tagged w/ Africom
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Jason Russell, head of the viral KONY 2012 video urging military action in Africa, was taken into police custody and later taken to the hospital after reportedly masturbating in public, vandalizing cars and other bizarre activity. TMZ released video showing Russell naked on a public street corner wildly pounding the ground apparently raving mad.
The KONY 2012 video rapidly received more than 80 million views this week, prompting a deluge of criticism and scrutiny from viewers, as well as urging from numerous public figures to send AFRICOM troops into the region.
From far away, it was a naked man pounding the sidewalk in public — now TMZ has obtained up close video of Jason Russell‘s meltdown … complete with four-letter words … and the devil.
KONY 2012 is a Scam and a pretext to invade Africa. Google Africom.
http://www.infowars.com/jason-russell-the-naked-meltdown-from-up-close/
http://www.tmz.com/2012/03/18/jason-russell-video-naked-meltdown-kony/#.T2dcTtk2fE2Jason Russell, head of the viral KONY 2012 video urging military action in Africa, was... more
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Image: (via Infowars) A visual representation of Invisible Children’s true backers and master minds. They will gladly shed their front group in the name of self-preservation and making a clean escape.
Funny how all of the mainstream news sites are trying to spin this and point out that Jason Russel is a Christian.
Umm excuse me but how many times have your typical lefty Hollywood types like Angelina Jolie, Nicki Minaj, Obama officials and Amnesty International previously been so quick to get on board with the political work of a devout Evangelical Christian?
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The growing legions of critics and skeptics arrayed against this latest Wall Street-London psychological operation will undoubtedly seize this irresistible bait laid out, either by chance or by design, to focus on finishing off the already mortally wounded “Invisible Children” organization. It is already turning out to be a spectacular crash and burn.
However, the focus must be maintained on the mechanics behind Invisible Children, the fact that they are backed by USAID and that they participated in the US State Department’s Alliance for Youth Movements (Movements.org) summits which laid the groundwork years in advance for the US-engineered “Arab Spring.” It must also be remembered that while they pretend to be a movement of the people, Invisible Children is in fact backed by (page 22) Soros-funded foundations, JP Morgan, Chase, and others.
And as satisfying as many will find it to stomp Invisible Children out of existence for intentionally misleading them, preying on their emotions, insulting their intelligence, and literally lying to them, they must remember that all they’ve managed to do is hack away but a tentacle of a much larger monster. While we have a firm grip on Invisible Children, let’s pull up the whole monster from its murky lair.Image: (via Infowars) A visual representation of Invisible Children’s true... more
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Featured here is Cecil Rhodes who helped the British Empire literally conquer a massive swath of Africa from the north all the way to the south, the portion over which Rhodes is spanning in the illustration. In memory of his megalomania, the British would name what is now modern day Zimbabwe after him, calling it “Rhodesia.”
Today, US Africa Command, known as AFRICOM, is spreading across Africa in the footsteps of Cecil Rhodes. As reported by allAfrica.com, Vice Admiral Moeller at an AFRICOM meeting held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008 would declare that protecting “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market” was one of AFRICOM’s guiding principles. Of course by “global market,” the admiral means the Fortune 500 corporations of Wall Street and London.
In our politically sensitive modern age, pillaging Africa in the footsteps of shameless and quite racist imperialists is very difficult to do. Therefore, Joseph Kony, Al Qaeda, Qaddafi, starving children, pirates, and every other geopolitical ploy and contrivance imaginable, and some left yet unimagined have been used to justify AFRICOM’s expanding presence on a continent they have no business setting foot on.
Ironically, ploys like KONY 2012 have liberal youth clamoring for what is perhaps the next dark chapter in large scale racist imperial enslavement, plundering, and exploitation.
For excellent analysis on the KONY 2012 scam, please read Nile Bowie’s “Youth Movement Promotes US Military Presence in Central Africa,” and BlackStarNews.com’s “KONY 2012, Invisible Children’s Pro-AFRICOM and Museveni Propaganda.”
