The Truth About Land Reform in Zimbabwe

From the BBC,

Zimbabwe's often violent land reform programme has not been the complete economic disaster widely portrayed, a new study has found.

Most of the country's 4,000 white farmers - then the backbone of the country's agricultural economy - were forced from their land, which was handed over to about a million black Zimbabweans.

The study's lead author, Ian Scoones from the UK's Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University, told BBC News he was "genuinely surprised" to see how much activity was happening on the farms visited during the 10-year study. "People were getting on with things in difficult circumstances and doing remarkably well," he said.

When Zimbabwe announced its radical agrarian reforms aimed at redistributing white owned farms to black workers, the Western media initiated a demonization campaign against the government of Robert Mugabe. The reforms were defined as bad economic policy, reverse racist and black farm workers were blamed for lower productive outputs. The study discussed above puts to shame the core arguments of Western critics and validate the necessity for radical land redistribution in other Southern African countries. Not surprisingly, there has been a lack of significant coverage of the facts on the ground. The reason is because the relative success of land redistribution in Zimbabwe invalidates the free-market orthodoxy to which Western sources say there is no alternative.

And that is exactly the reason why we should spread this story as far as possible.

Obama's Visit to India

President Obama is in India today courting one of the world’s growing economic powers on issues of trade, counter-terrorism and nuclear proliferation. The image of President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, signing agreements and addressing the “defining challenges of our time” are supposed to be a signal of international cooperation and democratic values but I can’t help but wonder how the most widespread issue facing the vast majority of people in both countries is off the agenda?

According, to the Hindustan Times of India,

“India has been ranked among top 10 global countries on income gain but widening disparity between rich and poor and gender inequality have been identified as major challenges in a United Nations report released on Thursday. The Human Development Report 2010 said India gained 15 positions on global Human Development Index (HDI) because of a high income growth since 1970. However, on overall HDI, Nepal, being the second fastest HDI gainer globally, did much better.”

India is not alone. As corporate profits soar and the burden of economic recovery is placed onto the backs of workers and the unemployed, the gap between the rich and poor is growing in nearly every country around the world including the United States. If wages internationally are declining and unemployment rising as corporations heighten exploitation and roll back social protections, then the only logical expectation is greater social instability, conflict and death at the hand of treatable diseases. In other words a decline in human well-being even if economies grow slightly.

The United States and India should be trying to bridge the rich-poor divide in their own countries and cooperating to ensure greater accountability among multinational corporations who skirt labor and environmental standards. Manufacturers, petroleum companies, and investors operating in North America and South Asia should be forced to follow unified codes of conduct that puts the breaks on ruthless competition. There should also be a coordinated attempt to promote fairer trade agreements between the two countries that create quality jobs in both nations and raise incomes.

There are a number of very important issues on the table during the President’s visit in India. But unfortunately, the most critical problem has been overlooked.

Google and the CIA Plan Joint Spy Technology

Google has long depicted its self as one of the good corporations, even promoting the motto "don't be evil". But investing along with the CIA on new advanced internet spy technology that "scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come" is not exactly the best way to keep the progressive facade up. Thanks to Democracy Now for breaking this story.

Shocking Video From the War in Afghanistan

The Guardian in U.K. has published an excerpt of a film highlighting "the horrific chaos of a stalemate that is taking its toll in blood" in Afghanistan. I just wish this video was required viewing for millions of Americans who never have to see or hear the brutality of the longest war in U.S. history in Afghanistan.

The Netherlands started withdrawing over a thousand of its troops from the war in Afghanistan. After a year of duty with NATO forces, the country has left behind an increasingly grim war effort to which the United States supplies 2/3 of all soldiers. The war in Afghanistan has indeed become a bloody stalemate with the U.S. apparently giving up on winning hearts and minds and now focused on fomenting a civil war to provide cover for them to leave. According to Brian Becker, national coordinator of the ANSWER anti-war coalition, the strategy of the Obama administration in Afghanistan is the same one pursued by President Richard Nixon at a similar phase in the Vietnam war.

"The Obama administration and its generals are borrowing a page from Nixon and Kissinger’s murderous “Vietnamization” plan, which became the announced policy in 1969. Since there was a rising tide of anti-war sentiment at home, Nixon and the Pentagon wanted the Vietnamese to kill each other in greater numbers as a way of diminishing U.S. war dead."

Validating Becker's comparison, Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the famous Pentagon papers during the Vietnam war, has come out swinging against the current war effort in Afghanistan. He has even drawn parallels about how propaganda has been used in both cases to manipulate the American public.

