Clooney Project To Probe Financing of African Wars 7-20-2015

This is brilliant!! 

Came via an email to me today from Enough Project. Very impressive


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party animal - not! wrote:This is brilliant!! 

Came via an email to me today from Enough Project. Very impressive


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Yes PAN.  I got an email from Enough Project too.  I was just about to post the video. Beat me to it.

Wow!
Another important issue George is taking on!
Really important to see where the money's coming from, where it's going and who's benefiting from it!

I hope this helps these people need to be stopped.

Oh no, page not found. I think they deleted the article. I searched on the Website as well but din't come up

But the Video works. Sounds great. i like "follow the Money"... and I like that George was in the Video too

thanks to frenchies

New George Clooney project to probe financing of African wars
The Sentry, headed by Clooney and John Prendergast of the advocacy group the Enough Project, will probe the financing of conflicts in African countries

NAIROBI, Kenya – Hollywood star George Clooney on Monday, July 20 launched an initiative aimed at ending conflicts in Africa by tracking the money that fuels them.

The Sentry, founded by Clooney and John Prendergast of an advocacy group called the Enough Project, will probe the financing of conflicts in South Sudan, Sudan, Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo.
"Real leverage for peace and human rights will come when the people who benefit from war will pay a price for the damage they cause," the 54-year old Oscar-winner, who has a long history as an advocate for peace in Sudan and South Sudan, said in a statement.
Prendergast, a former Africa director at the US National Security Council turned human-rights activist, took centre stage at the launch in Clooney's absence.
He said "conventional tools of diplomacy" had so far failed and "new efforts must centre on how to make war more costly than peace".
"The objective of The Sentry is to follow the money and deny those war profiteers the proceeds from their crimes," said Prendergast.
In 2010, Clooney and Prendergast initiated the Satellite Sentinel Project, using satellites to map evidence of conflict and human rights abuses on the ground.
At that time, the fear was of war between Khartoum and Juba as the south prepared for its independence in July 2011.
But in late 2013, civil war broke out inside the new nation of South Sudan and the satellite project was left largely redundant.

'Violent kleptocratic system'
The Sentry's declared goal is to "dismantle the networks of perpetrators, facilitators and enablers who fund and profit from Africa's deadliest conflicts."
Participants in the project include C4ADS, a Washington-based non-profit research organisation, and activist group Not On Our Watch, co-founded by Hollywood actors Clooney, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt.
The Sentry's first briefing paper on South Sudan was damning.
It described the civil war between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar as "a competition among the nation's elite for power and profits," with warring parties fighting for control of "a kleptocratic regime that has captured and controlled nearly all profit-generating sectors of the economy".
The group hopes a focus on "economic enablers" – identifying the banks, businessmen, investors and corrupt officials who launder gains and connect corrupt politicians and militiamen to financial markets – will provide new pressure to end long-running conflicts in Africa.
"(To) effectively address the conflict in South Sudan requires looking beyond the spasms of horrific violence and focusing on the underlying drivers, namely the various trends that collectively constitute South Sudan's violent kleptocratic system," The Sentry said. – Tristan McConnell, AFP/Rappler.com

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I like that they have changed the game plan.  They realized the shortcomings of the SSP at this point in the fighting within South Sudan.  A new strategy.  The Sentry.  This new project shows George's real commitment to the cause of bringing peace to the region and beyond.  He's not putting his hands up.  Not giving up.  Hopefully Clooney and Prendergast can make a small dent in the corruption that fuels the violence and human rights atrocities.

A lot of coverage today which is great, and this:

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I just thought I heard about this project before and then found it:

George mentioned it during the interview he did with Charlie Rose.

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You'll  find after about 13 minutes. Can't really figure it out because it counts down and I'm too lazy to calculate.

He's been talking about the importance of following the money trail for a couple of years, at least. I guess it took them that long to assemble a team and figure out how to make it work.

I'm glad they finally have it up and running.

George hasn't  been to South Sudan since January 2011. 
He didn't even pass by last March  2014, when he went on the staged photo-op safari with Ben Weiss + wife,  the entourage of photographers from People magazine, Amal Alamuddin and her cousin Tarek Minkass and his then fiance (the daughter of slain Bulgarian Mafia criminal arms dealer Ilia Pavlov). 

South Sudan isn't too far from Tanzania. 
A cause dear to our heart is hard to pass by...when so close.


