...

    We had a very con­struc­tive meet­ing in the office of Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz today. #AfriFo­ru­mUSA@afriforum @kalliekriel pic.twitter.com/cGr8lRG5aW— Ernst Roets (@ErnstRoets) May 10, 2018

    In addi­tion, Roets and Kriel tweet­ed about meet­ings at the Cato Insti­tute, a lib­er­tar­i­an think tank; the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, a con­ser­v­a­tive think tank; and the Inter­na­tion­al Repub­li­can Insti­tute, a democ­ra­cy pro­mo­tion non­prof­it that receives U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing.

    “We agreed that rule of law and prop­er­ty rights are essen­tial com­po­nents of eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment,” Mar­i­an Tupy, a senior pol­i­cy ana­lyst at Cato, told Huff­Post in an email. “Con­verse­ly, expro­pri­a­tion with­out com­pen­sa­tion is incom­pat­i­ble with tran­quil­i­ty and pros­per­i­ty. [The] inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty should do what it can to dis­suade [the South African] gov­ern­ment from embrac­ing cat­a­stroph­ic poli­cies that destroyed Cuba, Venezuela and Zim­bab­we.”

    Asked about AfriForum’s appar­ent­ly dis­mis­sive com­ment about apartheid being a “so-called” his­tor­i­cal injus­tice, Tupy said there “should be no doubt that apartheid was a his­tor­i­cal injus­tice” — and then sug­gest­ed there were sim­i­lar­i­ties between the cur­rent South African gov­ern­ment and the apartheid regime.

    “The cur­rent poli­cies of [the South African] gov­ern­ment are explic­it­ly racist, because not all South African cit­i­zens are treat­ed equal­ly before the law (some peo­ple are favored over oth­ers, as was the case under apartheid),” Tupy wrote.
    ...

    And, like many far right groups, AfriFo­rum denies its extrem­ist mes­sage when con­front­ed about it:

    ...
    Roets dis­putes that AfriFo­rum ever ques­tioned whether apartheid was an injus­tice. In his telling of the sto­ry, an AfriFo­rum legal rep­re­sen­ta­tive used the phrase “so-called ‘his­tor­i­cal injus­tice’” to refer to an argu­ment from the oppos­ing side dur­ing a court case over remov­ing Afrikaans street names. The phrase was tak­en out of con­text, Roets told Huff­Post.

    Some in Wash­ing­ton appear to be per­suad­ed by Roets’ nar­ra­tive. “It is my under­stand­ing that AfriFo­rum did not refer to ‘so-called’ injus­tices of apartheid; that we all agree that apartheid was an unjust sys­tem; that the words ‘so-called’ were lift­ed out of con­text to besmirch the rep­u­ta­tion of AfriFo­rum; and that a non-racial soci­ety based on indi­vid­ual, not group, iden­ti­ty ought to be the goal in South Africa,” Tupy wrote in an unprompt­ed fol­low-up email that includ­ed Roets on the cc line.

    But in its com­plaint lay­ing out the facts in the court case, AfriFo­rum “repeat­ed­ly refers to the Municipality’s attempts at cor­rect­ing ‘so-called ‘his­tor­i­cal injus­tices of the past,’” two judges on the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court of South Africa wrote in a 2016 judg­ment.

    Roets has also referred to apartheid as a “wool­ly con­cept,” a com­ment he stands by. “What I mean by that is that it is a term that every­one is talk­ing about, but if you ask peo­ple what it means, every­one would give a dif­fer­ent answer,” he said. “Racism is also a wool­ly con­cept, democ­ra­cy is also a wool­ly con­cept, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is a wool­ly con­cept.”

    Asked what apartheid meant to him, Roets said it was a “sys­tem of cat­e­go­riz­ing peo­ple accord­ing to the col­or of their skin and it was a sys­tem that failed mis­er­ably.” But he argued that the cur­rent South African gov­ern­ment is engaged in the same kind of “gov­ern­ment social engi­neer­ing.”
    ...

    But as the arti­cle points out, AfriFo­rum’s decep­tive mes­sag­ing cam­paign about the tar­get­ing of white farm­ers is actu­al­ly quite use­ful for far right white suprema­cist move­ments all around the globe. Why? Because it feeds into the now-glob­al far right nar­ra­tive of white vic­tim­hood:

    ...
    AfriForum’s work has helped “feed the efforts of the con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists and hate net­works that hope to cre­ate a glob­al­ized nar­ra­tive of white vic­tim­hood,” Dawes of Human Rights Watch said. “The anti-immi­grant and racist sen­ti­ment they ped­dle is too often inform­ing the pol­i­cy agen­das of gov­ern­ments and polit­i­cal par­ties out­side South Africa.”
    ...

    And that last point is prob­a­bly why we should only expect more and more dis­in­for­ma­tion around this issue: the far right white suprema­cist move­ments around the globe can thrive only when they can con­vince ran­dom white peo­ple that they are under assault and need to view all non-whites as inher­ent ene­mies. So a nar­ra­tive like “white farm­ers are being slaugh­tered” is sim­ply going to be too good to pass up whether or not it’s true, espe­cial­ly for some­one with Trump’s rhetor­i­cal skill set.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | August 30, 2018, 2:53 pm
  3. I just read Pter­rafractyl’s com­ments on this, & I got­ta ask, do you believe there is a con­nec­tion between Dr. Mary S. Sher­man’s SV-40 polio research in & the “South African Insti­tute for Mar­itime Research” goons’ covert NBC war­fare project?

    I only ask because some of the anti-Cas­tro nar­coter­ror­ists that were involved in the attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Cas­tro (and in all like­li­hood, Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s mur­der), were also involved in the geno­ci­dal, apartheid mer­ce­nary gueril­la wars in the Con­go.

    Per­haps some­one like Spe­cial Activ­i­ties Divi­sion offi­cer William Alexan­der “RIP” Robert­son act­ed as focal-point for the CIA’s “Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices Divi­sion” bioweapon’s work, con­sid­er­ing he was a task-force com­man­der in both the­aters, Cuba & the Con­go?

    Just a thought.

    I would also note that “RIP” Robert­son was also a ZR/JEWEL asset, which means his com­man­do exper­tise was used by the CIA’s “ZR” bigram pro­grams (“ZR” cryptonym implies NSA con­trol) on an inter­na­tion­al scope of oper­a­tions...

    Posted by Robert Ward Montenegro | March 18, 2021, 7:10 pm

Post a comment