Exodus: Israel to drive Africans from Holy Land

Israel has initiated the first stage of a controversial “emergency plan” aimed at interning and deporting an estimated 60,000 African immigrants. Officials believe the presence of the Africans poses a threat to the “Jewish character” of the state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who believes immigrants are swamping his country, has claimed the African migrants “are seen by many Israelis as a law and order issue and even a threat to the long-term viability of the Jewish state.”

The Prime Minister promised that in order to stop the hiring of illegal Africans the legislation would be strictly enforced.

Israeli authorities are ready to grant 1,000 euros to any African who agrees to freely leave within five days. Some immigrants have agreed, while others are going to be repatriated by force.

Over a hundred African men, women, and children, mostly South Sudanese, have been reportedly detained in the Red Sea port of Eilat.
Senior immigration official Yossi Edelstein reported on Israel Radio “We have arrested about 140 infiltrators up until last night, the main portion of who are South Sudanese.”

The handcuffed detainees were brought to the Saharonim detention facility in the Negev Desert.

According to Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, the first to be deported are going to be 1.500 refugees from South Sudan, who fled the civil war that split their country.

“The next stage is the removal from Israel of all the infiltrators from Eritrea and Sudan, whose number comes close to 50,000 people,” the Interior Minister said.

Still, the deportation is legally questionable and the Interior Ministry admits it.

“At the moment, we are permitted only to deport from Israel the citizens of South Sudan and the Ivory Coast,” Interior Minister Eli Yishai said.

This raises concerns about those African that are going to be detained and put into camps pending deportation.

But for Minister Eli Yishai who also heads of the Shas religious party saying “no” to alien deportation plans means “shelving the declaration of independence, and the end of the Zionist dream.”

The Israeli parliament is also fueling anti-African rhetoric. Parliamentarians in the Knesset do not hesitate to label Africans “cancer” and “AIDS to Israeli people”.

It must be said that the majority of the 7.8 million Israelis supports government migration policies. The latest opinion poll showed 52 per cent of Israelis agree that Africans pose a threat to Israel.

A few Israelis tend to shift blame for the economic and demographic crisis on illegal immigrants, mostly coming to Israel via the poorly guarded border with Egypt in the Sinai Desert.

There have been a number of anti-immigrant demonstrations in Israel in recent months. The latest was held in Tel Aviv this month. Some participants of the rally accused the African immigrants of coming to their country “to steal and rape”, proposing to “burn them out” and “put poison in their food”, says Ynet News.

A senior police commander David Gez has acknowledged that despite claims of raging crime in sections of south Tel Aviv where Africans live the actual crime level among the migrants is drastically lower than among Israelis.

Nevertheless, the majority of the Israeli are against illegal aliens and there have been a number of hate crimes against Africans. Last Thursday someone set fire on to an Eritrean migrant’s home in Jerusalem, injuring three men. Israeli police said it appeared to be a racist attack. One Eritrean suffered serious burns, and a pregnant woman and her husband were treated for smoke inhalation.

Those Israelis who actually communicate with the illegal Sudanese immigrants are ashamed of the attacks.

David Blum, director of the Isrotel Hotel in Eilat is reported as saying that “Most of them are educated people who fled from a bloody war in their homeland. They speak a number of languages, most of them are Christian, and they did their job in the best way possible with dignity.”

Israeli scientist Dr. Shalva Weil warns of another “threat” to the state of Israel. Dr. Weil is an anthropologist and expert on Ethiopian Jewry of Hebrew University claims that in the past 15 years there has been a sharp rise in the number of African tribes "rediscovering" their Jewish heritage.

"It's important that in Israel people understand that millions of people throughout Africa consider themselves Jewish,” the professor said. “As far as they are concerned, they are the sons of the lost tribes, and are certain that the Promised Land awaits them."

Obama's Scramble for Africa

by Nick Turse

They call it the New Spice Route, an homage to the medieval trade network that connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, even if today’s “spice road” has nothing to do with cinnamon, cloves, or silks. Instead, it’s a superpower’s superhighway, on which trucks and ships shuttle fuel, food, and military equipment through a growing maritime and ground transportation infrastructure to a network of supply depots, tiny camps, and airfields meant to service a fast-growing U.S. military presence in Africa.

Few in the U.S. know about this superhighway, or about the dozens of training missions and joint military exercises being carried out in nations that most Americans couldn’t locate on a map. Even fewer have any idea that military officials are invoking the names of Marco Polo and the Queen of Sheba as they build a bigger military footprint in Africa. It’s all happening in the shadows of what in a previous imperial age was known as “the Dark Continent.”

In East African ports, huge metal shipping containers arrive with the everyday necessities for a military on the make. They’re then loaded onto trucks that set off down rutted roads toward dusty bases and distant outposts.

On the highway from Djibouti to Ethiopia, for example, one can see the bare outlines of this shadow war at the truck stops where local drivers take a break from their long-haul routes. The same is true in other African countries. The nodes of the network tell part of the story: Manda Bay, Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya; Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda; Bangui and Djema in the Central African Republic; Nzara in South Sudan; Dire Dawa in Ethiopia; and the Pentagon’s showpiece African base, Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti on the coast of the Gulf of Aden, among others.

According to Pat Barnes, a spokesman for U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), Camp Lemonnier serves as the only official U.S. base on the continent. “There are more than 2,000 U.S. personnel stationed there,” he told TomDispatch recently by email. “The primary AFRICOM organization at Camp Lemonnier is Combined Joint Task Force -- Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). CJTF-HOA's efforts are focused in East Africa and they work with partner nations to assist them in strengthening their defense capabilities.”

