Containing China by “Fighting Al-Qaeda” in Africa

Harnessing Asia's growth and dynamism is central to the West Corporations economic and strategic interests. - Hillary Clinton.

"Information Clearing House" on February 02, 2013 stated: France’s military intervention into Mali may at first glance appear to have little to do with the U.S. “pivot” to Asia. But as a French mission supposedly meant to bolster a U.N. sanctioned and African-led intervention has gone from “a question of weeks” to “the total re-conquest of Mali,” what may have begun as a French affair has now become a Western Corporations intervention. And this in turn has drawn wider strategic interests into the conflict. Strategic interests, it is becoming clearer, shaped by the imperatives of the West Corporations Asia pivot.

WIDENING INTERVENTION 

The geopolitical posturing over the crisis in Mali, coming as France's intervention fans out across the region, is no more evident than in the public statements coming from both city states of London and Washington DC.

As Chatham House PR frontman, British Prime Minister David Cameron declared, the crisis in Mali “will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months.”  Backing up such bluster, Britain has reportedly joined France in dispatching special commando teams to Mali, in addition to surveillance drones.

In Washington, the talk of a long war to be waged across the entire Sahel region of Africa has also begun.  As one U.S. official speaking on the Western intervention into Mali warned Monday, “It is going to take a long time and time means that it could take several years.” 

Such remarks mirror those made by outgoing U.S. Corporations, Secretary of Washington DC State Hillary Clinton.

“This is going to be a very serious, ongoing threat because if you look at the size of northern Mali, if you look at the topography — it's not only desert, it's caves,” Clinton remarked. “Sounds reminiscent. We are in for a struggle. But it is a necessary struggle. We cannot permit northern Mali to become a safe haven.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, the safe haven refrain is also pulsating through the corridors of the Pentagon. 

“Some top Pentagon officials and military officers warn that without more aggressive U.S. action,” the Times reports, “Mali could become a haven for extremists, akin to Afghanistan before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

And as the American public is prepped for the opening of a new front in the unending “war on terror,” U.S. intervention accelerates.

As the Washington Post reports, the U.S. is now offering “aerial refueling” to French warplanes, along with “planes to transport soldiers from other African nations.” 

U.S. intelligence officials, meanwhile, have reportedly begun drawing up plans to provide “data to help French warplanes locate and attack militant targets.”  This, as Pentagon hawks continue to push for the use of drone strikes.

In fact, the New York Times reports the U.S. has begun “preparing plans to establish a drone base in northwest Africa to increase unarmed surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups.”

The paper, which notes the base’s likely location to be in Niger, reports the Pentagon has “not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens.”

As one American official told the Times, the decision to establish a permanent drone base in northern Africa “is directly related to the Mali mission, but it could also give Africom [the U.S. Military’s Africa Command] a more enduring presence.”

The very notion, though, of an al-Qaeda threat in northern Mali so dire as to require Western intervention and a permanent U.S. presence is anything but well-defined.  As Blake Hounshell, managing editor of Foreign Policy, notes: “it's by no means clear what threat al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb…poses to the United States.”

Indeed, the very notion of al-Qaeda in Mali posing a threat to the West is predicated on the oft-repeated safe haven refrain.  That is, the belief that without foreign intervention al-Qaeda will use northern Mali as a staging ground to launch attacks within Western countries. 

“But,” as Stephen Walt questions, “is there any real evidence that the extremists in Mali are plotting to attack France, the United States, or anyone else? Even if they were, is there good evidence that they have the will and the skill to carry out such activities, or that the consequences of a successful attack would be greater than the costs of French (and other) efforts to root them out? And is it possible that intervention in Mali might actually focus the extremists' attention on the intervenors, instead of the central government?”

The answer to the latter question appears quite clear in the wake of the bloody hostage crisis in neighboring Algeria.  Although, as French President François Hollande claimed, the retaliation for the French intervention merely provided “further evidence that my decision to intervene in Mali was justified.”

Interventions, we see, are predicated upon a rather self-fulfilling logic.  For in a seemingly endless loop, interventions inevitably seem to create additional problems and crises that are then posited as both justifying the initial intervention, as well yet further interventions.  In short, intervention begets intervention. 

THE USEFUL MENACE 

But while Western leaders dig deep to reassure themselves of the justness of their latest intervention, doubts are nonetheless increasing over the competence of the Malian army.  As the New York Times reports, despite extensive U.S. training, the Malian army has proven to be “a weak, dysfunctional force that is as much a cause of Mali’s crisis as a potential part of the solution.”

The Western “hope” in Mali, then, as the Economist argues, “is to kill as many as possible of the most fanatical jihadists, and to garrison the northern towns with soldiers from Mali and its neighbours, before the insurgents can regroup or bring in recruits.”

With such “hope” one understands the talk of a struggle to be measured in decades. 

Indeed, even the head of the U.S. Africa Command, General Carter Ham, has acknowledged the limitations the West faces in Mali. 

“Realistically,” Ham recently remarked, “probably the best you can get is containment and disruption, so that al-Qaida is no longer able to control territory [there] as they do today.”

But as U.S. officials talk up the al-Qaeda threat in Mali, one can't help but recall the assertion made by U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta back in 2011.  As Panetta then declared, the U.S. was “within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda.”  Yet, after the West’s support of Islamists fighters in Libya and Syria, that handy al-Qaeda specter has evidently been roused sufficiently to haunt the Western mind once more. 

