In 1980, Samuel Kanyon Doe, a 28-year-old Master Sergeant, assumed power in Liberia in a blaze of glory. In a surprise night-time attack on the Executive Mansion overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, Doe and his accomplices brutally murdered President William R. Tolbert Jr, ending...
...133 years of rule by black American settlers and their descendants (known as Americo-Liberians).
Thirteen members of the Cabinet were publicly executed ten days later. Other public demonstrations were made to show his power and humiliate Tolbert's people before killing them.
Shortly after the coup, government ministers were walked publicly around Monrovia in the nude and then summarily executed by a firing squad on the beach. Hundreds of government workers fled the country, while others were imprisoned.
Having discarded with Tolbert, Doe became Liberia’s first president of “exclusive indigenous heritage”.
Subsequently, President Doe inflamed ethnic politics and eked out a suspiciously close victory in the 1985 elections, before meeting less dignified end than his predecessor.
At the end of the Cold War, his previously unwavering support from the United States evaporated and, as Liberia erupted into civil war, Doe was left vulnerable.
Nine months into the conflict on September 9, 1990, Doe was captured on a visit to the recently deployed...
...ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in Monrovia by the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL) led by Prince Johnson.
They outmanouvered Doe’s security and the peacekeepers and captured the President. The rebels brought Doe before Johnson.
They stripped him naked except for his underpants and made a video recording.
In the video, Doe is sitting on the floor and one of his tormentors holds a microphone to his face. He begs Johnson for his life...
“Yomi, two people fight, one win. Spare me, please.” Johnson sternly tells Doe, “Don’t f**k with me!”
Johnson lords over the gruesome scene of a room filled with rebels. He is calmly sitting on a swivel chair underneath a picture of Jesus.
On one hand, he holds a walkie talkie and the other, a Budweiser.
The room is overly hot, and for most of the video, one of the few female rebels fans him with a piece of cloth. She also gets him another beer, and then water. He is the picture of the ultimate maniac.
On the other side, Doe sits on the floor begging for his life. The camera oscillates between the two scenes. At some point, the rebels hold him back as one of them cuts off his ears.
He does it almost casually, and when Doe is allowed to sit up again, he is earless and bleeding onto his naked body. They also cut off his fingers and toes. Hours later, he was dead.
Leaked .@HillaryClinton Emails Revealed .@NATO Killed Gaddafi to Stop the formation of United States of Africa
Of the 3,000 emails released from Hillary Clinton's private email server in late December 2015, about a third were from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal. One of these emails, dated April 2, 2011, read in part:
"Qaddafi's government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver ... This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar.
The color of the population of southern Europe from about the 9th to the 16th centuries could very much be compared to native quarters in some North African countries today.
During the Moorish occupation of Spain, a huge melting pot took place. The Moors mixed with natives, European groups, Arabs but also Slavic people. They brought a cosmopolitan spirit that even allowed some ancient captives to rise into the highest positions of the state.
Black people being the foremost power in Europe at that time, Europeans families thought marriage with them an honor. They were the conquerors and Europeans the conquered. So, to them it was an honor to mate or marry with the governing class.
Horrifying ways enslaved African men were sexually exploited and abused by their white masters
Time and time again, the horrifying experiences of enslaved Africans working on plantations in the Americas and other parts of the world are told over and over.
Mansa Musa spent 200kg of gold to make Mali a centre of academic excellence by building Sankore University 700 years ago in Timbuktu. It had the capacity to contain 25,000 students, and had around 1 million manuscripts in its library, one of the largest in the world then
Emperor Mansa Musa of Mali traveled to Mecca for Hajj with an entourage of 60,000 men.
He took his whole court, his officials, solders, heralds, jesters, merchants, camel riders and 12,000 slaves, dressed in quality Persian silk, clad in golden brocade & carrying golden staffs.
The South African photojournalist, Kevin Carter who took this photograph won a Pulitzer Prize for his image.
However, the darkness of that bright day never lifted from him and he committed suicide a year later in July 1994, writing, “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain.”
Kenyan runner Abel Mutai was only a few meters from the finish line, but got confused with the signs and stopped, thinking he had finished the race. A Spanish man, Ivan Fernandez, was right behind him and, realizing what was going on...
started shouting to the Kenyan to keep running. Mutai did not know Spanish and did not understand. Realizing what was going on, Ivan Fernandez pushed Mutai to victory. A reporter asked Ivan, "Why did you do this?" Ivan replied