"I would say in a very crucial way they are deceiving us. President Obama in his state-of-the-union speech said that he would begin withdrawing troops in July 2011. Although other officials, like Robert Gates, almost immediately backed away from that, they all collaborated in implying, with Obama, that July 2011 would represent the high point of our troop presence there.

I feel quite confident that unless the public and Congress demand that that timetable is adhered to, there will be more troops in 2012 than there are in 2011, and more troops in 2013 than there are in 2012. In other words, I believe we are currently in the process of an open-ended increase, which is limited by the fact that we don't have a draft."

There is no way that this war could sustain its self politically if the images and brutality of the effort was made known to the American people. That is why it is so tragic that more U.S. media outlets have not published videos like the film above. Perhaps, blogs including my own can help fill the void.

Who is to Blame for the Famine in Niger?

There is currently a famine in the African country of Niger that threatens to kill millions of people, but as attention now spotlights the mounting disaster the question still remains, who is to blame for the lack of leadership surrounding food security in Niger and the Sahel region in general?

For starters we can point the finger directly at a hand full of African political leaders that have spent millions of dollars in public resources (financial and technical) on military affairs as part of a NATO-led "war on terror" in the Sahel at the expense of people's needs. In recent years, the militarization of Africa has diverted attention away from the most important on going war in the continent, the war against poverty. For all of the propaganda about the threat of Al-Qaeda to civilian lives in Africa, there has never been and can never be another force more lethal than hunger. The failure of Africa's political leadership to provide for the most basic necessities of people in a continent rich in oil and mineral resources is absolutely criminal. In the 21st century, with all of the numerous technological and scientific advancements available to humanity, it is ridiculous that millions of people can die from a lack of something as fundamental as food.

What is even worse, is that the African Union can mobilize thousands of troops to fight a civil war in Somalia, indiscriminately killing civilians, but Niger is forced to look toward the West to send food aid to those on the verge of starvation. If ever there were a time for real progressive leadership in Africa, now is it.

The U.S. Military Fights to Silence Opposition to the Afghanistan War

Protesters in Afghanistan burned SUV's and chanted "Death to America" after security armored vehicles of the US embassy crashed killing civilians. The public outcry against the United States after this accident shows that their presence there is not welcomed by most of the Afghan people even in the capital city of Kabul where they have the strongest base of support. Rather than confront the reality of an unpopular colonial-type occupation head-on, the U.S. military continues to cover-up their failures in Afghanistan in order to justify their continued occupation.

Secretary Robert Gates of the U.S. Defense Department for example condemned the release of thousands of documents that reveal the indiscriminate killing of Afghan civilians and the failure of the U.S-lead war effort to defeat the Taliban. Hypocritically, Secretary Gates is criticizing the leak of information about the crimes of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan rather than demanding an investigation of those who committed the crimes. He has also signaled that the documented evidence of U.S. crimes committed against civilians in Afghanistan will not in anyway change U.S. policy there."They do not, in my view, fundamentally call into question the efficacy of our current strategy in Afghanistan and its prospects for success.”

It is well known that Secretary Gates believes that public opposition in Europe and the United States to the occupation of Afghanistan is as dangerous to his mission there as the Taliban. He publicly stated his fear that the anti-war sentiment of Europeans could pressure European governments to back-down from the U.S.-lead wars in the Middle-East. This of course would be a positive development and signal of democracy if leaders responded to the public opposition of their citizens to endless war and occupation. But for the U.S. superpower democracy is not the goal. The Afghan war is an unpopular war at home as it is inside Afghanistan its self, but under the logic of empire voices of opposition are considered obsolete.

AFRICOM & US Militarization in Africa: Radio Interview

Yesterday, I was part of an hour long discussion on WPFW radio in Washington D.C. with Emira Woods Co-Director, Foreign Policy In Focus, Institute for Policy Studies and coordinator of Trans-Africa Forum, Mwiza Munthal. We talked at length about current events in Africa related to the U.S. military Command in Africa (AFRICOM). For my part, I tried to emphasize the fact that there is an on going class struggle in Africa that we should be conscious of and support as we discuss militarization.

Click here to listen to the full interview.

Republican Candidate for Governor Calls Islam a "Cult" Not a Religion

From Politico

Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, one of three Republican candidates running for governor, has drawn rebukes after suggesting that Islam may be a “cult” instead of a religion...Ramsey continued, “Now you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, a way of life, or cult – whatever you want to call it. We do protect our religions, but at the same time, this is something that we are going to have to face.”

