"First World" already meddling in 2015 Ivory Coast election

The national newspaper of record (no, that is not ever going to be the National Post) today had a story for me penned by none other than former Canadian PM Joe Clark.

Follow Mandela's example in Ivory Coast.

Jolly Joe scored a trip to Ivory Coast courtesy of the National Democratic Institute. His mission is to check the temperature on the ground to see if those black folks are ready for democracy.

Throw Mandela's name at me and I'll read anything, at least for awhile.

I was doing OK till I happened upon this manure pile;

The NDI was invited by President Alassane Ouattara to send a neutral international panel to speak and listen to the leaders of parties, religious groups, civil society...

Excuse me?

The National Democratic Institute is a neutral international panel?

No, Joe, the NDI is 100% a creation of the US government! How far would your head have to be up your ass to call that "neutral?"

And by the way, Joe, Ouattara is an IMF bumboy installed at the pleasure of the USA, while the guy who should be president of the Cote d'Ivoire is languishing among the naughty niggers in the holding cells at ICC HQ in The Hague.

Have you noticed yet that the ICC can only find BLACK criminals?

The fact that two years out we get anti-Gbagbo propaganda delivered via mainstream media platforms tells you who has been anointed to win the next election.

That's democracy?

ICC batting .500 in Negro Leagues

Since its inception in 2002 the International Criminal Court has tried a grand total of two "war criminals".

They got a conviction in the Lubanga case and lost the Katanga-Chui case.

I think the problem with the ICC is they need to up their game. They need to bring it to the big leagues, go after some plump white targets in the West. The way they've gone about their prosecutions thus far the casual observer could be forgiven for concluding that all war criminals are Black Africans.

But look, right over there in Her Majesty's merry England, there's war criminal Tony Blair prancing about boasting of his intimate relationship with God and how he only pays a 2.6% tax rate. The man has the blood of tens of thousands of Iraqis on his hands. Surely he can't be that hard to track down.

And forget merry England; there's no greater concentration of well-fed rich white war criminals anywhere in the world than right inside the Washington Beltway. Their ICC sheriffs might have to slip over to Texas to pick up W, but Washington is a veritable cornucopia of war criminals. The entire PNAC cabal seems to me to merit at least as much attention from the ICC as did Lubanga and Katanga-Chui, and they have by far more blood on their hands.

So get serious, ICC, or give up and go home.

Storm clouds over Dan's Republic

The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of those African nations that has yet to grow into its potential in the post-colonial era. There's a certain segment of old-school pinkos who lay the blame for this on the legacy of colonialism.

I blame Dan Gertler. Gertler is the international man of mystery who has done a really great job of enriching himself with a wide range of business activities in the DRC. In fact, Gertler's net worth after a couple of decades of wheeling and dealing in the Congo is greater than the country's GDP!

Then I read Alex Engwete's impassioned defense of Gertler, and maybe he has a point or two. The Gertlers of the world do bring something to the table, and I agree that notions of transparency transposed willy-nilly onto emerging economies fail to take into consideration the realities of doing business in that kind of environment. Successful developed economies all had their share of crooks, swindlers, scallywags and carpet-baggers make their contribution in the course of their evolution.

But Dan's fabulous Congolese adventure may be facing a dark future, and it's all got to do with players much bigger than him. As part of the long term Africom strategy to remake Africa as an American fiefdom, the M23 rebel army is rapidly making inroads in the country. That's a rebel army underwritten and directed by our erstwhile ally, Rwanda.

But Dan's a land-on-his-feet kind of guy. He's probably making deals with the M23 commanders already!

The ICC: easing the white man's burden one African leader at a time

The Globe and Mail has been finding plenty of room for articles lauding the International Criminal Court's conviction of Charles Taylor this week.

A few days ago Lorna Dueck portrayed the Court as doing God's work in an item entitled Liberia proves the power of prayer.

Today they've got Erna Paris putting a secular but no less self-congratulatory spin on things in an article called One step closer to a humanitarian vision.

Whereas Paris invokes Immanuel Kant and Dueck the God of Abraham, both writers make one thing perfectly clear; Africa's salvation lies beyond her borders in the hands of the Nations of Virtue, that Western aggregation of capitalist democracies who know what's best for the rest of the planet.

What the Globe and Mail won't find room for are articles critical of the blessings the Nations of Virtue continue to bestow on the Dark Continent.

For example, in a beautiful irony, the ICC shares its home base of The Hague with the world headquarters of Royal Dutch Shell. Volumes have been written about Shell's rape of Nigeria, but don't expect to read about it in the Globe. Shell alone takes more money out of Nigeria than the Nations of Virtue provide in foreign aid for the entire continent.

And don't expect to read about American trainers training the Ugandan Army to train Congolese rebels so that the world's longest-running and deadliest war since WWII can be kept smoldering.

Nor should you expect to see Ugandan President Museveni in the docket at the ICC anytime soon, because while he is no friend of human rights he is very much a friend of the Nations of Virtue.

Unlike the hapless former dictator of Libya, who in the end learned that those friends he had bought in the West, friends like Blair and Sarkozy, were prepared to turn on him the moment a better price could be arranged.

The list of our accomplishments in Africa runs from slavery through colonialism to the neo-colonialism exemplified by the ICC.

It's a shameful history, but don't expect to read about it in the Globe and Mail.

Massa's back; the ICC rolls back post-colonialism

Laurent Gbagbo began his trial before the ICC today.

Looking a little forlorn, Gbagbo assured the court on the first day of the proceedings that he was being treated well, that the food was good if not great, and that he had enough blankets to keep warm in the often blustery Netherlands autumn.

When you read the dossier compiled against Gbagbo, what strikes you is the pedestrian nature of his so-called crimes. Was he a tyrant? Maybe, but certainly no worse than many tyrants the West continues to support today.

When he refused to slink willingly into the dustbin of history after the recent Ivory Coast elections, he wasn't doing anything that many who have come out on the short end of the democratic process have done.

Does Honduras ring a bell?

Unfortunately, his opponent had the support of the former colonial power.

And this is the problem with the ICC.

When you look at who is deemed prosecution-worthy and who isn't, it becomes obvious that the ICC is a tool of the colonial masters.

Its mission is nothing less than rolling back the last fifty years of history in the former colonies.

Gbagbo's real crime was annoying the former colonial masters, the same crime that cost President Zelaya his job in Honduras.