Barnes also noted that Department of Defense personnel are assigned to U.S. embassies across Africa, including 21 individual Offices of Security Cooperation responsible for facilitating military-to-military activities with “partner nations.” He characterized the forces involved as small teams carrying out pinpoint missions. Barnes did admit that in “several locations in Africa, AFRICOM has a small and temporary presence of personnel. In all cases, these military personnel are guests within host-nation facilities, and work alongside or coordinate with host-nation personnel.”

Shadow Wars

In 2003, when CJTF-HOA was first set up there, it was indeed true that the only major U.S. outpost in Africa was Camp Lemonnier. In the ensuing years, in quiet and largely unnoticed ways, the Pentagon and the CIA have been spreading their forces across the continent. Today -- official designations aside -- the U.S. maintains a surprising number of bases in Africa. And “strengthening” African armies turns out to be a truly elastic rubric for what’s going on.

Under President Obama, in fact, operations in Africa have accelerated far beyond the more limited interventions of the Bush years: last year’s war in Libya; a regional drone campaign with missions run out of airports and bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Seychelles; a flotilla of 30 ships in that ocean supporting regional operations; a multi-pronged military and CIA campaign against militants in Somalia, including intelligence operations, training for Somali agents, a secret prison, helicopter attacks, and U.S. commando raids; a massive influx of cash for counterterrorism operations across East Africa; a possible old-fashioned air war, carried out on the sly in the region using manned aircraft; tens of millions of dollars in arms for allied mercenaries and African troops; and a special ops expeditionary force (bolstered by State Department experts) dispatched to help capture or kill Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and his senior commanders. And this only begins to scratch the surface of Washington’s fast-expanding plans and activities in the region.

To support these mushrooming missions, near-constant training operations, and alliance-building joint exercises, outposts of all sorts are sprouting continent-wide, connected by a sprawling shadow logistics network. Most American bases in Africa are still small and austere, but growing ever larger and more permanent in appearance. For example, photographs from last year of Ethiopia’s Camp Gilbert, examined by TomDispatch, show a base filled with air-conditioned tents, metal shipping containers, and 55-gallon drums and other gear strapped to pallets, but also recreation facilities with TVs and videogames, and a well-appointed gym filled with stationary bikes, free weights, and other equipment.

Continental Drift

After 9/11, the U.S. military moved into three major regions in significant ways: South Asia (primarily Afghanistan), the Middle East (primarily Iraq), and the Horn of Africa. Today, the U.S. is drawing down in Afghanistan and has largely left Iraq. Africa, however, remains a growth opportunity for the Pentagon.

The U.S. is now involved, directly and by proxy, in military and surveillance operations against an expanding list of regional enemies. They include al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa; the Islamist movement Boko Haram in Nigeria; possible al-Qaeda-linked militants in post-Qaddafi Libya; Joseph Kony’s murderous Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the Central African Republic, Congo, and South Sudan; Mali’s Islamist Rebels of the Ansar Dine, al-Shabaab in Somalia; and guerrillas from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula across the Gulf of Aden in Yemen.

A recent investigation by the Washington Post revealed that contractor-operated surveillance aircraft based out of Entebbe, Uganda, are scouring the territory used by Kony’s LRA at the Pentagon’s behest, and that 100 to 200 U.S. commandos share a base with the Kenyan military at Manda Bay. Additionally, U.S. drones are being flown out of Arba Minch airport in Ethiopia and from the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, while drones and F-15 fighter-bombers have been operating out of Camp Lemonnier as part of the shadow wars being waged by the U.S. military and the CIA in Yemen and Somalia. Surveillance planes used for spy missions over Mali, Mauritania, and the Sahara desert are also flying missions from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, and plans are reportedly in the works for a similar base in the newborn nation of South Sudan.

U.S. special operations forces are stationed at a string of even more shadowy forward operating posts on the continent, including one in Djema in the Central Africa Republic and others in Nzara in South Sudan and Dungu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The U.S. also has had troops deployed in Mali, despite having officially suspended military relations with that country following a coup.

According to research by TomDispatch, the U.S. Navy also has a forward operating location, manned mostly by Seabees, Civil Affairs personnel, and force-protection troops, known as Camp Gilbert in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia. U.S. military documents indicate that there may be other even lower-profile U.S. facilities in the country. In addition to Camp Lemonnier, the U.S. military also maintains another hole-and-corner outpost in Djibouti -- a Navy port facility that lacks even a name. AFRICOM did not respond to requests for further information on these posts before this article went to press.

Additionally, U.S. Special Operations Forces are engaged in missions against the Lord’s Resistance Army from a rugged camp in Obo in the Central African Republic, but little is said about that base either. “U.S. military personnel working with regional militaries in the hunt for Joseph Kony are guests of the African security forces comprising the regional counter-LRA effort,” Barnes told me. “Specifically in Obo, the troops live in a small camp and work with partner nation troops at a Ugandan facility that operates at the invitation of the government of the Central African Republic.”