Part of the reason Americans find it so easy to support endless war and occupation in Africa and the Middle-East, is because mainstream political leaders and preachers are teaching that Islam its self is the enemy. Their ignorance overlooks the fact that the origins of "terrorism" lie at the heart of U.S. foreign policy as discussed in my previous post.

"Good Muslim, Bad Muslim": Second Thoughts on 'Terrorism' in Africa

With all the enthusiasm among the African Union over expanding the U.S. "war on terrorism" deep into Africa today, perhaps it is wise to consider the voice of one of the continent's finest public intellectuals Mahmood Mamdani of Uganda. In his 2005 work Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Mamdani explains that the attempt to identify the causes for extremism as rooted in a conservative cultural interpretation of Islam is based in a series of flawed assumptions about the history and politics of the modern world---a world shaped by Cold War power relations.

Your can read parts of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror via google books by clicking here.

Mark Weisbrot on the Destabilization Campaign Against Venezuela

The escalation of tensions between Venezuela and U.S. ally Colombia in Latin America have featured prominently in the American press with the slogan being that the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, was exposed for his support of "terrorists" in the border region with Colombia. Even the National Public Radio (NPR) has reported this line uncritically. The aim of this carefully timed and coordinated message in the press is to destabilize Venezuela's government ahead of major parliamentary elections in September there. As usual, the media took the bait. Needless to say, the barrage of propaganda in our media was predicted.

Mark Weisbrot from the economic think-tank CEPR wrote a very important article in the British Guardian newspaper outlining exactly how the U.S. is planning to use the issue of "terrorism" as part of a campaign to help the opposition in Venezuela win gains in the up coming election. I am re-posting the article on this page, but you can read the entire original article by clicking here.

In March I wrote about the Obama administration's contribution to the election campaign under way in Venezuela, where voters will choose a new national assembly in September. I predicted that certain things would happen before September, among them some new "discoveries" that Venezuela supports terrorism. Venezuela has had 13 elections or referenda since Hugo Chávez was first elected in 1998, and in the run-up to most of them, Washington has usually done something to influence the political and media climate.

The intentions were already clear on March 11, when General Douglas Fraser, the head of the US Southern Command was testifying to the US Senate. In response to a question from Senator John McCain about Venezuela's alleged support for terrorism, Fraser said:

"We have continued to watch very closely … We have not seen any connections specifically that I can verify that there has been a direct government-to-terrorist connection."

The next day he recanted his testimony after meeting with the US state department's top official for Latin America, Arturo Valenzuela.

This made it clear that the "terrorist" message was going to be a very important part of Washington's campaign. Even the Bush administration had never forced its military officers to retract their statements when they contradicted the state department's political agenda in Latin America, which they sometimes did.

Unfortunately, the campaign continues. Last Thursday, Colombia's ambassador to the Organisation of the American States (OAS) accused Venezuela at an extraordinary meeting of the OAS of harbouring 1,500 guerillas, and asked for the OAS to take action. The timing was noteworthy to many observers. President Lula da Silva of Brazil noted that it "seemed strange that this occurs a few days before [President] Uribe [of Colombia] leaves office. The new president has given signals that he wants to build peace [with Venezuela]. Everything was going well until Uribe made this denunciation."

Venezuela responded by breaking diplomatic relations with Colombia. It had previously cut off much of its trade with Colombia over the past two years, in response to Colombia's agreement with Washington to expand its military presence at seven US military bases in Colombia. Since Venezuela had been Colombia's largest trading partner in the region, it is possible that the new president, Juan Manuel Santos, was looking to improve relations for business reasons if nothing else. He had invited Chávez to his inauguration.

Of course, Uribe does not necessarily take orders from Washington, but it would be naive to assume that someone who has received more than $6bn from the US would not check with his benefactors before doing something like this. The fact that the US state department immediately took Colombia's side in the dispute is further indication that they approved. Even Washington's (rightwing) allies in the region did not take sides, with the government of Chile, for example, issuing a neutral statement; this would have been the normal diplomatic protocol for Washington too, if this were not part of a political and public relations campaign against Venezuela.

