{"id":5797,"date":"2011-10-21T04:03:49","date_gmt":"2011-10-21T08:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=5797"},"modified":"2011-10-21T04:03:49","modified_gmt":"2011-10-21T08:03:49","slug":"the-son-of-africa-claims-a-continents-crown-jewels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/?p=5797","title":{"rendered":"The Son of Africa Claims a Continent’s Crown Jewels"},"content":{"rendered":"

By John Pilger
\nOctober 20, 2011 – johnpilger.com<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

\"Barack<\/a>On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only \u201cengage\u201d for \u201cself-defence\u201d, says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way.
\n
\nObama\u2019s decision is described in the press as \u201chighly unusual\u201d and \u201csurprising\u201d, even \u201cweird\u201d. It is none of these things. It is the logic of American foreign policy since 1945. Take Vietnam. The priority was to halt the influence of China, an imperial rival, and \u201cprotect\u201d Indonesia, which President Nixon called \u201cthe region\u2019s richest hoard of natural resources \u2026the greatest prize\u201d. Vietnam merely got in the way; and the slaughter of more than three million Vietnamese and the devastation and poisoning of their land was the price of America achieving its goal. Like all America\u2019s subsequent invasions, a trail of blood from Latin America to Afghanistan and Iraq, the rationale was usually \u201cself defence\u201d or \u201chumanitarian\u201d, words long emptied of their dictionary meaning.<\/p>\n

In Africa, says Obama, the \u201chumanitarian mission\u201d is to assist the government of Uganda defeat the Lord\u2019s resistance Army (LRA), which \u201chas murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa\u201d. This is an accurate description of the LRA, evoking multiple atrocities administered by the United States, such as the bloodbath in the 1960s following the CIA-arranged murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first legally elected prime minister, and the CIA coup that installed Mobutu Sese Seko, regarded as Africa\u2019s most venal tyrant.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s other justification also invites satire. This is the \u201cnational security of the United States\u201d. The LRA has been doing its nasty work for 24 years, of minimal interest to the United States. Today, it has few than 400 fighters and has never been weaker. However, US \u201cnational security\u201d usually means buying a corrupt and thuggish regime that has something Washington wants. Uganda\u2019s \u201cpresident-for-life\u201d Yoweri Museveni already receives the larger part of $45 million in US military \u201caid\u201d \u2013 including Obama\u2019s favourite drones. This is his bribe to fight a proxy war against America\u2019s latest phantom Islamic enemy, the rag-tag al Shabaab group based in Somalia. The RTA will play a public relations role, distracting western journalists with its perennial horror stories.<\/p>\n

However, the main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. In the world of self-serving, institutionalised paranoia that justifies what General David Petraeus, the former US commander and now CIA director, implies is a state of perpetual war, China is replacing al-Qaeda as the official American \u201cthreat\u201d. When I interviewed Bryan Whitman, an assistant secretary of defence at the Pentagon last year, I asked him to describe the current danger to America. Struggling visibly, he repeated, \u201cAsymmetric threats \u2026 asymmetric threats\u201d. These justify the money-laundering state-sponsored arms conglomerates and the biggest military and war budget in history. With Osama bin Laden airbrushed, China takes the mantle.<\/p>\n

Africa is China\u2019s success story. Where the Americans bring drones and destabilisation, the Chinese bring roads, bridges and dams. What they want is resources, especially fossil fuels. With Africa\u2019s greatest oil reserves, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi was one of China\u2019s most important sources of fuel. When the civil war broke out and Nato backed the \u201crebels\u201d with a fabricated story about Gaddafi planning \u201cgenocide\u201d in Benghazi, China evacuated its 30,000 workers in Libya. The subsequent UN security council resolution that allowed the west\u2019s \u201chumanitarian intervention\u201d was explained succinctly in a proposal to the French government by the \u201crebel\u201d National Transitional Council, disclosed last month in the newspaper Liberation, in which France was offered 35 per cent of Libya\u2019s gross national oil production \u201cin exchange\u201d (the term used) for \u201ctotal and permanent\u201d French support for the NTC. Running up the Stars and Stripes in \u201cliberated\u201d Tripoli last month, US ambassador Gene Cretz blurted out: \u201cWe know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources!\u201d<\/p>\n

The de facto conquest of Libya by the US and its imperial partners heralds a modern version of the \u201cscramble for Africa\u201d at the end of the 19th century.
\nLike the \u201cvictory\u201d in Iraq, journalists have played a critical role in dividing Libyans into worthy and unworthy victims. A recent Guardian front page carried a photograph of a terrified \u201cpro-Gaddafi\u201d fighter and his wild-eyed captors who, says the caption, \u201ccelebrate\u201d. According to General Petraeus, there is now a war \u201cof perception \u2026 conducted continuously through the news media\u201d.<\/p>\n

For more than a decade the US has tried to establish a command on the continent of Africa, AFRICOM, but has been rebuffed by governments, fearful of the regional tensions this would cause. Libya, and now Uganda, South Sudan and Congo, provide the main chance. As WikiLeaks cables and the US National Strategy for Counter-terrorism reveal, American plans for Africa are part of a global design in which 60,000 special forces, including death squads, already operate in 75 countries, soon to be 120. As Dick Cheney pointed out in his 1990s \u201cdefence strategy\u201d plan, America simply wishes to rule the world.<\/p>\n

That this is now the gift of Barack Obama, the \u201cSon of Africa\u201d, is supremely ironic. Or is it? As Frantz Fanon explained in Black Skin, White Masks, what matters is not so much the colour of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.johnpilger.com\/articles\/the-son-of-africa-claims-a-continents-crown-jewels<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By John Pilger October 20, 2011 – johnpilger.com On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo and Central African Republic. They will only \u201cengage\u201d for … Continue reading The Son of Africa Claims a Continent’s Crown Jewels<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,5,178,39],"tags":[1032,104,105,1037],"class_list":["post-5797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-international","category-media","category-usa","tag-africa","tag-african","tag-barack-obama","tag-unc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5798,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5797\/revisions\/5798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.trinidadandtobagonews.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}