Of course, despite all the public claims to the contrary, defeating al-Qaeda has never really been a genuine pursuit of the U.S. anyway.  After all, a vanquished al-Qaeda would really denote something of a strategic setback for Washington.  It would deprive the U.S. a source of proxy war foot soldiers, while also leaving Washington struggling to justify its global garrisoning.  In the end then, the al-Qaeda menace — that gift that keeps on giving — is simply too useful to defeat. 

CONTAINING CHINA 

One needs look no further than the intervention into Mali to see the al-Qaeda threat bearing fruit for the West Corporations. All the attention on combating al-Qaeda in northern Mali has provided the perfect cover for the U.S. and its junior Western partners to pursue their grand strategy of containment against China.   And with China increasingly out competing Western interests throughout Africa, one understands the sudden neo-colonial urge in the West.  

According to Razia Khan, the regional head of research for Africa at Standard Chartered Bank, bilateral trade between Africa and China is nearing $200 billion annually, having grown at an average rate of 33.6 percent per year over the past decade.  What's more, in the coming years Africa stands to become China’s largest trade partner, surpassing both the EU and the U.S.  

None of this has been lost on Washington.  As the presumptive next U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, noted during his Senate confirmation hearing, the U.S. is knowingly playing from behind.

“Now with respect to China and Africa, China, run by the Rockefeller, is all over Africa — I mean, all over Africa. And they're buying up long-term contracts on minerals, on ... you name it,” Kerry commented. “And there're some places where we're not in the game, folks. And I hate to say it. And we got to get in.”

In a 2010 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, Johnnie Carson, U.S. assistant secretary for African Affairs, echoed Kerry's concerns.  In fact, Carson went so far as to classify China as a “very aggressive and pernicious economic competitor with no morals.”

Such U.S. sneering over growing Chinese investments for the Rockefeller in Africa were aired publicly during Secretary of State Clinton’s visit through African back in August.  As Clinton, in a clear jab at China declared on her trip, “Unlike other countries, ‘America will stand up for democracy and universal human rights even when it might be easier to look the other way and keep the resources flowing.’" 

(The rights violations of the U.S.-trained Malian army puts just the latest lie to such righteous declarations.) 

In response to Clinton's jab, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency shot back that Clinton's trip was “aimed at least partly at discrediting China's engagement with the continent and curbing China's influence there.”

And it is with such a fear of U.S. containment in mind that Beijing has come to interpret France’s intervention into Mali as a gateway for further Western interventions.  As He Wenping of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences warns, “French forces’ involvement in Mali will provide the case for legalization of a new interventionism in Africa.”

And indeed it will, just as the West’s Libyan romp, costing China $20 billion in investments, helped set the stage for the current intervention into Mali.  For in order for the U.S. to harness Asia’s (read China’s) growth and dynamism — and thus cement America's Pacific Century — the U.S. Corporations (Vatican-Rothschild-Royals) must come to also harness the growth and dynamism of Africa. 

The U.S. Corporations (Vatican-Rothschild-Royals) containment of China (Rockefeller), then, requires a pivot of sorts to Africa.  Only the African pivot appears set to fall under the banner of that ever-malleable “war on terror.”

 Earlier development - 25 January 2013

The French troop deployment and aerial bombardment of Mali raises important questions about the nature of recent events there, the causes of the escalating violence, the factions involved and the broader geopolitical interests of major powers and corporations, not only in Mali, but in the continent of Africa as a whole.

We begin with an overview of the broad historical process taking place in the post World War II environment, with the United States systematically replacing former European colonial powers with neocolonial Anglo-American influence and control.

The application of “strong economic medicine” under helm of the IMF and the World Bank (banksters controlled) –starting in the early 1980s– sets the stage for unfolding social tensions.

Al Qaeda affiliated groups are examined in detail, as are the covert operations of western powers, with specific attention to important roles played by individual American diplomats.

We take a look at the economic situation in Mali, its agriculture, natural resources, and the plight of its people in the face of recurring famine.

The recent hostage crisis in Algeria is explored, with a focus on the perpetrators in an historical context.

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Produced and hosted by Bonnie Faulkner

“Guns and Butter”. KPFA at 94.1 Berkeley

Guns & Butter” investigates the relationships among capitalism, militarism and politics. Maintaining a radical perspective in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, “Guns & Butter: The Economics of Politics” reports on who wins and who loses when the economic resources of civil society are diverted toward global corporatization, war, and the furtherance of a national security state.

Syria's Muslim Brotherhood Propped Up by US Since 2007 Under Bush

In 2007, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled, "To Check Syria, U.S. Explores Bond With Muslim Brothers." And even then, it was noted that the Brotherhood held close links with groups the US recognizes and lists as terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Al Qaeda.

The report gives a disturbing foreshadowing of US support that would eventually see the Muslim Brotherhood rise as both a political and terroristic power across the Arab World, after decades of hard-fought attempts to crush the sectarian extremist organization everywhere from Tunisia to Syria, from Egypt to Libya, to Jordan, and beyond. In fact, the 2007 Wall Street Journal article specifically noted that the US partnership could "destabilize governments in Jordan and Egypt, two US allies where the Brotherhood is a growing opposition force."