And that’s still just part of the story. U.S. troops are also working at bases inside Uganda. Earlier this year, elite Force Recon Marines from the Special Purpose Marine Air Ground Task Force 12 (SPMAGTF-12) trained soldiers from the Uganda People's Defense Force, which not only runs missions in the Central African Republic, but also acts as a proxy force for the U.S. in Somalia in the battle against the Islamist militants known as al-Shabaab. They now supply the majority of the troops to the African Union Mission protecting the U.S.-supported government in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

In the spring, Marines from SPMAGTF-12 also trained soldiers from the Burundi National Defense Force (BNDF), the second-largest contingent in Somalia. In April and May, members of Task Force Raptor, 3rd Squadron, 124th Cavalry Regiment, of the Texas National Guard took part in a training mission with the BNDF in Mudubugu, Burundi.

In February, SPMAGTF-12 sent trainers to Djibouti to work with an elite local army unit, while other Marines traveled to Liberia to focus on teaching riot-control techniques to Liberia’s military as part of what is otherwise a State Department-directed effort to rebuild that force.

In addition, the U.S. is conducting counterterrorism training and equipping militaries in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger, and Tunisia. AFRICOM also has 14 major joint-training exercises planned for 2012, including operations in Morocco, Cameroon, Gabon, Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Senegal, and Nigeria.

The size of U.S. forces conducting these joint exercises and training missions fluctuates, but Barnes told me that, “on an average basis, there are approximately 5,000 U.S. Military and DoD personnel working across the continent” at any one time. Next year, even more American troops are likely to be on hand as units from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, known as the “Dagger Brigade,” are scheduled to deploy to the region. The roughly 3,000 soldiers in the brigade will be involved in, among other activities, training missions while acquiring regional expertise. "Special Forces have a particular capability in this area, but not the capacity to fulfill the demand; and we think we will be able to fulfill the demand by using conventional forces," Colonel Andrew Dennis told a reporter about the deployment.

Air Africa

Last month, the Washington Post revealed that, since at least 2009, the “practice of hiring private companies to spy on huge expanses of African territory… has been a cornerstone of the U.S. military’s secret activities on the continent.” Dubbed Tusker Sand, the project consists of contractors flying from Entebbe airport in Uganda and a handful of other airfields. They pilot turbo-prop planes that look innocuous but are packed with sophisticated surveillance gear.

America’s mercenary spies in Africa are, however, just part of the story.

While the Pentagon canceled an analogous drone surveillance program dubbed Tusker Wing, it has spent millions of dollars to upgrade the civilian airport at Arba Minch, Ethiopia, to enable drone missions to be flown from it. Infrastructure to support such operations has been relatively cheap and easy to construct, but a much more daunting problem looms -- one intimately connected to the New Spice Route.

“Marco Polo wasn't just an explorer,” Army planner Chris Zahner explained at a conference in Djibouti last year. “[H]e was also a logistician developing logistics nodes along the Silk Road. Now let's do something similar where the Queen of Sheba traveled." Paeans to bygone luminaries aside, the reasons for pouring resources into sea and ground supply networks have less to do with history than with Africa’s airport infrastructure.

Of the 3,300 airfields on the continent identified in a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency review, the Air Force has surveyed only 303 of them and just 158 of those surveys are current. Of those airfields that have been checked out, half won’t support the weight of the C-130 cargo planes that the U.S. military leans heavily on to transport troops and materiel. These limitations were driven home during Natural Fire 2010, one of that year’s joint training exercises hosted by AFRICOM. When C-130s were unable to use an airfield in Gulu, Uganda, an extra $3 million was spent instead to send in Chinook helicopters.

In addition, diplomatic clearances and airfield restrictions on U.S. military aircraft cost the Pentagon time and money, while often raising local suspicion and ire. In a recent article in the military trade publication Army Sustainment, Air Force Major Joseph Gaddis touts an emerging solution: outsourcing. The concept was tested last year, during another AFRICOM training operation, Atlas Drop 2011.

“Instead of using military airlift to move equipment to and from the exercise, planners used commercial freight vendors,” writes Gadddis. “This provided exercise participants with door-to-door delivery service and eliminated the need for extra personnel to channel the equipment through freight and customs areas.” Using mercenary cargo carriers to skirt diplomatic clearance issues and move cargo to airports that can’t support U.S. C-130s is, however, just one avenue the Pentagon is pursuing to support its expanding operations in Africa.

Another is construction.

The Great Build-Up

Military contracting documents reveal plans for an investment of up to $180 million or more in construction at Camp Lemonnier alone. Chief among the projects will be the laying of 54,500 square meters of taxiways “to support medium-load aircraft” and the construction of a 185,000 square meter Combat Aircraft Loading Area. In addition, plans are in the works to erect modular maintenance structures, hangers, and ammunition storage facilities, all needed for an expanding set of secret wars in Africa.

Other contracting documents suggest that, in the years to come, the Pentagon will be investing up to $50 million in new projects at that base, Kenya’s Camp Simba, and additional unspecified locations in Africa. Still other solicitation materials suggest future military construction in Egypt, where the Pentagon already maintains a medical research facility, and still more work in Djibouti.

No less telling are contracting documents indicating a coming influx of “emergency troop housing” at Camp Lemonnier, including almost 300 additional Containerized Living Units (CLUs), stackable, air-conditioned living quarters, as well as latrines and laundry facilities.

Military documents also indicate that a nearly $450,000 exercise facility was installed at the U.S. base in Entebbe, Uganda, last year. All of this indicates that, for the Pentagon, its African build-up has only begun.

