Uncle Sam's adventures in Africa

The recent media kerfuffle over US troops in Niger didn't so much concern US troops in Niger as it did the Trump condolence call to one of the widows of the servicemen who died there. As such, the "story" wasn't about US troops in Africa, but about whether or not the POTUS is an a-hole, as if the answer to that question is somehow inconclusive and the matter requires further debate.

A host of your top-end US politicos have since come forward to claim that they had no idea there were US troops in Niger. According to some of the stuff I've been reading (admittedly on non MSM sites) the only country in Africa that does NOT have US boots on the ground is Zimbabwe. Not to worry; the National Endowment for Democracy (that US government "non-government organization" - and a shout-out to Orwell is in order here) have been busy beavers there, tilling the soil to prepare for the inevitable demise of the crotchety Bobby Mugabe. 

According to General Thomas Waldhauser, AFRICOM boss, the US has an "enduring interest" in Niger and is there to fight terrorists and create stability.

Of course!

Just like they'll soon be fighting terror and bringing stability to the entire continent!

They've been bringing stability to Somalia for forty years now, with underwhelming results. One could argue that Somalia enjoys far less stability today than it had when America first started gifting them stability, but that's another place where the US has "enduring interests."

Just like they'll soon have enduring interests all across Africa!

And might these "interests" have anything to do with the best interests of Africans?

Not likely. After all, Uncle Sam's regime doesn't run the USA in the best interests of 350 million Americans; it's unlikely that they've got the best interests of 1.2 billion Africans in mind.

No, General Waldhauser is talking about the enduring interests of America's one percent, the clique of war-profiteers and their acolytes who are determined to rule the world.

While I didn't notice much in the way of congratulatory reportage, AFRICOM celebrated it's tenth anniversary this month.

They're just getting started...

Not a bad week for The Empire in Africa

First of all, you've got United States Army War College grad General al-Sisi winning an election in Egypt. al-Sisi is still a youngish man, so by the expected life-span standards of middle-east despots his victory should sew up Egypt for Western interests for the next thirty years or so.

Meanwhile, right next door in oil-rich Libya, US citizen and "rogue" Libyan General Khalifa Haftar is doing God's work imposing order on the 1001 Libyan militias that have run amok over the past three years. Both of our generals are committed to crushing the Muslim Brotherhood, and both have better relations with Israel than they do with the Palestinians.

At the same time, our allies in Kenya and Nigeria have doubled down on the "terrorist threats" in their midst, promising "all-out-war" against al-Shabab and Boko Haram respectively. The call to war was immediately echoed by French colonies Benin, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger.
Declarations of perpetual war can only be music to the ears of AFRICOM boss General David Rodriguez and the Pentagon.

So while it may no longer be a perfect world, rumours of The Empire's imminent demise are greatly exaggerated.

Nairobi Gay Pride Parade cancelled

Till further notice. The duly elected representatives of the people have promised to have another look at the matter in a hundred years or so...

Pan-African homophobia is one of the few cultural facts that can be declared as truly pan-African these days. Aden Duale speaks for the "silent majority" of Africa when he puts his bona-fides on the table.

As any right thinking African knows, and as all those really smart white missionaries have been telling them for 400 years or more, homosexuality is a crime against God and a crime against the natural order.

While I don't mean to over-generalize, that's a bit of foolishness that fits right in there with other common African cultural facts like

• we can't develop without the aid of the white man
• we're backward
• we need help
• we can't feed ourselves without foreign aid
• Bwana is just so much smarter than us folks
• etc etc etc...

Bubbling merrily to the surface just below that level of official black deference to white colonial culture is a vigorous Afro-centric counter-culture that happily says "bullshit" to all of the above.

Look up virtually anything Binyavanga Wainaina has ever written and you'll find an entre into a world where real Africans know that the picture our mainstream media has painted of them doesn't resemble them in the least.

And he is far from being the only one...

It's just a matter of time before the Africans realize they're better off, far better off, without the "help" of the white man.

