The American Wars that Kill Americans

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

The lifeless body of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Although the killing of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya might be a direct response to an offensive film produced in the United States, the truth is that the real reason for the violence in Libya is not the film itself, but the United States’ increasingly oppressive foreign policy towards the Middle East in an effort to set the region on fire.

Balkanization to divide and conquer has been the official American policy for many years, as stated in official US government documents.

The attack against the Americans took place in the city of Benghazi, a well known al-Qaeda power center, where alleged al-Qaeda gunmen who belong to Ansar al-Sharia carried out the attack on the Americans, captured the American ambassador and his staff before, paraded them on the streets, lynched them — Gaddafi style — and then killed them.

“The American ambassador and three staff members were killed when gunmen fired rockets in their direction,” said a Libyan official. The same al-Qaeda forces that are responsible for the killing of the ambassador are the ones recently supported by the United States and NATO in their attempt to destabilize Libya.

As reported by various news agencies, al-Qaeda led militias established themselves in Libya back in 2011, before launching multiple attacks against the Gaddafi regime in February of 2011. The core of the terrorist groups supported by the West were headed by a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, reports Infowars.com.

News agencies like the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France Presse have all reported about the financial and military support provided by the U.S. to Gaddafi opposition groups in Libya. Many if not all of those groups were al-Qaeda affiliates in the country or groups of armed militias that infiltrated the country from neighboring nations.

At the moment, Libya, Syria and Iran are infested with tribal lords, guerrilla groups and terrorist groups backed by the U.S. government and directly operated by the CIA and other western intelligence agencies. As mentioned by American white papers, the official U.S. policy is to destabilize countries that are not aligned with western imperialist policies.

As Barack Obama warns the world that the murder of the Ambassador will not go unpunished, the truth is that his death will work as an propaganda instrument to push for more American aggression in the region. As of now, the United States has launched drones over Libya in an attempt to “hunt” those who captured and killed Ambassador Stevens.

The same policy used in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, among others, is now being implemented in Libya, Syria and Iran, where intelligence agencies back local government opposition groups to promote conflict, murder innocent people and later call for an armed intervention by NATO or to support United Nations’ resolutions to invade and execute ‘humanitarian’ attacks on the population.

Do not expect the United States to withdraw its forces or rethink its murderous foreign policy abroad. The country will continue to execute their attacks on more nations in the Middle East and Africa to force the fall of more governments and to ‘light up more fires’ that render the West more power and more resources in those regions.

Africa Braces for Fall on Exports and Rising Food Prices

By PASCAL FLETCHER | REUTERS | JULY 31, 2012

Rising food prices could hit commodity producers in Africa with a dangerous “double whammy” when combined with an economic slowdown in Europe and China reducing African exports of oil and raw materials, a leading African economist said on Tuesday.

Mthuli Ncube, Chief Economist and Vice President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), saw the threat of a food price spike casting a shadow over an otherwise positive growth outlook for Africa that will outpace much of the rest of the world.

“Certainly, there is a lot of reason to worry,” Ncube told Reuters, recalling a food and fuel prices squeeze in 2008 that touched off social unrest and food riots in several African nations and also directly affected the continent’s growth.

The 2012 African Economic Outlook produced by the AfDB with other international institutions foresees Africa’s growth accelerating to 4.5 percent in 2012 from 3.4 percent in 2011 in a display of healthy resilience in tough global conditions.

But the World Bank warned on Monday that a worrying broad-based rise in grain prices fuelled by a severe drought in the U.S. Midwest would hurt the world’s poor, including those in the world’s least developed continent, Africa.

“It is a threat … if they (the food prices) keep rising, again we will have social upheaval that will threaten economic growth in Africa,” Ncube said in an interview on the sidelines of a youth employment promotion event in Johannesburg.

Another global food price spike would squeeze both net food importers in Africa and combine with the euro zone crisis in Europe and a slowdown in China’s growth to negatively impact African exporters of oil and other commodities.

“That then becomes a dangerous ‘double whammy’,” Ncube said.

It was estimated that a one percent drop in Europe’s GDP for example would shave half a percent off Africa’s growth.

Ncube added however that the looming food price squeeze could be less severe than in 2008, when it was accompanied by a damaging parallel rise in oil and fuel prices, growing use of biofuels and bad weather.

This sparked violent food riots in African states like Egypt and Cameroon, as well as elsewhere.

Ncube believed too that governments and global institutions were now more aware and better prepared to deal with a fresh food prices crisis. “The world knows what could happen … there is a better crisis response preparedness,” he said.

The AfDB, for example, would be ready to swing into action to financially support governments struggling to cope with sharply higher food import bills and budget crunches.

“PAINFUL SLOG” TO DIVERSIFY

Despite Africa’s comparatively strong economic expansion rates, the continent was experiencing “jobless growth”, particularly in relation to its huge reservoir of unemployed youth, Ncube said.

