Posted on 01/13/2019 3:02:30 AM PST by blueplum
Jan van Risseghem was only a teenager when his mother ordered him to flee Nazi-occupied Belgium for her native England with his brother Maurice. After hiding in a convent, and an epic journey across the war-torn continent, they reached safety in Portugal, then took a ship north.
Once in England, the pair signed up with the Belgian resistance, and with the help of an uncle enrolled for flight training with the RAF, a decision that shaped not just their war, but the rest of their lives.
Half a century later, flying skills he learned in Britain would also make the younger van Risseghem internationally notorious, when he was publicly linked to the plane crash that killed Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN secretary general, in 1961...{snip}
Rumours about why the plane came down were fuelled by no less a figure than former US president Harry Truman. He told reporters two days after Hammarskjöld’s death that the UN leader “was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said ‘when they killed him.’”
He refused to elaborate, but it was the start of decades of suspicions that western governments were not sharing all the information they held about the crash.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Info from Wiki:
Following the death of Hammarskjöld, there were three inquiries into the circumstances that led to the crash: the Rhodesian Board of Investigation, the Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry, and the United Nations Commission of Investigation.[9]
The Rhodesian Board of Investigation looked into the matter between 19 September 1961 and 2 November 1961[9] under the command of British Lt. Colonel M.C.B. Barber. The Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry held hearings from 16–29 January 1962 without United Nations oversight. The subsequent United Nations Commission of Investigation held a series of hearings in 1962 and in part depended upon the testimony from the previous Rhodesian inquiries.[9] Five “eminent persons” were assigned by the new secretary-general to the UN Commission. The members of the commission unanimously elected Nepalese diplomat Rishikesh Shaha to head an inquiry.[9]
The three official inquiries failed to determine conclusively the cause of the crash that led to the death of Hammarskjöld. The Rhodesian Board of Investigation sent 180 men to search a six-square-kilometer area of the last sector of the aircraft’s flight path, looking for evidence as to the cause of the crash. No evidence of a bomb, surface-to-air missile, or hijacking was found. The official report stated that two of the dead Swedish bodyguards had suffered multiple bullet wounds. Medical examination, performed by the initial Rhodesian Board of Investigation and reported in the UN official report, indicated that the wounds were superficial, and that the bullets showed no signs of rifling. They concluded that cartridges had exploded in the fire in proximity to the bodyguards.[9] No evidence of foul play was found in the wreckage of the aircraft.[10]
Previous accounts of a bright flash in the sky were dismissed as occurring too late in the evening to have caused the crash. The UN report speculated that these flashes may have been caused by secondary explosions after the crash. Sergeant Harold Julien, who initially survived the crash but died days later,[11] indicated that there was a series of explosions that preceded the crash.[9][12] The official inquiry found that the statements of witnesses who talked with Julien before he died in hospital five days after the crash[13] were inconsistent.
The report states that there were numerous delays that violated established search and rescue procedures. There were three separate delays: the first delayed the initial alarm of a possible plane in trouble; the second delayed the “distress” alarm, which indicates that communications with surrounding airports indicate that a missing plane has not landed elsewhere; the third delayed the eventual search and rescue operation and the discovery of the plane wreckage, just miles away. The medical examiner’s report was inconclusive; one report said that Hammarskjöld had died on impact; another stated that Hammarskjöld might have survived had rescue operations not been delayed.[9] The report also said that the chances of Sgt. Julien surviving the crash would have been “infinitely” better if the rescue operations had been hastened.[9]
On 16 March 2015, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed members to an independent panel of experts to examine new information related to the tragedy. The three-member panel was led by Mohamed Chande Othman, the Chief Justice of Tanzania. The other two members were Kerryn Macaulay (Australia’s representative to ICAO) and Henrik Larsen (a ballistics expert from the Danish National Police). The report was handed over to the secretary-general on 12 June 2015.[14]
Bullets in a fire tend to stay put or move slightly…because they are lead and heavy. while the cases, which are light tend to fly off but with not enough mass to penetrate very far.
There were two rivals for head of state. The UN, of course, backed the Moscow favored Patrice Lumumba whereas the Belgian side favored Moise Tshombe, who was pro-western. On independence, the country devolved into civil war, at which time Tshombe felt the best solution was a separate independent state in his native Katanga province, which quickly settled into a fully functioning semi-democracy whereas the civil war in the remainder of Congo between Lumumba and the rest of his rivals continued unabated.
The United Nations decided to send peace keeping forces to end the civil war. Their objective devolved not into ending the civil war where it was actually raging, but to quell the rebellion in Katanga, where it was not.
Long story short is that Dag Hammarskjöld's mission wasn't to end the civil war but to convince Tshombe to come back into the main chaotic province in return for assuming a role in a coalition government, something he probably would not agreed to do given his experience and knowledge of how Communists operated.
Lumumba ended up being shot by a firing squad of his own soldiers, supposedly egged on by Belgian mercenaries. Tshombe became head of state of briefly independent Katanga which the remainder of Belgian Congo opted to join (with the UN's suppression of Katanga's independence) and Lumumba's few remaining backers moved into French Congo, which had become "independent" a year or two before the Belgian portion.
Tshombe served as prime minister for a little more than one year before he was forced to resign and flee into exile on October 13, 1965.
