If you can't recognize betrayal when it's spitting in your face, you need to look in a mirror it may be yourself. By putting 'boots on the ground' on all continents with our tax money and never-be-paid-back debt, Americans will be multi-generational losers. As Ron Paul has warned, blowback from our bullying for corporate interests will be horrific. That's right. America's grip of tyranny is ours to solve, not our neighbors.
CV 1st. published this on 25 March 2012
Nile Bowie is an independent writer and photojournalist based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; he regularly contributes to Tony Cartalucci's Land Destroyer Report and Professor Michel Chossudovsky's Global Research Twitter: @NileBowie
’AFRICOM des Etats-Unis et la militarisation du continent Africain (Version Française)
Since
the time of the British Empire and the manifesto of Cecil Rhodes, the pursuit
of treasures on the hopeless continent
has demonstrated the expendability of human life.
Despite decades of apathy among the primary resource consumers, the increasing reach of social media propaganda has ignited public interest in Africa’s long overlooked social issues. In the wake of celebrity endorsed pro-intervention publicity stunts, public opinion in the United States is now being mobilized in favor of a greater military presence on the African continent. Following the deployment of one hundred US military personnel to Uganda in 2011, a new bill has been introduced to the Congress calling for the further expansion of regional military forces in pursuit of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an ailing rebel group allegedly responsible for recruiting child soldiers and conducting crimes against humanity.
As
the Obama administration claims to welcome the peaceful rise of China on the
world stage, recent policy shifts toward an American
Pacific Century indicate a desire to maintain the capacity to project
military force toward the emerging superpower. In addition to maintaining a
permanent military presence in Northern Australia, the construction of an
expansive military base on South Korea’s Jeju Island has indicated growing antagonism
towards Beijing. The base maintains the capacity to host up
to twenty
American and South Korean warships, including submarines, aircraft carriers and
destroyers once
completed in 2014
– in addition to the presence of Aegis
anti-ballistic systems. In response, Chinese leadership
has referred to the increasing militarization in the region as an open
provocation.
On the economic front, China has been excluded from
the proposed Trans-Pacific
Partnership Agreement (TPPA), a trade agreement intended
to administer US-designed international trading regulations throughout Asia, to
the benefit of American corporations. As further fundamental policy divisions
emerge subsequent to China and Russia’s
UNSC veto mandating intervention in Syria, the Obama
administration has begun utilizing alternative measures to exert new economic
pressure towards Beijing. The United States, along with the EU and Japan have
called on the World Trade Organization to block Chinese-funded mining projects
in the US, in addition to a freeze on World Bank financing for China’s
extensive mining projects.
In a move to counteract Chinese economic ascendancy,
Washington is crusading against China's export restrictions on minerals that
are crucial components in the production of consumer electronics such as
flat-screen televisions, smart phones, laptop batteries, and a host of other
products. In a 2010 white paper entitled “Critical Raw
Materials for the EU,” the European Commission cites the immediate
need for reserve supplies of tantalum, cobalt, niobium, and tungsten among
others; the US Department of Energy 2010 white paper “Critical Mineral
Strategy” also acknowledged the strategic importance of these
key components. Coincidently, the US
military is now attempting to increase its presence in what is widely considered
the world’s most resource rich nation, the Democratic
Republic of the Congo.
The DRC has suffered immensely during its history of
foreign plunder and colonial occupation; it maintains the second lowest GDP per
capita despite having an estimated $24 trillion in
untapped raw minerals deposits. During the
Congo Wars of the 1996 to 2003, the United States provided training and arms to
Rwandan and Ugandan militias who later invaded the eastern provinces of the DRC
in proxy. In addition to benefiting various multinational corporations, the
regimes of Paul Kagame in Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni in Uganda both profited
immensely from the plunder of Congolese conflict minerals such
as cassiterite, wolframite, coltan (from which niobium and tantalum are
derived) and gold. The DRC holds more than 30% of the world's diamond reserves and 80% of the world's coltan, the
majority of which is exported to
China for processing into electronic-grade tantalum powder and
wiring.