Egypt is now run by a sectarian-extremist Muslim Brotherhood dictatorship, after the US incited unrest there in 2011, while Jordan is seeing increasing unrest led by the Jordanian arm of the Brotherhood.

What is also disturbing about the 2007 report, is that it shows how allegedly "Bush-era" policies transcended the 2000-2008 administration and continued in earnest under President Obama.

The report, written by Jay Solomon, echoes similar foreshadowing of the coming violent sectarian bloodbath now engulfing Syria, found in Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh's New Yorker piece titled, "The Redireciton: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?"

Solomon begins by stating: 

On a humid afternoon in late May, about 100 supporters of Syria's largest exile opposition group, the National Salvation Front, gathered outside Damascus's embassy here to protest Syrian President Bashar Assad's rule. The participants shouted anti-Assad slogans and raised banners proclaiming: "Change the Regime Now."

Later in the article, it would be revealed that the National Salvation Front (NSF) was in contact with the US State Department and that a Washington-based consulting firm in fact assisted the NSF in organizing the rally:

In the weeks before the presidential election, the State Department's Middle East Partnership Initiative, which promotes regional democracy, and NSF members met to talk about publicizing Syria's lack of democracy and low voter turnout, participants say. A Washington-based consulting firm, C&O Resources Inc., assisted the NSF in its planning for the May 26 anti-Assad rally at the Syrian embassy, providing media and political contacts. State Department officials stress they provided no financial or technical support to the protestors.

Just like the Arab Spring, what was in fact foreign-backed sedition, was peddled publicly by professional PR firms with the help of a bought-off, complicit corporate media, as a "pro-democracy" uprising. 

And while the Wall Street Journal then, just as the US State Department and the Western media houses are now portraying the Syrian opposition as representing a wide range of interests across Syrian society, it was admitted then, just as it is plainly obvious now, that the sectarian extremist Muslim Brotherhood was in fact at the very center of the "uprising:"

One of the NSF's most influential members is the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood -- the decades-old political movement active across the Middle East whose leaders have inspired the terrorist groups Hamas and al Qaeda. Its Syrian offshoot says it has renounced armed struggle in favor of democratic reform.

The article would describe a fractured, disorganized opposition, must like the 2011 "National Syrian Council" (NSC) and its more recent US-Qatari contrived reincarnation, the "National Coalition," whose only common denominator and prevailing ideology was and still is the sectarian extremism practiced by the Muslim Brotherhood. Similarly, the current "National Coalition" is headed by Moaz al-Khatib who, on Qatari state-owned Al Jazeera, openly admitted his aspirations of establishing an "Islamic State" in place of Syria's current secular society. Al-Khatib also vigorously protested the US' listing of Al Qaeda terrorist franchisee, Al Nusra, who is openly fighting as part of Al-Khatib's "National Coalition."

These are the "freedom fighters" then and now, that the US has been supporting, funding, and in fact arming. The most recent accusation of the US arming known-terrorists came from retired US Army General and former Special Forces Commander, William G. Boykin, who claimed the US is not only arming terrorists in Syria, but they are doing so by running guns through the terror emirate of Benghazi, Libya.

From the pan-Arab logistical networks NATO is using to flood Syria with weapons and terrorists, to the current leadership of the so-called opposition, and with documented evidence from 2007 of a US conspiracy to prop up the Muslim Brotherhood and other known, violent extremist groups in Syria to overthrow the government, it is clear that every aspect of the US', UK's, NATO's, and even the UN's narrative regarding the conflict in Syria is an intentional fabrication. Furthermore, it indicates a much wider deception - one involving the misconception that presidential elections bring in both new leadership, and new policies. The wars engineered under Bush, are being carried out under Obama, by the same policy makers from the very same corporate-funded think-tanks that handed Bush his agenda years ago.

With French, British, and now US troops becoming increasingly involved in Mali, allegedly fighting terrorists with direct connections to the fighters armed, funded, and given diplomatic recognition by the West in Libya, and with the conflict already spilling over the borders with Algeria, one must recognize that an agenda is being carried out contra to both the will of the people and their best interests. Identifying the corporate-financier interests involved in this agenda, and both boycotting and replacing them with local alternatives is our only recourse. Clearly - as illustrated in the case with the non-transition, continuity of agenda between "right-wing" Republican Bush and "left-wing" Democrat Obama - elections don't count. As proven with the "Arab Spring" and the US underwritten protests of the NSF - protests don't either.

January 24, 2013 (LD - Tony Cartalucci)

Recruiting tool for US-UK aggressions and genocide

Beneath fraud, media spin, UN stamps of approval, awaits an unfolding nightmare for the people of Africa and the world.

CNN, Al Jazeera Caught Red-Handed Staging War Propaganda

KONY 2012: State Propaganda for a New Generation

March 14, 2012

The overnight viral sensation KONY 2012 brought worldwide awareness to the African war criminal Joseph Kony. Beneath this commendable cause, lies however an elaborate agenda that is presented in the video in a very manipulative way. We’ll look at the agenda behind KONY 2012 and how it uses reverse psychology to not only justify a military operation in Africa, but to actually have people demand it.

