African Union Reaches the Height of Stupidity in Somalia

How in the hell did the African Union get caught in a U.S. created quagmire in Somalia? Was this the conception of a united Africa that Kwame Nkrumah spoke about in the early days of the then Organization of African Unity? When will African leaders tire of endless war and bloodshed? Maybe when the U.S. money and guns stop flowing.

The civil war in Somalia is not a war of necessity or an existential battle between good and evil but is the indiscriminate killing of Somali people by outsiders and a government in Mogadishu seen as illegitimate by the majority of the Somali people. Following a shocking suicide bombing by a Somalia insurgent group in Uganda during the World Cup Finals game, Guinea in West Africa has promised to send some of its troops into this mess. Isn't this the same military responsible for conducting a coup then raping and killing innocent Guineans in 2009? A perfect fit for the daily murder and destruction being rained on the Somali people day after day.

The U.S. military claims that the war in Somalia is a defensive action against Al-Qaeda Islamists. And the African Union has taken the bait (plus billions of dollars in U.S. weapons and cash). But a researcher at the the Council on Foreign Relations did an assessment of U.S. intelligence in 2007, that Somalia was actually under no threat whatsoever from foreign jihadist movements or from foreign terrorist groups. According to the intelligence reports at the time, Al-Qaeda's experience recruiting in Somalia was so terrible that U.S. intelligence basically said, "There's no way they can operate there." So what happened?

In 2006, a coalition of Somali leaders defeated US-backed warlords and established peace in the capital of Mogadishu for the first time in decades. The United States however, had other plans and exaggerated the threat of Al-Qaeda in order to build public support for an orchestrated Ethiopian invasion of Somalia. Ethiopia and U.S. special forces led warlords in the violent removal of the moderate Islamist Somali government and worked to create civil war in Somalia. Thousands of of civilians including women and children were murdered sometimes targeted in their homes, schools and places of worship by the U.S.-instigated civil war. The violence of a newly installed regime of warlords in Somalia continued and eventually led to hardline factions with ties to other militias fighting in Afghanistan and Yemen resisting foreign occupation using terrorist tactics to fight back.

What the African Union fails to realize is that the most effective role that body can play in Somalia is as mediator between factions. Instead, the African Union has chosen to fight a war in defense of a government of mostly U.S.-backed warlords who have been the central impediment to peace in Somalia for several decades. The Wall Street Journal wrote a piece today documenting the problem African Union forces face as they shell civilians in Somalia and further feed the cynicism about external interference in the country. The African Union lead by Uganda has to be about the most gullible or greedy leaders on the planet.

Note: You can read a detailed breakdown here of how the bumbling idiots in the U.S. military created Islamic extremism in Somalia through its own interference and has facilitated a conflict that could send the whole region up in flames.

Afghanistan: What the Wikileaks files TRULY reveal

The following message is the most damning response to what for me has been among the most horrifying examples of how American tax-payer money and lives are being spent on a loosing conflict in Afghanistan. The leak of documents from 2004-2010 on the Afghanistan war, which is already the longest war in American history, has revealed even more what a shameful and murderous campaign the occupation been.


Re-posted message from the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism)

The release of 90,000 secret U.S. military files by the whistleblower website Wikileaks, in its broadest context, reveals that the Obama administration and the Pentagon brass have been and still are fully aware that they are not only losing the war in Afghanistan, but also have no possibility of winning.

The documents present a powerful indictment against the Pentagon, the Obama administration and the Bush administration for their failure to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan. They provide documentary evidence of the killing of hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians by U.S. and NATO troops.

The files reveal that the Pentagon set up a secret commando unit called Task Force 373 that is nothing other than a death squad. Task Force 373, made up of Army and Navy Special Operatives, is seeking to assassinate individuals from an assembled list of 2,000 targets.

And despite rosy-sounding publicity missives coming from the Pentagon, the information released on Wikileaks shows an obvious pattern of intensifying bomb attacks against U.S. and NATO forces.

The decision by the Obama administration to send 60,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in 2009 is exposed as nothing other than a decision to send more human beings to their death in an ongoing war that cannot be won, so as to avoid taking the political responsibility for a military setback. That is the rule that all U.S. policymakers abide by. No matter what, they must avoid the appearance of military defeat at the hands of an armed resistance.

