Anyone heard of AFRICOM? Pentagon Unified Command

[Disco_Destroyer]

[TonyGosling]

so proud, so pleased to have the opportunity to interview Dan Glazebrook this week about Tunisia - the latest expression of Africom's diabolical plan

Dan Glazebrook: Tunisia in turmoil as NATO & China play for Africa
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/66110

[Disco_Destroyer]

Pentagon plans military war games with African nations in ‘urgent’ mission
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/02/12/288589/us-military-plans-urgen t-africa-task/

Tuesday Feb 12, 201311:04 AM GMT
The US military’s Africa Command has been newly tasked with “a more urgent” mission of fighting Muslim militants in the continent, establishing a drone base in Niger and deploying troops to conduct war games and training with African nations.


Amid a shrinking military budget and the winding down of the US-led war in Afghanistan, senior Pentagon officials “are scrambling to address the growing threat in North and West Africa by repositioning spy satellites and shifting surveillance aircraft from other theaters,” The New York Times reports on Tuesday.

According to the report, in building the new assassination and spying drone base in Niger, American military leaders seek to increase “surveillance missions” on what they commonly describe as al-Qaeda-linked militants in the area.

Additionally, the US Africa Command plans to deploy military contingents to the region “to conduct nearly 100 exercises and training programs in 35 African countries,” the report adds.

American officials reached a “status-of-forces agreement” last month in Niger, clearing the way for expanding American military involvement in the resource-rich African country, including the drone base, out of which US assassination and spying drones are expected to run missions against various targets in the region.


Commander of the Africa Command Gen. Carter Ham, who has previously led American troops in Iraq, said following an attack against the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed the country’s ambassador and four CIA operatives there that he is drawing up plans to have American forces in Europe, West Africa or Djibouti respond more quickly to a crisis in the region.

“Instead of responding in a day,” he said, “they could respond within some number of hours.”

The development comes, however, as American military training bids have not always proved effective, the report adds, citing the defection of US-trained Malian army commanders last year to join anti-government militants, “taking troops, trucks, weapons and their newfound skills to the enemy,” the report notes.

The Africa Command has an annual budget of nearly 300 million dollars and 2,000 employees worldwide, compared with the US Central Command, in charge of the nation’s military operations in Afghanistan and the Middle East, which has an annual budget of about 800 million dollars and 5,000 personnel.

[TonyGosling]

Hi Disco
I just came across this USA take over the world map on an excellent French language blog which, i think, translates as The Global Holocaust

Syrie, Turquie, Irak, Iran, Pakistan, Russie : que passa ?

http://fonzibrain.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/syrie-turquie-irak-iran-pak istan-russie-que-passa/

http://www.defense.gov/home/features/2009/0109_unifiedcommand/

http://www.bcfmradio.com/wp-content/Podcasts/20131227180001.mp3

[TonyGosling]

http://www.defense.gov/home/features/2009/0109_unifiedcommand/

Unified Command Plan 2011

The Department of Defense updated the Unified Command Plan, a key strategic document that establishes the missions, responsibilities, and geographic areas of responsibility for commanders of combatant commands. UCP 2011, signed by President Obama on April 6, 2011, assigns several new missions to the combatant commanders.

Every two years, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is required to review the missions, responsibilities, and geographical boundaries of each combatant command and recommend to the President, through the Secretary of Defense, any changes that may be necessary.

Significant changes made by UCP 2011 include:
Shifting AOR boundaries in the Arctic region to leverage long-standing relationships and improve unity of effort.
Giving U.S. Northern Command responsibility to advocate for Arctic capabilities.
Codifying the President's approval to disestablish U.S. Joint Forces Command.
Expanding U.S. Strategic Command’s responsibility for combating weapons of mass destruction and developing Global Missile Defense Concept of Operations.
Giving U.S. Transportation Command responsibility for synchronizing planning of global distribution operations.

The UCP 2011 continues to support U.S. defense security commitments around the world while improving military responsiveness to emerging crises.

Last Updated April 27, 2011

http://www.bcfmradio.com/wp-content/Podcasts/20130517170001.mp3
http://www.bcfmradio.com/wp-content/Podcasts/20130517180001.mp3

http://www.bcfm.org.uk/wp-content/Podcasts/20130517170001.mp3
http://www.bcfm.org.uk/wp-content/Podcasts/20130517180001.mp3

[TonyGosling]

ie a bunch of Kissinger sponsored mercenaries do a few massacres as an excuse for the French colonial troops to pour in for the Yanks Brits and Israelis

French troops clash with Central African Republic gunmen in capital
By Emmanuel Braun
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/09/uk-centralafrican-france-idUK BRE9B80DF20131209
BANGUI Mon Dec 9, 2013 5:29pm GMT
French troops may find Central African Republic mission easier than Mali
End attacks on civilians in Central African Republic: Hague prosecutor
Pentagon eyes logistical aid for Central African Republic mission
(Reuters) - French troops in Central African Republic clashed with gunmen in the capital Bangui on Monday as they searched for weapons in an operation to disarm rival Muslim and Christian fighters responsible for hundreds of killings since last week.
Shooting erupted near the airport in the morning after gunmen refused to hand over their weapons, and French forces later came under attack by former rebels in the city centre.
France said it was prepared to use force if fighters rejected calls to disarm or return to barracks.
France boosted its military presence in its former colony to 1,600 troops over the weekend as waves of religious violence swept across the country. At least 459 people have been killed in Bangui alone since Thursday, according to Red Cross officials.
"This is not an easy job, but our soldiers are well prepared," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told France Inter radio.
The order to disarm had been broadcast on local radio in Bangui and "if that is not enough, force is going to be employed."
Central African Republic has spiralled into chaos since mainly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power in March and embarked on months of looting, raping and killing. Seleka's leader, Michel Djotodia, installed as the country's interim president, has lost control of his loose band of fighters.

EXCHANGES OF FIRE
Christian militias and gunmen loyal to ousted president Francois Bozize attacked Bangui on Thursday, the same day the U.N. Security Council authorised France to use lethal force to help African peacekeepers already struggling to restore order.
In an early test of France's resolve, its troops traded fire with gunmen near the airport Monday morning. A French army spokesman in Paris called the incident "insignificant".
"Many armed elements who held positions in Bangui have left their positions to go back to their barracks," Colonel Gilles Jaron said.
However, French troops again came under attack later in the day in the PK 5 neighbourhood from suspected Seleka fighters.
"It was an attempt to intimidate. We responded with 20mm cannon, then sent in a platoon to carry out clean-up operations," Captain Guillaume Fresse, spokesman for the French force in Bangui, told Reuters.
It was not immediately known whether there had been casualties in the two incidents.
As French forces manned checkpoints and patrolled the streets, pockets of crowd violence erupted in several districts.
In the Castor neighbourhood, a Reuters reporter watched as a crowd attacked a man they accused of being a disarmed Seleka fighter after French soldiers removed weapons from a house there, then left.
At a mosque in the PK 5 neighbourhood, the resident imam showed journalists the bodies of two men who he said had been beaten to death by Christians.
The arrival of French troops has been broadly welcomed in a city still struggling to emerge from a period that saw fighters, both Christian and Muslim, go door-to-door killing civilians as they cowered inside.
As French warplanes and helicopters flew low overhead and despite the violences, Bangui residents reappeared on the streets and some shops and market stalls reopened for the first time since last week.
"Yesterday we couldn't even come here to cross this road because the Seleka came and set up a base here," said a woman who gave her name only as Armelle. "Thank God the French came. If there's peace, things will get better."

THOUSANDS DISPLACED
However, the United Nations said it had counted some 72,000 people displaced by the violence currently staying in various sites around the city, including at the airport, where French troops and African peacekeepers have their base.
"There are still conflicts in some neighbourhoods. There's still killing," said Amy Martin, head of the U.N. aid agency OCHA in Bangui. "For now, we don't have the feeling that people are ready to go home.
Meanwhile information from elsewhere in the country, cut off from the capital since last week, began to trickle in.
A humanitarian worker in the town of Bossangoa said the number of dead there from several days of violence between Seleka and Christian "anti-balaka" militias formed in response to the violence had risen to 38.
In Bozoum, in the northwest, U.N. officials received reports of dozens of dead, and there was also violence in the nearby town of Bocaranga.
Humanitarian agencies and rights groups said the figures only reflected bodies that had been officially counted, and that the final death toll was likely to be significantly higher.
"We've spoken to a lot of people who have just buried their relatives in the back yard because they couldn't get out or didn't see the point of calling the Red Cross," said Joanna Mariner, a crisis expert with Amnesty International in Bangui.
(Additional reporting by Marine Pennetier, Joe Bavier and Bate Felix, Writing by Joe Bavier,; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

[TonyGosling]

America’s Conquest of Africa: The Penetration of AFRICOM on the Continent
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-conquest-of-africa-the-penetration-of -africom-on-the-continent/5349088
TomDispatch tracks where the Pentagon is moving in Africa

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Global Research, September 10, 2013
Pan-African News Wire
Region: sub-Saharan Africa
Theme: US NATO War Agenda

A recent study conducted by Nick Turse of TomDispatch.com on the increasing role of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) illustrates why this issue should become a major focus of the peace, anti-war and anti-imperialist movements in the West. With the withdrawal of Pentagon ground forces from Iraq and the scaling-down of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, there has been very little attention paid to developments involving interventions by the imperialist states in the oppressed nations.

Although there have been significant demonstrations around the U.S. against the war threats aimed at Syria, these latest machinations by the White House and the French government of Francois Hollande should not be the sole focus of the anti-war movement. The degree to which the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) has engaged in acts of subversion and military intrigue in Africa must at some point force the movement to break out of its myopic preoccupation with events that grab the headlines within the corporate media outlets.

If these trends in Africa are presented in an organized and cohesive fashion, there could be an upsurge in interests related to events on the continent. A panel discussion put together by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) at the Left Forum in New York City in early June, attracted a standing-room-only audience.

Issues related to the Obama administration and its allies’ interventions in Africa should have been the subject of a plenary session at the Left Forum. The panel entitled “The War on Africa” and its success illustrates that there is growing interests in these aspects of imperialism and its strategic outlook for areas outside the so-called Middle East.

Even though President Obama is of African descent, his policies toward the continent have continued and even intensified Western efforts to dominate the continent which has been subjected to nearly six centuries of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism. With the People’s Republic of China playing a greater role in Africa through trade relations and strategic partnerships, the ruling class within the U.S. is scrambling to edge out Beijing by increasing its military and intelligence presence.