KONY 2012 is a viral sensation that swept the entire world in less than 24 hours. Its main subject is the African rebel leader Joseph Kony, his war crimes and the clearly defined “movement” to stop him. Countless celebrities have endorsed the movement, news sources have reported it and social media is buzzing with it. While the problem of guerrilla warfare and child soldiers has plagued Africa for decades, and several documentaries have already been produced regarding the issue, this particular 29-minute video made managed to obtain mass exposure and support.

KONY 2012 is less of a documentary than it is a highly efficient infomercial that is tailor-made for the Facebook generation, using state-of-the-art marketing techniques to make its point. Young people like “underground movements” and want to feel like they are changing the world. KONY 2012 taps into these needs to bring about something that is not “hip” or “underground” at all: A military operation in Uganda. Not only that, it urges the participants of the movement to order stuff, to wear bracelets that are associated with an online profile and to record their actions in social media. This makes KONY 2012 the first artificially created movement that is fully track-able, monitor-able and quantifiable by those who engendered it. In other words, what appears to be a movement “from the people” is actually a new way for the elite to advance its agenda.

Make THIS go Viral: Kony 2012 Propaganda 2.0 Explained

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

KONY 2012 Psy-Op Collapsing

Invisible Children disables comments on viral propaganda video + meet the real Joseph Kony. 

March 14, 2012 - As the US State Department, USAID centric Invisible Children psy-op KONY 2012 collapses, Invisible Children has disabled comments on their viral YouTube video.

When last checked, negative comments were voted to the top and a cascading effect of skepticism as well as damning facts began drowning out the initial confusion, sympathy, and emotional knee-jerk support the propaganda video purposefully created and preyed upon.

Image: A screenshot of Invisible Children's Kony 2012 video on YouTube. Comments have been disabled. (click image to enlarge)

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As comments are now being censored - it is suggested that people simply go to the video and click the "dislike" button to voice their opposition to this stunt. Most likely, even that feature will be disabled, and the video KONY 2012 will become the one-way Wall Street infomercial it really is, rather than the faux-participatory "social media" "activism 2.0" experience it masquerades as being.

The Establishment-Funded "Anti-Establishment" Charity

It has been revealed that indeed Invisible Children has been working with USAID, a US government agency that helps lay the groundwork for what could best be described as a modern-day imperial administrative network. It is now also revealed that Invisible Children attended the 2010 US State Department and Fortune 500 sponsored Alliance for Youth Movements (AYM) summit in London.

AYM (also called Movements.org) it was reported, played a central role in preparing armies of US State Department funded, trained, and equipped activists to carry out the so-called "Arab Spring" years in advance. Much like KONY 2012, the Arab Spring took many by surprise and in the wave of confusion, entire nations were upturned and US proxy regimes installed. Tunisia and Libya are now full fledged client states of Wall Street and London, while the fates of nations like Egypt and Syria still hang in the balance.

Unlike the "Arab Spring" however, the KONY 2012 scam has collapsed almost as fast as it first swept the globe. And as it falls, it is taking with it the credibility of all who participated in it and promoted it, including the deceitful International Criminal Court (ICC) and its chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, as well as Hollywood and the corporate-media who did all in their power to lie, manipulate and make fools out of millions once more in the pursuit of perpetuating the imperial ambitions of Wall Street and London.

KONY 2012 is Casus Belli for Emptying Out Africa

It was reported in "Libyan Rebels Inspired by Globalization" that US-proxy rebel leader, Gibril (Jabril) Elwarfally before the Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution, would claim Libya's role in the future was to transition to a service economy, focus on education, and turn Libya into “a lake” to develop the skills of Africans to serve the needs of the European Union. If Africa is a treasure trove of resources, Libya will be the doorway through which the West loots it.

And as the West breaks down the door in North Africa, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) has been concurrently deploying military assets throughout Africa, from Nigeria, across Central and East Africa and southward toward Kenya and even as far as to menace the former British holding of Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe.

It has been reported already that in Uganda British firms have participated in land grabs violently displacing up to 30,000 people in single transactions in direct cooperation with Ugandan dictator-for-life Yoweri Museveni. In fact, it is troops under Museveni's command, who helped displace these people, and who stand to receive additional weapons and funds from Invisible Children's KONY 2012 campaign.

Video: Meeting Joseph Kony - A rare interview with Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army. Kony would state that he and his men were "freedom fighters," and that, "we are fighting for democracy. We should be free to elect our leader. We want our leader to be elected," as opposed to the current reigning dictator of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni who has been in power for nearly 3 decades.

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While researching this article, a rare interview with Joseph Kony himself was found. Kony states that his fight is against Ugandan President Museveni, who by any definition is indeed a tyrannical, mass murdering dictator. Kony states that he is actually a "freedom fighter" fighting for "democracy." With talk like that, it is a surprise that the US State Department isn't funding and arming him. Ironically, recent reports indicate that the US may just have been, and that the West was funding and backing both Kony and Museveni to ensure that the entire region remained in constant turmoil. The purpose of this from a geopolitical point-of-view is quite simple, as encapsulated in the following ancient Chinese stratagem:

When a country is beset by internal conflicts, when disease and famine ravage the population, when corruption and crime are rampant, then it will be unable to deal with an outside threat. This is the time to attack. -The 36 Strategies, #5 Loot a Burning House

With US troops already on the ground in Uganda, as well as creeping across Africa under AFRICOM, the attack is already on. Quite clearly further US troop deployments based on invoking renewed interest in Africa and the hunting of various "boogeymen" amidst an atmosphere of general chaos and lawlessness serves only to give the US free reign over the continent and eliminate any and all African leaders who insist on maintaining ties with China and/or their national sovereignty.