North Korea and the Libyan militias - a match made in heaven?

Here's a story so improbable it's got to have some big-time grey market operators behind it. A few years ago I would have guessed Glencore, but they've gone legit.

Since the North Korean economy is virtually under house arrest, due to the sanctions and embargoes imposed by the Nations of Virtue, you'd wonder how that ship even got to the Mediterranean without making headlines.

You'd also have to wonder what was on it. Missiles for Gaza? By all accounts the rebels who hold the oil terminals in eastern Libya are open to virtually any kind of barter deal.

The comical "legitimate government" of Libya, currently operating out of a Tripoli hotel since it lost control of its own parliament building, is threatening to bomb the offending tanker. Given that the "legitimate government" has neither bombs nor airplanes to drop them, this may seem an idle threat. Unfortunately, it isn't.

While they may lack legitimacy and the wherewithal to drop a bomb, they're still capable of making a phone call to someone who could.

I'm guessing they have AFRICOM on speed-dial.

What the Pentagon budget cuts really mean

Chuck Hagel's proposed budget cuts at the Pentagon have unleashed a carnival of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing.

Relax. It's all window dressing.

First of all, Hagel isn't actually pitching hard numbers. He's proposing very modest reductions of troop numbers and the mothballing of some hardware that is reaching the outer margins of its useful life anyway.

The very idea of large standing armies is so 19th century. In the modern era, if the US government needs boots on the ground, the company formerly known as Blackwater or one of its many rivals can provide them quickly and cost-effectively. You'll also notice that quick-reaction special forces numbers are scheduled to go up rather than down, for those special occasions where "America's strategic interests" just can't be farmed out to the private sector or local proxies.

For routine invasions and occupations, "local proxies" like the armed forces of Kenya or Uganda or Ethiopia are a much more cost-effective way of pacifying restless locals than sending the US Army into some African backwater that happens to sit astride vast mineral or oil wealth.

What Hagel is really signalling is this; American military spending going forward will be much more focussed on buying the latest hardware. Not necessarily last-century hardware like ships and planes and tanks, but new-age "intelligent" hardware, that special niche of technology where Silicon valley meets the Valley of Death.

So rather than mourn lost Pentagon funding, patriotic investors need to do their homework and sniff out those high-tech start-ups whose products can thrive in that niche.

There's a new high-tech boom on the horizon!

The future of Africa

Here's how it's gonna shake out...

AFRICOM been looking for something to do for a few years now. They have not succeeded. But our allies in France have been front and centre, biting off more than they can chew again and again. We are moments away from critical mass...

In a couple of years AFRICOM and their NATO bumboys will be occupying the Dark Continent from the DRC on north. It will be a new era of peace and democracy for the Africans.

Peace.

Democracy.

Peaceful enough to allow the international conglomerates into the deepest and darkest heart of Africa to rip out the diamonds and the copper and the gold.

Democratic enough to allow the international conglomerates into the deepest and darkest heart of Africa to rip out the diamonds and the copper and the gold...

Then we'll be outta there.

Enjoy your peace and democracy...

Top war profiteers invest in Africa

Canadian journalist Brian Stewart has an "analysis" on view at CBC that purports to tell us why the US and France are sending troops to Africa.

What's striking is that this far-flung and little noticed U.S. Africa Command —​ AFRICOM as it's called — has been on a roll at a time when the Pentagon is undergoing a big downsizing.
But the move coincides with new thinking in Washington that big wars like Iraq and Afghanistan are far less likely in future, so it's now time to shift priorities toward preparing for smaller regional conflicts

Little noticed? AFRICOM has been the subject of thousands of articles and numerous books. Brian goes on to inform us that America's interest in Africa may have something to do with China;

While the U.S. military objectives seem clear enough, it is assumed Washington has an unstated strategic goal as well — to lay down markers again in an Africa increasingly being courted by China and other Asian nations.