The bombing of Libya by the Pentagon and NATO for seven straight months in 2011, demonstrated clearly the extent to which imperialism is willing to go in order to overthrow and remake states. Since the fall of the Gaddafi government and the Jamahiriya system, Libya has been plunged into economic distress and political chaos.



Drone stations are being constructed throughout the Horn of Africa and in Niger while the U.S. subsidizes the maintenance of a 17,500-person military force in Somalia. Somalia is now the focus of oil exploration and exploitation along with other states along the coast of East Africa.



TomDispatch’s Findings



Nick Turse begins his review of the Pentagon’s increasing intervention in Africa saying “They’re involved in Algeria and Angola, Benin and Botswana, Burkina Faso and Burundi, Cameroon and the Cape Verde Islands. And that’s just the ABCs of the situation.”



He goes on to stress that all you need to do is “Skip to the end of the alphabet and the story remains the same: Senegal and the Seychelles, Togo and Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia. From north to south, east to west, the Horn of Africa to the Sahel, the heart of the continent to the islands off its coasts, the U.S. military is at work.”



Turse goes on to track the activities of the Pentagon through its joint military exercises with various African states, the construction of military bases within these states, the so-called training exercises carried out by the U.S. defense department involving African militaries, the construction and expansion of the Camp Lemonier base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti and the utilization of drone technology to both monitor events as well as engage in offensive strikes against targeted individuals and organizations.



Another important aspect of the escalating Pentagon presence in Africa is the existence of AFRICOM-related bases of operation outside the continent. Located mainly in European countries and islands under their control, the presence of these facilities should also be of concern to Left and anti-war forces on that continent which was the forerunner of intervention prior to the birth of its offspring in North America.



Turse notes that “When considering the scope and rapid expansion of U.S. military activities in Africa, it’s important to keep in mind that certain key ‘African’ bases are actually located off the continent. Keeping a semblance of a ‘light footprint’ there, AFRICOM’s headquarters is located at Kelley Barracks in Stuttgart-Moehringen, Germany.”



He goes on saying “In June, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the base in Stuttgart and the U.S. Air Force’s Air Operations Center in Ramstein were both integral to drone operations in Africa. Key logistics support hubs for AFRICOM are located in Rota, Spain; Aruba in the Lesser Antilles; and Souda Bay, Greece, as well as at Ramstein. The command also maintains a forward operating site on Britain’s Ascension Island, located about 1,000 miles off the coast of Africa in the South Atlantic, but refused requests for further information about its role in operations.”



The Need for a Response by the Anti-Imperialist Forces



These findings should provide the basis for a more concentrated effort related to the growing Pentagon as well as CIA presence in Africa. The organization of a clear anti-imperialist response to these developments would serve to encourage and motivate revolutionary organizations and movements in Africa that could lead to alliances between progressive forces in the West and those on the continent.



There should be the establishment of study groups to review the history and current events related to imperialist militarism. Task forces need to be set up where military training facilities and corporations directly involved in these events in Africa could be targeted for protests and boycotts.



Positions papers, pamphlets, books and web pages should be developed to provide concrete information about these trends. These resources can serve as the basis for reaching greater numbers of people both in the imperialist states and those in Africa and other regions of the world.



To read this report entitled “Tomgram: Nick Turse, AFRICOM’s Gigantic ‘Small Footprint’” just log on to: http://TomDispatch.com

[TonyGosling]

CAR ex-leader heads for exile in Benin
Michel Djotodia, who seized power backed by rebels last March, resigned under pressure from regional leaders.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/01/car-ex-leader-exile-benin -201411115450653357.html

Humanitarian Warfare: “Stabilizing” Central Africa for the Multinationals
http://www.globalresearch.ca/stabilizing-central-africa-for-the-multin ationals/5364423

On December 5th, yet another war led by foreign powers broke out in Africa, and like the one in Mali, it was led at the helm by the French. The UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution which authorized the deployment of French and African troops in the Central African Republic. At the same time, Chad, Cameroon, South Africa, Angola, Morocco, Burundi, Rwanda, the Republic of Congo, and other African countries, sent troops. Other countries like the UK, Germany, Spain, Denmark and Poland provided logistical support, while Belgium and the US provided air support by transporting the peacekeeping troops.

To pay for this war, which is a huge expense, France paid a good portion, along with the US pitching in $60 million, and Canada even pitching in a little. On January 20th, the full financing of international donors will come into view as EU and UN donors will meet and decide how much money they are giving to support the intervention. All the while, high-level UN officials have said that “a strong peacekeeping force” is needed in the Central African Republic and that 6,000 to 9,000 UN Peacekeepers would be needed to “stabilize the country.” This brings one to the question of who or what is being stabilized by the military intervention in the Central African Republic and what the real goals are, other than professed humanitarian reasons.

There is already some signs that the stabilization is not going very well for the population of the Central African Republic. 935,000 have been displaced by the conflict in the country, with more than 74% being internally displaced and more than 26% leaving to neighboring countries according to the UN High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR). As a recent Reuters article noted, “the deployment of 1,600 French and nearly 4,000 African Union peacekeepers has done little to contain the tit-for-tat violence between religious communities.” Already, numerous French troops and AU peacekeepers have died in action while many residents of the country continue to be killed, wounded, mutilated, and beheaded, numbers which grow day by day. The humanitarian crisis continues to get worse with over 600,000 internally displaced by December 30th of 2013. This is compounded by the fact that the President and his family, who came to power in a coup last year, have fled the country for Benin.

France: the gendarme of Africa?

What Roosevelt says connects to the fact that the French multinational nuclear energy company, Areva “mines the Bakouma uranium deposit in the CAR’s south” which Reuters describes as “France’s biggest commercial interest in its former colony.” [6] This reality runs deep into the reasons for intervention. As Francois Hollande, the fake socialist and really neoliberal, president of France, declared to the government-owned Radio France Internationale (RFI), that while the “intervention will cost about 400-500 million euros…[which] may seem like a lot, especially at a time when we have budget constraints and we demand sacrifices of French people” it is based in the “role of France” he believes to be true: “the responsibility of France…is to be a world power.”

That same day, Hollande told the Telegraph that “we think that it should not cost France anything as I have spoken to you of European financing…I would hope that they [European Union] can contribute more, be in the forces that we could mutualise.” Only the day before, he had said at end of a summit between France and African leaders that 1,600 troops in the Central African Republic will be “a number that will remain as long as necessary for this mission.” In that same article, an anonymous source from the French defense ministry source claimed that “there were patrols all night, including some on foot. We are going everywhere.”

This is partially confirmed by the fact that “French jets and surveillance aircraft” flew over parts of the country, while in the neighboring country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, five drones were deployed in the first use of “unmanned surveillance aircraft” by the UN for “peacekeeping efforts.” As for Hollande, drones were not his major aim, but rather it was mounting a rhetorical defense of the intervention by telling a group of French troops that it was “necessary if one wants to avoid carnage here” and that “it was time to act. It was soon going to be too late.” He added that fighting in the country was “taking on a religious dimension with the risk of leading to a civil war” and that “France is not here in the CAR out of any self-interest. France has come to defend human dignity.” These words seemed to echo what he said back in October, at a meeting with South African President Jacob Zuma: “there is a political emergency because there is no state. There is also an emergency at a regional level because there is a risk of spillover. We might witness religious conflict.”

What Hollande is saying is only the beginning of French officials covering and defending the intervention. In a purportedly non-interventionist manner, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared that since “the democratic situation has been re-established,” France doesn’t need to provide assistance or “get involved” in the troubles in Mali, but that: “France intervened and we can say it saved Mali. But it’s not up to us to be the gendarme of Africa.” A gendarme is “a police officer in any of several European countries, esp. in France,” [6] which in this context would be the policeman of Africa, since neo-colonial domination is deeply patriarchal. The idea that France is not ‘policing’ is frankly absurd. As a Reuters article reminds us, the Central African Republic “has seen little stability in five decades, and France has intervened more times since independence in 1960 than in any of its former colonies” which is partially evidenced by the fact that “under a 1960 defence accord, France is obligated to intervene in the event of foreign aggression.”

This is why some say that France has conduced a forty-year secret war in Central Africa. In the last sentence of an article in The Telegraph, which almost seems to be an afterthought, it importantly points out that “since 2011, France has intervened in four African states: in Ivory Coast…in Libya, in Mali and now in the Central African Republic.” Only a few days before the intervention in Central Africa officially began, France quietly sent more troops to complement the 2,600 African Union troops then in the country and in later November, as the Christian Science Monitor noted, France planned “to boost its force there to around 1,000 troops to restore law and order until a much bigger African Union force fully deploys.” In all of Africa, France has 6,275 troops as of December 2013, the most recent information,which is between 74-75% of its overseas deployments. If this isn’t enough, at the end of the summit between Africa leaders and French officials on December 8th, Hollande pledged to “help the African Union turn its plans for a rapid reaction force into a functioning unit by 2015” by offering “to provide equipment, logistical support and training for 20,000 troops from the continent every year for five years” while trying to persuade “Britain, Germany and other EU partners to help finance the equipment and arms the new force will require.” This huge commitment is a sign of France’s lasting presence in Africa, especially over in its former colonies.

There is something that proves Hollande was wrong: a war for securing resources, blatant imperialism. Unlike Obama’s speech at the UN, French politicians haven’t in recent years blatantly declared their imperialist motives. With the war in Libya, many nations rushed in to support the rebel forces officially for humanitarian reasons, but really about acquiring or protecting the oil supply. Like in Mali, France also led the charge, with the objectives being about making sure that uranium reserves in Niger were untouched by violence, and possibly also helping international mining companies as well. These events must be seen in context of the overall French foreign policy in regards to Africa. A document written by Paul Melly and Vincent Darracq for the London think thank, Chatham House, in May 2013, describes this policy well, noting that: “France wields a level of influence in sub-Saharan Africa that it cannot command anywhere else in the world…Africa accounts for 3 per cent of France’s exports and remains an important supplier of oil and metals…[such as] uranium…sub-Saharan Africa is an important market for French logistics, service, telecoms and infrastructure companies.”

The policy that Chatham House describes is definitely active in the Central African Republic. In 2008, the majority French state-owned multinational corporation, Areva, [7] signed a “uranium mining deal with Central African Republic” but only a year earlier, Francois Bozize, the President of the Central African Republic who was ousted, said that the acquisition of UraMin by Areva “without our consent” and said that he wouldn’t let the country’s economy “be bandied about in a game between capitalists on the London Stock Exchange.” Over two years later, Areva “suspended its uranium mining project in the Central African Republic for two years” due to a fall in prices in uranium after the Fukashima disaster, which means it was scheduled to reopen operations in November 2012 and “ramp[ing] up to full production in 2014-15” as noted by the World Nuclear Association. It is important to remember, that as the World Bank noted, Areva also “controls most of Niger’s uranium industry.” With the tensions between numerous groups, Areva, as noted by Bloomberg News, began removing employees from their Bakouma uranium mine after an attack the previous year. There were been numerous attacks on Areva properties including one in January in which hundreds attacked a uranium exploration site, taking “computers and looted houses” and another, well-known one, in June, with gunmen attacking a uranium plant and doing some material damage to a site “considered important by Areva.” Still, France did not intervene.

