War A Africa

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

War A Africa

Postby conniption » Wed May 07, 2014 3:16 pm

Guardian

Western intervention will turn Nigeria into an African Afghanistan

The plight of kidnapped girls is set against the corruption and inequality that the west's economic war has helped to create

Lindsey German
Tuesday 6 May 2014


Image
Protest against Shell after a oil spill from a Shell oil field in Nigeria
A protest against Shell after a oil spill in 2011. 'There is widespread corruption, yet weapons and armies are paid to protect the wealthy and the foreign companies like Shell that want to access the country’s resources, especially oil.'
Photograph: George Esiri/EPA


It seems almost beyond belief that more than 200 girls can be kidnapped from a school in northern Nigeria, held by the terrorist group Boko Haram, and threatened on a video – shown worldwide – with being sold into slavery by their captors. The disbelief is compounded by today's news that, overnight, eight more girls have been kidnapped by suspected Boko Haram gunmen in north-east Nigeria. This tragedy touches the hearts of everyone, evoking a feeling of revulsion not only at the danger and loss of freedom itself, but at the assumption that for young girls their destination must be forced marriage and servitude, not education.

There is rightly anger that so little has been done by the Nigerian government to find the girls, and that those who have demonstrated in huge numbers against President Goodluck Jonathan have themselves been accused of causing trouble or even temporarily arrested.

But we should be wary of the narrative now emerging. This follows a wearily familiar pattern, one we have already seen in south Asia and the Middle East, but that is increasingly being applied to Africa as well.

It is the refrain that something must be done and that "we" – the enlightened west – must be the people to do it. As the US senator Amy Klobuchar put it: "This is one of those times when our action or inaction will be felt not just by those schoolgirls being held captive and their families waiting in agony, but by victims and perpetrators of trafficking around the world. Now is the time to act."

The call has been for western intervention to help find the girls, and to help "stabilise" Nigeria in the aftermath of their kidnap. The British government has offered "practical help".

Yet western intervention has time and again failed to deal with particular problems and – worse – has led to more deaths, displacements and atrocities than were originally faced. All too often it has been justified with reference to women's rights, claiming that enlightened military forces can create an atmosphere where women are free from violence and abuse. The evidence is that the opposite is the case.

Women's rights were a major justification for the Afghanistan war, launched in 2001, when Cherie Blair and Laura Bush supported their husbands' war as a means of liberating Afghan women. Today, with millions displaced and tens of thousands dead, Afghanistan remains one of the worst countries on earth for women to live, with forced marriage, child marriage, rape and other atrocities still occurring widely.

And western intervention is already firmly embedded in Africa. It does not have the same profile as in Afghanistan or Iraq, because past wars have made it harder to put boots on the ground. But Barack Obama has his military forces engaged in West Africa through their Predator drone base in Niger, which borders northern Nigeria. It also borders Mali, the scene of recent French and British interventions, and Libya, object of a disastrous western bombing campaign in 2011 that has left that country in a state of civil war and collapse.

US drones also operate in Djibouti, Ethiopia and just across the Red Sea in Yemen. The west has been engaged in proxy wars in Somalia in recent years.

If Islamism is now a threat to western interests in growing parts of Africa, it is one that they have played a large part in creating.

But there is another war going on in Africa: economic war. A continent so rich in natural resources sees many of its citizens live in terrible conditions. In President Jonathan's Nigeria, economic growth has not trickled down to the poor. Healthcare and education are beyond the reach of many.

There is widespread corruption, yet weapons and armies are paid to protect the wealthy and the foreign companies, such as Shell, that want to access the country's resources, especially oil. This corruption and inequality is not separate from the role of the west, but an integral part of a system that is prepared to go to war over resources such as oil and gas, but will not go to war on poverty or to provide education for all.

It is this background that informs the terrible plight of the kidnapped girls in Nigeria. It will not be improved by more western weapons and armies on the ground or in the air.


~

War A Africa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9AcnwfwyhY

Published on May 19, 2012

WAR A AFRICA
(Jimmy Cliff)


War a Africa war a Africa war
War a Africa war a Africa war
War in the Gulf war in the Gulf war
War in the Gulf war in the Gulf war

An' a President Bush and Margaret Thatcher
John Major and Helmut Kohl, Fred Martins and Rud Lubers
Mitterand, Saddam Hussein
War a Africa war a Africa war
Say war in the east but the people want peace and a war
United States and Soviet Russia, Brutany and Italy
Germany, France and Japan, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia

War a Africa war a Africa war
War a Africa war a Africa war
A den a who dat a lie down dey
Who dat a lie down dey
Who dat a lie down dey
Who dat a lie down dey
Parson an' all a go lie down dey woo yooo
Iman an' all a go lie down dey woo yooo
War a Africa war a Africa war
War a Africa war a Africa war
Get out you long gun put in you bayonet
Get out the oïl and the bottle and the gas
Come we go mek up all a dem bum
Sticks and stones these are our weapons
We want our lives our land our gold no more war
We're tired of crying, dying, tired of war
Den a who dat a lie down dey
Who dat a lie down dey
Who dat a lie down dey
Who dat a lie down dey
Parson and all a go lie down dey woo yooo
An' a priest an' all a go a lie down dey woo yooo
It's not racial it's not separation
It's not tribal it's liberation
President Bush and John Major, Mitterand and Helmut Kohl
Get out your ballistic
Get out your higher power this won't stop
The black liberation
President de Klerc we want our land
President de Klerc we want our land
War a Africa
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: War A Africa

Postby MacCruiskeen » Wed May 07, 2014 3:41 pm

Thanks for starting this thread, conniption. There's a good thread on the same topic at Media Lens, where the excellent "margo" comments:

Look to the US's UN Ambassador's tweets ...