Youth represented 60 percent of Africa’s unemployed, and despite recording world-topping growth rates between 2000 and 2008, the continent was failing to create the number of jobs necessary to absorb the 10-12 million young and increasingly educated people entering the labor market each year.

Ncube said a major obstacle to more job creation was the persistence of what he called “one-sided economies” in Africa that exported oil and raw materials instead of moving decisively to diversify into job-multiplying manufacturing, commercial agriculture or agro-processing.

“It’s a painful slog to diversify,” he said.

“We need entrepreneurs to do it. We need to spend the time to build that business culture, the entrepreneurs,” he added.

Ncube identified efficient commercial farming in particular as a “missed opportunity” in Africa where, despite an abundance of fertile land, complex social and political issues of land ownership and title were still hampering farming development.

“Africa hasn’t cracked this yet,” he said.

U.S. Drone Military Bases all over the World and Amerika

RT | JUNE 14, 2012

The US is planning to expand secret intelligence bases throughout Africa with a view to combating terrorism in the region, says a new report by the Washington Post. It is the latest in a US push to militarize its presence on the continent.

The plans include the deployment of spy planes equipped with high-tech surveillance technology.

The US is set to extend its influence, opening a number of intelligence air bases “from the fringes of the Sahara to jungle terrain along the equator,” said the Washington Post.

The initiative dates back to 2007 and is indicative of the rapid expansion of US Special Forces operations in the region as part of the decade-long war against Al-Qaeda.

The US will use the strategically-placed bases to launch spy planes disguised as private aircraft kitted-out with a range of sensors able to record video, track infrared heat trails and tap into radio and mobile phone signals.

The reasoning behind the ratcheting-up of surveillance on the African continent by the US is the increasing presence of terrorist cells that could potentially destabilize the region.

The Washington Post said that the US government currently has a number of intelligence facilities across Africa, including Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Seychelles, Burkina Faso and Mauritania.

The bases in Burkina Faso and Mauritania are used to spy on Al-Qaeda.

The US military has expressed concerns over the growing influence of the Nigerian terrorist sect Boko Haram, blamed for a wave of bombings in the country in December and Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Shabab in Somalia.

In addition, 100 special troops are currently in action in Uganda to hunt for Joseph Kony, the leader of a brutal guerrilla group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army.

Some state department officials have questioned the necessity to step-up a US presence in Africa given that many of the terrorist groups active on the continent represent no direct threat to the US.

In spite of doubts the US continues to rack up its presence in Africa. Last month the Army Times confirmed US military plans to deploy over 3,000 troops across the continent as part of a “regionally aligned force concept.”

US to maintain ‘Light Footprint’ in Africa?

Officially the US is painting an altogether different picture of its operations in Africa. Army General Carter F. Ham top US Africa command officer said that the US is not seeking permanent military bases in the region.

“In Africa, I would say a light footprint is consistent with what we need and consistent with the defense guidance,”
said General Carter.

The general said he recognized that some African nations were concerned over increased US military presence across Africa, but stressed that this did not necessarily mean the US would be establishing more bases there.

However, in a testimony to US Congress in March he said that he wanted to increase US surveillance and reconnaissance in Africa.

“Without operating locations on the continent, ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] capabilities would be curtailed, potentially endangering US security,” he said.

From WIRED Magazine: 64 Drone Bases on American Soil

We like to think of the drone war as something far away, fought in the deserts of Yemen or the mountains of Afghanistan. But we now know it’s closer than we thought. There are 64 drone bases on American soil. That includes 12 locations housing Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles, which can be armed.

Public Intelligence, a non-profit that advocates for free access to information released a map of military UAV activities in the United States on Tuesday. Assembled from military sources — especially this little-known June 2011 Air Force presentation (.pdf)  – it is arguably the most comprehensive map so far of the spread of the Pentagon’s unmanned fleet.  What exact missions are performed at those locations, however, is not clear. Some bases might be used as remote cockpits to control the robotic aircraft overseas, some for drone pilot training. Others may also serve as imagery analysis depots.

The medium-size Shadow is used in 22 bases, the smaller Raven in 20 and the miniature Wasp in 11. California and Texas lead the pack, with 10 and six sites respectively and there are also 22 planned locations for future bases. ”It is very likely that there are more domestic drone activities not included in the map, but it is designed to provide an approximate overview of the widespread nature of Department of Defense activities throughout the U.S.,” Michael Haynes from Public Intelligence tells Danger Room.

The possibility of military drones (as well as those controlled by police departments and universities) flying over American skies have raised concerns among privacy activists. As the American Civil Liberties Union explained in its December 2011 report, the machines potentially could be used to spy on American citizens. The drones’ presence in our skies “threatens to eradicate existing practical limits on aerial monitoring and allow for pervasive surveillance, police fishing expeditions, and abusive use of these tools in a way that could eventually eliminate the privacy Americans have traditionally enjoyed in their movements and activities.”