The importance of the uranium mine and exploration in the country likely got the attention of the French government. As an article in The Guardian in January 2013 noted, France has 250 troops in the country at the time, with the government saying that it would “only deploy them to protect its embassy and other interests” and the article then noted that “there are around 1,200 French citizens in the country, many working for mining firms, such as French nuclear giant Areva, which has a significant uranium mine in south-east CAR.” If this couldn’t be made any clearer, a BBC article around the same time pointed out that “France… dispatched additional troops to the country to protect its nationals, many of whom work in Areva’s large uranium mine at Bakouma in the south-east of the country.” The underlying truth should be clear: France deployed the troops to protect the uranium operations conducted by Areva. Since the France’s “main source of electricity generation is nuclear power” as noted by the Energy Information Agency (EIA) of the US Department of Energy, uranium deposits would be important for their national security. In May 2012, Juliette Poirson wrote on the site of the World Information Service on Energy, a review of a book by Raphael Granvaud titled Areva en Afrique (Areva in Africa), that “the great development of French civilian and military nuclear power have been possible thanks to the exploitation of the soil of French African colonies….and then of African independent countries” making “French energy independence” a myth which is further proven by the continuing “collusion between politics and interests of the French nuclear industry.”This conclusion, that the war is related to France’s security connected to a mineral, uranium is held by others across the board and is the main reason for intervening in the country.

French-backed currency, the EU and African elite

The French-led imperialist war, as it should be called, is not only in their hands, but also that of the African-led force called MISCA. The Lieutenant General Babacar Gaye, who leads the mission, graduated from École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr (ESM), the premier military academy in France, seemingly their version of West Point. This force includes soldiers who have been transferred from the Multinational Force of Central Africa, an AU military mission, which was comprised of soldiers from Gabon, Chad, Republic of Congo, and Cameroon along with those serving as part of MICROPAX, a peacekeeping mission led by the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), which is part of the AU.

This is important to point out, because it directly connects to France’s economic policy in regards to Central Africa. As the founder Christof Lehmann writes on the online newspaper, NSNBC International, and political consultant, the Central African CFA Franc, the currency of the all of the states of ECCAS, “is printed under supervision of the French National Bank,” but is issued by the region’s central bank the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) which France has veto power over. All the while, “foreign currency reserves…[are] subject to deposition” in the central bank of France, Banque de France, including those which are gold. He says all of these things are, in his view, “indebting and enslaving Africans by means of Africa’s own wealth” and are “not only bleeding Africa…[but] increasingly bleeding both the French and European economies.” This is only the tip of the iceburg.

The West African CFA franc, is printed in a similar manner, and is also “guaranteed by the French treasury” and France also has a veto over the region’s central bank, called the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO). This means that fourteen countries in total have their currencies, which are pegged to the Euro, guaranteed by Banque de France, which is linked to the European Central Bank, a total of over 123 million people, a massive exploitation by the French government of poor Africans. This is important to note, because it could be a reason for intervention by European states, along with the EU’s involvement in Central Africa’s Rainforests and the recent declaration that the EU is considering deploying an additional 1,000 troops to the country.

The deep connection between the French state and the fourteen African governments, is likely a motivator for some members to send troops to the Central African Republic, not the bribes and support that the government gave African dictators in the past.[8] This shows that Cornel West was right: “African and Latin American regimes [are] still grappling with postcolonial European and U.S. economic domination.” [9] Interestingly, Dembassa Worogagoi, the ambassador of said country appointed by Bozize, asked from help from the French at the UN on November 25th: “it is during difficult times that we recognize our friends” and also said that day that the country would like to see the “the African-led MISCA…supported and equipped by the United Nations, with the logistical support of France.”

While some say that France wants to overthrow the current government, one can’t be so sure. After all, the current prime minister of the Central African Republic, Nicolas Tiangaye, a choice of the rebels, went to the summit of African leaders. According to the International Business Times, he “welcomed the French intervention and called for international support,” saying that the country needed “massive humanitarian aid…[because] there is a risk of famine.” It is important to remember that the rebel government, led by Djotodia has promised “to review all mining deals, but those awarded to richer states are likely to be secure [including] the French billion dollar uranium project in Bakouma…and…[the] Canadian gold mining company Axmin Inc” which was recently approved by an interim council. WSWS added to this, noting that the “Djotodia…already announced that he will review the CAR’s mining and oil contracts with China, signed by the Bozizé government.” Despite this, on December 8th, Hollande said “I don’t want to point fingers but we cannot keep in place a president who was not able to do anything, or even worse, who let things happen,” and that he wants Djotodia to go and have elections to replace him as “fast as possible.”

Sources tell Reuters that Michel Djotodia “is due to step down at a summit of regional leaders” partly because other African leaders had run out of patience with him. Part of the reason Canada is involved in the country is that Axamin, a Canadian international mining company, has a gold mine, called the Passendro Gold Project, to which the company claimed had a total reserve of 1.4 million ounces of gold which is equivalent of approximately 3,348 gold bars. At the same time, South Africa, Angola, Burundi, Rwanda and the Republic of Congo, have their own reasons, to enrich their elite or to maintain regional stability to join in the fight. In the end, French credit insurer COFACE writes on their profile of the Central African Republic, that insecurity in the country “is curbing investment development” while “growth, which leads into the reasons the US joined in the scramble.

The business of America in Africa is business

When the war began, the United States government didn’t hold back at endorsing the intervention. Current National Security Adviser Susan Rice, who holds assets in Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Honda, AOL, Monsanto, Shell, TransCanada, McDonalds, and other corporations, according to her most recent financial disclosure report, remarked at the Human Rights First Annual Summit, a day before the intervention, that the US is taking “on the deteriorating situation and increasing violence in the Central African Republic” by “working this week at the UN to support African Union forces protecting civilians, to provide humanitarian assistance, and to investigate human rights abuses so the perpetrators can be held accountable.” The next day, Press Secretary Jay Carney wrote that the UN resolution was “an important step in preventing further atrocities or an escalation of the violence,” and that African and French forces will “protect civilians, restore security, and ensure humanitarian access” while the US government evaluates what it will do next. Only a few days later, Obama made a plea for the warring factions in the country to “reject violence” and he said that the US government will support the intervention in Central African Republic, which he said will “protect civilians.”

As the next month rolled by, the US first said that it was providing $40 million in aid, then by December 19th, it was “$101 million in support for restoring security” in the country which was mostly of a military nature. Aid wasn’t all: the US began ferrying African troops to the Central African Republic on December 9th, an action which was requested by the French.

At the same time, the US has special forces in the country, which are not counted as boots on the ground, as noted by a Washington Post article in April 2012 and President Obama’s message to Congress in December. In this message, Obama wrote that there were a number of officially deemed ‘counterterrorism’ operations in Africa: “the capturing longtime al-Qa’ida member Abu Anas al Libi” in Libya, a military raid in Somalia, the stationing of 200 military personnel in Niger to provide intelligence for French troops who are still in Mali, the continued deployment of 120 military personnel in Central Africa officially to go after Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), 715 military personnel staying in Egypt as part of the “Multinational Force and Observers” and others staying in Libya. On top of this, as noted by a map of US and French military operations in Africa, made by Philippe Rekacewicz, the US gives military aid in the form of training special forces to Mali, Niger, Chad, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritania, and Senegal, along with a US naval presence off the coast of Gabon, a US base in Djibouti.

That’s not all. In almost a band across the middle of the continent, the United States has deployed special forces and other military personnel, as a map complementing an article in Foreign Policy magazine points out. Near the Central African Republic, the US even has numerous flight bases, specifically in South Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso and Uganda as noted by Public Intelligence.

While increased US presence in Africa could lay the groundwork for intervention, this is not really what is at stake. The answer lies in the official documents that set the foundation for US national security policy. The first of these is the current National Security Strategy, which is due to be replaced this year with a new one that last the rest of his years. There is a major focus on the Middle East and North Africa, just like the speech Obama made to the UN, but the document still says “…as long as we are dependent on fossil fuels, we need to ensure the security and free flow of global energy resources…We will stimulate our energy economy at home, reinvigorate the U.S. domestic nuclear industry.” One could make a logical connection to the uranium deposits, saying that the US government wants to secure those in central Africa to help the domestic nuclear industry, but no government policy or action shows this to be true. Involvement in the intervention of central Africa doesn’t even seem to be connected to US’s non-tolerant attitude toward an energy supply cut off in North Africa and the Mideast. The US, through covert methods which are “out of the public eye” have expanded in Africa, along with so-called access agreements that allows deep cooperation between the US military and African forces. In fact, the US has engaged in a war for oil in Africa already: Libya in 2011, which was to protect the volatile oil markets and secure better contracts for international petroleum corporations, the first major war the US has had in Africa since the Barbary Wars of the early 1800s which one of the first public displays through military might of the dirty energy doctrine. Additionally, the positioning of US special forces in Uganda officially to go after Joseph Kony was “likely because of huge oil deposits” in the country, the U.S. government is also concerned about oil in the Sudans, assistance in Mali was seemingly connected to oil deposits, and there is a growing importance of African oil to the United States, since 25% of US oil consumption is estimated to come from West Africa by 2015 as noted by Chatham House. AFRICOM or Africa Command, which was created in 2008, is related to this phenomenon and is connected to the growing empire of bases across the continent while engaging in war where terror is invoked but resources are the real underlying reason. Let us not forget that the Obama Administration has used the US armed forces more times in Africa than any other President in US history.[10]

As for the Central African Republic, the reason for US assistance mainly seems to lie in something different than just a hunt for resources. Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s senior advisor, said ominously that “we all know that Africa is the new center of global growth.” I’m not sure who ‘we’ is referring to but I can infer that ‘global growth’ means the expansion of the wealth of the rich through corporate investments, individual finances and so on. The quote by Jarrett was tied into the hoopla over Obama’s trip to Africa, in June 2013, described in Jarrett’s same blogpost which outlined the trip’s three main goals: increasing US trade and investment, creating “strong democratic institutions,” and training the “next generation of African leaders.” The last one is possibly more important than the others because if these new leaders, if they get into office, will have a positive impression of the United States, likely influencing them to make sure that American multinationals are favored while cooperating with and assisting continued US military domination over Africa. There is one document written in June 2012 titled US Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa that seems to be part of the puzzle of why the U.S. is involved in Central Africa. Like the goals of the Africa tour, it has a focus on creating powerful democratic institutions which could be part of hidden goal to great ‘big government’ that would help the rich and powerful. There is more: the strategy says the U.S. government should “promote opportunity and development” through supposedly encouraging measures to address social inequality, “spur economic growth, trade [and] investment” by creating a friendly business climate, promoting “regional integration,” improving “economic governance,” helping Africans effectively “access and benefit from global markets,” and finally encouraging “U.S. companies to trade with and invest in Africa.” This is all capped by efforts to “advance peace and security” or stabilize Sub-Saharan Africa which would create a better business climate to bring U.S. businesses in, which is exactly what the U.S. government is supporting by backing the military intervention in the Central African Republic.

