UNITED
NATIONS,
July 14 – The
Florida town
of Sanford,
where George
Zimmerman shot
and killed
Trayvon
Martin, was
founded and
named for
Henry Shelton
Sanford, who
lobbied and
got the US to
recognized
Belgian King
Leopold II's
Congo “Free”
State in the
1870s.
Sanford
worked on
this with the
chairman the
Senate Foreign
Relations
Committee,
Alabama
Senator John
Tyler Morgan,
who wanted
freed slaves
sent back
to Liberia in
Africa.
This
was 140 years
ago – but
Liberia and
the Democratic
Republic of
the Congo
still
have UN
Peacekeeping
missions in
them, run by
France's Herve
Ladsous.
As Inner City
Press exposed,
the UN in
Liberia was
paying workers
$8 a day,
here.
After
buying 23
acres in
Florida and
naming them
after himself,
Sanford headed
to
Brussels as US
minister, and
later became
Leopold's
negotiator on
the
Congo.
Both
pretended that
the venture
was intended,
at least
eventually, to
end the slave
trade. But
hands were cut
off; African
soldiers were
paid in brass
for the
decapitated
heads they
carried
back from
battles.
Not
to put too
fine a point
on it, but in
2013 a UN
Intervention
Brigade is
being
deployed in
Eastern Congo,
ultimately run
by Ladsous,
the fourth
Frenchman in a
row to
head the UN
Department of
Peacekeeping
Operations.
Leopold
held
so-called
anti-slavery
conferences
(some might
think of some
ironic
UN
conferences);
Sanford paid
journalists to
spread
propaganda
about
the
“humanitarian
king.”
At
the UN in
2013,
running
“peacekeeping”
missions in
Liberia and
the DRC, the
latter with an
all-African
Intervention
Brigade, Ladsous
refuses to
answer
critical Press
questions,
running into
to friendly
scribes to,
well, tell his
stories.
Ban
Ki-moon, who
issued a
statement
about the
recent crash
in San
Francisco of a
South
Korean
airline's jet,
has yet to
speak on the
Trayvon Martin
non
guilty verdict
in the UN's
host country.
Ban
is at the
colonial
Bastille Day
parade on the
Champs d'Elysees
in Paris with
Ladsous, who
runs missions
in Liberia and
the DR Congo.
Plus
ca change.
This ends
Inner City
Press' Sunday
history
musing. Watch
this site.
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