Other governments clearly saw Colombia's action as a political move, and were upset with what looked like the OAS being manipulated for these purposes. President Lula was cited in the Brazilian press saying that the venue of the dispute should be moved to Unasur, because the US would tilt the negotiations toward Colombia and against Venezuela. Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, strongly criticised the head of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, for not having consultation before granting Colombia's request for a meeting of the OAS permanent council. Patiño said that Insulza had shown his "absolute incapacity" to direct the organisation and to "look for peace in the region". Bolivia's president, Evo Morales, had even harsher rhetoric for Uribe, calling him "a loyal representative of the US government, with its military bases in Colombia designed to provoke a war between Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua."

This dispute highlights the importance of the institutional changes that the left-of-centre governments in Latin America are trying to make. The increasing importance of Unasur, displacing the OAS, has become vital to Latin American progress and stability. For example, because of the influence of the US (as usual, with a handful of rightwing allies) in the OAS, it failed to take stronger action to restore the democratically elected government of President Zelaya of Honduras last year.

When Bolivia was having problems with attempts by the separatist, extra-parliamentary opposition – including violence and de-stabilisation efforts – it was Unasur that met in Santiago in September 2008 and threw its weight behind the democratic government of Evo Morales. When the US decided last fall to expand its presence at the military bases in Colombia, Unasur reached an agreement – which included Colombia – that prohibited these bases from being used for any actions outside of the country.

As to the substance of Colombia's latest claims, guerillas and paramilitaries have been crossing the 2,000km border with Venezuela – much of it dense jungle, mountains and all kinds of difficult terrain – for decades. There is no evidence that anything has changed recently, and nothing to indicate that the Venezuelan government, which has extradited guerillas to Colombia, supports any armed groups – as General Fraser testified before he was apparently forced to take it back.

On Tuesday Insulza – perhaps feeling like he had gone too far to please Washington – told CNN en Español that "the guerrillas come and go, and it is quite difficult to ask just one country to control the border … Uribe says he doesn't know why Venezuela doesn't detain the guerillas, but the truth is that Colombia can't control them either." He might have added that the US, with all its vastly greater resources and superior technology, doesn't have an easy time controlling the flow of drugs, guns, and people across its own much more manageable border with Mexico.

On Thursday there will be an emergency meeting of Unasur, and hopefully a process of diplomacy will begin to resolve the dispute. Certainly there will be a better chance of success to the extent that Washington – and its political campaigns against governments that it doesn't like – can be kept at a distance.

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.

Why Were Black Farmers Robbed to Fund Imperial War?

The U.S. Congress passed an additional 60 billion dollars for the war effort in Afghanistan with a vote that cut across party lines. The funding was approved only after deleting $23 billion in unrelated spending for social programs including money allotted for black farmers who desperately need it. Black farmers, are owed $1.2 billion for a long history of discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The decision by the U.S. Congress to give billions more public money to the war in Afghanistan, even after yesterday's shocking leaked war documents, has exposed the consensus among Democrats and Republicans that the U.S. war machine should march on unchecked, no matter what the consequences. The bill will bring total war expenses to $1.1 trillion. A majority of the eligible black farmers due money from the federal government are over 65 and in poor health. Today's vote in the U.S. Congress further underscores the imperial nature of our government and the lack of a real check on executive power or the U.S. military by elected officials. But it also underscores the racist neglect of public officials to redress historical discrimination against African-Americans. All in the name of empire.

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.

Podcast: My Conversation With the National Youth Federation for Development in Haiti

Fighting for Haiti by aus10

Recently, I had a conversation with Ernst Louis and Gilles Sassine of the Haitian grassroots organization, National Youth Federation for Development. Ernst, Gilles and their colleagues were among the first responders after the disaster beginning 2 hours after the earthquake in January that took the lives of over 200,000 people. Founded in 2004, the organization is currently managing 50 camps in Haiti serving over 147,000 people. They need our help to raise financial and material resources for their camps as the threat of a new hurricane season this summer could totally devastate Haiti if proper precautions are not taken immediately. Please, listen to this podcast and get involved. You can find the facebook page of the National Youth Federation by clicking here.

Former Angolan Liberation Party, Struggles to Meet Social Expectations

As a youth, I was tremendously inspired by the story of Angola's struggle against Western imperialism. Lead by the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), Angola won its independence but suffered from decades of a civil war fomented by the U.S. and apartheid South Africa. A large part of their mystique was a commitment, not just to independence, but to transforming Angolan society and investing in the social development of the nation's people. Angola was a Portuguese colony from the end of the 16th century until it achieved independence in 1975 through armed struggle. Colonial rule had neglected any focus on health care, education, or food sovereignty. How has the MPLA done after 35 years of political independence?