The low trade between the US and the Central African Republic, and paltry amounts of seemingly humanitarian aid by USAID, doesn’t invalidate the push for investment in Central Africa, but rather strengthens it. After all, the current economic circumstances for business are rocky: Global Edge gives the country a D rating for the business climate. They write that while “agricultural potential, forest and mining wealth” along with IMF support is a plus, there are numerous weaknesses of the country’s investment climate such as an “economy vulnerable to internal and external shocks…geographic isolation…unstable political and security situation” and poor infrastructure. This brings one to the point that the country is underdeveloped and needs to be developed.

The U.S. is already committed to supporting “private sector engagement and investment in Africa through three Africa regional trade hubs,” which is part of the U.S. government initiative that claims to tackle food insecurity in Africa: Feed the Future, along with a number of other programs to move forward with “economic growth” in Africa while the US pushes for increased trade with selected countries in East Africa. For the US, no such investment like that of numerous country-specific and continent-specific investment banks, which have offices in the country, exists, but it could. There is one likely contender that could swoop in: not the big banks or oil companies, but the technology giants. The reason for this is partly because the technology giants have deep support from the Obama administration, like the mainstay of the Democratic Party. The strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa, which I mentioned earlier, calls for “technology [that] will further support the region’s economic expansion.” More importantly, every country in Africa has internet cable running through a majority of its territory except Gabon, Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Eritrea, Somalia, and the Central African Republic.

These tech companies have already been pushing to close this gap, using their best efforts and all the resources at their disposal to expand into a new market. In an article in the Seattle Times, the power of Microsoft and other companies in Africa is fully explained. This article noted that in recent years, Microsoft, “IBM, Google, Intel, Hewlett Packard and other tech companies…have expanded their presence in Africa” because many countries have “become more stable” and able to work with multinational corporations like themselves. In order to accommodate these projects and future “business potential” in the billions of dollars, these technology companies are building “tech infrastructure…bringing faster broadband connections to Africa’s coasts and terrestrial cables to extend these networks inland” while also investing in increased internet access and other infrastructure. Other articles noted the same boom in investment, with The Economist boasting in February 2013 that the information technology coming to the continent was “the next frontier” since “mobile-phone and internet penetration in Africa is sharply on the rise.”

Another article in The Economist also notes how Google is a ‘hit’ in Africa, possibly becoming the “single biggest private-sector influence in Africa” which is operating in a realm where there is little regulation and they have much power. All of these developments come together with technology companies wanting a new market, which consists of the 30% food insecure Central African Republic. This is proven by the fact that UPS is the only big American multinational that has an office in the country. All of this ties into the National Strategy for Global Supply Chain Security which says that the US government will “promote the efficient and secure movement of goods,” make sure the global supply chain is not disrupted and while working to “promote America’s future economic growth and international competitiveness by remaining open for businesses to the world.”

Still, resource interests still play some part in the US reasons for assisting in the intervention of Central Africa, which in this case is oil, rather than mineral interests. As a June 2013 fact sheet for the seemingly pro-dirty energy project launched during Obama’s trip to Africa, Power Africa, notes, “the recent discoveries of oil and gas in Sub-Saharan Africa will play a critical role in defining the region’s prospects for economic growth and stability, as well as contributing to broader near-term global energy security.” At the same time, the Engineering and Technology Magazine points out, five countries dominate the upstream oil production of Africa: Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Egypt, and Angola. Refugees from Central Africa, that aren’t in the majority who have been internally displaced, are fleeing to oil-rich South Sudan, resource-rich Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo, Cameron, and Chad, all which could be destabilized.

The last two of these countries is the most important to the US reasons for assisting in the intervention in Central Africa and is connected to the expanding amount of roads and pipelines being “built or envisioned into the interior of Central Africa from multiple directions,” none which penetrate the resource-rich Congo. This is refined on page five of TransNet’s Pipeline Development Plan, which notes that none of the proposed gas, crude of liquid fuel pipelines in Africa will be anywhere near the Central African Republic, but only one existing pipeline is nearby: the Chad-Cameroon pipeline. This pipeline runs through the middle of Cameroon by beginning at a marine terminal outside the city of Krel, continuing along and near the border of the Central African Republic and ending outside the Chadian city of Kome.

This pipeline, as dutifully noted on website of the pipeline project, has four main partners: the governments of Chad and Cameroon, the World Bank, and a “consortium of three energy companies” that built the pipeline: ExxonMobil (40%) which was the pipeline’s operator, Malaysian multinational Petronas (35%), and Chevron (25%). The latter corporation is directly connected to the Obama administration because Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel used to be on the board of directors of Chevron, and pro-fracking Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz who was part of the corporate funded MIT Energy Initiative, with companies like Chevron, BP and Shell giving money while many other people in Obama’s corporatist administration have ties to Big Business. Still, while there are other pipelines being developed in Africa like the proposed Trans-Saharan pipeline, the East African pipeline, the Kenya-Uganda pipeline, only the pipelines coming out of South Sudan and Nigeria seem close enough to be affected. Protecting dirty energy in the Republic of Congo as a reason for assisting in the intervention, is affirmed through the fact that while French multinational Total S.A. And Italian Eni dominate the oil and gas sector, Chevron has its place, and “Congo holds the fifth-largest proven natural gas reserves in Sub-Saharan Africa” according to the EIA.

In closing, for the US, the reasons for helping out the French-led effort seem to be clear and revolve around stabilizing the country from violence committed by rebels who are coming from South Sudan and Chad, or other countries: create a friendly business climate likely for American tech giants, and protect the Chad-Cameroon pipeline along with oil in the Republic of Congo from strife or disturbance.

Left in the dust: China, India, and Russia

The competition in Africa has gone to new heights: not only is the US competing with China, but also with the European countries, India, and Russia in a “scramble for Africa’s many resources including oil…diamonds and gold to land for agricultural investment” along with a push to create a friendly climate for their country’s investors. Of these competitors, China is the most potent as it has major investments “across the continent and has surpassed the U.S. as Africa’s largest trading partner.” Even so, its military presence doesn’t even meet that of the US, but uses of the Chinese military in Africa are slowly growing. As John Reed noted in Foreign Policy magazine on July 2013, “for the second time in little over a year, China has infantry on the ground in Africa, reflecting the Chinese military’s increasing global presence.” In another article about China’s involvement in Africa, American University professor Debroah Brautigam dispels some myths about China, describing the smaller-than-expected amount of aid the country gives to Africa which is not really given because of a want for natural resources, China working with all sorts of regimes across the continent, not just Sudan and Zimbabwe, but ones like South Africa, whose president, Jacob Zuma, visited China in 2010, and much more. Most importantly, in the closing part of her article, Brautigam writes that “China is now a powerful force in Africa, and the Chinese are not going away. Their embrace of the continent is strategic, planned, long-term and still unfolding.” The investment power of the Chinese in the continent is what one could call Renminbi Diplomacy, named after the official currency of China, is almost a 21st century version of William Howard Taft’s ‘dollar diplomacy’ except the aims of China in Africa are furthered through the economic power of guaranteeing investments, rather than loans. Additionally, the mutualistic approach and persistence keeps Chinese companies in place, not brute force like military interventions or covert actions that topple or destabilize governments.

In the Central African Republic, Renminbi Diplomacy has been developing since 2009.[11] That year, the country called on China for investment. Bozize told Hu Jintao, then the President of China (the current president is Xi Jinping), that their country welcomed “Chinese enterprises to come and invest” and Jintao responded, stating that both countries should “strengthen and push forward our economic and trade competition.” Later that year, Jintao made four proposals to strengthen ties with the Central African Republic while Bozize was on a state visit: have better communication on “major issues and important affairs,” making sure that both countries have mutually beneficial “economic and trade cooperation,” having “personnel and cultural exchanges” between the two countries; and having better coordination in multilateral affairs.” Even by this time, BBC was declaring that China was an “increasingly important commercial partner” for the Central African Republic, adding that “China appears to be undeterred by an unpromising business climate [across Africa] and looks to be safely established there.”

In March 2010, this dialogue between the two countries continued, as the Ambassador of the Central African Republic to China, spoke highly of the Chinese president, while also saying that “China’s aid to Africa is trustworthy, practical [and] efficient” and lauded the “brilliant achievements” of the ruling Chinese ‘Communist’ Party, at the time. In May 2011, Bozize visited China again, saying that he was greatful for the “sincere and friendly assistance to the construction of the Central African Republic” from China, and hoped for future cooperation. After this meeting, Bozize and other high ranking officials from both countries at the meeting, signed an “economic and technological cooperation agreement.” By September 2012, the Chinese premier was calling for closer relations with Central Africa. An article on Global Voices, published in December 2012, brings the subject a bit closer to the present: “in recent months the licensing of oil exploration has been underway” with two contracts going to a South African company and one to a Chinese company while on December 27th, 2012, Bozize would suggest that “he was being attacked because he decided to grant oil exploration contracts to a Chinese company.”

Despite military support from fellow African countries, rebels occupied the capital city of the Central African Republic in March 2013, and Bozize fled to the Democratic Republic of Congo and later to France, resulting in the ascension of Michel Djotodia as the president of the country in a three-year transitional government which has promised to review the resource contracts. This, on top of the increased instability in East Africa which could be harming Chinese investments, was not good news for the Chinese, even though they remain the biggest export partner of the Central African Republic. In addition, South Sudan or even north Sudan could become less stable due to refugees fleeing, which is important because China is the top export partner of Sudanese oil, according to the EIA. At the same time, China still has a chance to expand in the country, since 2012 data shows that it does not have a “documented presence” in the country and Chinese companies are ok with operating in bad conditions.

This is precisely why China would support an intervention: to create a better business climate to increase investments of Chinese companies.