The White House condemned the release of the classified documents in the most disingenuous and hypocritical way. It denounced those who provided the files for putting “the lives of U.S. and partner service members at risk.” That is turning reality upside down. It is the Obama administration that is putting the lives of U.S. service members and Afghan civilians “at risk” every day by continuing a war just so that it can avoid the political backlash for suffering a defeat on its watch.

The released documents paint a grim picture that is repeated over and over again involving a large number of previously unknown incidents where U.S. and NATO troops shot and murdered unarmed drivers and motorcyclists.

The documents reveal another incident where French troops used machine guns to strafe a bus full of children in 2008. A military patrol machine gunned another bus, wounding or killing 15 of its civilian passengers. In 2007, Polish troops rained mortar fire down on an Afghan village, killing a wedding party, including pregnant women, in a revenge attack for an earlier insurgent assault.

In April of this year, Wikileaks published the now-famous classified video of a U.S. Apache helicopter murdering 12 Iraqi civilians and seriously wounding children. The Pentagon arrested Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old intelligence analyst in Iraq and has been holding him incommunicado in recent months. Wikileaks has not disclosed whether Manning was the source of the leak of the classified video or the recently released documents, but has announced that it will help provide legal assistance for Bradley Manning.

For months now, the web of lies spun by the White House and Pentagon about the Afghan war has started to come undone. Public support for the Afghan war, along with support from inside the military ranks, continues to decline. But it will take a resurgent anti-war movement to convert this latent frustration into a powerful political force that can finally bring the criminal occupation to an end.

In Africa, the Hypocrisy of the Obama Administration is Inexcusable

The United States fears Africa is becoming a place of increasing competition from China mostly, but also Brazil, Russia, and the European Union. African countries like Angola or Zimbabwe who were once forced to depend on the patronage of the IMF and World Bank are less dependent on America's hegemonic financial institutions than anytime in the last 20 years. The growing complexity of actors has opened the possibility of greater independence in national economic and social policy-making in African countries from the dictates of Washington D.C. With the threat of increased competition and the level of oil imports from Africa going up as much 20 percent, the U.S. is engaging in its most extensive imperial quests in Africa since the end of the Cold War.Ironically, this assault is advancing under the leadership of one of Africa's own "sons", U.S. President Barack Obama.

Hiding behind the rhetoric of limited government and individual liberties, the United States is protecting some of the most repressive regimes in the world. The Obama administration is intensifying President Bush's plan to militarily support anti-democratic regimes throughout the continent. These regimes are responsible for grave human rights violations and widespread persecution of political and national minorities according to prominent Western human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The ridiculous level of hypocrisy in U.S. foreign policy proves that the Obama administration is concerned neither with human rights or participatory democracy but stability against any actor that could potentially threaten their perceived political and economic interests. Eritrea, a small East African nation that shares a contentious border with Ethiopia, has refused to support a U.S. war in the Horn of Africa and reportedly rejected a demand from the U.S. military to host a U.S. base in the Red Sea port of Assab off its coast. Eritrea's intransigence earned it a spot on the U.S. terrorist list. The Obama administration froze existing ties with Eritrea and claimed that the "government acted as a principal source and conduit for arms to antigovernment, extremist, and insurgent groups in Somalia." The Eritrean government vehemently denies supporting such groups. Meanwhile, the same Obama administration has increased military funding by more than 300 per cent for African countries that support its foreign policy aims including Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Djibouti, Ethiopia, Equitorial Guinea, Algeria and Nigeria. Each of these governments are infamously known for exceptional corruption and state repression against political opponents.

The hypocrisy of the Obama administration does not end with military intervention. The administration has also teamed up with billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates to extend U.S. influence and guarantee multinational corporate access to African agricultural markets. Their strategy is to maintain leverage in African affairs by creating new systems of aid dependency for U.S. technical and financial support in the area of food production. In this way the administration approaches aid as an issue of national security. The interests of the U.S. military, multinational corporations and aid NGO's intersect as the three groups meet to share talking points and communication strategies. Their latest gimmick is $408 million for a World Bank fund to encourage "good" farming practices in the developing world. However, as Mukoma Wa Ngugi of Pambazuka news points out, the reason why so many African's go hungry in a global economy of abundance is not for a lack of "free" markets or U.S. aid but the existing neo-colonial models of political economy in African countries that maintain unequal social relations.