Today, Angola's civil war has ended and the MPLA remains the dominant party in the country. But it no longer remains the popular radical nationalist party it once was. Angola is rich in mineral resources and one of Africa's biggest exporters of oil however, the majority of the popular classes live in poverty and are excluded from the economic boom of the past few years. The export-oriented development model in Angola has generated enormous amounts of new wealth in the country but imports almost all of its food and basic medical supplies. The MPLA is currently working to meet the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, which include dramatically improving the lives of the poor in the areas of health, income, and education.

The video below is an inside account of life in Angola and the unresolved social development needs in the capital city of Luanda.

Angola from Nacho Salgado on Vimeo.

Are We Headed Toward Another Food Crisis?

Two years ago African countries erupted into massive protests following dramatic increases in the price of food. Now, economists are predicting that financial speculation is on the verge of causing yet another episode of food price inflation. Are governments prepared to respond to the potential social crisis? If they aren't are existing social and political forces prepared to hold them accountable?

Guinea Conakry and the Meaning of Democratic Reform

The colonially engineered nation-state of Guinea in West Africa has faced decades of authoritarian leadership and ethnic conflict ever since independence from French-rule in 1958. After a coup led by Moussa Dadis Camara in 2008, there was much enthusiasm about a break with that past. Then, on a day which will live in infamy, September 28, 2009, a protest against Camara's military junta turned violent when at least a hundred and fifty-six people were shot dead and women gang-raped in the streets. You can see and hear an audio slide-show in the New Yorker on the history. A video of the ensuing political crisis is below.

Today, Guinea is headed for a reportedly "free, transparent and credible" election on June 27, 2010, that will usher in a civilian controlled government. A list of presidential front-runners in the election are already announced. The Guinean military has sworn that it will not interfere in the election process. A Guinean diplomat happily told Reuters,"for now, the army has remained out of the political process."

But is it really possible? Has Guinea, after years of brutal dictatorship finally entered into the paradise of a Western approved multiparty democracy? A timely analysis in Foreign Policy magazine warns that transition from military to civilian rule will in no way challenge Guinea's kleptocracy (rule by thieves)---a system in which multinationals and elites work with the military behind the scenes to ensure the safe extraction of resources.

"No one doubts that the military, through its affiliated networks of businessmen and political allies, will continue to overshadow the running of any elected regime. Guinea is the world's largest bauxite exporter and home to vast iron ore deposits, and possibly even oil reserves -- all of which the military is keenly aware."

The challenge therefore is to understand just how much democracy Guineans can expect after the polls on the 27th? If a sign of democracy is how much Guinea's people directly share in the fruits of the nation's wealth, signs are so far not looking positive. After all, the free-flow of Guinea's mineral resources in past have not in anyway improved the social and economic lives of the country's majority poor population. According to U.S. sources, when economic growth rose slightly in 2006-08, due to increases in global demand and commodity prices on world markets the standard of living fell. Guinea remains among the poorest countries in the world despite its rich natural resources.

Another historical problem in Guinea is the habit among the state to utilize political violence against opposition movements and political parties (often along ethnic-lines). And while a transition to a nominally civilian government represents the opportunity for a serious change, the amount continuing military intrusion in economic and political affairs is a warning sign. The Foreign Policy article lists the continuing influence of the military as a warning sign for future violence along ethnic or religious lines.

"Most alarmingly, serious splits have emerged within military circles. Last year, Camara brought in Israeli mercenaries to train as many as 10,000 new recruits for the army. They came mostly from Camara's ethnic Geurzé tribe in the isolated Forestiere region....Over the last few weeks, ethno-religious clashes have killed several people in Forestiere amid fears that Camara may be stirring up trouble ahead of the polls."

I recently listened to a piercing analysis in a Brecht forum podcast on Western military and judicial influence in the African continent. One speaker noted toward the end of the discussion the fact that forms of natural resource extraction conspicuously match political structures in Africa. Guinea is a text-book case of this phenomena even during significant moments of regime change as we are about to witness later this month. What does democratic reform mean in a state like Guinea where the political structure is configured for the cheap extraction of the country's mineral resources rather than endogenous social development of its citizens?

Elections Without Democracy in Ethiopia?

Ethiopians have recently finished voting at the electoral polls in a parliamentary election that was widely held as a test of the country's multiparty democracy. Despite ethnic violence, conflicts with neighboring Somalia and Eritrea and accusations of political repression, the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front and Menes Zelawi, the current prime minister, are expected to win big in the election. Zelawi is one of the U.S.'s closest allies in the 'War on Terrorism'. In keeping with the norm of African elections, the ballot box will not likely deliver any sweeping political changes internally or in foreign relations.