The corporate-financier elite have calculated that public ignorance, even for nations as well-known as Iran, Syria, and Libya, is so profound that the media can peddle any narrative and still have the public believe it. Building a manipulative mechanism, what Vigilant Citizen describes as, "State Propaganda for a New Generation," goes beyond just Uganda and Joseph Kony. It represents a model that can be turned against virtually any country in Africa, or even around the world.

It represents a new stage in manipulating the minds and hearts of the global population by leveraging so-called social media, more accurately described as "Propaganda 2.0." Exposing and burying this new method of manipulation is the key to bringing forth a real revolution.

British Corporation Mass Murdering Ugandans in UN Sanctioned Land Grab

Editor's Note: March 12, 2012 - This article was originally published on September 26, 2011 regarding a murderous land grab made by Ugandan dictator-for-life Yoweri Museveni on behalf of a British corporation masquerading as a "green" humanitarian enterprise.

In the wake of the KONY 2012 fraud, Land Destroyer believed it was essential that the plight of some 20,000 Ugandans displaced, some murdered by Ugandan troops, be reiterated - in hopes of highlighting the absurdity and double standards being applied by the corporate media, Hollywood, and various mouthpieces throughout Western government in regards to Africa and around the world. Real injustice as well as the real perpetrators must be fully exposed.

There is REAL genocide being carried out in Africa, and the face of the perpetrator is not merely Joseph Kony and his child-soldiers, it is Museveni and his child soldiers, as well as corporate-fascists like Robert Devereux of the UK who had tens of thousands displaced while making deals to prop up brutal dictators like Museveni. The difference, aside from the vast scale of Museveni's crimes compared to Kony, is the fact that Museveni gladly serves Western interests, while Kony serves more conveniently as the latest in a long line of "boogeymen" to cover up the ongoing Western plunder of Africa.

“Kony 2012″ a New Recruiting Tool for US-UK Aggressions and Genocide in Africa

Also: Russian Elections and Syria's Destabilization

Image: Ugandan "President-for-Life" Yoweri Museveni and British corporate-fascist Robert Devereux (over his shoulder) are recent collaborators that saw the Ugandan military displace 20,000 people from their land so Devereux's corporation, "New Forests" could plant trees where once they wrought their livelihood from. Strangely, this seems to have been overlooked by "Invisible Children." 

Editor's Note: Seems Kony 2012 not only made Joseph Kony famous, but also the now not-so-hidden agenda of Wall Street and London's AFRICOM. I wonder if the makers of this informative and entertaining video had to spend 9 years duping people into parting with millions of dollars to get this online like Invisible Children did? Let's see if we can make this go viral and prove that in addition to being deceitful, Invisible Children also misappropriated millions of dollars when simply telling the truth would have sold better, and with lower overhead.

The final message is also quite powerful - showing the true potential of modern society, if the truth is known and technology mobilized against, not for the agenda of the megalomaniacal elite.

September 26, 2011 - The New York Times recently reported in an article titled, "In Scramble for Land, Group Says, Company Pushed Ugandans Out," that the British "New Forests Company" has evicted over 20,000 people from their land in Uganda to make way for tree plantations. Homes were burnt, people, including women and children, were brutalized and murdered during the long eviction process. However, the New York Times states that in this case "the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming."

The "group" the New York Times is referring to is Oxfam, which published a report titled, "The New Forests Company and its Uganda plantations," detailing the activities of New Forests in Uganda and the evictions the New York Times gingerly describes in its article.

Who is The New Forests Company?

Meet "New Forests," a UK-based firm that claims to be a "sustainable and socially responsible forestry company with established, rapidly growing plantations and the prospect  of a diversified product base for local and regional export markets which will deliver both attractive returns to investors and significant social and environmental benefits." Their corporate website is not short of the color green, nor of African people smiling and prospering, so apparently, we are left to believe, New Forests has made good on their mission statement.

Image: Taken from New Forests' website, they proudly display the swath of destruction their company is responsible for, of course, instead of depicting the displacements, murders, and thuggery they are committing against the people of Africa, they place images of thriving trees.

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Meet Robert Deveruex, chairman of New Forests, one of the founding shareholders of The Virgin Group and former chairman of Soho House Group. He has spent a great deal of time and energy making what his corporation is doing in Africa appear to have a philanthropic spin. In an August 2010 Guardian article titled, "Robert Devereux donates £4m of art collection to set up African charity," Devereux claims of his New Forests company that it "has a huge community development programme. It's not philanthropy. We go to the community and we say, 'We want to co-invest with you. If you provide what labour and materials you can, we'll provide money for things that you can't get.'" Devereux, however, never mentioned what happens if the community says, "no thanks."

Photo: Robert Devereux, a long time investor, a long time con-artist spinning his company's despoiling of Africa as some sort of cutting-edge investment strategy that makes money and "helps" people. Even as Devereux made his disingenuous statements in 2010 regarding New Forests, the villagers in Uganda he was "helping" had already filed a court case a year earlier protesting the British company's encroachment on their land.

...