"Hunger in Africa is mostly a political and economic disparity problem. To end hunger, political stability, proper distribution of food and land within nations, and less emphasis on cash-crop farming and more on food- crop farming will be more effective, friendlier to the environment and less costly than the super-seeds that will require tons of pesticides - and eventually, cost a lot of money."

With Barack Obama as the chief spokesman, the U.S. government is in the midst of a major public relations campaign to re-brand themselves as a partner of African countries rather than an imperial power. This shift is mostly in response to the failures of the World Bank and IMF's unpopular structural adjustment programs that imposed ruthless neo-liberal conditions on the re-payment of loans and led to a backlash in the form of renewed calls for national sovereignty. However, this new American re-branding effort should not be confused with a genuine attempt to re-start U.S.-Africa relations on equal terms. The conditions of U.S. bilateral partnership in the form of technical and financial assistance are not limited to specific development projects but amount to a sophisticated form of blackmail with the U.S. interfering in the way government's run their internal politics and manage their economies.

The most notorious example of this form of blackmail is no where more obvious than through a bilateral development fund known as the Millennium Challenge Account. The completely biased conditions for financial support from the account include "economic freedom" and "civil liberties" as defined by far right-wing think tanks like the U.S. Heritage Foundation. Smaller, cash-strapped African countries like Senegal, are particularly vulnerable to this scheme being forced to 'behave' in a manner that is acceptable to conservatives in the U.S. in exchange for aid.

In the final analysis, U.S. strategists fear that the further waning of their exclusive post-Cold War influence will impinge on long-term economic and political "interests" in Africa, which include unlimited access to natural resources and markets for U.S. goods. Therefore, the Obama administration is determined to put more financial resources into promoting a balance of power more favorable to its interests with proxy military initiatives and Trojan Horse development aid designed to promote dependency on the U.S. At the same time, the administration is deceptively using the rhetoric of partnership and mutuality to provide cover for African elites allied with the interests of the U.S. military, foreign investors and multinational corporations. There is no amount of Kenyan heritage that should absolve Barack Obama and his administration of responsibility for intensifying the scourge of U.S. imperialism in Africa. For a man who is quick to preach personal responsibility in front of large audiences of black Americans and continental Africans, Obama should hold himself accountable for the actions of his administration under his watch.

Dr. King VS Barack Obama: On U.S. Occupation

Which African-American leader gave a better speech about a U.S. occupation in Asia? U.S. President Barack Obama on the Afghanistan War or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Vietnam War? You be the judge. Happy M.L.K. Day.

Dr. King "Why I Oppose the Vietnam War"

President Obama Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize

US Health Care in Comparison

Commentators much more capable than myself are weighing in on the important health care debate taking place in Washington D.C. However, given the historic magnitude of the Obama Administration's push for health care reform I have decided to diverge from my usual focus to humbly remind my readers exactly why the American system needs fixing. Let's put it in perspective.

According to the OECD Health Data 2009 the United States' performance is comparatively lacking on all fronts. The OECD is comprised of the world's wealthiest nations with the highest living standards. Unfortunately, for citizens of the United States, our system spends much more and covers less people.

Spending More

"Total health spending accounted for 16.0% of GDP in the United States in 2007, by far the highest share in the OECD. Following the United States were France, Switzerland and Germany, which allocated respectively 11.0%, 10.8% and 10.4% of their GDP to health. The OECD average was 8.9% in 2007."

Covering Less

"For this amount of expenditure in the United States, government provides insurance coverage only for the elderly and disabled (through Medicare, which primarily insures persons aged 65 and over and people with disabilities) and some of the poor (through Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, SCHIP), whereas in most other OECD countries this is enough for government to provide universal primary health insurance."