The Scramble for Africa

In a recent speech in Arlington, Virginia, AFRICOM Commander General Carter Ham explained the reasoning behind U.S. operations on the continent: “The absolute imperative for the United States military [is] to protect America, Americans, and American interests; in our case, in my case, [to] protect us from threats that may emerge from the African continent.” As an example, Ham named the Somali-based al-Shabaab as a prime threat. “Why do we care about that?” he asked rhetorically. “Well, al-Qaeda is a global enterprise... we think they very clearly do present, as an al-Qaeda affiliate... a threat to America and Americans.”

Fighting them over there, so we don’t need to fight them here has been a core tenet of American foreign policy for decades, especially since 9/11. But trying to apply military solutions to complex political and social problems has regularly led to unforeseen consequences. For example, last year’s U.S.-supported war in Libya resulted in masses of well-armed Tuareg mercenaries, who had been fighting for Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi, heading back to Mali where they helped destabilize that country. So far, the result has been a military coup by an American-trained officer; a takeover of some areas by Tuareg fighters of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, who had previously raided Libyan arms depots; and other parts of the country being seized by the irregulars of Ansar Dine, the latest al-Qaeda “affiliate” on the American radar. One military intervention, in other words, led to three major instances of blowback in a neighboring country in just a year.

With the Obama administration clearly engaged in a twenty-first century scramble for Africa, the possibility of successive waves of overlapping blowback grows exponentially. Mali may only be the beginning and there’s no telling how any of it will end. In the meantime, keep your eye on Africa. The U.S. military is going to make news there for years to come.

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. He is the author/editor of several books, including the recently published Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 (with Tom Engelhardt). This piece is the latest article in his series on “the changing face of American empire,” which is being underwritten by Lannan Foundation.

Robbing Nigeria blind

By Thomas C. Mountain

As western oil companies loot some $140 billion a year of Nigeria’s black gold, two thirds of the country’s 100 million people live on less than $2 a day.

Nigeria’s “official” oil production figures show about 3 million barrels a day being pumped from their oil fields into the holds of western tankers, though for decades now informed observers have estimated up to one third of all Nigerian oil is actually “stolen”, secretly loaded onto oil tankers after bribes are paid to corrupt government officials.

If 4 million barrels of oil are being shipped out of Nigeria daily at $100 a barrel, times 30 days a month, times 12 months, you arrive at almost $150 billion a year in potential oil revenues for Nigeria.

The problem is not just theft but the fact that the western oil companies are literally looting Nigeria’s oil, paying as little as a 9% royalty.

Do the math, 9% of $150 billion minus the one third oil that is stolen and the Nigerian government only receives about $10 billion a year of this amount.

Simply put, at $100 a barrel, the western oil companies get $91 and Nigeria only gets $9. Or more shockingly, Big Oil makes $140 billion a year vs. Nigeria’s $10 billion.

The Big Oil robber barons famously promote themselves as “investors” in Nigeria, though when looking at the loot they are making from what should be Africa’s richest country it is doubtful that they have invested $140 billion in Nigeria in total over the last decades (Big Oil is notorious for sticking the host countries with a major share of infrastructure expenses, deducted from their royalty checks).

In other words, Big Oil has made its investment back almost exponentially. And all the while Nigerians are hungry, sick, and increasingly fed up.

What have the people of Nigeria gotten from all this wealth being looted from their country?

Malnutrition and disease are rampant across the country. Many if not most of Nigeria’s children have never seen the inside of a school room. Many if not most of Nigeria’s people simply cannot afford even primary medical care. Malaria, water borne diseases, TB, HIV/AIDS, the list of sicknesses killing Nigerians in the thousands every day is criminal.

Nigeria’s environment has been a victim with a large swath of the coast lying under a toxic blanket of oil, mainly as a result of the criminal failure of Big Oil to do even basic maintenance on its pipelines.

Yet Nigeria has the largest, best equipped army in west Africa, the better to enforce Pax Americana. As I write, Nigerian troops are pouring into Guinea Bissau, there to restore “democracy”—something they have done many times in the past.

Nigeria should be wealthy, its people the envy of Africa, if not the entire developing world. Instead its cities are filled with homeless children begging for their daily bread.

Nigeria imports almost all of its fuel needs, selling its oil for $9 a barrel and buying back the gasoline, diesel and kerosene made from its oil for hundreds a barrel.

Nigeria is in constant need of IMF bailouts and pays the price for such predatory loans. Earlier this year after Queen of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, paid a visit, Nigerian President “Badluck” Jonathan was forced to kneel down and kiss her feet, promising to more than double the price desperate Nigerians are forced to pay for their fuel.

The kleptocrats that rule Nigeria under the banner of “democracy”, for they stole the elections fair and square, cannot even provide electricity to their people, with most Nigerians receiving only a few hours a day of electric supply, if any at all.

Nigeria’s other infrastructure, what little there is, decays by the day with even its once functional railroads now barely operational.

Yet this is all applauded by the west, with Nigeria’s President a permanent member of the so called G-20 council of world leaders.

One of the leading candidates for the title of “Queen of African Kleptocracy”, the Nigerian Finance Minister, complained bitterly after she was rejected by Pax Americana to head the USA majority owned World Bank. Talk about the fox wanting to rule the chicken coop.

All this looting and theft has left a once proud and self-sufficient people on the brink of a major explosion with government repression barely containing a cauldron of ethnic/religious violence that continues to erupt in murder and mayhem. Muslims killing Christians, Christians killing Muslims, and the army killing ethnic rebels taking up arms over the looting and destruction of their homelands by the western oil companies.