Again, hardly a fresh observation, and if I may say, an altogether too delicate way of stating the matter. Let us assume the worst; American troops are being prepared for African adventures in order to protect American capital. And nowhere do the interests of the American military and American capital co mingle, coalesce, and congeal more serendipitously than in the Carlyle Capital Group.  "Making a buck on your bad luck" is their motto, especially where your bad luck attracts the attention of the Pentagon.

Nowhere else in the wacky world 'o inbred crony capitalism does big money snuggle tighter with big guns. So it should come as no surprise that Carlyle just announced a $100 million investment in African logistics.

As you know, "logistics" is just a ten dollar word for trucking, and anyone at all who has paid attention to America's doomed adventures in Afghanistan knows that this most ordinary of enterprises was the achilles heel of NATO and US re-supply. It was also phenomenally lucrative for the contractors providing the services, often running into the hundreds of millions of dollars per month.

Obviously lucrative enough to capture the attention of the big dogs at Carlyle.

Lara Logan and 60 Minutes team up with AFRICOM for thrilling Kony episode

The first thing that grabbed my attention was the claim that the Lord's Resistance Army represents a significant "emerging threat" to the US.

Huh?

Luckily they dropped that bombshell in the first few seconds, so at least you know you're in Bullshit City right away. Nothing worse than thinking you're watching objective news programming for half an hour before you figure out you're being had.

The Ugandan Special Ops are, according to the program, close enough to Kony that they can track him and his few dozen remaining acolytes by their fresh footprints.

If these guys are a threat to the US, America is well beyond any hope.

But we do need to throw a bit of a scary story out there in prime time just to get the idiot public onside for the rapidly expanding role of AFRICOM in the re-liberation of the dark continent.

Frankly, I thought that from the point of view of aesthetics, Lara's prominent bosoms provided a great visual counterpoint to those folks missing their ears and lips.

And of course there was not a word about the dismal human rights record of our friend and ally President Museveni.

US officials claim black African fighters completely useless

I'm paraphrasing here; the exact words were "completely incapable."

That's from Mike Sheehan, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Ops, testifying before the Senate  Armed Services Committee. I'm sure Mike was just trying to be polite.

Mike even went so far as to acknowledge that those useless African troops have been trained by the US and NATO for many years. Speaks volumes about the efficacy of our "training" doesn't it?

That's the thing about our many training missions. It's not about training anybody. It's about maintaining control over the armed forces in those countries where we're the trainers. Think about it for a minute; do the Afghans need us to train them?

Hell no! After putting the run to the Red Army twenty-five years ago, the sandal-clad locals with their WW II era arsenal have put the run to the most technologically advanced armies in the history of history. And we think we need to train them?

They should be hired to train our military!

But back to Sheehan. Mike is one of those versatile guys who has served his country well. Even did a spell of "counter-insurgency" in Central America back in the day, and you know what that means. He's not squeamish. He knows how to rub out insurgency and he knows when our African client states are falling down on the job.

He's also versatile enough to slip back and forth between "public service" and helping himself as a player in the private sector, specifically as a partner in an investment group that specializes in defense industries. He's got the kind of inside knowledge that will keep America safe and himself rich, which is pretty much the apex of the American Dream!

Reading between the lines, I'm going to speculate that with the impending flight of the French and the shocking ineptitude of the Africans, there is but one hope for free Africa, for America, and for freedom and democracy and liberty and capitalism worldwide....

Look for AFRICOM to step up to the plate!

AFRICOM announces Taliban will be hired to train Mali Army

That's some shocking news out of the Dark Continent. While the UN has given the thumbs up to a Mali intervention, conventional wisdom had that intervention coming no sooner than late 2013.

This delay was thought necessary to give the Nations of Virtue time to train up the Malian Army. While we have already trained them numerous times, (in fact the leader of the Mali coup, Captain Sanogo, was repeatedly sent to the US for advanced training by his government) more training was deemed in order.