The United States has fewer doctors per-capita than any other OECD country. We also lag behind world leaders in increasing life expectancy and declining infant mortality rates. This is all despite being the world's wealthiest country. The reason? Unlike most other industrialized OECD nations, the US does not have a universal health care system. Even the current reforms being advocated by President Obama fall short of providing universal quality care for every American. Furthermore, the administration left the single-payer option off the table which would have been the most efficient cost cutting mechanism. As a country that prides its self on being the "best" in the world, health care should offer every American a powerful dose humility.

Why is Obama Recycling Africa's "Good Governance" Myth?

I was originally excited to watch President Obama's first speech in sub-Saharan Africa but after a few sentences of the written transcript I realized any hope of equal partnerships between the administration and African governments on development issues is highly unlikely. In addition to many others, one particular passage caught my eye and I think it summarizes the general attitude and tone of his message. Speaking in regards to his brand of "transformational change" in Africa he commented,

"This progress may lack the drama of 20th century liberation struggles, but make no mistake: It will ultimately be more significant. For just as it is important to emerge from the control of other nations, it is even more important to build one's own nation...This is a new moment of great promise. Only this time, we've learned that it will not be giants like Nkrumah and Kenyatta who will determine Africa's future. Instead, it will be you — the men and women in Ghana's parliament — the people you represent."

Obama's speech to the Ghanaian parliament was clearly designed to counter the growing influence of Chinese investment in Africa via defining America's leadership role in the continent as a mentor for its allied countries around the concept of "good governance". There are several issues surrounding the use of the ambiguous term "good governance", as often thrown around by western governments and NGO's (Tanzanian scholar Issa G. Shivji gives one of the most damaging critiques of the paternalism lying underneath the phrase here) but the elusive definition of the phrase is not the focus of this post.

President Obama's insistence on "good governance" and persistent criticisms of "strongmen" in Africa was sadly misplaced. The reality is sustainable economic growth in the continent is actually stymied by weak leadership, not the inverse. Historical weaknesses of African leadership (and institutions) is one of the lasting legacies of European colonialism in the continent. As discussed in a paper sponsored by the World Bank Commission on Growth and Development, it is the lack of effective, consistent, and visionary leadership in Africa that prevents it from moving beyond its current state in the political economy. Author Benjamin Mkapa laments the political and economic reality that African leaders have often lacked preparation, and financial resources to bring their visions to life, leaving governments weak and incapable of responding to crises.

"I believe that Africa’s trajectory of development would have been very different
and much more positive had the departing colonial powers behaved differently,
including treating Africans with greater respect; helping them to train and build
capacity of independence leaders and administrators; helping to build strong
institutions to deal with the challenges that the new countries faced rather than
trying to perpetuate institutions intended to promote, sustain, and defend
Western economic and political interests; and giving the new governments space
and the wherewithal to realize the vision and dreams they had for their newly
independent countries."

Mkapa also lists 10 issues he believes are essential for leadership in Africa "if the continent is to make greater headway in growth, development, and poverty reduction". There are even some lessons that can be learned from some of Africa's emergent post-colonial leaders like Julius Nyere of Tanzania.

President Obama was quite dismissive of the fact that the colonial legacy in Africa is in fact enduring, as newly independent countries like Ghana inherited the political and economic institutions of their former colonizers. For all of their faults, former leaders like Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyere can not be blamed for Africa's lack of growth and poverty reduction today--nor for that matter even corrupt autocrats in 2009.

As in any other continent, democracy is an important goal for every African government to ascribe. However, the rhetoric about democratic governance in Africa overlooks the fact that many of the most authoritarian regimes around the world today post the highest growth- rates and have been more effective in eradicating poverty than so called democratic ones i.e. China. Maybe objective observers should be less concerned about whether they are "good" in some abstract normative sense, so much as they are effective. If the Obama administration's foreign policy resembles anything close to the lecture he gave the government of Ghana you can expect to see more of this.

Obama's Quiet War on Poverty?

Poor people basically never came up in the 2008 presidential campaign, not even from the hope-filled lips of Barack Obama. But an interesting commentary by Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director Center for Community Change, claims President Obama has been silently fighting for America's poor and intiated some of the most progressive anti-poverty policies in 40 years since his election.



I haven't seen enough data to check the validity of his claims, Bhargava may be a tad bit over optimistic, but his perspective is interesting none the less.