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"On 14 October, President Barack Obama announced he was sending United States special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops will be sent to South Sudan, Congo, and Central African Republic. They will only "engage" for "self-defense," says Obama, satirically. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent is under way. Obama's decision is described in the press as "highly unusual" and "surprising," even "weird." It is none of these things. It is the logic of American foreign policy since 1945. Take Vietnam. The priority was to halt the influence of China, an imperial rival, and "protect" Indonesia, which President Nixon called "the region's richest hoard of natural resources …the greatest prize." Vietnam merely got in the way; and the slaughter of more than three million Vietnamese and the devastation and poisoning of their land was the price of America achieving its goal. Like all America's subsequent invasions, a trail of blood from Latin America to Afghanistan and Iraq, the rationale was usually "self defense" or "humanitarian," words long emptied of their dictionary meaning. In Africa, says Obama, the "humanitarian mission" is to assist the government of Uganda defeat the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which "has murdered, raped, and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa." This is an accurate description of the LRA, evoking multiple atrocities administered by the United States, such as the bloodbath in the 1960s following the CIA-arranged murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first legally elected prime minister, and the CIA coup that installed Mobutu Sese Seko, regarded as Africa's most venal tyrant. Obama's other justification also invites satire. This is the "national security of the United States." The LRA has been doing its nasty work for 24 years, of minimal interest to the United States. Today, it has fewer than 400 fighters and has never been weaker. However, US "national security" usually means buying a corrupt and thuggish regime that has something Washington wants. Uganda's "president-for-life" Yoweri Museveni already receives the larger part of $45 million in US military "aid" – including Obama's favorite drones. This is his bribe to fight a proxy war against America's latest phantom Islamic enemy, the rag-tag al-Shabaab group based in Somalia. The RTA will play a public relations role, distracting western journalists with its perennial horror stories. However, the main reason the US is invading Africa is no different from that which ignited the Vietnam war. It is China. In the world of self-serving, institutionalized paranoia that justifies what General David Petraeus, the former US commander and now CIA director, implies is a state of perpetual war, China is replacing al-Qaeda as the official American "threat." When I interviewed Bryan Whitman, an assistant secretary of defense at the Pentagon last year, I asked him to describe the current danger to America. Struggling visibly, he repeated, "Asymmetric threats … asymmetric threats." These justify the money-laundering state-sponsored arms conglomerates and the biggest military and war budget in history. With Osama bin Laden airbrushed, China takes the mantle. Africa is China's success story. Where the Americans bring drones and destabilization, the Chinese bring roads, bridges, and dams. What they want is resources, especially fossil fuels. With Africa's greatest oil reserves, Libya under Muammar Gadhafi was one of China's most important sources of fuel. When the civil war broke out and NATO backed the "rebels" with a fabricated story about Gadhafi planning "genocide" in Benghazi, China evacuated its 30,000 workers in Libya. The subsequent UN security council resolution that allowed the west's "humanitarian intervention" was explained succinctly in a proposal to the French government by the "rebel" National Transitional Council, disclosed last month in the newspaper Liberation, in which France was offered 35 per cent of Libya's gross national oil production "in exchange" (the term used) for "total and permanent" French support for the NTC. Running up the Stars and Stripes in "liberated" Tripoli last month, US ambassador Gene Cretz blurted out: "We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources!" The de facto conquest of Libya by the US and its imperial partners heralds a modern version of the "scramble for Africa" at the end of the 19th century. Like the "victory" in Iraq, journalists have played a critical role in dividing Libyans into worthy and unworthy victims. A recent Guardian front page carried a photograph of a terrified "Gadhafi" fighter and his wild-eyed captors who, says the caption, "celebrate." According to General Petraeus, there is now a war "of perception … conducted continuously through the news media." For more than a decade the US has tried to establish a command on the continent of Africa, AFRICOM, but has been rebuffed by governments, fearful of the regional tensions this would cause. Libya, and now Uganda, South Sudan and Congo, provide the main chance. As WikiLeaks cables and the US National Strategy for Counter-terrorism reveal, American plans for Africa are part of a global design in which 60,000 special forces, including death