Oh, but maybe he can start the investigation of the war crimes in that zone with who supplies the arms.


Amal Alamuddin's Islamic arms dealer uncle Ziad Takieddine was negotiating arms supplies to all of Islamist Arab Middle East and North Africa with Libya's Ghaddafi regime. 


Ziad Takieddine is banned from entry to UK & France. Allegedly money-laundered millions.
The house in Sonning is loose change with the profit Takieddine made from arms deals. Rags-to-riches...like Baria's brother, AKrim Minkass...


Links online. Just Google his name.  


Hope George nails their ass with the spy satellite he can access....
Islamist terrorism is at an all time alarming stste and getting worse.

Having George figure head this is hard an not a good idea with so much credibility lost in last 12 months.I think more would hope for good for project if George name kept out. For short time while people forget such heavy spending by George and his family right now.

George has been involved with this for years he should not stop being involved. How has he lost credibility all he has done is what everyone else does in life fall in love and get married. I doubt that any of the people involve give a crap about his spending or his family. All that matters is what he does and try's to do for this cause and his name brings attention so that in it self is a good thing. The only people who are interested in George's personal life are fans and gossips. The people involved in the causes he works with respect him and want him involved and I'm sure the people who this helps don't care how much he spends. 

As for his credibitiy  I think he has gained a lot by marrying an intelligent woman who is accomplished in her own right. Who also does not need his fame.

I just hope that he's not just "lending his name" and actually does some boots on the ground work like John does.  That offers a lot more credibility than doing a PSA and writing a check or asking other people for money to fund the projects.

I would think if George can't get to South Sudan that he collaborates extensively with John.  My feeling is that he wants to be key to projects that Enough Project and NOOW are working on ..... Including newsworthy editorials and reaching out to government officials.  He is very conscientious of his responsibilities to his humanitarian work.

if using his Brand as a high profile celebrity to draw attention to a cause in order for resolution is effective, then hopefully the severity of the situation in that region will be resolved with foreign intervention.
So far, since George Clooney has actively voiced his support and activism, it has not. But it is hard to establish if the situation would have been more critical if  not. I don't think enough was done.
Hopefully now it can progress. It is in a worse situation than ever. Otherwise if it escalates, there will be dire consequences.

George has been actively involved in this issue for years. He has said that he spends time on it every day. That the situation hasn't been resolved is the result of South Sudanese politics and greed - not something that George or all the aid workers in the world can fix.

The internal problems of any country have to be solved by the people who live there. If they need outside help, fine, but no outsider can do it for them. The citizens themselves have to work for change.

Very true, Lizzy, but the outside world can enable that. But in a good way. 

So it possibly hasn't helped that the Chinese got access and the exploitation rights to the oilfields in exchange for supplying Al Bashir with army equipment including tanks..........

PAN  I was responding to a statement by Leon Felini that the situation will be resolved with foreign intervention. Unless that means foreign occupation, which IMO never works, the changes have to come from within.

Interference from outside usually only benefits the intruder and a small group in the country affected.

Now this is spooky I started to write this and on the radio the DJ is going on "its on this year '94..blah...blah" and half listening I heard George's name....The DJ said when he heard he was leaving ER he thought it an incredibly brave thing to do...and then played a little from ER....

The Reason I write about this is that I had this thread open, and I thought the line George said was very moving and in some way, and I don't know how, apt....
it went something like this...

"Sometimes letting a child die is the kindest thing to do, you are not saving a life, but you are saving the child from pain..."

In a crazy way this applies here, at this stage I don't know how much can be done following the money....after all freezing accounts,  is an impossibility in the Bitcoin world we now live in.....

But what do I know....I hope it continues his monologue above "you are saving a child from pain"....If only one child then its worth it...

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George Clooney Paid by Lockheed Martin to Oppose War Profiteering by Africans Disloyal to the U.S. Agenda

By David Swanson
Global Research, July 23, 2015
World Beyond War
Region: Middle East & North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa
Theme: Militarization and WMD, US NATO War Agenda
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George Clooney is being paid by the world’s top two war profiteers, Lockheed-Martin and Boeing, to oppose war profiteering by Africans disloyal to the U.S. government’s agenda.

Way back yonder before World War II, war profiteering was widely frowned on in the United States. Those of us trying to bring back that attitude, and working for barely-funded peace organizations, ought to be thrilled when a wealthy celebrity like George Clooney decides to take on war profiteering, and the corporate media laps it up.