These days the western media have begun carrying alarming reports of a dramatic decline in Nigerian oil production, down according to some reports by as much as 25% in the last few months. As bad as matters are already for Nigeria’s suffering millions, what is to come may be far worse, for without even the small morsels that their western masters allow to fall from their oil burdened tables the Nigerian economy is headed for a collapse, being almost completely dependent on their oil exports.

What is going to happen if Nigeria’s oil fields begin to run dry? Only time will tell, though thanks to the looting of Nigeria one might be forgiven for holding little hope for what should be one of the jewels of Africa.

>Thomas C. Mountain is an independent western journalist based in the Horn of Africa, and has been living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He was a member of the 1st US Peace Delegation to Libya in 1987.

War is not the answer; War is a racket

Photo of the day

How Far US Violation of Human Rights Has Extended: A Cruel & Unusual Record



By Jimmy Carter

"The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights."

Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended.

This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.

While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile.

The declaration has been invoked by human rights activists and the international community to replace most of the world’s dictatorships with democracies and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global affairs.

It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Recent legislation has made legal the president’s right to detain a person indefinitely on suspicion of affiliation with terrorist organizations or “associated forces,” a broad, vague power that can be abused without meaningful oversight from the courts or Congress (the law is currently being blocked by a federal judge). This law violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration.

In addition to American citizens’ being targeted for assassination or indefinite detention, recent laws have canceled the restraints in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to allow unprecedented violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless wiretapping and government mining of our electronic communications.

Popular state laws permit detaining individuals because of their appearance, where they worship or with whom they associate.

Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable.

After more than 30 airstrikes on civilian homes this year in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan,

Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone. We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times.

These policies clearly affect American foreign policy. Top intelligence and military officials, as well as rights defenders in targeted areas, affirm that the great escalation in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against us and permitted repressive governments to cite such actions to justify their own despotic behavior.

Meanwhile, the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, now houses 169 prisoners. About half have been cleared for release, yet have little prospect of ever obtaining their freedom.

American authorities have revealed that, in order to obtain confessions, some of the few being tried (only in military courts) have been tortured by waterboarding more than 100 times or intimidated with semiautomatic weapons, power drills or threats to sexually assault their mothers.

Astoundingly, these facts cannot be used as a defense by the accused, because the government claims they occurred under the cover of “national security.” Most of the other prisoners have no prospect of ever being charged or tried either.

At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

But instead of making the world safer, America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends.

As concerned citizens, we must persuade Washington to reverse course and regain moral leadership according to international human rights norms that we had officially adopted as our own and cherished throughout the years.

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center and the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.

© 2012 The New York Times Company

Obama's declaration of War on Africa

Obama in a toast to the roasting of Africa?

President Obama, that imperialist son-of-a…um, Kenyan, last week unveiled what he described as a “new” U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The White House report does not once mention AFRICOM, the U.S. military command that has pushed aside the State Department as the primary institution of U.S. policy and power in sub-Saharan Africa. The report comes three years after Obama’s trip to Ghana, when he declared that Africa’s biggest problems were “corruption and poor governance,” rather than five centuries (and still counting) of Euro-American predation. African complaints about “neo-colonialism, or [that] the West has been oppressive, or racism” are mere “excuses,” said Obama, in a performance that scholar Ama Biney described as “imperialist lecturing” and “Obama-speak.”

Having effectively abandoned even the pretense of competing with China, India, Brazil and other rising economic powers in Africa, the Obama regime has turned the continent into a battleground, where AFRICOM is the principle interlocutor with the region’s governments and peoples. In addition to conducting year-round military maneuvers with nearly every nation on the continent, AFRICOM handles much of U.S. food distribution and medical aid to the region, while the CIA monitors Africa’s vast expanses with a network of secret airstrips and surveillance aircraft.

The White House report, a document of pure obfuscation, puts U.S. efforts to “strengthen democratic institutions” at the top of the list. It rehashes Obama’s Ghana declaration, that “Africa does not need strong men, it needs strong institutions.” Yet, Washington’s closest allies in sub-Saharan Africa are Paul Kagame, the minority Tutsi warlord in Rwanda; Yoweri Museveni, who rose to power with a guerilla army of child-soldiers and locked up two million Acholi people in concentration camps; and Ethiopian strongman Meles Zenawi, a military dictator who heads an ethnic-based regime. Rwanda and Uganda are the principal culprits in the deaths of six million Congolese since 1996, the worst genocide since World War Two, while Zenawi’s 2006 invasion of Somalia, instigated by the United States, led to “the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa – worse than Darfur,” according to United Nations observers.

“Washington’s closest allies in sub-Saharan Africa are Paul Kagame, the minority Tutsi warlord in Rwanda; Yoweri Museveni, who rose to power with a guerilla army of child-soldiers; and Ethiopian strongman Meles Zenawi, a military dictator who heads an ethnic-based regime.”

The text of the president’s statement on the “new” sub-Saharan strategy warns that “the United States will not stand idly by when actors threaten legitimately elected governments or manipulate the fairness and integrity of democratic processes, and we will stand in steady partnership with those who are committed to the principles of equality, justice, and the rule of law.” In the context of Obama’s humanitarian military intervention doctrine – and especially since AFRICOM led NATO’s regime change in Libya – this is war talk.