squads, already operate in 75 countries, soon to be 120. As Dick Cheney pointed out in his 1990s "defense strategy" plan, America simply wishes to rule the world. That this is now the gift of Barack Obama, the "Son of Africa," is supremely ironic. Or is it? As Frantz Fanon explained in Black Skin, White Masks, what matters is not so much the color of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray." http://tinyurl.com/csphy9j "According to Oil and Gas Journal, Libya had total proven oil reserves of 41.5 billion barrels in 2007, officially becoming the largest in Africa. In 2009, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi held a meeting with students from Georgetown University via satellite. During the exchange, Gaddafi said that oil prices were "unbearable" and that Libyan oil "maybe should be owned by national companies or the public sector at this point, in order to control the oil prices, the oil production or maybe to stop it". Oil companies such as ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil, Occidental Petroleum, Amerada Hess and Royal Dutch Shell all had major investments in Libya since Gaddafi renounced Libya's WMD program in 2003 and US sanctions were lifted, and the idea of Gaddafi nationalizing oil companies wasn't going to sit too well with these corporations. Also in 2009, Libya's state-owned oil company threatened to nationalize Petro-Canada's operations in Libya if Canada did not apologize for Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon's criticisms of Gaddafi giving a heroes welcome to the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. Britain and the United States were prepared to intervene on Petro-Canada's behalf "to emphasize that it is not good for Libya to threaten existing and potential investors and violate the sanctity of contracts with such abandon"." "According to a Russian article titled 'Bombing of Libya – Punishment for Gaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar', Gaddafi initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Gaddafi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency. During the past year, the idea was approved by many Arab countries and most African countries. The only opponents were the Republic of South Africa and the head of the League of Arab States. The initiative was viewed negatively by the US and the European Union, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya a threat to the financial security of mankind; but Gaddafi was not swayed and continued his push for the creation of a united Africa." http://tinyurl.com/d6grcv8 "March 22. 2011: US helicopter shoots and wounds villagers who come to assist rescue operation with downed aircraft; no deaths reported. April 25, 2011: NATO bombs "flatten" Gaddafi's office, wounding 45 people and seriously injuring another 15. May 1, 2011: Muammar Gaddafi's youngest son and three grandchildren (two toddlers, one infant) are killed by NATO strikes. May 13, 2011: The Libyan government reports that 11 Muslim clerics are killed during a NATO airstrike while sleeping, and 50 civilians are also wounded. NATO does not confirm, nor deny, the report, but issues a statement that it "regrets" civilian casualties wherever they may occur. May 31, 2011: The Libyan government claims that over 700 civilians have been killed since the Libya War began in March, and that 4,000 have been wounded. June 20, 2011: An "errant missile" strikes a civilian home and kills at least five people, including a baby and child." http://tinyurl.com/d25kar2 "Since at least 1997 the abhorrent Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has murdered at least 2,400, kidnapped at least 3,400, and displaced at least 300,000. LRA is an ideological group, led by batshit crazy polygamist preacher and self-proclaimed “Spokesman of God” Joseph Kony, which seeks a theocratic state in Uganda based on the Ten Commandments and local traditions." "No doubt Uganda needs help; they are one of the world's poorest nations (17th) and have failed thus far to combat the LRA effectively enough to stop them. It's a good thing that we're fighting this monster, but for a humanitarian crisis that has been ongoing for almost two decades, that has been the scourge of a nation and a domestic terror threat rivaling the worst guerillas in Africa, it took us this long? Earlier this year, at least 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil were discovered along Uganda's border. The Economist reports that the country expects to earn $2 billion a year beginning in 2015. A week ago today, three
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In this image made from television Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, right, who was found guilty of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, is greeted by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, in Tripoli, Libya on Friday, Aug. 21, 2009. The release of al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of blowing up a Pan Am flight in 1988 has brought high drama and controversy: the jeering mob outside a Scottish prison, the cheering crowd at a Tripoli airport, the furious families of the 270 people who died in the Lockerbie bombing. (AP Photo/Jamahiriya Broadcasting via APTN) ** LIBYA OUT, TV OUT **
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