Land Destroyer Report
March 11, 2012
Not saying Kony is a great guy, but you need some sophistication and intellectual discernment (not popular with Current trolls, I know) in order to understand complex geopolitical issues.Featured here is Cecil Rhodes who helped the British Empire literally conquer a... more
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THE installation of the National Transitional Council (NTC) government in Libya by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) could signal the beginning of an open neocolonial scramble for Africa. Suspicions about such a blueprint were first aroused when President George W. Bush set up the United States-Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008, months before demitting office. The demand for a permanent American military footprint on the African continent had come from right-wing think tanks that enjoyed great clout in the corridors of power during the eight years of the Bush presidency.
A background paper prepared in 2002 by the influential right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation had called for the creation of a military command for the continent so that “direct military intervention”, using air power and naval forces, could become possible to “protect vital U.S. interests” in Africa. Such interventions, its authors wrote, would not necessitate the deployment of U.S. forces on the ground. Such wars, the paper proposed, should be fought with the help of local allies. The U.S. Defence Department's African Contingency Operation Training and Assistance Programme is deeply involved in training the armies of many countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Ghana, America's close allies in the region.
The authors of the paper clearly spelt out what they meant by vital interests: “With its vast natural and mineral resources, Africa remains strategically important to the West, as it has been for hundreds of years, and its geostrategic significance is likely to rise in the 21st century.” According to the National Intelligence Council, “the United States is likely to draw 25 per cent of its oil from West Africa by 2015, surpassing the volume imported from the Persian Gulf”, the Heritage Foundation study reported. The Bush administration's Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter Kansteiner was quick to echo the views expressed by the foundation. He went on record stating that Africa's oil had “become a national strategic interest”.
Libya is among Africa's biggest oil producers. China was importing 11 per cent of Libyan oil for its domestic needs before the NATO-instigated civil war in the North African state started seven months ago. It could now find itself locked out of new oil contracts. Top functionaries of the NTC have said that China, Russia and Brazil would be frozen out of contracts.
These countries had criticised the misuse of the United Nations Security Council resolution on Libya to bring about a regime change. China gets around one-third of its oil from Africa. The French newspaper Liberacion recently published documents revealing the NTC leadership's offer of 35 per cent of Libya's oil production to France in return for its “total and permanent support” for the new government. Gene Cretz, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, recently blurted out that “oil is the jewel of the crown of Libyan national resources”.
President Barack Obama, who famously claimed that he was leading the war in Libya “from behind”, used precisely the tactics prescribed in the Heritage Foundation report. AFRICOM played an important behind-the-scenes role in planning the U.S./NATO bombing of Libya. U.S. Special Forces teamed up with its counterparts from France and the United Kingdom to arm and organise the ragtag rebel forces into a fighting unit. It was the coordinated air strikes, coupled with an amphibious operation led by the U.S., that finally led to the fall of Tripoli. South African President Jacob Zuma complained bitterly that it was NATO bombing that prevented the African Union (A.U.) from hammering out a negotiated settlement to the civil war in Libya. More than 200 prominent Africans wrote an open letter in August criticising the recourse to “militarised diplomacy to effect regime change in Libya”.
In early October, a few days before the fall of Sirte and the killing of Muammar Qaddafi, Obama ordered the despatch of 100 U.S. Special Forces troops to Uganda. He said the decision to send the troops was taken to help the U.S.' ally in the region, Yoweri Museveni, defeat the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which was engaged in a guerilla war with the central government in Kampala. Obama told Congress that the troops were deployed in order “to assist African forces in the removal of Joseph Koni [the LRA leader] and the LRA leadership from the battlefield”. Museveni, one of Africa's long-serving authoritarian rulers, was a one-time friend of Qaddafi. Qaddafi had extended support to the rebel army that brought Museveni to power in 1986. After coming to power, Museveni became one of the trusted allies of the West and was regularly feted at the White House.
At America's bidding, Uganda has sent peacekeepers to Somalia under the A.U. umbrella to keep the Islamist Al Shabab militia out of the capital, Mogadishu. Two years ago, Ethiopia despatched its troops to Somalia to drive away the Islamic Courts Union government from Mogadishu after it had managed to unite most of the country. In the face of immense resistance, the Ethiopian troops were withdrawn, but the country was left in chaos again. Al Shabab exploited this and now poses a potent threat to U.S. interests in the region.