Apparently the fact that the French Socialists have jumped the gun on this timetable has created a new urgency among other members of the Nations of Virtue. While it was originally anticipated that US, Canadian, French and British trainers would be involved, today's announcement by AFRICOM boss Bwana Ham dismissed those expectations.

"We've decided to award the training contract to the Taliban," said Ham. "Those Towelheads put the run to us over in Afghanistan. Guys in sandals and bedsheets with WWII weaponry defeated the most advanced militaries on earth. I think we need to give the Towelers their due."

Taliban trainers are expected to arrive in Bamako as soon as they manage to hijack some commercial airliners and divert them to Africa.

How to tell which Sudanese are the good guys

History is a crazy thing. Countries get wiped off the map. New countries find their way onto it.

The newest country on it is South Sudan. When you read about Sudan this and Sudan that, it is important to remember that South Sudan are the good guys. They are the ones allied with the Nations of Virtue.

There are a couple of reasons for this. In the first place, Sudan proper, the "original" Sudan, is an Islamic country. That's right; towellers. You know how the Nations of Virtue feel about that.

Meanwhile, new Sudan, or South Sudan, are "Christian." Ah! People we understand! They may be dark colored Christians, but they are Christians none the less.

As chance would have it, new Sudan, aka South Sudan or "the good guys," also happens to have most of Sudan's oil! Is that a happy coincidence or what!

It is not hard to make out God's master plan for Sudan. In His wisdom, God put Christians on top of the oil fields. That is as it should be.

God's plan for Sudan is somewhat stymied at the moment because, while the good guys have the oil, the evil-doers have the oil pipelines, which is leading to all sorts of difficulties. Luckily both countries are in Africa, and now that we have AFRICOM doing God's work throughout the Dark Continent, it shouldn't take too long to sort this out.

A further complication is the issue of human rights in God's half of Sudan. Arresting journalists because they didn't cover the President's speech seems something foreign to the values that we here in the Nations of Virtue hold dear.

This is not necessarily the case. At this moment there is no country on the planet that has imprisoned more journalists than our NATO ally Turkey, so there are certainly precedents in the civilized world for throwing journalists into prison.

So lock up the journos and unlock the oil! Welcome South Sudan to the family of the Nations of Virtue!

CAR capital girds for Armegeddon

The defenders of the Central Africa Republic's capital are circling the wagons in preparation for an imminent advance by the Seleka rebel group.

According to this story the defenders of Bangui have bows, arrows and machetes at their disposal. This is not likely to slow down the rebels with their truck-mounted .50 cal machine guns and RPGs, but it seems an effective way to shake down the locals in the interim.

Note how the article glosses without comment the fact that US special forces and the French military are both present on the ground.

The US is there to track down Joseph Kony's LRA, while the French are there with 600 troops to protect it's 1,200 nationals.

What a shabby fate for the concept of "sovereignty." Do African troops maraud through Mississippi and Alabama in search of the KKK? Then why  do American troops forage around Africa, with complete disregard for local sensibilities, hunting down the LRA?

And why are there no French boots on the ground in the USA to protect French Nationals? After all, the winds of public opinion could once again turn on the French at a whim.

Remember "freedom fries?"

Sadly, this is a preview of Africa's future. Totally dependent on the whims of the big dogs and foreign conglomerates.

Sovereignty isn't so much as an afterthought.

Wheels fall off democracy bandwagon length and breadth of Dark Continent

Here's an entertaining and educational parlor game the whole family can  enjoy on those long winter evenings.

Get yourselves a map of Africa and rank the democratic countries in order of political stability!

Hmm, that's a head-scratcher, isn't it?

First conundrum; how democratic and by whose standard?

Next problem; once you're into the second hour of head-scratching, countries you may have successfully categorized in the first hour could very well have suffered a "spring", a coup, an invasion, or been sold to Dan Gertler or a Canadian mining conglomerate.

Just last spring the government of Mali, reputedly "one of the most stable and democratic" in Africa, was toppled by a US trained Colonel with less firepower than the Luther Marsh Duck Hunting Club.