In another sense, however, it is, quite simply, pure crap. Rwanda has for 16 years destabilized and spread genocidal chaos in neighboring Congo, in blatant violation of a U.S. law specifically tailored to curtail and punish those activities. The Democratic Republic of The Congo Relief, Security and Democracy Promotion Act, written by then-Senator Barack Obama and co-sponsored by his colleague Hillary Clinton, now Secretary of State, authorizes the Secretary of State to withhold U.S. aid “if the Secretary determines that the government of the foreign country is taking actions to destabilize the Democratic Republic of the Congo." The Obama administration, like its predecessors, not only disregards its own policy statements – it ignores laws passed by the president and the chief foreign policy officer.

The White House claims the U.S. has made Africa a safer and more just place “by strengthening institutions and challenging leaders whose actions threaten peaceful political transitions, including in Cote d’Ivoire” – where the U.S. and French accomplished armed regime change.

Obama brags that: “We have been the world’s leader in responding to humanitarian crises, including in the Horn of Africa, while at the same time working with our African partners to promote resilience and prevent future crises.” In reality, George Bush and Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi ended Somalia’s brief period of peace under an Islamic Courts regime, plunged the country into “the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa,” and then, under Obama, withheld food from Somalia in order to weaken the Shabaab resistance, all of which set the stage for an even worse famine in 2011, killing hundreds of thousands.

Such realities give the lie to Obama’s promise to “work to prevent the weakening or collapse of local economies, protect livestock, promote sustainable access to clean water, and invest in programs that reduce community-level vulnerability to man-made and natural disasters.” AFRICOM and U.S. policy are the disasters afflicting the continent; they are part of the disease, not the cure.

During the winter following his Africa visit in 2009, Obama took the lead in destroying all prospects for slowing global warming, at the Copenhagen climate talks. But he still wants to peddle American “green” products (and natural gas fracking) to a scorched Africa. “We will continue promoting resilience and adaptation to impacts of climate change on food, water, and health in vulnerable African countries, supporting the adoption of low-emissions development strategies, and mobilizing financing to support the development and deployment of clean energy,” said the White House report.

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu had his own interpretation of U.S. climate policy. Africa, he said, “is to be condemned “to incineration and no modern development.”

Obama assures Africa that: “The United States will seek to expand adherence to the principle of civilian control of the military.” In practice, AFRICOM has cultivated a “soldier-to-soldier” policy between U.S. troops and African militaries that extends from “general-to-general” to “colonel-to-colonel” and down the ranks, positioning the U.S. to launch coups at will against African civilian, or even military leaders that fall out of favor with Washington. As Dan Glazebrook recently wrote in The Guardian, America’s “great hope is that the African Union's forces can be subordinated to a chain of command headed by AFRICOM.”

As with George Bush, the death of millions and the erasure of nations can all be justified by the invocation of one word: al-Qa’ida.

“In our approach to counter-terrorism,” said the White House, “we will continue to be guided by the President’s affirmation in the National Security Strategy that he bears no greater responsibility than ensuring the safety and security of the American people.

“Consistent with the National Strategy for Counter-terrorism, we will concentrate our efforts on disrupting, dismantling, and eventually defeating al-Qa’ida and its affiliates and adherents in Africa to ensure the security of our citizens and our partners. In doing so, we will seek to strengthen the capacity of civilian bodies to provide security for their citizens and counter violent extremism through more effective governance, development, and law enforcement efforts.”

And there you have it. Ultimately, “good governance” and the rest of Obama’s wish-list for Africa is whatever suits U.S. war on terror priorities – and keeps out the Chinese. Which only confirms that Barack Obama is, indeed, an imperialist son-of-a…um, Kenyan.

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

The US invades Africa



The US Army confirms they will deploy thousands of soldiers across the continent of Africa during 2013, many which will come from Afghanistan.

The Army Times confirms that the US military gave the go-ahead for the mass deployment last month and that roughly 3,000 soldiers will soon be sent overseas, with more troops expected to be dispatched during the duration of the program. Maj. Gen. David R. Hogg, head of US Army Africa, says the initiative is part of a “regionally aligned force concept” that will allow American troops to forge relationships across Africa, where the US has not concentrated its soldiers among civilians to the same degree as other continents.

“As far as our mission goes, it’s uncharted territory,” Hogg tells Army Times.

The program will put thousands of American troops in different African cities from anywhere for a few weeks to a few months, where they will learn about unfamiliar cultures and conduct training for threats and missions.

The US currently has a substantial military presence across the African continent, but nowhere to the degree that is has in other locales. More than 1,200 soldiers are currently stationed at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, and last October US President Barack Obama personally authorized the deployment of 100 troops to Uganda to aid in attempt to oust Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony.

Around the time of that announcement, though, award-winning war correspondent Eric Margolis told RT that if Washington had humanitarian interests in mind while considering deployments to Uganda that it would not be going in alone.

“The US is also concerned about Chinese penetration in the region that they are going to gobble all the economical resources and earn influence on the regional governments. So the US maybe want to stop this Chinese advancement in central Africa,” said Marggolis. “It could be more legitimate, if the US did it in conjunction with disinterested nations – Russia, for example, or South Africa and Turkey. But the fact that they’re doing it on their own means they are doing it for the interests of their own policy.”

Hogg insists this time, though, that Americans won’t be sent overseas with a plan to prepare for war. “We are not trying to reproduce the United States Army in the 54 countries in Africa,” he says. The soldiers will, however, show foreign citizens some of the tactics used by American troops, as well as provide instruction on combating famine and disease.