In the middle of October, Kenya replicated what Ethiopia did. Encouraged by the U.S., it sent its troops deep into Somalia to fight Al Shabab. The U.S. is providing air support to the Kenyan military. The Kenyan invasion has already led to terror attacks in Kenyan cities. Only a handful of African states have bothered to send peacekeepers to the war-ravaged country, viewing the conflict there as one mainly instigated by the West.
Observers of the African scene are suspicious of the Obama administration's sudden decision to send Special Forces to Uganda. Obama has also indicated that the U.S. forces will be sent to the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, ostensibly to help the governments there to crush rebel groups. AFRICOM provides billions of dollars worth of equipment to the armies of countries that are friendly to the U.S. The U.S. military is already helping counter-insurgency operations in Mali and Niger, where the marginalised Tuareg ethnic group has raised the banner of revolt. “With Libya secure, an American invasion of Africa is under way,” observed John Pilger in a recent article.
The LRA, which operates along Uganda's borders with Southern Sudan and the Central African Republic, was never considered a serious threat in the 24 years that it has been active. It is said to have around 500 fighters, many of them child soldiers. Many African commentators suspect that the real goal of the Obama administration is to start preparing the ground for a permanent military base for AFRICOM on the continent. AFRICOM is currently headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, but it has a major military facility in Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, a small state located in the Horn of Africa. In all, 1,800 American troops are permanently based there.
~~~~THE installation of the National Transitional Council (NTC) government in Libya by the... more
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Firoze Manji: Nothing in international law allows regime change and assassination of a leader.
He also talks about oil, unholy alliances, privatization, European banks and the vast amounts of fossil water under the Nubian Aquifer... the real prize.Firoze Manji: Nothing in international law allows regime change and assassination of a... more
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Peace be upon you. ..... I was near the Sirte front with 23 fighters. We were under attack by well-armed rebels for more than a day and a half, and we suffered fatalities." ..... He went on to announce the launch of the strategy NOONA MIME [N - NATO - M - MAJLIS INTIKALI (NTC)]. This strategy involves creating multiple flash points of instability to continually disrupt every NATO plan, rendering the ongoing presence of NATO in Libya untenable. Thus the NTC will be abandoned and the Resistance can demolish it within a month. Recent events have shown that the NTC is very weak with their rebels failing to take over Bani Walid and Sirte in the last few days. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/recent-news/43013-strategy-noona-mimePeace be upon you. ..... I was near the Sirte front with 23 fighters. We were under... more
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The Libyan government’s continent-wide investments in sensitive sectors such as oil and banking were further testament to his influence in the region.
“The AU will surely miss one of its agile proponents and financiers, who was committed to making it an active continental body that would negotiate and trade with other continents on the same level,” said Dr Adams Oloo, a political science lecturer at the University of Nairobi.
“In the absence of Gaddafi and Libya’s generous contributions, there will be a slowdown in some of the projects that had been lined up. I don’t think a new Libyan leader will have the same enthusiasm, because Gaddafi had ruled Libya for four decades and he was now ready to lead Africa,” he added.
Libya’s contribution to the AU budget is estimated to have been about 12 per cent. Apart from voluntarily sponsoring ministerial and expert meetings, Gaddafi was personally paying annual fees on behalf of some African counties, especially those from West Africa who have difficulties in meeting their financial obligations to the continental body.
Gaddafi was also a major contributor to AU projects, whose budget stands at an average of $300 million annually. In the 2011 budget, the organisation voted for $256.8 million, a 2.5 per cent increase compared with 2010. The budget consisted of $112.4 million for operations and $144.4 million for programmes.
Since February 2011, the AU has issued four strongly worded statements urging Nato to suspend its bombing campaign while a negotiated solution that locked out Gaddafi from a further term was sought.