This brings one to the next player and member of the UN Security Council, like China, the UK, US, and France. The Russian Federation has an embassy and consulate in the Central African Republic, while the same country has an embassy in Russia. On November 1st, 2013, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it was “seriously concerned about the activities of the anti-government coalition of Seleka rebels which resulted in the deterioration of [the] situation in the Central African Republic” and called for peaceful negotiations between the warring groups, and the government. On All Africa, an article noted something important in Russian relations toward the African continent, that while the country’s current “presence now pales when compared to its competitors,” in recent years, “increasing bilateral exchanges…suggest…that Russia-Africa relations are on the brink of revival.” South Africa, like China, and the US, is one of Russia’s major trading partners in the region, with enough connections that both countries want to supposedly create an OPEC-style “platinum cartel” to monopolize the sales of platinum worldwide.

Also, like China, Russia has brought troops to Africa: 200 peacekeepers specifically to Chad and the Central African Republic “in support of a UN mission in the region” in 2008. This isn’t all. Russia has a growing amount of arms sales to Africa, along with increased military and technical cooperation in Africa including training officers, giving military equipment, and much more, since since it is one of the biggest arms exporters in the world. Arms and weaponry aren’t all, but there is an element of economic involvement as well. The most recent data I could find was a report describing trade between Africa and Russia “at a glance” with data from late 2011. While the exact data is probably outdated as of now, the report makes a point that “renewed interest” by the Russians has not only included “recent visits by several African leaders to Russia and by Russian leaders to the continent,” but it includes investments in dirty energy such as natural gas and oil, mineral mining, nuclear power, hydropower, and more across the continent [12]

The last country that should be discussed is the up-and-rising country of India. While this country is not a member of the UN Security Council, but may become a member in the future, it has an embassy in the Central African Republic as well. The Prime Minister of the country, like the Russian government, was distressed with disturbances in the country, specifically the killings. Additionally, it is the third biggest export partner of Sudanese oil, with Japan being the second biggest, which is important because the Sudans could be negatively affected by events in the Central African Republic, especially South Sudan. In some respects, even India and France had a relationship, as The Hindu reported that there is a commitment from India to France, promising to shortlist “its companies…for lucrative defence and civil nuclear energy contracts.” The country is seeming to expand into Africa more and more, than it had in the past. Other than the $29.5 million line of credit the public Export-Import Bank of India, India’s government enjoys “friendly relations” with the Central African Republic, along with a number of agreements between the two countries, “foreign office consultation” on issues such as expanding “trade, investment, and technical cooperation between the countries,” and a total $89.9 million in projects and investments in the mining of limestone, construction of a cement factory, hydroelectric projects, and sending 100 buses, along with the materials for repair and to build new buses. This is all despite the fact that there is a small community of Indian workers in the country and a small amount of trade between the two countries.

In conclusion, the involvement of China, Russia and India in the African continent and the Central African Republic is important despite the fact that they didn’t send military forces to assist the African or French forces.

What can you do about all of this?

Unlike Mali, there have already been protests against the war, from the beginning. Already, there have been protests in the Central African Republic, with those in a crowd who were calling out Chad’s presence in the country since it has backed the rebel groups in the past, being fired on by Chadian peacekeepers on December 24th. Pictures of protests that same day against the clearly French imperialist intervention near where the soldiers were stationed were posted by Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of Pan-African News Wire. [13] A number of other news outlets reported this as well, but characterized the protesters in a negative light as “supporters of the largely Muslim Seleka rebels,” by the governent-owned France 24 or as “Muslims” by the Associated Press, neither of which actually interviewed any of the protesters. The first article, which seemed very pro-intervention, described people chanting “No to colonisation! No to the Sangaris operation!” or “We don’t want religious conflict in our country” said by another protester.

The Associated Press did a better job of describing the protest, while including pictures, saying that most of the marchers were young and male “demand[ed] the departure of French troops” from the country, with some signs saying “We say No to France!” and others “Hollande = Liar” with some even having a “hand drawn map of this nation…split into two, with a Muslim homeland penciled in in the country’s north,” all the while the French are trying to put out propaganda to justify the war. The previous day, an article actually quoted some of those who were angry and protesting, who were attacked by French forces with tear gas, and protesters blocked roads with “rocks, metal barrels and pieces of wood” while chanting “’Not to France’ and ‘Hollande is a criminal’” and raiging signs that read “French crimes against the Central African Republic” among other messages, with one yelling that the french war in the country “is a murderous operation [since] they [the French] want to divide us Central Africans…to impose their will and make us kill each other. These protesters are not alone. An article in the Epoch Times profiled the views of some Africans on the war, with some knowing it wouldn’t bring peace, others opposing the intervention as not enough, which some had either “great doubt” in the intervention or weren’t reassured by it.

There are others who have already showed their resistance in numerous different countries. The French public has already gone weary to the intervention. A poll on December 15th showed that a majority of French citizens were “growingly opposed…to…[the] military intervention in the Central African Republic” which is very different than what happened with Mali. A poll almost a month later on January 5th showed even lower public support for the military intervention. There may be protests in the country, but I couldn’t find evidence of any. Few French have spoken out, with those opposing it including a small French group of radicals that believes in anti-capitalism, democratic socialism, eco-socialism and alter-globalization, called Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste or New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), stating their case against the intervention: “François Hollande is therefore to engage the French army in its second operation in Africa in a year…clinging to his policing role, French imperialism, far from helping to solve problems, only exacerbates poverty and underdevelopment…Large companies [have]…plunder[ed] the wealth of the former colonies for decades…French imperialism is the problem, not the solution!” They even have a whole page on their website in which they have fliers opposing the war, and other critiques as the war goes along. They have also, along with another radical group, Worker’s Struggle, called for the French withdrawal of troops from Mali. Also in France, writer and freelance journalist Michel Collon, wrote that the intervention is not about humanitarianism but rather about resources and protecting the interests of multinational French corporations operating in the country, which is a deeply stinging critique.

In the US, a group that is made up of true communists, called Workers Power, and they oppose the intervention as well. In a statement titled ‘Why communists oppose French military intervention in Central African Republic‘ they write that politicians are being deceptive when they say there is a coming genocide, continuing and writing that “France has been directly or indirectly involved in the assassination or overthrow of every single leader of the CAR since it first gained autonomy…There has never been a constitutional transfer of power,” and says that France wants “to install a government dependent on French military protection in return for the right to develop and monopolize the extraction of CAR’s reserves of diamonds, uranium, and other raw materials.” Then, on what Allison Kilenny, a co-host of Citizen Radio, jokingly calls the ‘People’s Republic of the Internet,’ there was a video

[outsider]

'U.S. military in Somalia for 1st time since Black Hawk Down':
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-military-in-somalia-for-1st-time-since- black-hawk-down/

'At some point, the number of American military advisers in Somalia will almost certainly increase, Martin reports.

Meanwhile in Somalia, Al-Shabab has ordered telecom companies to shut down mobile internet services over fears the U.S. can use the data to target militants.

Al-Shabab this week set a 15-day deadline for the telecoms, whom the group accused of being "enemy collaborators." The two affected mobile operators that offer 3G data service declined to comment.

Al-Shabab said the service "corrupts the morals of society" and allows the enemy "to know your movements." Al-Shabab said mobile internet services allowed the targeting of some fighters, an apparent reference to drone strikes or other military operations.

Its statement said the decision comes amid "the spying scandals practiced by the Americans," according to a translation by the intelligence service SITE.

Taliban fighters in Afghanistan also order phone operators to shut down at night over fears the U.S. uses the data to track movements. Extremists in northeast Nigeria followed similar tactics in the early days of a 4-year-old Islamic uprising, bombing cellphone towers to disrupt communications in areas that they were attacking.

More recently, the Nigerian military in May cut all cellphone communications in northeast Nigeria, saying insurgents were using networks to coordinate attacks. Landlines do not work in Nigeria so cellphones are the sole form of communication...'


Another of Wesley Clark's '7 governments in 5 years' list....

[TonyGosling]

AFRICOM, the 4-G Upgrade.
by Chioma Oruh. Wednesday, March 30, 2011
http://allpowertothepositive.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/africom-4-g-upgrad e.html

In May 2009, President Muammar Gadaffi met with General William “Kip” Ward, former commander of the USAFRICOM to express his support of the “new America”. Ironically, 2009 was also the same year that Gadaffi decided to nationalize more oil fields than previously under state control in the past.

Admittedly, despite his socialist rhetoric Gadaffi remains a complex neocolonial political force that has made many selfish, opportunist and controversial moves while all the time retaining his position as ruler of Libya. Perhaps his over confidence as state ruler for life led him to make the miscalculations made in relationship to US military presence in Africa. Or could he really have sipped on the same kool aid that suggests Obama’s America is somehow a different flavor from any other presidency in US imperialist history? Whatever the case maybe, Gadaffi’s struggles are the gateway drug for many more foreign military exercises to come in Africa.

Imperial Military in Realtime.

In the midst of the UN resolutions 1970 and 1973 that sanctioned a no fly zone and gave permissions for NATO sponsored air strikes, Gadaffi has woken to a sobering hangover that this “new America” is no different than the old one. The question remains, when will the rest of the African world awake to the upgraded version of militarism of white power in black face? Just hours after President Barack Obama (also fondly known as the white house-negro) announced at the National Defense University his plans to order warships into the Mediterranean for “humanitarian reasons” did the US make a move. On the morning of March 29th, a U.S. Navy P-3C Maritime Patrol aircraft, a U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt attack aircraft and guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52) engaged with the Libyan Coast Guard vessel Vittoria and two smaller crafts in a military altercation. This is the first big military move after 100+ missiles launched on Libya on March 19th. Even as Obama made promises to the television audience that he would not commit any ground troops, the A-10 Thunderbolt that just attacked Libya is well known to be an aircraft specifically designed for ground troop support. Such military moves make the arrival of US troops an inevitable move and war its only mission.

Obama also noted that the military attack of Libya is done in “coalition” efforts led by NATO and endorsed by the Arab league. Forget that the weak opposition of the African Union hasn’t got much press, what’s most ironic is that Obama didn’t even bat an eye as he made the same illegitimate case for war that George Bush did in 2003 at the dawn of the Iraq War. Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya is looking a lot like Operation Iraqi Freedom. It is also important to note that the US contributes the most military weaponry and manpower to NATO, and so whether it’s the war in Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya, NATO is code word for US military command efforts. In the case of Libya, AFRICOM is already being mentioned with curiosity as militarists at the Pentagon are salivating at the opportunity to give their four-year efforts a test-run.