“I’m not there to win their wars or settle their differences,” says Hogg.

Did you get that? These troops will be deploying from Afghanistan! Same location where American troops are known to have committed the highest rate of suicides from within their commands. Same location that has made the US Army 'famous' for blowing up kids and unarmed civilians. Same location that made US troops 'famous' for body parts' trophies, human hunting sports and target practice. Rape, mutilation, mayhem, destruction and death is all the US Army ever visited on the Afghan people. These same mentally-challenged troops will now depart for the shores of Mother Africa??? These American kids are not trained to interact with any form of society but to viciously suppress and target populations for slaughter. We, in Africa, have enough already on our plates without America throwing more bloodshed into the mix or laying out instructions on combating famine and disease. Must-do instructions are the last kind of help Africa desires, we know it can only lead to one thing-human slavery adorned in 'humanitarian' cloak!

Remembering Afghanistan

Raping Africa silly; the second coming.



The UN’s Earth Summit Rio+20 will begin this week. On their agenda will be population growth, urbanization, Agenda 21, and consumption. These factors, claim the UN, are causing irreversible damage to the environment and are targets for a new “green” agreement to save the planet.

The UN’s Environment Program (UNEP) released a report entitled the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-5). The GEO-5 took three years to complete. It is the UN’s “health-check” on earth and encourages world government leaders to enact more stringent environmental mandates within their countries to combat their effects on the planet.

Achim Steiner, UN under-secretary general and UNEP executive director, warns that time is running out as the world’s population comes closer to 9 billion people as expected by 2050. Steiner claims that as larger amounts of natural resources are expected to be consumed, the planet’s safety is at stake. “If current trends continue, if current patterns of production and consumption of natural resources prevail and cannot be reversed and ‘decoupled’, then governments will preside over unprecedented levels of damage and degradation.”

The UNEP would like governments to redirect their focus on the factors driving climate change:

* Population growth
* Urbanization
* Fossil fuel-based energy consumption
* Globalization

The UNEP is centering their attention on Africa and Asia, where climate change is being felt most, according to the GEO-5 report.

The UN’s goals for sustainable development in Africa and Asia center on their population growth, water supplies and food security. The sub-Saharan and northern regions of Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and parts of Asia are of particular interest to the UN, as stated by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO).


At the Earth Summit, the UNEP will be promoted and expanded to “specialized agency” with a new title, UN Environment Organization (UNEO).

The UNEO will prop up the Sustainable Development division of the UN. The same agency that disseminates Agenda 21 policies to governments will be centralized into a global agency with powerful international backing.

As the unscientific assertions of a global environmental crisis, vanishing biodiversity and over-population become more “urgent” to the UN; the insertion of international governance is being covertly added into the mix as the answer to solve all problems worldwide.

With the assistance of the UN, corporations have begun descending on Africa to aid in the securitization of their natural resources.

Examples like an $11 million dollar project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Coca-Cola Corporation are usurping 50,000 Kenyan and Ugandan smallholders to produce fruit for Minute Maid, a subsidiary for Coca-Cola.

"Africa is now the last frontier in terms of arable land," said James Nyoro, the Rockefeller Foundation’s managing director for Africa. "With the population growing to 9 billion, the rest of the world will have to depend upon Africa to feed it."

Researchers for the British Geological Survey (BGS) and the University of London have uncovered underground aquifers of water in Africa that are 100 times the amount found on the surface of the continent; and have written a paper in the Environmental Research Letters journal. They created a detailed map of the underground water.

This discovery is the largest attempt at water privatization by governments and international governances.

The UNEP is also creating a project with the Capacity Building for the Biotrade Project (CBBT). Their concerns are with the use, collection, production and commercialization of goods and services for use and trade that expressly derived from the native biodiversity – plants, species and organisms in our environment.

The UNEP seeks to control the trading of these products to make sure they are cultivated in line with their definition of social, environmental and sustainable.

As the desire for natural products in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries becomes more popular, the UN wants to gain control to secure profits and production standards.

Speaking at the UN Earth Summit, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah , the Minister of Environment and Tourism, hopes that “biodiversity could become an even greater asset for sustainable, pro-poor development in [Namibia].”

Nandi-Ndaitwah promotes policy reforms and financial investments from the public and private sectors targeted at Namibia’s key BioTrade products and services. Through the use of multinational corporate relationships, control over the use of agricultural land in rural areas and implementation of BioTrade policies, research and development, the land grabbing by the UN will soon become extremely lucrative.

The UNEP has also announced that they are investing in green projects under the African Carbon Asset Development(ACAD) Facility and expansion plans.

ACAD is looking for financial investors, along with their current holders Stand Bank, to “re-enlisted in the public-private partnership”.

Sylvie Lemmet, Director of UNEP’s Division of Technology, Industry and Economics, is excited about the expansion plans:

UNEP is pleased to announce the expansion of ACAD, and recognizes that much work still needs to be done to help African green entrepreneurs access carbon finance. We are thrilled to have helped not only bring good projects to fruition, but also to have supported the African financial sector evaluate the potential of innovative carbon projects. These latest developments suggest a strong vote of confidence in ACAD and signal Africa’s emergence as a fully-fledged carbon market player.

These plans for the ACAD originated by provisions of the German government’s International Climate Initiative by investing a facility that will seed the opportunities for more funding.

