Patrice Lumumba

“Dead, living, free, or in prison on the orders of the colonialists, it is not I who counts. It is the Congo, it is our people for whom independence has been transformed into a cage where we are regarded from the outside… History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington, or the United Nations will teach, but that which they will teach in the countries emancipated from colonialism and its puppets... a history of glory and dignity.”
— Patrice Lumumba, October 1960

For those who might think the UN might help the people of Syria, a reminder of some of the facts of its first intervention. And brilliant though Lumumba was, it was he who made the mistake of thinking the UN would come to help. When Kofi Annan says that the Syrian opposition should stop fighting, it is so the intrigues of the Great Powers can rule the day.