The AU had tasked the presidents of South Africa, Uganda, Mali, Mauritania and Equatorial Guinea with the task of finding such a solution — only for their efforts to be ignored by Nato and the rebels.The Libyan government’s continent-wide investments in sensitive sectors such as... more
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For three years, critics of AFRICOM have charged that it serves to militarize U.S. foreign policy in the region, as opposed to aid and diplomacy. Carl Bloice at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.For three years, critics of AFRICOM have charged that it serves to militarize U.S.... more
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An opening for progressives in the U.S. and in Africa to push the Obama Administration on its short-sighted Africa policy might exist in 2011. Emira Woods at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.
http://www.fpif.org/blog/obama_to_step_up_outreach_to_africa_in_2011An opening for progressives in the U.S. and in Africa to push the Obama Administration... more
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The developed world has a message for Africa: “Sorry, but we are reneging on our aid pledges made at the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland back in 2005, but we do have something for you—lots and lots of expensive things that go ‘bang’ and kill people.”
And that was indeed the message that came out of the G8-G20 meetings in Canada last month. The promise to add an extra $25 billion to a $50 billion aid package for the continent went a glimmering. Instead, the G8 will cut the $25 billion to $11 billion and the $50 billion to $38 billion. And don’t hold your breath that Africa will get even that much.
The G8 consists of Britain, the U.S., Germany, France, Italy, Japan, France, and Russia, although Moscow is not part of the aid pledge.
Canada’s Muskoka summit hailed “significant progress toward the millennium development goals”—the United Nations’ target of reducing poverty by 2015—but when it came time to ante up, everyone but the United Kingdom bailed. The Gleneagles pledge was to direct 0.51 percent of the G8’s gross national income to aid programs by 2010. The UK came up to 0.56 percent, but the U.S. is at 0.2, Italy at 0.16, Canada at 0.3, Germany at 0.35, and France at 0.47. Rumor has it that France and Italy led the charge to water down the 2005 goals.
The shortfall, says Oxfam spokesman Mark Fried, is not just a matter of “numbers.” The aid figures “represent vital medicines, kids in school, help for women living in poverty and food for the hungry.”
AIDS activists are particularly incensed. “I see no point in beating around the bush,” said AIDS-Free World spokesman Stephen Lewis at a Toronto press conference. He charged that Obama Administration’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief “is being flat-lined for at least the next two years.” Lewis said AIDS groups were treating five million patients, but that another nine million needed to be in programs. “There are AIDS projects, run by other NGOs [non-governmental organizations], where new patients cannot be enrolled unless someone dies.”
But if the poor, sick, and hungry are going begging, not so Africa’s militaries.
According to Daniel Volman, director of the African Security Research Project, the White House is following the same policies as the Bush Administration vis-à-vis Africa. “Indeed, the Obama Administration is seeking to expand U.S. military activities on the continent even further,” says Volman.
In its 2011 budget, the White House asked for over $80 million in military programs for Africa, while freezing or reducing aid packages aimed at civilians.
The major vehicle for this is the U.S.’s African Command (AFRICOM) founded in 2008. Through the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative, AFRICOM is training troops from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Chad. The supposed target of all this is the group al-Qaeda in the Islamic Meghreb (AQIM), but while AQIM is certainly troublesome—it sets off bombs and kidnaps people— it is small, scattered, and doesn’t pose a serious threat to any of the countries involved.
The worry is that the various militaries being trained by AFRICOM could end up being used against internal dissidents. Tuaregs, for instance, are engaged in a long-running, low-level insurgency against the Mali government, which is backing a French plan to mine uranium in the Sahara. Might Morocco use the training to attack the Polisario Front in the disputed Western Sahara? Mauritanians complain that the “terrorist” label has been used to jail political opponents of the government.
In testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson said the U.S. was seeking to bolster Nigeria’s “ability to combat violent extremism within its borders.” That might put AFRICOM in the middle of a civil war between ruling elites in Lagos and their transnational oil company allies, and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Delta, which is demanding an end to massive pollution and a fair cut of oil revenues.
The National Energy Policy Development Groups estimates that by 2015 as much as 25 percent of U.S. oil imports will come from Africa.
So far, AFRICOM’s track record has been one disaster after another. It supported Ethiopia’s intervention in the Somalia civil war, and helped to overthrow the moderate Islamic Courts Union. It is now fighting a desperate rear-guard action against a far more extremist grouping, the al-Shabaab. AFRICOM also helped coordinate a Ugandan Army attack on the Lord’s Resistance Army in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—Operation Lightning Thunder— that ended up killing thousands of civilians.