“Real leverage for peace and human rights will come when the people who benefit from war will pay a price for the damage they cause,” said Clooney — without encountering anything like the blowback Donald Trump received when he criticized John McCain.
Really, is that all it takes to give peace a chance, a celebrity? Will the media now cover the matter of who funds opponents of the Iran deal, and who funds supporters of the wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc.?
Well, no, not really.

It turns out Clooney opposes, not war profiteering in general, but war profiteering while African. In fact, Clooney’s concern is limited, at least thus far, to five African nations: Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, though these are not the only nations in Africa or the world with serious wars underway.

Of the [url=http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/production/recent-trends-in-arms-industry/Fact Sheet Top100 2013.pdf]top 100[/url] weapons makers in the world, not a single one is based in Africa. Only 1 is in South or Central America. Fifteen are in Western allies and protectorates in Asia (and China is not included in the list). Three are in Israel, one in Ukraine, and 13 in Russia. Sixty-six are in the United States, Western Europe, and Canada. Forty are in the U.S. alone. Seventeen of the top 30 are in the U.S. Six of the top 10 mega-profiteers are in the U.S. The other four in the top 10 are in Western Europe.

Clooney’s new organization, “The Sentry,” is part of The Enough Project, which is part of the Center for American Progress, which is a leading backer of “humanitarian” wars, and various other wars for that matter — and which is funded by the world’s top war profiteer, Lockheed Martin, and by number-two Boeing, among other war profiteers.

According to the Congressional Research Service, in the most recent edition of an annual report that it has now discontinued, 79% of all weapons transfers to poor nations are from the United States. That doesn’t include U.S. weapons in the hands of the U.S. military, which has now moved into nearly every nation in Africa. When drugs flow north the United States focuses on the supply end of the exchange as an excuse for wars. When weapons flow south, George Clooney announces that we’ll stop backward violence at the demand side by exposing African corruption.
The spreading of the U.S. empire through militarism is most often justified by the example of Rwanda as a place where the opportunity for a humanitarian war, to prevent the Rwanda Genocide, was supposedly missed. But the United States backed an invasion of Rwanda in 1990 by a Ugandan army led by U.S.-trained killers, and supported their attacks for three-and-a-half years, applying more pressure through the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and USAID. U.S.-backed and U.S.-trained war-maker Paul Kagame — now president of Rwanda — is the leading suspect behind the shooting down of a plane carrying the then-presidents of Rwanda and Burundi on April 6, 1994. As chaos followed, the U.N. might have sent in peacekeepers (not the same thing, be it noted, as dropping bombs) but Washington was opposed. President Bill Clinton wanted Kagame in power, and Kagame has now taken the war into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with U.S. aid and weapons, where 6 million have been killed. And yet nobody ever says “We must prevent another Congo!”

What does George Clooney’s new organization say about the DRC? A very different story from that told by Friends of the Congo. According to Clooney’s group the killing in the Congo happens “despite years of international attention,” not because of it. Clooney’s organization also promotes this argument for more U.S. warmaking in the DRC from Kathryn Bigelow, best known for producing the CIA propaganda film Zero Dark Thirty.

On Sudan as well, there’s no blame for U.S. interference; instead Clooney’s crew has produced a brief for regime change.

On South Sudan, there’s no acknowledgement of U.S. warmongering in Ethiopia and Kenya, but a plea for more U.S. involvement.

The Central African Republic gets the same diagnosis as the others: local ahistorical spontaneous corruption and backwardness leading to war.
Clooney’s co-founder of the Sentry (dictionary definition of “Sentry” is “A guard, especially a soldier posted at a given spot to prevent the passage of unauthorized persons”) is John Prendergast, former Africa director for the National Security Council. Watch Prendergast find himself awkwardly in a debate with an informed person here.

Clooney’s wife, incidentally, works for U.S.-friendly dictators and brutal killers in places like Bahrain and Libya.

More nations could soon be spotted by The Sentry. The President of Nigeria was at the U.S. Institute of “Peace” this week pleading for weapons. U.S. troops are in Cameroon this week training fighters.

If the peace organization I work for had 0.0001% the financial support of The Sentry, perhaps the debate would change. So, one thing you can do is support the right antiwar efforts.

Another is to let The Sentry know what it’s missing. It asks for anonymous tips when you spot war profiteering. Have you ever turned on C-Span? If you see something, say something. Let The Sentry know about the Pentagon.