China’s unprecedented economic transformation has
relied not only on consumer markets in the United States, Australia and the EU
– but also on Africa, as a source for a vast array of raw materials. As Chinese
economic and cultural influence in Africa expands exponentially with the
symbolic construction of the new $200 million African
Union headquarters funded solely by Beijing, the ailing United States and its leadership have expressed dissatisfaction
toward its diminishing role in the region. During a diplomatic tour of Africa
in 2011, US Secretary of
State Hilary Clinton herself has irresponsibly insinuated China’s
guilt in perpetuating a creeping “new
colonialism.”
At a time when China holds an
estimated $1.5 trillion in
American government debt, Clinton’s comments remain dangerously
provocative. As China, backed by the world’s largest foreign currency reserves, begins
to offer loans to its
BRICS counterparts in RMB, the prospect of emerging nations resisting the
New American Century appear
to be increasingly assured. While the success of Anglo-American imperialism
relies on its capacity to militarily drive target nations into submission,
today’s African leaders are not obliged to do business with China – although
doing so may be to their benefit. China annually invests an estimated $5.5
billion in Africa, with only 29 percent of direct investment in
the mining sector in 2009 – while more than half was directed toward domestic manufacturing,
finance, and construction industries, which largely benefit Africans themselves
– despite reports of worker mistreatment.
China has further committed $10 billion in
concessional loans to Africa between 2009 and 2012 and made
significant investments in manufacturing zones in non-resource-rich economies
such as Zambia and Tanzania. As Africa’s largest trading partner, China imports 1.5
million barrels of oil from Africa per day,
approximately accounting for 30 percent of its total imports. Over the past
decade, 750,000 Chinese nationals have settled in
Africa,
while Chinese state-funded cultural centers in rural parts of the continent
conduct language classes in Mandarin and Cantonese. As China is predicted to formally emerge as the world’s largest
economy in 2016, the recent materialization of plans for a BRICS Bank have the potential to
restructure the global financial climate and directly challenge the hegemonic
conduct of the International Monetary Fund in Africa’s strategic emerging
economies.
China’s deepening economic engagement in
Africa and its crucial role in developing the mineral sector, telecommunications
industry and much needed infrastructural projects is creating "deep nervousness" in the West, according to David Shinn, the
former US ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia. In a 2011 Department of
Defense whitepaper entitled “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China”, the US acknowledges the
maturity of China’s modern
hardware and military technology, and the likelihood of Beijing finding
hostility with further military alliances between the United States and Taiwan.
The document further indicates that “China’s rise as a major
international actor is likely to stand out as a defining feature of the
strategic landscape of the early 21st century.” Furthermore, the Department of Defense concedes to
the uncertainty of how
China’s growing capabilities will be administered on the world stage.
Although a US
military presence in Africa (under the guise of fighting terrorism and
protecting human rights) specifically to counter Chinese regional economic
authority may not incite tension in the same way that a US presence in North
Korea or Taiwan would, the potential for brinksmanship exists and will persist.
China maintains the largest standing army in the world with 2,285,000 personnel
and is working to challenge the regional military hegemony of America’s Pacific Century with its expanding naval and
conventional capabilities, including an effort to develop the world’s first anti-ship
ballistic missile. Furthermore,
China has moved to begin testing advanced anti-satellite (ASAT) and Anti
Ballistic Missile (ABM) weapons systems in an effort to
bring the US-China rivalry into Space warfare.
The concept of US intervention into the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Central African Republic and
Uganda under the pretext of disarming the Lord’s Resistance Army is an
ultimately fraudulent purpose. The LRA has been in operation for over two
decades, and presently remains at
an extremely weakened state, with approximately 400 soldiers. According
the LRA Crisis Tracker, a
digital crisis mapping software launched by the Invisible Children group, not a
single case of LRA activity has been reported in Uganda since 2006. The vast
majority of reported attacks are presently taking place in the northeastern
Bangadi region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, located on the foot of
a tri-border expanse between the Central African Republic and South Sudan. READ MORE