Was the election a sign of internal political legitimacy for the EPRD and continuity?

Opposition parties are claiming foul play but the alternatives are either addressing grievances through the courts or violent confrontation with the ruling party. Have things become some bad here that a peaceful but flawed election is the most one can hope for? As usual Al Jazeera has had great coverage of the electoral proceedings and their implications.

The U.S. Military Drags West Africa into 'War on Terror'

After decades of CIA assassinations, U.S.-supported coups and subversive interference during the Cold War in Africa, one would think that West African political leaders would run at the thought of another geo-political chess match in their own territories. But slowly and gracefully, the U.S. 'War on Terrorism', has been able to submit the continent to yet another round of imperial strategem with very little organized internal political opposition.

The U.S. military is training soldiers in West Africa for a potential confrontation with "jihadists" under the new U.S. Africa Command. The stated objective of the recent mobilizations is to prepare for confrontation with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The group is unlikely an existential threat to West African governments, is small in number compared to other violent criminal organizations and has so far only managed to kidnap foreigners and extort money. Partly due to the aggressive and often draconian work of their security forces, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, have already prevented the organization from operating in their territories. There is also no public evidence to suggest the group serves as a direct threat to the U.S.

Despite their infamous name and the constant fear-mongering in the Western press, the organization likely uses the name al-Qaeda for recruiting and fundraising purposes only as opposed to having any lasting ties with cells in Afghanistan/Pakistan. Nevertheless, the U.S. is mobilizing the armies of Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger and Nigeria for a protracted conflict with the organization.

Political leaders in West Africa are probably doing more harm than good by accepting the U.S. label of the region as a wellspring of jihadist terrorism. As we have seen in Iraq and Somalia, U.S.-backed military operations are often the principal cause of violent political terrorism and recruiting activity rather than a force for peace and social justice. In regions with large conservative Muslim populations the influx of America forces and assistance is among the top recruiting tools for new converts to the cause of political Islam. Certainly, an objective assessment of the American track record in the aforementioned cases among others should have caused alarm among government's participating in AFRICOM'S recent mobilizations. However, political elites in this region draw their legitimacy among top the military brass and petty-bourgeois intellectuals from receiving external aid from the United States and European Union. With the incoming military and financial support elites are able to crack down on internal opposition movements and consolidate their own political authority regardless of the long-term consequences.

Armed robbery and kidnapping conducted to extract ransom is not unique to al-Qaeda in West Africa. There are any number of violent drug cartels, rebel groups and other criminals in the region who exploit the vacuum of political legitimacy, and grinding poverty in order to advance this or that cause. The ideals of regional autonomy and national sovereignty have suffered so much in West Africa that because the least organized of such groups happens to be a potential threat to U.S. interests, government's are responding as if preparing for a full-scale war.

It was not long ago that the United States utilized political Islam and al-Qaeda extremists in a struggle against the Soviet Union and secular nationalists movements in North Africa and the Middle-East. The same networks and ideologies that West African governments are being paid to chase throughout the Saharan desert, were empowered in the first place by the U.S. State Department, CIA and Pentagon. Unfortunately, for the majority of the poor and formally unemployed people in West Africa the region is once again employed in another of the U.S.'s adventures.

Whereas China and other countries have sought to increase their influence in Africa through mainly political and economic means, the United States and European Union have estimated that their strategic advantage lies in a combination of economic assistance and military strength as it did during the Cold War. The clear parallel between the current U.S. strategy of establishing client-states today to the Cold War in the 20th century were outlined by U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates who argued in a recent article in Foreign Affairs that American military and economic assistance rather than full-scale invasions is the most effective way to expand its strategic influence.

"Building up the military and security forces of key allies and local partners was also a major component of U.S. strategy in the Cold War, first in Western Europe, then in Greece, South Korea, and elsewhere."

The triumph of AFRICOM in West Africa is perhaps one of the most striking indicators that the independence movements of 50 years ago achieved little to nothing in the area of self-government or regional autonomy. The so called independent democratic regimes in this region have literally become client-states of the United States and European Union completely dependent on the economic and military support of their patrons. There remains hope that a growing social and political movement can challenge the attempt to drag the poor into another U.S.-conflict and put the region on an endogenous path of social development against poverty, hunger, and disease.

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.