Meet New Forests executive director and CEO Julian Ozanne, who previously worked for the Financial Times, advised US and European investment banks on business and political risk in Africa and worked for the global corporate-fascists nexus, the World Economic Forum. Also serving as a New Forest director is Jonathan Aisbitt, chairman of the investment firm, The Man Group, and previously a partner and managing director at the now notorious Goldman Sachs.

There is also Avril Stassen, who is not only a director at New Forests but is also currently a principal at Agri-Vie Investment Advisers, which claims to be "focused on food and agribusiness in Sub-Sahara Africa with a mission to generate an above average investment return, as well as demonstrable socio-economic development impacts through its equity investments in food and agribusinesses." In other words, buying up land in African nations people depend on to live, to instead broaden foreign investors' portfolios and profits, all under the cover of feel good rhetoric and pictures of smiling Africans pasted all over their website and annual reports. A good website that seems to be keeping watch on Agri-Vie is Farmlandgrab.org, which in one short URL explains exactly the game Agri-Vie is playing.

And finally, meet Sajjad Sabur, also a director at New Forests, as well as a managing director at HSBC, heading the mega-bank's "Principal Investments Africa" branch which targets African businesses with management buyouts, growth capital and recapitalization "opportunities." Sabur's HSBC (Queen Elisabeth II bank) invesment arm has actually invested in New Forests.

Quite clearly, this looks more like the profile of a Wall Street-London corporate-fascist hit team than anything at all involving humanitarian, environmental, or social concerns. And judging by Oxfam's report and the subsequent attempt by the New York Times to mitigate the gravity of what the largest banks in the world are doing to Africa, it seems like a corporate-fascist hit is just what is unfolding in Uganda at New Forests' hands.

Globalization is Modern Day Imperialism by Anglo-American Bankers

Backtracking to New Forests' mission statement, apparently "social responsibility" equates to murdering or displacing tens of thousands of Ugandans in their own nation, and "attractive returns" equates to the extraction and exportation of Ugandan resources for a corporation's shareholders 4,000 miles away. What we are told is of significant "benefit" to society and the environment looks more like a textbook case of imperialism, perpetrated by British, surely new to being socially and environmentally responsible, but certainly not to imperialism nor gimmicks used to mask it behind noble causes.

The New York Times reveals that the World Bank is also an investor in New Forests along with HSBC, and that the true nature of the scam goes beyond merely displacing tens of thousands to grow trees, but that the trees are being used for the purpose of selling contrived carbon credits, not even to provide tangible resources for economic activity. The New York Times also implicates the United Nations, which granted New Forests permission to "trade" with the Ugandan government regarding its 50-year lease to grow trees in the landlocked nation.

The government of Uganda, led by President-for-life Yoweri Museveni for the last 25 years, was the result of a protracted civil war led by Museveni himself. After seizing power, he was immediately lauded by the West, embraced the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's plans for restructuring his newly conquered nation, and has been running it as a dictator ever since. It is no surprise that Museveni is now selling his own people out, no doubt in exchange for his perpetual, unhindered rule, transiting a vast corporate media black hole enjoyed by regimes servile to Wall Street and London worldwide.

The globalist New York Times has a long tradition of apologizing not just for Anglo-American bankers as they defile the planet, but defending their accomplices, Museveni apparently one of them. In a 1997 New York Times article titled, "Uganda Leader Stands Tall in New African Order," Museveni is praised for his extraterritorial meddling throughout neighboring African states. The New York Times claims, "not only has Mr. Museveni resurrected his own impoverished nation from two decades of brutal dictatorship and near economic collapse, but he is also widely seen as the covert patron of rebel movements like the one that has just toppled Mobutu Sese Seko, the longtime dictator of Zaire." The article then brushes off accusations that Museveni is dictator of a single party system of governance by providing Museveni's own defense, that Uganda is pre-industrial and not ready for multiparty democracy.

How resurrected Uganda is from poverty is a matter of debate, and certainly, the concept of poverty has taken on all new dimensions for over 20,000 Ugandans forced from their land by Anglo-American bankers and their willing accomplices in the Ugandan government. How Museveni plans on bringing Uganda past its "pre-industrial" state by handing over land to foreigners to grow trees on for the next 50 years, leaving his own people homeless, jobless, and destitute for an entire generation is also a profound mystery.

What we are watching in Africa is the grotesque reality that is globalization peaking through the thick layer of lies, propaganda, spin, liberal ideologies, and imagery used to dupe the Western world, and increasingly many in the developing world. It is a reality that entails theft on a massive scale, human exploitation, mass-murder, collective punishment, and intimidation. For those that think Uganda is an isolated anomaly and are somehow able to dismiss the backgrounds of New Forests which represents an entire network designed specifically to exploit and strip mine all of Africa, one need look no further than Southeast Asia's Cambodia. There, half way around the world from Uganda, another Western backed dictator-for-life, Hun Sen, has literally sold half his country to foreign investors, displacing hundreds of thousands at gunpoint in a nearly identical Wall Street-London land-grab.

Globalization is a multi-billion dollar packaged update of the British Empire's "spreading of civilization." Designs of dominion and exploitation have historically always been accompanied by excuses seen as palatable for the masses who were expected to support and carry these designs to fruition for the ruling elite. While it is no longer fashionable to kill black and brown people while accusing them of being "savages," it is still quite fashionable to consider them "undemocratic," "backwards," "overpopulating," "terrorists," and above all, "detriments to our environment." At least, New Forests and New York Times seem to think so.