AFRICOM: the Centerfold of the US Command Plan

The current political climate in North Africa is truly the perfect storm for AFRICOM to flex its muscles and sharpen its mission to “ conduct sustained security engagement through military-to-military program, military-sponsored activities and other military operations” in Africa. Born as the brainchild project of Donald Rumsfeld as he stood on his last political leg during the Fallujah scandal in 2006, former President George Bush brought AFRICOM to public attention in a February 2007 press statement announcing this new and humanitarian version of a military command program. It spent its first year as a concept with a $50 million budget focused on public relations. Four years later, not only does AFRICOM’s have a budget increase of $302 million, but it has its headquarter in Stuggart, Germany, sub-stations at US Embassies throughout Africa and many active programs on the ground. One of its prominent programs is called “Hub” training as part of the African Partnership Station (APS). “Hub” has trained soldiers and police from Djibouti, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique and Tanzania by US naval forces. APS focuses on maritime law and concentrates its focus on border nations that allows for US military forces an excuse to remain involved in all strategic trade posts at all times.

AFRICOM, unlike its counterpart in the Middle East and parts of Asia known as CENTCOM, is young and fresh without the historic baggage of dethroning the Shah in the 1950s, fighting Israel’s war for her in the 1960s, getting kicked out of Afghanistan in the 1970s, making a mess in Iran in the 1980s, being exposed as a gluttonous oil-monger in Kuwait in the 1990s and completely going war-crazy with the dual assaults on Iraq and Afghanistan in the first decade of the 21st century. AFRICOM is part and parcel of a neocolonial makeover plan to give imperialism a new strategy with new leadership and new methods of forwarding an age-old imperial agenda to carry a big stick with a flashing smile.

Gadaffi is an easy mark to make a moral argument for “humanitarian intervention” as his own contradictions as an illegitimate political patriarch allow for imperial exploitation. As traumatizing as it is to hear of over 100 missiles dropping on the Libyan people or the Djibouti sub-station (along with the US embassies in Tunisian and Egypt) being used as a launch pad for future military aggression, the worst of military aggression is yet to come.

The Future of US Militarism, AFRICOM in 4-G

Retired AFRICOM commander, Kip Ward, is currently on a speaking tour to continue to assist with the public relations of AFRICOM as he has passed the baton to General Carter F. Ham. Unlike Ward and many other generals, Ham has extensive combat experience to go along with his officer training. In sum, he is a strategist and has been called the “go-to guy” for Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Why the upgrade? It’s simple. The US is going to war on Africa and will execute an aggressive campaign to intervene in the plethora of unstable states in the region. It is safe to say that the training wheels are off and AFRICOM as a military machine is fully operational.


It is estimated the US Defense budget will reach $1 Trillion in 2012 and because AFRICOM’s budget is sure to increase significantly as war necessitates more weapons, infantry support, intelligence operations and administrative staff salaries. The AFRICOM website alludes to a substantial increase in funding and credits this potential inflated budget to a re-shuffling of monies given to the DoD as part of a $150 Billion “reinvestment for efficiency savings”. When the real numbers are announced, jaws are most certain to drop. Yet, any surprised responses on the US stepping up its military aggression on Africa are unfounded. The motivation for sustained military presence in Africa are too many to list, yet, it is important to outline some key places that will be met with greater force in the next few years.


Coastline countries will be of increasing interest for maritime operations. Countries that border places like the Gulf of Guinea (Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria), the Gulf of Aden (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia) and Africa’s borders on the western Indian Ocean (Kenya, Madagascar, South Africa). Of course Libya, which borders the Mediterranean, is significant and is the christening border location for these increased military strategies. In addition to the oil-resource that border countries offer, they also are strategic trade posts (with the War on Drugs as the perfect excuse to create stations as AFRICOM has already launched the APS training programs). Each of the countries listed as border countries are sure to make headlines in the next coming months as unstable and creating the necessary political climate for more US “humanitarian intervention”. Cote d’Ivoire will soon erupt in a civil war, upcoming Nigerian elections is sure to irritate the militants of the Niger Delta, Somalia remains unstable, Ethiopia-Eritrean border tensions are sure to result in conflict in the region, Kenyan and Ghana drug trade will allow for foreign intervention, oppositional forces in Madagascar will make more aggressive moves against the newly elected government and South Africa’s President Zuma will eat his words for speaking out against the US attack on Libya. Of course, there are also countries of the Great Lakes, with particular focus on the DRC, which are of high interest to the US imperial agenda due to resource wealth. Political instability in the region also gives way to increased military aggression.

All the while, AFRICOM will continue to make headway and state-sovereignty in every African country (both on the coast and in the mainland) will continue to deteriorate. Of course, this story has a potential plot twist with the birth of a new African liberation movement looking to unify and define itself. Obama is living out the main reason he was allowed the seat of presidency of a historically unapologetic white supremacist nation-state project of Manifest Destiny. The dual dose of a reality check that both AFRICOM and Obama offer is filled with the promise to rejuvenate a defeated liberation movement waiting in the periphery to make real revolution for Africa. And for this reason (and many more) luta continua!

[TonyGosling]

AFRICOM, the 4-G Upgrade.
by Chioma Oruh. Wednesday, March 30, 2011
http://allpowertothepositive.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/africom-4-g-upgrad e.html

In May 2009, President Muammar Gadaffi met with General William “Kip” Ward, former commander of the USAFRICOM to express his support of the “new America”. Ironically, 2009 was also the same year that Gadaffi decided to nationalize more oil fields than previously under state control in the past.

Admittedly, despite his socialist rhetoric Gadaffi remains a complex neocolonial political force that has made many selfish, opportunist and controversial moves while all the time retaining his position as ruler of Libya. Perhaps his over confidence as state ruler for life led him to make the miscalculations made in relationship to US military presence in Africa. Or could he really have sipped on the same kool aid that suggests Obama’s America is somehow a different flavor from any other presidency in US imperialist history? Whatever the case maybe, Gadaffi’s struggles are the gateway drug for many more foreign military exercises to come in Africa.

Imperial Military in Realtime.

In the midst of the UN resolutions 1970 and 1973 that sanctioned a no fly zone and gave permissions for NATO sponsored air strikes, Gadaffi has woken to a sobering hangover that this “new America” is no different than the old one. The question remains, when will the rest of the African world awake to the upgraded version of militarism of white power in black face? Just hours after President Barack Obama (also fondly known as the white house-negro) announced at the National Defense University his plans to order warships into the Mediterranean for “humanitarian reasons” did the US make a move. On the morning of March 29th, a U.S. Navy P-3C Maritime Patrol aircraft, a U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt attack aircraft and guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52) engaged with the Libyan Coast Guard vessel Vittoria and two smaller crafts in a military altercation. This is the first big military move after 100+ missiles launched on Libya on March 19th. Even as Obama made promises to the television audience that he would not commit any ground troops, the A-10 Thunderbolt that just attacked Libya is well known to be an aircraft specifically designed for ground troop support. Such military moves make the arrival of US troops an inevitable move and war its only mission.

Obama also noted that the military attack of Libya is done in “coalition” efforts led by NATO and endorsed by the Arab league. Forget that the weak opposition of the African Union hasn’t got much press, what’s most ironic is that Obama didn’t even bat an eye as he made the same illegitimate case for war that George Bush did in 2003 at the dawn of the Iraq War. Operation Odyssey Dawn in Libya is looking a lot like Operation Iraqi Freedom. It is also important to note that the US contributes the most military weaponry and manpower to NATO, and so whether it’s the war in Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya, NATO is code word for US military command efforts. In the case of Libya, AFRICOM is already being mentioned with curiosity as militarists at the Pentagon are salivating at the opportunity to give their four-year efforts a test-run.


AFRICOM: the Centerfold of the US Command Plan

The current political climate in North Africa is truly the perfect storm for AFRICOM to flex its muscles and sharpen its mission to “ conduct sustained security engagement through military-to-military program, military-sponsored activities and other military operations” in Africa. Born as the brainchild project of Donald Rumsfeld as he stood on his last political leg during the Fallujah scandal in 2006, former President George Bush brought AFRICOM to public attention in a February 2007 press statement announcing this new and humanitarian version of a military command program. It spent its first year as a concept with a $50 million budget focused on public relations. Four years later, not only does AFRICOM’s have a budget increase of $302 million, but it has its headquarter in Stuggart, Germany, sub-stations at US Embassies throughout Africa and many active programs on the ground. One of its prominent programs is called “Hub” training as part of the African Partnership Station (APS). “Hub” has trained soldiers and police from Djibouti, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique and Tanzania by US naval forces. APS focuses on maritime law and concentrates its focus on border nations that allows for US military forces an excuse to remain involved in all strategic trade posts at all times.

AFRICOM, unlike its counterpart in the Middle East and parts of Asia known as CENTCOM, is young and fresh without the historic baggage of dethroning the Shah in the 1950s, fighting Israel’s war for her in the 1960s, getting kicked out of Afghanistan in the 1970s, making a mess in Iran in the 1980s, being exposed as a gluttonous oil-monger in Kuwait in the 1990s and completely going war-crazy with the dual assaults on Iraq and Afghanistan in the first decade of the 21st century. AFRICOM is part and parcel of a neocolonial makeover plan to give imperialism a new strategy with new leadership and new methods of forwarding an age-old imperial agenda to carry a big stick with a flashing smile.

Gadaffi is an easy mark to make a moral argument for “humanitarian intervention” as his own contradictions as an illegitimate political patriarch allow for imperial exploitation. As traumatizing as it is to hear of over 100 missiles dropping on the Libyan people or the Djibouti sub-station (along with the US embassies in Tunisian and Egypt) being used as a launch pad for future military aggression, the worst of military aggression is yet to come.

The Future of US Militarism, AFRICOM in 4-G

Retired AFRICOM commander, Kip Ward, is currently on a speaking tour to continue to assist with the public relations of AFRICOM as he has passed the baton to General Carter F. Ham. Unlike Ward and many other generals, Ham has extensive combat experience to go along with his officer training. In sum, he is a strategist and has been called the “go-to guy” for Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Why the upgrade? It’s simple. The US is going to war on Africa and will execute an aggressive campaign to intervene in the plethora of unstable states in the region. It is safe to say that the training wheels are off and AFRICOM as a military machine is fully operational.


It is estimated the US Defense budget will reach $1 Trillion in 2012 and because AFRICOM’s budget is sure to increase significantly as war necessitates more weapons, infantry support, intelligence operations and administrative staff salaries. The AFRICOM website alludes to a substantial increase in funding and credits this potential inflated budget to a re-shuffling of monies given to the DoD as part of a $150 Billion “reinvestment for efficiency savings”. When the real numbers are announced, jaws are most certain to drop. Yet, any surprised responses on the US stepping up its military aggression on Africa are unfounded. The motivation for sustained military presence in Africa are too many to list, yet, it is important to outline some key places that will be met with greater force in the next few years.