Posted by margo on May 7, 2014, 5:11 pm, in reply to "Exterminate All The Brutes!"

... for hints as to where the R2P machine is next headed. For the last while @AmbassadorPower's been *very* concerned about Central African Republic and Nigeria - and in particular about "women's issues" in CAR and Nigeria.

LINK TO THREAD


It's worth remembering that the late Michael C. Ruppert was pointing out over a decade ago that the "War on Terror" would soon shift focus to Africa, and especially to the oil-rich parts of that continent. Pretexts for "intervention" can always be found, and if not found, then they will be manufactured.
"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

TESTDEMIC ➝ "CASE"DEMIC
User avatar
MacCruiskeen
 
Posts: 10558
Joined: Thu Nov 16, 2006 6:47 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: War A Africa

Postby 82_28 » Wed May 07, 2014 4:30 pm

I like the term "War A". I like it because it's something I've always puzzled over. Why is WWI and WW2 looked upon as quasi sequels? Thus creating an environment in which everyone has some opinion about what will start WWIII. Everyone is expecting it, but no one is expecting WAR A.

It's time for WAR A. Then we go to B and so on. Perfect. It totally works for this day and age. The Sesame Street of the further normalization of war.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
User avatar
82_28
 
Posts: 11194
Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2007 4:34 am
Location: North of Queen Anne
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: War A Africa

Postby Dioneo » Wed May 07, 2014 5:25 pm

It really pisses me off that wikipedia just uncritically passes along Summers's claim that the text was "sarcastic." Asshole. (Tangentially related, I realize, but not really...)

"DATE: December 12, 1991
TO: Distribution
FR: Lawrence H. Summers
Subject: GEP

'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Least Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate[sic] cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate[sic] cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.

The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.
—Lawrence Summers"
User avatar
Dioneo
 
Posts: 51
Joined: Fri Mar 14, 2014 8:10 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: War A Africa

Postby Nordic » Thu May 08, 2014 4:18 am

Haven't had time to really dig into this, but it looks pretty intriguing. Thought others might be interested:

http://wonuolatahjdeen.wordpress.com/20 ... wikileaks/

Boko Haram Is A CIA Covert Operation – Wikileaks
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
Nordic
 
Posts: 14230
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2006 3:36 am
Location: California USA
Blog: View Blog (6)

Re: War A Africa

Postby Nordic » Thu May 08, 2014 9:53 pm

This is turning into Kony, The Sequel.

This #bringbackourgirls thing is suddenly everywhere and now even the despicable tool Michelle Obama is doing it.

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-medi ... nt-n100771

This whole thing is beginning to have a very familiar stench.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
Nordic
 
Posts: 14230
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2006 3:36 am
Location: California USA
Blog: View Blog (6)

Re: War A Africa

Postby stefano » Fri May 09, 2014 2:13 am

I agree - the kidnapping happened on 14 April, and now in the past week it became a massive story everywhere. Some of it has to do with a World Economic Forum thing taking place in Abuja right now, where the Westerners and the Chinese made a big thing about promising help to Nigeria, but I do get the sense it is being pushed.

Also worth noting, I think - one of the women who led a protest march in Abuja about it claims First Lady Patience Jonathan accused her of 'fabricating' the abductions, not clear if that's true, but Jonathan clearly does think there is a political agenda behind the protests, which there is. “You are playing games. Don’t use school children and women for demonstration again. Keep it to Borno, let it end there. Until you people are ready to cooperate.”
User avatar
stefano
 
Posts: 2672
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 1:50 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: War A Africa

Postby stefano » Fri May 09, 2014 2:57 am

Twitter uses of #bringbackourgirls:

Image
User avatar
stefano
 
Posts: 2672
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 1:50 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: War A Africa

Postby stefano » Fri May 09, 2014 4:22 am

Hillary Clinton has had a proper go at Jonathan's administration:

"The seizure of these young women by this radical, extremist group, Boko Haram, is abominable, it’s criminal, it’s an act of terrorism, and it really merits the fullest response possible, first and foremost from the government of Nigeria,” Clinton told ABC-TV. “The government of Nigeria has been, in my view, somewhat derelict in its responsibility toward protecting boys and girls, men and women in northern Nigeria over the last years,” she said.

The Nigerian government must accept help – particularly intelligence, surveillance and recognizance help – their troops have to be the ones that (are) necessary, but they could do a better job if they accept the offers that are being made. Nigeria has made bad choices, not hard choices," Clinton said, parroting the name of her forthcoming memoir.