The U.S. has been careful to keep a low profile in all this. “We don’t want to see our guys going in and getting whacked,” Volman quotes one U.S. AFRICOM officer. “We want Africans to go in.”
And presumably get “whacked.”
AFRICOM’s Operation Flintlock 2010, which ran from May 3-22, was based in Burkina Faso. Besides the militaries of 10 African nations, it included 600 U.S. Special Forces and elite units from France, the Netherlands, and Spain. Yes, there are other arms pushers out there, and the list reads like an economic who’s who: France, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, Sweden, and Israel. Some 70 percent of the world’s arms trade is aimed at developing countries.
So, is AFRICOM about fighting terrorism, or oil, gas and uranium? Nicole Lee, the executive director of Trans Africa, the leading African American organization focusing on Africa has no doubts: “This [AFRICOM] is nothing short of a sovereignty and resource grab.”
And who actually benefits from this militarization of the continent? As Nigerian journalist Dulue Mbachu warns, “Increased U.S. military presence in Africa may simply serve to protect unpopular regimes that are friendly to its interests, as was the case during the Cold War, while Africa slips further into poverty.”
http://www.fpif.org/blog/africa_no_butter_but_lots_of_gunsThe developed world has a message for Africa: “Sorry, but we are reneging on our... more
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The Pentagon is considering dispatching surveillance drones and other limited military support for a Somali government offensive against insurgents.The Pentagon is considering dispatching surveillance drones and other limited military... more
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When President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, it was widely expected that he would dramatically change, or even reverse, the militarized and unilateral security policy that had been pursued by the Bush administration toward Africa, as well as toward other parts of the world.
After one year in office, however, it is clear that the Obama administration is following essentially the same policy that has guided U.S. military policy toward Africa for more than a decade. In fact, the Obama administration is seeking to expand U.S. military activities on the continent even further.When President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, it was widely expected that... more
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U.S. Marines have begun training Congolese troops accused of attacking civilians and committing extreme abuses.U.S. Marines have begun training Congolese troops accused of attacking civilians and... more
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"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it."- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mid-January means it's time to commemorate the birthday of a true African-American peacemaker who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for actual peacemaking work. But once again, as they do every year, our politicians, our pundits, and our corporate media will narrow down Dr. King's life and legacy to that of strictly black-white civil rights with convenient clichés such as "slain civil rights leader" and countless, predictable references to his "I Have A Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington, as though that was the only important speech he ever made. That way, they can manage to make it seem as though his development as a world, not merely U.S., thinker and leader was frozen in that summer of '63, and that his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize was the "capping off" of his public career. And the key word in the previous sentence is "manage," as in managing or controlling.
But inconveniently for those in power who still attempt to control perceptions of reality, King continued to grow as a thinker and leader for the last five years of his life till his murder on April 4, 1968. And in those five years, what he learned and realized transcended the issue of black-white civil rights and was crystallized in the speech he gave at Riverside Church in upper Manhattan, New York City on April 4, 1967, a year to the day of his assassination, and, no doubt, one of the main reasons for his violent silencing. And that speech is now more relevant, and more valuable, than ever, if we will only pay attention. http://bit.ly/5aDI9K"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to... more
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I spoke with Cindy Sheehan, oh Cindy's Soapbox Internet Radio, on April 12, 2009, in San Francisco, about San Francisco's annual, all forces military recruitment drive, a.k.a., Fleet Week and the Blue Angels Air Show. Now, on October 4th, San Francisco prepares to host the recruitment drive from October 8th to 13th, as the world awaits Barack Obama's response to Admiral Stanley McChrystal's request for 40,000 more "boots on the ground" in Afghanistan.I spoke with Cindy Sheehan, oh Cindy's Soapbox Internet Radio, on April 12, 2009,... more
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As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues her seven-nation tour of Africa, we hear from British anthropologist Jeremy Keenan. He traces AFRICOM, the US military command in Africa, to a 2003 kidnapping of European tourists. The hostage taking was widely blamed on Islamic militants thought to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, but Keenan argues that the Bush administration and the Algerian government were the ones responsible.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has emphasized that her 7-country tour of Africa is intended to promote democracy, fight corruption, and boost US investments in African trade and agriculture.