Coastline countries will be of increasing interest for maritime operations. Countries that border places like the Gulf of Guinea (Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria), the Gulf of Aden (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia) and Africa’s borders on the western Indian Ocean (Kenya, Madagascar, South Africa). Of course Libya, which borders the Mediterranean, is significant and is the christening border location for these increased military strategies. In addition to the oil-resource that border countries offer, they also are strategic trade posts (with the War on Drugs as the perfect excuse to create stations as AFRICOM has already launched the APS training programs). Each of the countries listed as border countries are sure to make headlines in the next coming months as unstable and creating the necessary political climate for more US “humanitarian intervention”. Cote d’Ivoire will soon erupt in a civil war, upcoming Nigerian elections is sure to irritate the militants of the Niger Delta, Somalia remains unstable, Ethiopia-Eritrean border tensions are sure to result in conflict in the region, Kenyan and Ghana drug trade will allow for foreign intervention, oppositional forces in Madagascar will make more aggressive moves against the newly elected government and South Africa’s President Zuma will eat his words for speaking out against the US attack on Libya. Of course, there are also countries of the Great Lakes, with particular focus on the DRC, which are of high interest to the US imperial agenda due to resource wealth. Political instability in the region also gives way to increased military aggression.

All the while, AFRICOM will continue to make headway and state-sovereignty in every African country (both on the coast and in the mainland) will continue to deteriorate. Of course, this story has a potential plot twist with the birth of a new African liberation movement looking to unify and define itself. Obama is living out the main reason he was allowed the seat of presidency of a historically unapologetic white supremacist nation-state project of Manifest Destiny. The dual dose of a reality check that both AFRICOM and Obama offer is filled with the promise to rejuvenate a defeated liberation movement waiting in the periphery to make real revolution for Africa. And for this reason (and many more) luta continua!

[TonyGosling]

Guess what - - this blog has been taken down - - and taken out!

[outsider]

‘Black Agenda TV – Season 1, Episode 4’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnz4_LuFqgk

'Published on 23 Aug 2013
Bruce Dixon's Open Letter to Melissa Harris-Perry, Toure, Joy Ann Reid: Stop the Hate, Grow Some Guts
Glen Ford: US Military Conquest of Africa "All But Complete"
Cornel West: Washington March Organizers are Part of the "Obama Plantation"; Says Sharpton Attempts to "Contain Black Rage", Jay-Z an Example of the "Re-Niggerization of the Black Professional Class."

Through AFRICOM and massive amounts of military aid and training, the US literally owns every army on the African continent, except those of Eritrea and Zimbabwe. Glen Ford explains...
Cornel West on Sharpton, Jay-Z, and the 50th Anniversary Farce on Washington:
Rev. Al Sharpton and other organizers of the March on Washington 50th anniversary commemoration are so tightly tied to "the Obama plantation," said activist and academic Dr. Cornel West, "we won't get to focus on the New Jim Crow; we won't get to focus on the privatization of education; we won't get to focus on the land grabs and the gentrification of land it the city; we won't get to focus on working class people; and we certainly won't get to focus on the drones and those bombs landing on innocent brothers and sisters in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia, and especially the 222 innocent children who have been murdered by the U.S. government so far, and counting."
President Obama is scheduled to speak at the August 28 event at the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. West, of the Union Theological Seminary, in New York City, does not plan to attend. "If Martin [Luther King Jr.] were to show up at this march and they asked him to give a speech," said West, "what he would say would be so subversive that those on the Obama plantation would be revealed for who they are, which is obsessed with career, obsessed with access, obsessed with status as opposed to being obsessed with the suffering of poor Black brothers and sisters."

Speaking on Black Agenda Television, Dr. West said George Zimmerman's acquittal in the killing of Trayvon Martin has fueled "an overwhelming Black rage, and Brother Sharpton and the others are trying to contain it, and of course Obama and Holder are fearful of it, because Black rage is always the catalyst to Black self-determination, toward Black self-respect, and toward Black self-defense."
Dr. West rebuked entertainment mogul Jay-Z, who said his "presence is charity" to Black people, "just like Obama's is."
"It's what I call the re-niggerization of the Black professional class, where you have fear, you have a tremendous sense of being intimidated even though you have big money," said West. "So you say to Brother Jay-Z, What are you risking? We don't want to just see you successful, we appreciate it, we want to see you faithful to something bigger than you, and faith has to do with risking something. The only way you become de-niggerized and free is when you are willing to risk, when you're willing to go against the grain, to show you're not fearful, you're not afraid. Unfortunately, Jay-Z at his worst is an example of folk who get so elevated that they don't show courage and take a risk for something that is bigger than them."

Bruce Dixon to Melissa Harris-Perry, Toure, Joy Ann Reid: Grow Some Guts

When the White House gets upset, Black MSNBC talking heads get apoplectic. MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry, Toure and Joy Ann Reid whipped themselves into McCarthyite fervor against secrets-leaker Edward Snowden. Harris-Perry and Reid lost all sense of decorum, screaming like banshees at Wikileaks spokesman Kris Hrafnsson. In an open letter to the trio, Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce Dixon described Harris-Perry and Reid as playing "a reprehensible game of make believe, where leakers are criminals instead of heroes, Wikileaks is a conspiracy instead of a media organization, Joy Ann's a tough district attorney and Melissa's a special agent ready with the handcuffs." As for Toure's reflexive defense of Obama's global dragnet for Snowden: "We all know you're just repeating what the White House the Pentagon the intelligence agencies tell you. That's just plain lazy, man," said Dixon, in his latest Black Agenda Television commentary. "Until the three of you grow the guts and integrity to represent something besides your own shallow careers on the tube, stop the fronting, stop the hate, and leave the real journalists alone."

AFRICOM dominates the great majority of African armies. ’Black Agenda Report’ and ‘Black Agenda TV’ tell it how it is.

[TonyGosling]

Nice one

Seleka vs. Antibalaka civil war in Central African Republic, or US AFRICOM divide & rule?
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-zh8mKZn7Y[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-zh8mKZn7Y

[outsider]

'Macron in Mali: France will be 'uncompromising' in fight against terrorists':
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39968319?utm_source=%5BNewslett ers%5D+The+Africa+Report&

'Emmanuel Macron has said France will be "uncompromising" in the fight against "Islamist terrorists" in Mali, during a short visit to the country.

France's new president also reaffirmed his commitment to helping the West African country, where French soldiers have been facing extremists since 2013.

Mr Macron said he hoped to strengthen ties with Germany to boost security in the area, according to Reuters.

This trip is Mr Macron's second foreign visit since his inauguration on Sunday.

He has already visited German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin....'

France wants it's share as well.

[outsider]

'In the Light of African Liberation Day Imperialist Rats Will Run Away':
https://www.blackagendareport.com/african_liberation_day_under_neocolo nialism

'...Bob Marley said: “Hypocrites and parasites will come up and take a bite. But if their night should turn to day, a lot of people will run away…” If Africa’s enemies have retreated like cowardly rats to the safety of their offices and boardrooms where they not only hide behind U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) but also the various terrorist forces and African armies western governments enlist as military proxies, then it’s time for us to drag their deliberations and plans out into the light of day -- African Liberation Day -- so that Africans can see them and learn how to fight the continent’s enemies more effectively.'

[outsider]

'African Union: The West’s Gendarme In Africa':
http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/09/09/african-union-the-wests-gend arme-in-africa/

'he African Union is the west’s gendarme in Africa with it’s combined national armed forces increasingly primed to invade and occupy rather than keep the peace. The latest potential victim of the African Union, backed by its big brother, the UN, is South Sudan. Before that Burundi was threatened with invasion by the AU “peacekeepers”. And this is just the beginning of a list of intended targets and actual invasions and occupations.

The African Union has its corrupt, western funded hands in almost every dirty war on the continent, ranging from the invasion of Somalia (and the subsequent spawning of Al Shabab) to the war in Azawad (Mali) to the most dirty of them all, the carnage in the Congo.

A lot of flowery rhetoric is spoken by and about the AU but the historical record tells a far different story. To start with, the AU’s predecessor, the OAU, was founded in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia while Ethiopia was a colonial power fighting an anti-independence war against the Eritreans, a war that would see success for Eritrea in 1991. Remember now, the OAU was founded as an “anti-colonial” organization so heaquartering the organization in Addis Ababa launched the outfit two faced from the start.

Addis Ababa itself is founded on the Oromian town of Finefine, captured by Abyssinian Imperialism (Europeans weren’t the only empire builders in Africa), colonized, and annexed to the ethnic Amhara/Abyssinian ruled empire.

The Abyssinians, or Ethiopians, colonized the Oromo peoples in the Horn of Africa along with the Anuak, Bengul, Sidhama, Afars, Somali/Ogadeni and Tigrayans (amongst others) in creating the modern Abyssinian empire of the Menelik and Haile Sellasie line which was ended by the military coup of 1974.

The Oromo, whom make up 40% of the Ethiopian population are the largest nationality in Africa with their language being the second most popular on the continent. Colonizing these once proud and mighty people was no small feat, requiring decades and large amounts of european weaponry supplied mainly by the Italians. No matter the bravery and daring of it’s mounted calvary, for which the Oromos were greatly feared by their enemies, firearms will eventually overcome spears and arrows, and the defeat of the Oromo by the Abyssinians began one of the largest, most barbaric, genocidal even, destruction’s of a people in history.

Off to a bad start the OAU continued through out the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s to spout righteous words of African independence all the while overseeing or standing idly buy as western interests raped and pillaged our continent all in the name of “democracy and sovereignty”. The OAU actively supported the Ethiopian counter insurgency against the Eritrean independence fighters right up until Eritrean rebel tanks drove through the gates of Addis Ababa and chased the Soviet, backed dictator Mengistu out of the country.

Eventually the OAU morphed into the African Union and its role as the gendarme in Africa came to the fore. In 1998 Ethiopia invaded Eritrea, an egregious violation of the AU’s charter never mind Ethiopian goons ransacking the Eritrean Embassy and brutalizing Eritrean diplomats in Addis Ababa, all with the quiet acquiesense of the AU leadership.

During the subsequent two year war, while Ethiopian troops were raping and pillaging their way across the Eritrean countryside the AU sat on its hands and did nothing to stop this crime, instead secretly supplied aid and comfort to the Ethiopian regime.

Today, while the western backed Tigrayan ethnic minority regime in Ethiopia is tottering and its Agazi death squads open fire on Oromo and Amhara demonstrators, killing thousands across the heart of Ethiopia, the AU stands silent or when pressed, mutters a few words of the need for non violence by both sides.