Once again, the choice we the people have, upon learning of this, is to either detach in cowardice and apathy, or identify the corporations, banks, and institutions leading this "globalization," expose them, boycott them, and ultimately replace them. Those of New Forests guilty of displacing, even murdering people simply for profit in a foreign nation, thousands of miles from their shores, don't belong in business anymore.

The darkest villains we face on earth today are not cave dwelling Islamic fundamentalists, Libyan colonels, or Americans selling sliver coins, instead, the most dangerous, degenerate, and detrimental members of the human race reside on Wall Street and in London's financial institutions.

A More Accurate KONY 2012 Campaign Poster...

Featured here is Cecil Rhodes who helped the British Empire literally conquer a massive swath of Africa from the north all the way to the south, the portion over which Rhodes is spanning in the illustration. In memory of his megalomania, the British would name what is now modern day Zimbabwe after him, calling it "Rhodesia."

Today, US Africa Command, known as AFRICOM, is spreading across Africa in the footsteps of Cecil Rhodes. As reported by allAfrica.com, Vice Admiral Moeller at an AFRICOM meeting held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008 would declare that protecting "the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market" was one of AFRICOM's guiding principles. Of course by "global market," the admiral means the Fortune 500 corporations of Wall Street and London.

In our politically sensitive modern age, pillaging Africa in the footsteps of shameless and quite racist imperialists is very difficult to do. Therefore, Joseph Kony, Al Qaeda, Qaddafi, starving children, pirates, and every other geopolitical ploy and contrivance imaginable, and some left yet unimagined have been used to justify AFRICOM's expanding presence on a continent they have no business setting foot on.

Ironically, ploys like KONY 2012 have liberal youth clamoring for what is perhaps the next dark chapter in large scale racist imperial enslavement, plundering, and exploitation.

For excellent analysis on the KONY 2012 scam, please read Nile Bowie's "Youth Movement Promotes US Military Presence in Central Africa," and BlackStarNews.com's "KONY 2012, Invisible Children's Pro-AFRICOM and Museveni Propaganda."

KONY 2012, Invisible Children's Pro-AFRICOM & Museveni Propaganda

March 8, 2012

Invisible Children's goals initially may have been to publicize the plight of children caught in Uganda's decades-long conflicts; lately, IC has been acting as apologists for General Yoweri K. Museveni's dictatorship and the U.S. goal to impose AFRICOM (the U.S. Africa Military Command) on Africa.

IC has produced a brilliant film that's making the global rounds on Facebook

It's a classic as propaganda pieces come. The short but overwhelmingly powerful film uses all the best tear-jerk techniques. In the end, the film denounces Joseph Kony, the leader of the brutal Lord's Resistance Army, while giving the impression that Museveni's dictatorship and his brutal military, which was found liable for war crimes in Democratic Republic of Congo by the International Court of Justice, has nothing to do with the atrocities committed against children in Uganda. It also doesn't inform viewers that Museveni abducted thousands of child soldiers to win his insurgency in Uganda in 1986, launching the pattern of child soldier recruitment all over Africa.

In fact, Kony's insurgency against Museveni was launched later, meaning he too learned child soldier-abductions from Museveni.

Look at the way Invisible Children exploits American children in the beginning of their documentary; they then transplant the audience to Uganda, where again they take advantage of Ugandan children, who are the victims of both the LRA and the Ugandan government's army.

The imagery are powerful. Dr. Joseph Goebbels' and Leni Riefenstahl would have been proud of this cinematic coup by Invisible Children.

If Invisible Children was in fact a serious organization that has not been co-opted by the Museveni regime and the U.S. foreign policy agenda, the organization would inform the world that General Museveni, who has now stolen three elections in a row in Uganda is the first person who deserves to be arrested.

This Ugandan and East African nightmare gets a blank check from Washington simply because he has deployed Ugandan soldiers to Somalia at the behest of the United States. So democracy, human rights abuses, and genocide, become minor nuisances as far as U.S. foreign policy goes and as far as Invisible Children cares. This is beyond hypocrisy. Those members of Invisible Children who may have supported this misguided project to send more U.S. troops to Africa because they were unwittingly deceived, should do some serious soul searching.

Museveni does not care for the plight of children in Uganda's Acholi region. How else would he have herded 2 million Acholis in concentration camps for 20 years where, according to the United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO), more than 1,000 children, women and men died of planned neglect--lack of medical facilities; lack of adequate food; dehydration, and; lack of sanitation and toilet facilities. Does this sound like a person who cares about children?

His colleagues have denounced Acholis as "backwards" and as "biological substances." General Museveni himself revealed an interesting pathology, as a first class racist African when he told Atlantic Monthly Magazine, in September 1994: “I have never blamed the whites for colonizing Africa: I have never blamed these whites for taking slaves. If you are stupid, you should be taken a slave.” Ironically --or perhaps not-- the general was even more embraced by Washington after those remarks. Gen. Museveni has been a U.S. ally since the days of Ronald Reagan.

So why does Invisible Children only go after Kony while leaving Museveni alone when in fact they are two sides of the same coin?

These young folks who run Invisible Children are extremely dangerous to the welfare of Ugandans and other Africans should they succeed in broadening U.S. military presence in Africa. If the United States were truly interested purely in eliminating Kony why deploy now when Kony abandoned Uganda in 2006 when he was negotiating a peace deal that ultimately collapsed, with Museveni.