"They have squandered their oil wealth; they have allowed corruption to fester, and now they are losing control of parts of their (own) territory because they would not make hard choices,” she went on to say.

"The Nigerian government has failed to confront the threat, or to address the underlying challenges. Most of all, the government of Nigeria needs to get serious about protecting all of its citizens and ensuring that every child has the right and opportunity to go to school,” she said in her address to the function organized by the International Crisis Group.

"Every asset and expertise should be brought to bear. Everyone needs to see this for what it is, it is a gross human rights abuse, but it is also part of a continuing struggle within Nigeria and within North Africa,” she added forcefully.


Jonathan was the US's man when he came to power, him and his neoliberal finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Looks like that's changed. The problem might be that the Nigerians are no longer just stealing from their people but stealing from the oil majors, and pocketing funds that US engineering firms were expecting to get paid for public works.
User avatar
stefano
 
Posts: 2672
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 1:50 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: War A Africa

Postby InfraGard » Fri May 09, 2014 3:14 pm

Nordic » Thu May 08, 2014 4:18 am wrote:Haven't had time to really dig into this, but it looks pretty intriguing. Thought others might be interested:

http://wonuolatahjdeen.wordpress.com/20 ... wikileaks/

Boko Haram Is A CIA Covert Operation – Wikileaks

User avatar
InfraGard
 
Posts: 43
Joined: Tue Jan 28, 2014 9:47 am
Location: occidental hemisphere
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: War A Africa

Postby Luther Blissett » Fri May 09, 2014 5:01 pm

Naomi Wolf was active on Facebook last night publicizing all the other mass kidnappings that go on all over the world all the time to no media sensation at all, while also pointing out legitimate aid organizations like the International Rescue Committee who have expertise in negotiation, rescue, rehabilitation, therapy, and re-integration back into society (rather than a colonialist military intervention like that being promoted in corporate media today).
The Rich and the Corporate remain in their hundred-year fever visions of Bolsheviks taking their stuff - JackRiddler
User avatar
Luther Blissett
 
Posts: 4990
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 1:31 pm
Location: Philadelphia
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: War A Africa

Postby Nordic » Sat May 10, 2014 3:18 am

Few things have infuriated me more lately than Michelle Obama's despicable PR stunt with the "bringbackourgirls" ##

Seeing this this morning? Well, this was the perfect response:

Image
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
Nordic
 
Posts: 14230
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2006 3:36 am
Location: California USA
Blog: View Blog (6)

Re: War A Africa

Postby Occult Means Hidden » Sat May 10, 2014 5:15 am

Nordic wrote:Haven't had time to really dig into this, but it looks pretty intriguing. Thought others might be interested:

http://wonuolatahjdeen.wordpress.com/20 ... wikileaks/

Boko Haram Is A CIA Covert Operation – Wikileaks


It's not. I read it. No source material and amazing leaps of logic. For instance, apparently the CIA was responsible for South Sudan split from Sudan because of Chinese oil deals. Not very rigorous when you consider the motives of the people that actually live there. Im a radical "leftist" too, but I'm not so deluded into thinking evil only comes from the West in general and the CIA in particular. There is such a thing as evil Nigerian religious-fascists driven by their own twisted motives.

Nordic wrote:This is turning into Kony, The Sequel.

This #bringbackourgirls thing is suddenly everywhere and now even the despicable tool Michelle Obama is doing it.

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-medi ... nt-n100771

This whole thing is beginning to have a very familiar stench.


Cynical. Even if it's a Kony sequel.
Rage against the ever vicious downward spiral.
Time to get back to basics. [url=http://zmag.org/zmi/readlabor.htm]Worker Control of Industry![/url]
User avatar
Occult Means Hidden
 
Posts: 1403
Joined: Mon Nov 06, 2006 1:34 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: War A Africa

Postby Nordic » Sun May 11, 2014 5:02 pm

Thanks for checking that out, OMH.

It does seem remarkably convenient that the U.S. now seems to be spreading this meme so we can go "rescue" these people with our military.

http://www.commdiginews.com/news-2/firs ... nes-17238/

First suspected Boko Haram terrorists arrested by US Marines

Image

They're such Heroes!!!! :lovehearts: :lovehearts: :lovehearts:
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
Nordic
 
Posts: 14230
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2006 3:36 am
Location: California USA
Blog: View Blog (6)

Re: War A Africa

Postby Occult Means Hidden » Mon May 12, 2014 2:09 pm

Look at it from a net positive to a net negative like some kind of morality ledger. It's a net positive that Obama is speaking out and US troops are arresting Boko Haram militants. Normally the US completely ignores African atrocities. There were many opportunities for intervention over the decades, and the US generally hasn't done so with force, other than with money. Somalia being the main exception. Opportunities didn't have to be manufactured for US involvement.
Rage against the ever vicious downward spiral.
Time to get back to basics. [url=http://zmag.org/zmi/readlabor.htm]Worker Control of Industry![/url]
User avatar
Occult Means Hidden
 
Posts: 1403
Joined: Mon Nov 06, 2006 1:34 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Next

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 35 guests