LBJ's administration never liked Tshombe and eventually welcomed Mobutu Sese Seko as military dictator to succeed him. Mobutu had good anti-communist bonafides (including his role in the mock trial and execution of Communist hero Lumumba) but was seen as independent from the west. Congo's name was changed to Zaire and Mobutu continued to milk the United States for hand-outs to oppose the next door Communist Republic of Congo, which did the same thing with the Soviet Union.
Tshombe, sadly, died in exile four years later. Mobutu went on to rule Zaire with an iron first for more than thirty years and the Republic of the Congo went through a series of Soviet Union backed dictators until 1992, when a lack of financial support led them to try democratic elections which lasted exactly five years before it devolved into a new series of military dictators empowered under the cloak of sham elections.
And there you have the history of much of post colonial Africa in a nutshell:
Gun shot wounds & plan crash - did he know the Clintons?
Thanks!
I think I learn more on FR than anywhere. Born in the 50’s, I remember hearing about all that when it happened, but as I was young these were just names in the background. I seem to remember Tshombe being portrayed as a good guy in the US media, but I could be wrong.
Great post.
LBJ was a globalist at heart. The first two Kennedy bothers were mostly Americans at heart.
Bobby had served as a staffer of Sen. Joseph McCarthy but devolved into more of a globalist after his brother's assassination, but still had not made the complete transformation. Remember, his assassin was a Jew hater who did not like the Kennedy family's tilt to Israel.
Rebel leader Moïse Tshombe had covert military and technical backing from the Belgian government, the former colonial power, and support from western mining firms with interests in the area. Hammarskjöld believed the UN had a duty to intervene because Katanga’s secession posed an existential threat to Congo.
Moise Tshombe, who was pro-West--and heartily hated by the international Left--was a hero among American conservatives who saw him as an alternative to the Third World leftism that was engulfing the newly-independent states in subsaharan Africa. In March, 1962, the Conservative Rally for World liberation from Communism, held on his behalf at Madison Square Garden in New York City featured conservative celebrities that included actor John Wayne and Senators John Tower and Barry Goldwater. The size of the crowd ran to five figures.
Nonetheless, the Kennedy administration backed the UN, whose blue-helmeted troops crushed Katanga's bid for independence at the end of 1962.
About a year later, the UN ran out of money and had to pull out of Congo Leopoldville, and Tshombe became its head of government, staying in power for about a year and a half before being ousted in a coup led by "Diamond Joe" Mobutu, who would complete Congo Leopoldville's transition into a Third World hellhole,
Whether his death was a murder or not, why would they want him killed?
What was he doing that made them fear enough to take this action?
Seriously, I know very little about this. A Google search returns lots of conspiracy sites with convoluted stories; I’d like to hear it from a FReeper who is knowledgeable.
Same here. Even though I was only a young kid, I remember hearing many of those names at the time. Of course being a kid I was blissfully unaware of such machinations in high places.
Notice how overt and covert United States involvement has ameliorated the situation in Africa and enhanced the security and well being of the American people.
No, you were right. Tshombe was treated as a pariah by the international Left. In 1964, when he tried to attend a summit meeting of the Organization of African Unity in Cairo, which he was entitled to as Congo Leopoldville's head of government, the Egyptians essentially kidnapped him and held him in a hotel for the duration of the conference.
The international Left, from Peking and Moscow to Harvard and Berkeley breathed a collective sigh of relief when "Diamond Joe" Mobutu overthrew Tshombe in a November, 1965 coup. A year and a half later, Tshombe was imprisoned in Algeria when his plane was hijacked and flown there. Of course, no one in the West lifted a finger in response to this act of international lawlessness. In 1969, he died from a "heart attack" while still in captivity in Algeria.
I remember hearing years ago that he was a faggot.
There doesn't seem to be a solid purpose to driving every successful African state to chaos & poverty. Expanding communism may have once been the goal, supplying bodies & resources to fuel more communist expansion. But that (as far as I know) was contained to Africa.
The three objectives I can see are: denying other nations the resources of Africa, a powerful source of destabilization that can "used" by dragging nations in or moving people out and building upon the results, a massive wealth theft & "redistribution" mechanism through which individuals & organizations gain power & wealth and unsustainable governments are funded.
This can't be random, not with the U.N. and communist countries doing the exact same things, over and over.
Have we witnessed large-scale socialist experimentation ?
Ultimately, I think the globalist lack of confidence in being able to control JFK is what led to his assassination. He ALMOST did the right thing with Bay of Pigs, but pulled out air support at the last minute. He ALMOST did the right thing with the Congo/Katanga situation but backed the UN at the last minute. He DID do the right thing with the Cuban Missile crisis and the Russians backed down at the last minute. He DID do the right thing by refusing to get involved with Vietnam on globalist terms and this may have gotten him killed.
All-in-all, a mediocre president who could have been a good president had he followed his instincts rather than his globalist advisers.
It was only later that I had to figure out on my own, that the UN itself, was among the WORST tragedies to impose on the world.
Agreeing that LBJ was a Globalist/near Communist, why did he push so hard to escalate our involvement in VietNam?
So is the guy up for a medal or something?
Like you, I grew up thinking the UN was a good thing. It wasn’t until I joined the army that I learned different. Then,fast forward to today and it’s clearly evident they’re an organization driven by Satan himself.
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