Subtle Frauds

I came across this piece yesterday, A journey into the most savage war in the world by Johann Hari.

"It starts with a ward full of women who have been gang-raped and then shot in the vagina. I am standing in a makeshift ward in the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, the only hospital that is trying to deal with the bushfire of sexual violence in Eastern Congo."

“We are trying to reconstruct their vaginas, their anuses, their intestines. It is a long process.”

… a woman was carried here on her grandmother’s back after an eight-hour trek. “I had never seen anything like it. She had been gang-raped and then her legs had been shot to pieces."

- First of all I question how anyone with "legs … shot to pieces" would survive an 8 hour trek on grandma's back. Or survive vaginal gunshots given the availability of ER healthcare in bush country.

The beginning paragraphs immediately reminded me of urban legends and of the long-term ever prevailing effort to paint the inhabitants of Africa as perverted evil animals. Recall the stories of babies being raped because African men (barbaric and ignorant) believed sex with an infant cured AIDS (another phony "epidemic"). When baby rape to cure AIDS in Africa entered the news, I researched and found 1, possibly 2, documented cases. This type of demonized reporting often first appears on rightwing sites such as FreeRepublic.

I'm not denying crime and atrocity don't occur, but there's a difference between hype and facts. Just watch CNN or Faux News.

Hari's articles are sometimes confused with progressive, written by a "leftist" - but initiating the above savage war report with the standard evil African barbarians red-flagged me, so I googled around on the "journalist" of the report, Johann Hari.

SourceWatch describes Hari as a leftwing gay columnist. His credibility has been questioned. Rightly so as he supported the Iraq War under the idea of "friendly bombs." Between January-March 2003 he penned columns for the Independent such as "Liberate Iraq Now, With or Without the UN" and "We Must Fight to End the Iraqi Suffering" and "Sometimes the Only Way to Spread Peace is at the End of a Barrel."

Apparently Johann also claims to have been there done that when he wasn't and didn't, or at times stretches the been there and that of his reporting. And remember, being Gay doesn't automatically make one a liberal. (There's a large and crowded closet in the current administration.)

At times Hari is a darling on the left because of his mistaken identity as an anti-imperialist. Johann is a prep for the rightwing. In this case, because the Congo is sitting on a great deal of petro with potentials for much more offshore. White folks (arming all sides) will need to intervene and end the barbarity of the Congolese and use their oil and resources to repay the white man's kindness and concern for African vaginas. The friendly end of the barrel, etc.

But Hari is just another among thousands of "journalists" and columnists who are well-placed frauds. And thanks to men and women like Hari who pose as intelligent writers backed by the propaganda machines, the Cradle of Civilization is still portrayed as a continent of either subordinate baboons or dangerous Black monsters. Apparently the only good Africans are those who have had lengthy exposure to white people ways (and the ones Brad and Angelina know).