Is it too late to add another headline or three? (0.00 / 0)

I apologize for not getting to this yesterday and hope it's not out of line to offer these here.  If not I've got three related ones.  All the documentation comes from a series of four half hour radio documentaries produced mostly by Canadian labor unions called The Ravaging of Africa by Asad Ismi and Kristen Schwaartz.

It's 2020, like you said.  And the headlines, if they still have headlines might read....

1.  Fourth Consecutive Year of Zero US Military Aid to Africa.  
Africa is the poorest and most war-torn region on the planet largely, but not entirely, due to our policy of offering military aid to more than 50 of the 54 nations on that continent.  For some time now, the cheapest prices for AK-47s anyplace on planet earth are in Africa.
Here also is a snatch from the audio of "Militarizing Africa", part one of the Ravaging of Africa by Asad Ismi and Kristen Schwartz.

"Following the end of the Cold War, the Clinton Administration undertook "a wave of new military training programs in Africa." From 1991 to 1995, the U.S. gave military assistance to 50 countries in Africa out of a total of 53; during 1991-98, U.S. arms sales and military training to Africa totalled more than $227 million. The U.S. has four different military training programs for Africa: International Military Education Training (IMET), Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET), African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) and the African Center for SecurityStudies (ACSS). Under IMET, the U.S. gave $7.9 million in outright grants to Sub-Saharan Africa in 1998, increasing it to $8.1 million in 1998 and $8.5 million in 2000. In contrast, South Asiagot only $5.7 million, $5.6 million, and $5.8 million, respectively. In 2000, the U.S. gave $8.1 million under ACRI to 39 African countries and U.S. Special Forces have trained 34 out of 53 African national militaries under JCET."

This is from part one of The Ravaging of Africa: Militarizing Africa.

AFRICOM, with its trademark integration of military and civilain functionaries --- the commander is an army general, the deputy a state dept diplomat -- is the complete militarization of US Africa policy.  Should be a headline about the 2nd anniversary of the close of AFRICOM too.

2.  Asia, Africa, Latin America Celebrate 3rd Anniversary of the Death of World Bank and the IMF.  These bodies dictate to the governments of less developed countries that they must privatize whatever public sectors exist and curtail expenditures on education, public health and the like in favor of repaying Western banks at payday loan interest.  Getting the World Bank and IMF off these people's necks would free them to educate and feed their people and develop.
A great primer in how this works is part 2 of The Ravaging of Africa: Economic War.

3.  As Fiscal Regs Tighten Worldwide, Last "Offshore" Banks Due To Shut Down  
Obama and the rest like to moralize about "African corruptio," but the fact is that finance capital maintains a global network of black hole banks that enable corporations to extract and launder vast sums of money from illegal logging in the Amazon and Indonesia to diamonds, oil and cocoa from West Africa, to titanium, timber and coltan from the Congo.  The fact that Nigerian brigadiers, Ferdinand Marcos, the Shah of Iran, Mobutu and others use the same means to stash their stolen assets abroad is just a by-product.  If you want to end African corruption, you have to start by stopping the hypocrisy and tightening the regs and closing the worldwide offshore banking industry from the Jersey Isles to the Cayman Islands to SE Asia and many houses in London and NY for that matter.  
For some well documented discussion of this listen to part 3 of The Ravaging of Africa: Corporate Plunder.

"If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other people, then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding..."
Zora Neale Hurston

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by: bruce.dixon @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 16:58:09 PM UTC

Good (0.00 / 0)

What steps over what timeline do you think would help get these headlines into reality?

--

Seeing The Forest -- Who is our economy FOR, anyway? Twitter: dcjohnson

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by: DaveJ @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 18:46:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Not exactly low hanging fruit... (0.00 / 0)

The first amounts to the US empire folding its tent in Africa, where it expects to get a quarter of its imported oil and all its coltan, titanium, and lots of other goodies in the near future.

The second, killing the World Bank and the IMF means that the loan shark's enforcer has to go away, and the debt written off.

And the third is the closing of all international hidey holes for trillions in dirty money that the global economy as it is depends upon along with the pipelines leading into and out of them.

Ending the militarization of our Africa policy, writing off structural adjustment, international loan sharking and making all international financial transfers transparent are all enormous jobs.

Guess it would start with public ed campaigns that contradict the bogus pro-interventionist narrative of the Save Darfur industrial complex, to make sure they know where their chocolate and coltan and titanium and such come from.  We'd need to bring into existence a real movement against militarism and empire too.  We'd have to discredit the banks and their narrative and their creatures here and abroad.

OK, OK, I don't exactly see the clear road from here to there, I admit that.  But we are about nothing if we will not challenge ourselves to do stuff more farsighted than the next two election cycles.  I know where to start, though.

"If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other people, then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding..."
Zora Neale Hurston

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by: bruce.dixon @ Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 21:46:56 PM UTC

[ Parent ]