And all this week, the President of the Central African Republic has been pleading with his colonial overlords, or his "French and American cousins" as he likes to frame it, to save his sorry kleptocratic ass from the rebels bearing down hard on the capital.

As random happenstance would have it, the US and France both have boots on the ground already in the CAR, ostensibly to track down that most heinous band of evildoers of all time, the Lord's Resistance Army.

Frankly, I'm guessing the boffins at AFRICOM wouldn't care one way or the other whether Kony or Bozize was in charge of the CAR, as long as someone's in charge who will make the place safe for foreign capital.

You see, in Africa there can be no stability without democracy, and there can be no democracy without capitalism, and there can be no capitalism without foreign capital. That's because for the entire capitalist era, foreigners have been exploiting Africa's wealth and sending the profits elsewhere. Ergo, Africa has no indigenous capital and is therefore entirely dependent on foreign investment!

So until AFRICOM has had some time to set things right, the next few dozen years in the history of the Dark Continent will be dark indeed.

And good luck finding those stable democracies.

UN demands that world starts taking its demands seriously

Aye, but it's much too late for that.

If you follow this sort of thing, you'll know that the UN is right next to apoplectic over the M23 invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo. But if you watched the newsreel highlights of the actual takeover of Goma, you'll notice that the UN troops stood down as the M23 troops strolled into town.

Today that same UN is demanding that the supporters of M23 stop with their bad behavior.

Fat chance.

By all accounts there is a straight line from M23 to Rwanda's strongman Paul Kagame, and from there straight to Africom.

So don't worry about M23 heeding those UN exhortations anytime soon.

They're doing Uncle Sam's dirty work after all.

While you're busy with March Madness the Pentagon is busy getting America deeper into an African quagmire

The African Union announced today that US "advisers" will play a key role in a multi-national force assembled to hunt down Joseph Kony.

Who are the nations in this "multi-national" combine?

The Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and South Sudan. The leaderships of all of these countries (with the qualified exception of S. Sudan) have far more blood on their hands than does uber-terrorist Joseph Kony.

Those are the countries that the US is teaming up with. Kinda makes you proud, doesn't it?

Kony's star was very much on the decline before the Kony 2012 video went viral a couple of weeks ago. Almost 90 million people have watched the video. Kony is so far past his best-before date he wasn't on anybody's radar a few weeks ago. He's been hiding out in the jungle with no more than a few dozen followers.

Now he's the excuse the Pentagon needs to get in deeper in Africa. Here's African Union spokesman Francisco Madeira on the American contribution;

The Americans are playing a pivotal role. They support us militarily, they support us with equipment, they support us with intelligence and training.


Hmm... where have we heard that before?

The new Kony Command will be based in, of all places, South Sudan. If you follow international news you'll know that's the world's newest and freshest country, having gained independence from Sudan just last year.

You'll also know it has oil.

Coincidence?

US loses key Africa ally and it's Gadaffi's fault

Up until today the land-locked African country of Mali was a key US ally in everything from the war on Libya, the war on terror, the war on drugs, and the war on Chinese influence in Africa.

All gone in the blink of an eye.

No wonder the White House is leading the chorus of "international" condemnation of the coup that has Mali President Toure running for his life. "International" in this case means the usual basketful of US vassal states in Africa and beyond.

It's interesting to see how Western media are spinning this story. Up until today Mali has been consistently portrayed as a model African democracy. Sure, it's one of the poorest countries in the world, but their President is democratically elected, and they play along with all the standard US initiatives like the war on Gadaffi and the war on drugs, so obviously they are good guys.

The democratically elected President was ousted by "renegade soldiers" according to CNN and Reuters. Fox had them as "drunken soldiers". Hey, I guess that would explain why you'd want to overthrow a "democratic" US-friendly government in one of the world's poorest countries...

So how was this Gadaffi's fault?