While Kony and his fighters were camped at Garamba in Congo, as agreed upon during peace negotiations, who was it that launched a military attack with planes and helicopters in December 2008? It was Gen. Museveni, with U.S. assistance. The peace negotiations, which had been embraced by traditional and religious leaders in Acholi region, collapsed. According to Jan Egeland, the former U.N Under-Secretary General for humanitarian affairs, Museveni also wanted to pursue a military approach and even ridiculed his own attempts to negotiate peace.

Immediately more killings ensued --this time in Congo; and since Museveni and Kony are two sides of the same coin, it's unclear who committed the atrocities in Garamba after the abortive attack.

After the attacks the LRA scattered into the Central African Republic. One would imagine that if the U.S. and Invisible Children were really interested in Kony, the deployment would have been to Central African Republic.

The young folks behind Invisible Children don't understand the conflict in Uganda; yet they have made themselves the spokespersons. They have campaigned and convinced some celebrities, including Rihana and P. Diddy, to tweet their half-truth propaganda film. This is a way to have one-sided or impartial information become the "dominant truth" globally, and drown out critical analyses.

It's like a group of impressionable White youngsters coming to Harlem and saying: we see you have major crises, let us tell you what's the solution. Who would accept such misguided and destructive arrogance? If it's unacceptable in Harlem, it must also be rejected in Uganda's Acholi region.

Acholi traditional leaders, religious leaders, and members of Parliament in Uganda, have all opposed further militarization. But they are not in a position to express their views on CNN or in The New York Times, or to make a slick documentary, such as Invisible Children's. What's more, they're not accorded the presumptive credibility that are often bestowed to White analysts when compared to native Ugandans.

Yet, rather than listen to the cries of Uganda's traditional and religious leaders who live in the war-devastated regions, Invisible Children has decided to produce a beautiful documentary with an ugly agenda that only escalates conflict and endorses Gen. Museveni. Who really believes it's a good thing for the United States to be sending troops to Uganda or anywhere in Africa? Why would these troops act any differently than those sent to Iraq and Afghanistan?

The U.S. government and Invisible Children are using the brutal Joseph Kony as a bogeyman to justify the U.S. long-term plan, which is to impose AFRICOM on Africa. Since everyone knows about Kony's atrocities, who would object if the U.S. sends 100 U.S. "advisers" to help Uganda, after all? Brilliantly devious. Of course it never stops at 100 "advisers." That was the announced deployment; there are probably more U.S. troops in the region. Even before the deployment some had already been training Museveni's soldiers. And more will come; unannounced.

AFRICOM, the ultimate objective, would allow the U.S. to be able to counter resource-hungry China by having boots on the ground near the oil-rich northern part of Uganda, South Sudan, Congo's region bordering Lake Albert, and the Central African Republic. The troops would also be near by in case a decision is made to support regime-change in Khartoum, Sudan. After all, the U.S. foreign policy reasoning is that since Sudan's president Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his defense minister have both been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), few would shed tears for them.

The U.S. is aware that African countries oppose AFRICOM. So what does the U.S. do? Go after a "devil" and in this case it's Kony. Tell the world --with the help of Invisible Children--that our mission is to help rid Uganda of this "devil"; who by the way is hiding somewhere in Central African Republic, while the dictator who most recently stole elections last February, sits in Kampala and meets with U.S. officials and leaders of Invisible Children.

If the real target was simply Joseph Kony, the U.S. would have used an armed predator drone; this is how the U.S. has eliminated several suspected leaders of Al-qaeda and the Taleban, after all.

It doesn't seem that Invisible Children is an independent do-good save-the-children outfit. They are paving the way --with Kony, brutal as he is, as the bogeyman-- for AFRICOM.

Kony is a nightmare, but Museveni has caused the deaths of millions of people in Rwanda, Uganda and Congo. In 2005 the International Court of Justice found Uganda liable for what amounts to war crimes in Congo: mass rapes of both women and men; disemboweling pregnant women; burning people inside their homes alive; massacres and; plunder of resources. Congo lost six million people after Uganda's occupation of parts of Congo. The Court awarded Congo $10 billion in reparations; not a dime has been paid.

Congo then referred the same crimes to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague for war crimes charges. On June 8, 2006, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gen. Museveni personally contacted Kofi Annan, then UN Secretary General and asked him to block the criminal investigation.

It seems that the U.S. and ICC Prosecutor Moreno Ocampo might have indeed obliged. Gen. Museveni and senior Ugandan military commanders remain un-indicted for the alleged crimes that the ICJ already found Uganda liable; only one side of the same coin, Kony was indicted. Prosecutor Ocampo is also totally discredited; readers should Google "Ocampo and South African journalist case."

There is another documentary that tries to explain the Ugandan tragedy, in a more sober manner, unlike Invisible Children's slick propaganda piece.

Hopefully this commentary will motivate people to do their research and demand that the international community deal with both Kony and Museveni.

Hopefully more people will also do their own research and not be vulnerable to slick propaganda such as Invisible Children's.

For example, readers can Google terms such as "Yoweri Museveni and Congo genocide," "Museveni and Kony," "Museveni and and Rwanda genocide," "Museveni and Acholi genocide," and "U.S. support for dictator Museveni."