And all the while AU sponsored soldiers in Somalia rape and murder, sell arms on the black market to their erstwhile enemies, Al Shabab, and in general smuggle and racketeer with the leadership of the AU turning a blind eye. And that’s just in Somalia, how many other AU sponsored armies from the Congo to the Central African Republic to Mali are supposedly “keeping the peace” is some of the most violence wracked places on the planet?

Being the west’s gendarme in Africa comes with a cost, for where there is oppression there will be resistance and the AU is heading for a crisis. It’s host, the Ethiopian regime, seems to be nearing its end and Africa’s largest nation, the Oromo, have seen the light of liberation at the end of a long very dark tunnel. The scent of freedom and independence is in the air mingling with the smoke of street fires fronting blockaded roads.

Do the western funded AU fat cats at their desks in Addis Ababa think the eventually independent Oromos will continue to welcome the AU in their hard won new capital of Finefine a.k.a. Addis Ababa? Or will the AU,, the west’s gendarme in Africa, call for troops to invade and occupy a newly independent Oromia? Or any of the rest of the Ethiopian nationalities crying out for freedom and independence, as they try to cut themselves loose from the decaying corpse of the Abyssinian Empire.

Thomas C. Mountain is an independent journalist in Eritrea, living and reporting from here since 2006. He speeches, interviews and articles can be seen at thomascmountain on facebook and he can best be reached at thomascmountain at g mail dot com '

[outsider]

'Trump's Niger uproar shines light on the U.S.'s murky African wars':
https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?e=cGF1bGJhcmJhcmExOTQzQGhvdG1ha WwuY29t&s=59eec8abfe1ff6159ed3edba

'...Details remain murky surrounding the ill-fated patrol and the timeline of the joint American, French and Nigerien response to the ambush. At least five Nigerien soldiers who accompanied U.S. forces on their reconnaissance mission to the village of Tongo Tongo, near the border with Mali, also perished. But no matter what emerges, Johnson's tragedy has waked up Washington to the wider issue of American deployments in Niger and other countries in Africa.

At a briefing Monday evening, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon's assessment was that the assailants probably belonged to a local militia affiliated with the Islamic State. He described the Sahel, an arid region that includes the impoverished countries of Niger and Mali, as a strategic theater where the Islamist militants may seek to regroup after losses in the Middle East.

Dunford did not comment on speculation that Washington may loosen restrictions on the U.S. military's ability to use lethal force in Niger, as it has done in other arenas, including Syria, Yemen and Somalia. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will testify Oct. 30 before an open hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that will weigh the need for a new c congressional authorization of military force in the battle against the Islamic State.....'

[outsider]

An old article, predating the opening of this thread:
'Africa – Where the Next US Oil Wars Will Be':
https://blackagendareport.com/content/africa-%E2%80%93-where-next-us-o il-wars-will-be

'On Feb. 7 George Bush announced the formation of AFRICOM, a new Pentagon command which will, under the pretext of the so-called "Global War On Terror", plan and execute its oil and resource wars on the African continent. What does this mean to African Americans? And to Africans? BAR consults Prexy Nesbitt, an architect of the anti-apartheid struggles of the 70s and 80s

.

"It's about the oil. And the diamonds. And the coltan. But mostly about the oil."

The Pentagon does not admit that a ring of permanent US military bases is operating or under construction throughout Africa. But nobody doubts the American military buildup on the African continent is well underway. From oil rich northern Angola up to Nigeria, from the Gulf of Guinea to Morocco and Algeria, from the Horn of Africa down to Kenya and Uganda, and over the pipeline routes from Chad to Cameroon in the west, and from Sudan to the Red Sea in the east, US admirals and generals have been landing and taking off, meeting with local officials. They've conducted feasibility studies, concluded secret agreements, and spent billions from their secret budgets.

Their new bases are not bases at all, according to US military officials. They are instead "forward staging depots", and "seaborne truck stops" for the equipment which American land forces need to operate on the African continent. They are "protected anchorages" and offshore "lily pads " from which they intend to fight the next round of oil and resource wars, and lock down Africa's oil and mineral wealth for decades to come.....'

'..Twenty percent of Nigerian children die before the age of 5, according to the World Bank. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of oil have been extracted from the Niger Delta, according to Amnesty International in 2005. But its inhabitants

"...remain among the most deprived oil communities in the world - 70 per cent live on less than US$1 a day. In spite of its windfall gains, as global oil prices have more than doubled in the last two years, the Nigerian government has failed to provide services, infrastructure or jobs in the region."

In a typical gesture of disregard for local black lives and livelihoods, the natural gas which sits atop many oil deposits but is more expensive to capture and process than petroleum is simply burned off or flared at African wellheads. Throughout the 1990s it is estimated that 29 million cubic feet per day of Nigerian natural gas was disposed of in this manner. Many of the flares, according to local Niger delta residents, have burned continuously for more than twenty years, creating a toxic climate of acid fogs and rains , depositing layers of soot and chemicals that stunt or kill ocean and riverine fish and livestock, and poison the few surviving crops. For this reason, flaring at oil wells has long been outlawed in the US. But many African communities near the mouth of one of the planet's largest rivers are now entirely dependent on water trucked in from outside....'

[outsider]

'US MILITARY PRESENCE IN AFRICA: ALL OVER CONTINENT AND STILL EXPANDING': https://southfront.org/us-military-presence-in-africa-all-over-contine nt-and-still-expanding/
'...There are currently roughly 7,500 US military personnel, including 1,000 contractors, deployed in Africa. For comparison, that figure was only 6,000 just a year ago. The troops are strung throughout the continent spread across 53 countries. There are 54 countries on the “Dark Continent.” More than 4,000 service members have converged on East Africa. The US troop count in Somalia doubled last year...'

[TonyGosling]

After ousting Bashir, Sudan's activists struggle to loosen military's grip
Nafisa Eltahir
6 MIN READ

DUBAI (Reuters) - After spearheading the rallies that toppled former President Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s main protest group is now locked in a stand-off with the country’s new military rulers that is testing its clout as a political force.

Ahmed Rabie, a member of the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), gestures as he arrives to break fast with his friends during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in front of the Defence Ministry compound in Khartoum, Sudan, May 7, 2019. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) gained widespread support during more than four months of protests and it has helped win a string of apparent concessions from the military council that took over from Bashir on April 11.

But as the unionists and activists in the SPA try to chart a course to full-fledged democracy, they are coming up against a powerful rival that has shown little sign yet that it is willing to move aside for a civilian-led transition.

Frustrated by a lack of progress, the Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces (DFCF), a broad coalition of opposition groups headed by the SPA, called on Wednesday for a campaign of civil disobedience to crank up the pressure on the military.

“We have all options open from now on,” Ahmed Rabie, an influential SPA member, told Reuters. “If (the council) insists on holding on to power, we are going to consider this a military coup, and we will escalate our tactics, peacefully.”

The SPA has said such a campaign would likely focus on mass strikes, which have been successful in previous uprisings in post-independence Sudan. Strikes called by the SPA before Bashir’s fall met with limited success, but workers may be less cowed following his removal.

It may also call for a boycott of non-essential goods and public services in a bid to starve the government of tax revenue, and intensify rallies and sit-ins across Sudan.

The biggest ongoing sit-in, which began on April 6 outside the Defence Ministry in Khartoum, has become the focal point of the uprising.

The Transitional Military Council (TMC) has said it will not use force to end the sit-in. But the SPA could be undermined by maneuvering due to its lack of political experience.

“The politicking is starting. This is a terrain that the professionals association might not be as well-equipped for as it seems,” said Sudanese analyst Magdi el-Gizouli.

CONCESSIONS
To try to placate protesters the TMC replaced its first head after one day, dismissed senior allies of Bashir, announced anti-corruption measures and moved to restructure security and intelligence agencies.

Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes in Darfur, is in prison in the capital Khartoum.

But while the DFCF wants a transitional body led by civilians to steer a four-year transition, the TMC has indicated that it wants to retain overall control of any joint military and civilian sovereign council.

As talks between the two sides have dragged on, the SPA has accused the military leaders of expanding their powers.

The TMC has said it is open to more dialogue and that elections could be held after six months if there’s no agreement on an interim government - well ahead of the end of the council’s planned two-year transition.

The SPA’s civil disobedience could put pressure on the military council given Sudan’s economic vulnerability. The country is already suffering from spiraling inflation and shortages of cash and basic goods.

But its rivals in the TMC have powerful and wealthy backers.

The TMC’s leaders, Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, have ties to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which together promised Sudan $3 billion to support the central bank and provide fuel, wheat and medicine.

Slideshow (2 Images)
Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti, controls the feared Rapid Support Forces, which fought in Darfur and are participating in the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. They are also deployed across Khartoum.

“This is an army establishment and they don’t want to lose control,” said Sudanese writer and commentator Reem Abbas. “There’s a lot of things at stake: resources, land, immunity for war crimes.”

SHADOW UNIONS
The SPA, by contrast, was formed in 2016 from unofficial parallel trade unions outside the state apparatus representing doctors, lawyers, journalists and other professions.

It was campaigning for higher wages when demonstrations against Bashir, triggered by a deepening economic crisis, spread across Sudan from Dec. 19 and propelled the SPA into the role of protest coordinator. It has since expanded to include more than 20 unions.

The SPA’s non-political image was key to its success in ousting Bashir after three decades in power, said Rabie, a high school physics teacher from the Haj Yousif neighborhood on the outskirts of Khartoum.

Despite its large following, the SPA says it will not become a political party. It has no leader or strict hierarchy and, until recently, operated largely underground.

That could leave a vacuum.

Under Bashir, opposition parties’ activities were limited and membership dwindled. Analysts say they still have much work to do to become effective political forces.

The opposition also faces a challenge presenting a united front. The DFCF is made up of a wide range of political parties, civil society associations and armed groups from across Sudan and they have already made conflicting statements about their approach to the negotiations.

Many protesters believe the SPA shouldn’t be negotiating with the military at all, chanting: “Civilian rule is the decision of the people.” The SPA has sought to reassure them, saying it will act as a guarantor of the revolution and democracy during the transition.

“We always work hard to get democracy in this country and then we lose it,” said Rabie, who was jailed from Jan. 4 until shortly after Bashir’s downfall. “We worked hard to get it, and, God willing, we can protect it.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sudan-politics/after-ousting-bashir -sudans-activists-struggle-to-loosen-militarys-grip-idUSKCN1SG0GD

http://bcfmradio.com/fdha7r4170fhkj/f789eqrh4uqy7frgya/4y789hfuhjkflds  /19987615305cd5dcf1d014d6.13057021.mp3