We turn now to another issue that is widely expected to be discussed on every stop: AFRICOM, the US military command in Africa, which has been publicly opposed by every country on the continent except Liberia.
Now, Secretary Clinton will not be visiting the countries in and around the oil and gas rich Sahara desert—Mali, Niger, Chad, Algeria, and Mauritania. But a new book by British anthropologist Jeremy Keenan argues that this area is crucial to understanding the birth of AFRICOM and the Bush administration’s expansion of the global war on terror into Africa.
Keenan is a Professor of social anthroplogy at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and has spent over four decades working in and writing about this region. He traces AFRICOM and the US military concern over Al Qaeda’s presence in Africa back to the February 2003 kidnapping of 32 European tourists in Algeria’s Sahara desert. The hostage taking was widely blamed on Islamic militants thought to be affiliated with Al Qaeda, but Keenan argues that the Bush administration and the Algerian government were the ones responsible.
His latest book is called “The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa” and its sequel titled “The Dying Sahara” will be released next year. Anjali Kamat and I spoke to Jeremy Keenan last week and asked him to lay out this story.As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues her seven-nation tour of Africa, we... more
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China is increasing it's presence in Africa, but so is the US.
Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller gives us peak into the newly
launched US Africa Command, better known as Africom.China is increasing it's presence in Africa, but so is the US.
Vanguard... more
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Whether or not we have fully arrived at peak oil can be left to the nitpickers and bean counters to decide. What we know for sure is that the cost of black gold has exponentially risen in just a few short years, and the global economy it is built upon is currently straddling a razor waiting for the inevitable slice. That final cut may come from Nigeria, where all the major oil companies have done business, dirty and otherwise, for the last five decades, degrading the environment and depressing the general population along the way.
That disturbing feedback loop is the subject of the new book Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta, which juxtaposes the arresting graphics of award-winning photojournalist Ed Kashi with the geopolitical insights of UC Berkeley professor Michael Watts to present Africa's most populous nation as a possible epicenter for the full-blown resource wars to come. [You can watch a short multimedia presentation of Kashi's photographs on the right-hand side of this page.]
They are wars that are already well under way. In mid-June, a Shell facility was attacked by local militants, disrupting production and sending the already sky-high price of oil to further heights before coming back online a week later. Attacks like those have increased in frequency, as Nigerian factions have fought for control of the nation's lucrative petroleum resources, which are the largest in Africa.
The problem, especially as indigenous populations caught between Nigeria's prosperous rich and their oil industry's environmental devastation see it, is that viable land and resources have been wasted on a handful while the majority of the country falls into further disrepair and depression. From natural gas flares and oil spills to the destruction of native plants, animal species and other salable commodities, Nigeria's oil industry has wreaked havoc across the land and its people.
And it's only getting worse. And if you think it doesn't affect America, think again.
"The United States has been concerned with its own post-1945 global oil strategy, involving Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela," Watts explains in our interview below. "But this strategy has fallen apart, and now Africa plays a key role at a time when oil is beyond $100 a barrel."
It is a role that will only expand, as increasing demand, ass-backward environmental policy and diminishing resources send nations and multinationals scattering for control of what's left of Earth's black gold. America's disastrous war in Iraq is one example of this panic at work. President Bush's 2006 plan to establish the United States African Command (AFRICOM), an ominous Department of Defense program to network operations and combatant command across the African continent, is another such example, especially since not one African country has come forward to offer America permission to build a base on its territory. For now, AFRICOM is on the outside looking in on Africa from a base in Germany, an arrangement that can be seen both as a geopolitical reality and as a suitable metaphor for U.S.-African relations throughout history.
But the United States won't be outside Africa for long, as climate crisis and peak oil take further hold. And when it comes calling, it will most likely call on Nigeria first.
---click the link to read an interview with the author---Whether or not we have fully arrived at peak oil can be left to the nitpickers and... more
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