Following suit is the French government who is negotiating to contribute through the French Global Environment Facility administered by the Agence Française de Développement.

The UN has enacted a carbon credit scheme under the registration of large-scale wind power projects in Africa. Multinational corporations are financing this plan to mandate LED lights to Rwandan households.

ACAD will focus their global carbon sector and green economy schemes through Africa because of its natural resources. These projects are slated to attract commercial funding that will expand the ACAD’s reach.

ACAD is Africa’s first project development support facility dedicated to increasing carbon project deal-flow, while the UNEP Risoe Centre on Energy, Climate and Sustainable Development is leading UNEP activities related to carbon finance and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

Nigeria's 911: The Dana Air Crash, the Terrorist Act of Indian negligence

THE CRASH















Our Dearly Departed; the Beautiful ones

The Anyaenes; Father, mother, sister, four kids, two cousins and a mother-in-law.






Two sisters, Jennifer and Anita Onita, visiting from the US for a wedding


Ijeoma; enroute Lagos


Some crew members of ill-fated flight


Cabin crew


Uche; Cabin crew member


All, without exception, reduced to body bags


At times like this, words fail me. And even if they didn't my thoughts, but for the following, are best left unspoken. May all their precious souls rock in God's place as they depart this wicked world for the Divine Warmth of His Bosom.

Startling facts about vaccines

Culled from the International Medical Council on Vaccination

Some of the diseases that have documented associations with vaccines

•Allergies and eczema
•Arthritis
•Asthma
•Autism
•Acid reflux requiring an infant to take proton pump inhibitors, which have many side effects
•Cancer
•Diabetes (infant and childhood)
•Kidney disease
•Miscarriages
•Long list of neurological and autoimmune diseases
•Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)
And many, many more.

Some known vaccine side effects, documented in medical literature and/or in package inserts

•Arthritis, bleeding disorders, blood clots, heart attacks, sepsis
•Ear infections
•Fainting (with reports of broken bones)
•Kidney failure requiring dialysis
•Seizures/epilepsy
•Severe allergic reactions, such as hives and anaphylaxis
•Sudden death
And many common diagnoses given for hospital admissions.

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, (NVICP) has awarded more than $1.2 billion in damages to children and adults injured by vaccines.
Autism is associated with vaccines. Autism was rare until the mass vaccination programs were accelerated in 1991, with the introduction of the hepatitis B vaccine and the HiB (meningitis) vaccine. Tens of thousands of parents will attest that autism appeared in their children very soon after they were given these, and other, vaccines.

Drug companies, insurance companies and the medical system get rich when you get sick.
•Vaccines do not give life‐long immunity, which means booster shots are recommended.
•Each booster shot increases the risk of more side effects.
•Vaccine side effects can make you sick for the rest of your life. Conveniently, there are many drugs to treat the side effects caused by vaccines.
•In the U.S., neither drug companies nor doctors can be sued when something bad happens from a vaccination. Both are protected by the 1986 National Child Vaccine Injury Act. This law, signed into effect by the then president, Ronald Reagan, decreed: “No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine‐related injury or death.” (Public Law 99‐660)
•Drug companies have infiltrated and seized control over the entire healthcare system, including medical schools, medical journals, hospitals, clinics and the local pharmacy. A doctor’s very livelihood thus depends on blind faith, without questioning any aspect of any vaccination. Even when obvious evidence of vaccine damage occurs right before a doctor’s eyes, s/he is usually unwilling to consider a vaccine as the cause. Though uncorrupt science and medicine support rejection of vaccines, doing so can be considered professional career suicide.
•Hospitals benefit financially from hospitalizations and tests.
•Drug companies make billions of dollars from vaccines.
•Drug companies make tens of billions of dollars from drugs given to treat side effects and life‐time illnesses caused by vaccines.
•Vaccines are the backbone of the medical system. Without vaccines, healthcare costs would go down because we would have a healthier overall society.

Some Vaccine Ingredients

•Stray viruses and bacteria from the animal cell cultures that vaccines are made in.
•Mercury, a well‐documented neurotoxin, is still in the multi‐dose flu vaccines throughout the world. Trace amounts remain in several other vaccines.
•Aluminum, a poison that can cause bone, bone marrow and brain degeneration.
•Animal cells from monkeys, dog kidneys, chickens, cows, and humans.
•Formaldehyde (embalming fluid), a known carcinogen.
•Polysorbate 80, known to cause infertility in female mice and testicular atrophy in male mice.
•Gelatin, from pigs and cows, known to cause anaphylactic reactions, is found in large quantities in the MMR, chickenpox and shingles vaccines.
•Monosodium glutamate (MSG) in inhaled flu vaccines, is known to cause metabolic disturbances (e.g. diabetes), seizures and other neurologic disorders.
How is it possible that vaccines will not be harmful to your health?

We have exchanged chicken pox for autism, flu for asthma, ear infections for diabetes. The list goes on and on. In the zeal to eliminate a short list of relatively benign microbes, we have traded temporary illnesses for pervasive, life‐long diseases, disorders, dysfunctions and disabilities.

Now, go figure why vaccine manufacturers have legal immunity from vaccine-related injuries. The foremost reason is because some of these big pharmaceutical companies that produce these vaccines are also big donors to political campaigns. See how it works? Scratch my back, I scratch yours.

Educate yourself before you vaccinate that child

Forty-nine doses of fourteen vaccines before the age of six, if not murder, is definitely a DEATH WISH for your child!