Mali has for many years had issues with its Taureg minority. The Taureg are a nomadic tribe that wander in and out of the various countries around the Sahara. They suffered the usual litany of abuse that nomadic people everywhere in the world suffer, but they found a friend in the eccentric Gadaffi.

Gadaffi not only allowed the Libyan-based Taureg the same rights as all Libyans, but he welcomed Taureg from neighboring countries into his military. When Gadaffi was deposed by last year's nine month NATO campaign, tens of thousands of them headed home, looting military stockpiles along the way.

When they got back to Mali they joined up with their fellow tribesmen who have been staging a long-term struggle for independence from the most stable democracy in Africa.

With their ill-gotten booty from the looted Libyan military stockpiles they've been easily kicking the shit out of the regular (US sponsored) Malian army. And it's that army that today pushed our ally President Toure out of the Presidential Palace.

Another one bites the dust.

Why America's next 53 wars will be fought in Africa

Because there are 54 countries in Africa and we already won Libya.

When Obama and Panetta appeared together at the press conference at the Pentagon the other day to reiterate America’s commitment to the Asia Pacific region, the subject of Africa did not come up. Sometimes what is avoided can be a clue to what is most important on the agenda.

The obvious intent of the stated focus on the Asia Pacific region is to remind rising China that America is still the big dog. Recent arms sales to Taiwan and the agreement with Australia to station American troops there are but two symbolic gestures to that effect.
But the real focus of the "focus on Asia Pacific" is not the Asia Pacific region at all. It is Africa.

The creation of Africom in 2006 by the US military was a signal that America would not simply lie back and allow the Chinese to become the hegemon for the continent. That signal by itself was not enough, however. By 2009 Chinese trade with Africa surpassed America’s for the first time.

Chinese economic involvement took many forms. Obviously resource development is a priority for the Chinese, as Africa is acknowledged to be the world’s greatest storehouse of precious and rare metals, and has vast unexploited oil reserves. While Chinese companies, all proxies for the government of China, compete with western companies for those resources, they also enter into agreements to provide critical infrastructure in the transportation, education and medical fields, all of which provide an advantage when it comes to winning hearts and minds.

The Libya uprising provided America and its NATO allies the first opportunity to turn back Chinese influence in Africa. Chinese companies had an estimated 20 billion in projects underway and had courted Gadaffi for many years. As the NATO-enabled rebel tide overwhelmed the Gadaffi forces, 36,000 Chinese engineers, tradesmen, and technicians fled the country. Chinese infrastructure projects and its involvement in Libya’s oil sector lay in disarray.

The years ahead will be rife with African proxy wars between the US and China. The escalating violence in South Sudan is but the latest manifestation of this. Obama and Panetta correctly claimed the Asia Pacific as their next focus after having, in their terms, stabilized the middle east.

But while the focus may be on the Asia Pacific region, it is in Africa that the bullets and the bombs will fly.

How to profit from the US invasion of Uganda

We're in Uganda to save the people from the ravages of the Lord's Resistance Army. Ha ha ha, good one! You can bet the guy who dreamt that one up just got a promotion!

But seriously, I don't think we're there to make a rich Irish accountant richer either. Tullow Oil is the biggest player by far in the nascent Ugandan oil play. It was founded in 1985 by an Irishman named Aidan Heavey. In his haste to grow his company he made deals with the Ugandan government that oil industry veterans consider extremely favorable to Uganda.

To become profitable, the Ugandan oil needs to find a way to export markets. That's going to take more capital investment in pipeline and refinery infrastructure than Tullow can handle. I don't think the American boots are in the country to make it safe for BP or Total to take over Tullow. I'm thinking one of the American majors will have a controlling interest in the near future.

Then we'll pressure the Ugandan government to re-write the royalty agreements. I'm sure they'll comply. After all, they just have to look around and see what happens to people who don't.

Once the new American owners have renegotiated the concessions so they're 80/20 in our favor instead of the other way around, the Tullow properties will be infinitely more valuable. That justifies a huge premium on the current share price for the company.

Buy now. Thank me later.