As Danger Room reported last month, even military drones, which are prohibited from spying on Americans, may “accidentally” conduct such surveillance — and keep the data for months afterwards while they figure out what to do with it. The material they collect without a warrant, as scholar Steven Aftergood revealed, could then be used to open an investigation.

The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the U.S. military from operating on American Soil, and there’s no evidence that drones have violated it so far.

This new map comes almost two months after the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) revealed another one, this time of public agencies – including Police Departments and Universities – that have a permit issued by the Federal Aviation Agency to use UAVs in American airspace.

“It goes to show you how entrenched drones already are,” said Trevor Timm, an EFF activist, when asked about the new map. “It’s clear that the drone industry is expanding rapidly and this map is just another example of that. And if people are worried about military technology coming back and being sold in the U.S., this is just another example how drone technology is probably going to proliferate in the U.S. very soon.”

Domestic proliferation isn’t the same as domestic spying, however. Most — if not all — of these military bases would make poor surveillance centers. Many of the locations are isolated, far from civilian populations. Almost half of the bases on the map work only with the relatively-small Raven and Shadow drones; their limited range and endurance make them imperfect spying tools, at best. It’s safe to assume that most of the bases are just used for military training.

Privacy concerns aside, the biggest issue might be safety, as we’ve been reminded on Monday when a giant army drone crashed in Maryland.

Whoever Controls the Land will Control the Nations

Whoever Controls the Food will Control the People

By SUSANNE POSEL | OCCUPY CORPORATISM | MAY 15, 2012

Whoever controls the land controls the nation.

Corporations and foreign governments have been “ land-grabbing” from third world nations to control agriculture.

“What is missing the most in terms of land grabbing is a clear condemnation of this practice. That was one of the baseline demands of civil society,” Stephane Parmentier from aid agency Oxfam. “It was impossible to include it, because it was too sensitive and too controversial for quite a lot of member states.”

Nations like Ethiopia, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone, in Africa have “voluntarily” signed agreements with multi-national corporations and foreign investors, allowing them to control agricultural land. The nation’s leaders believe that giving access to their resources will benefit their people; however this is just another manipulative ploy to coercively acquire control over land, food production and securitization.

The world’s governments have agreed to follow UN dictated guidelines over land, and who controls the fate of land.

The United Nations (UN) has enacted global guidelines on purchasing agricultural land from developing nations like Africa and Asia.

The UN claims that to secure equality for the poor and disadvantaged, this international body must control their lands through the allowance of mutli-national corporations and governments who will develop the land for agriculture and securitize the crop yields; thereby giving the UN control over the global food supply.

The document entitled “ The UN Global Compact and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises” outlines through “voluntary” means, the UN will implement their international guidelines with respect to corporate conduct, standards and abilities.

The UN decries that their voluntary code of conduct promotes equal rights for women by securitizing title to land. They also claim that they will give poor people access to their own land once they own and control it. And once the UN controls the land, they will enact “legal help” to settle disputes.
This document requires governments and local communities to adhere to UN rules with respect to business practices.

The UN asserts that the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development; and the United Nations Convention against Corruption and subtle Agenda 21 initiates will allow their Global Compact principles to facilitate universal consensus.

To create this document and the guidelines within it, the UN collaborated with non-governmental groups, members of the global Elite within the private sector, and multi-national corporations.

“It’s a starting point that will help improve the often dire situation of the hungry and poor,” the head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Jose Graziano da Silva, said at a news conference in Rome.

Grazino da Silva said the guidelines should prompt revisions of national and international law.

Once agreements are signed, the land and the people are indebted to the UN for slave labor to work the land and watch their resources being reallocated to other countries for consumption. The promise of investment and technological advancement are just the hook to convince leaders to sign away the rights of their people and their land.

Over the last decade, the UN has “acquired” an area of land in Africa and Asia the size of Great Britain.

The World Bank, FAO and other UN agencies are meeting to create a new document to expand on the current guidelines. Certain acquisition of Africa through the guise of “investments” is a usurpation of land rights over a people who cannot say no or fight back.

Corporations like Cocoa-Cola have descended upon Africa by an $11 million dollar project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“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.”

Cocoa-Cola Corporation are employing 50,000 Kenyan and Ugandan small holders to produce fruit for Minute Maid, a subsidiary for Cocoa-Cola, to utilize their land in the hopes that crop yields will boost their profit margins.

“I have no doubt whatsoever that Africa can feed itself and that Africa can be a major contributor to world food security,” Namanga Ngongi, the former president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

It is also no coincidence that 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.

Andrew Mitchell, the United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for International Development is delighted by this find.

Considering the plethora of natural resources in Africa, it makes perfect sense why the UN and multi-national corporations are now usurping this continent for their own use.

The UN is currently allowing corporatism through aggressive international law to claim governance over crop production, privatization of water, disbursement of food stores and the eventuality of securing control over the world’s food supply.

IMF and US African Command Join Hands in the Plunder of the African Continent

by Nile Bowie
Global Research
January 9, 2012

Lagos Dissents Under IMF Hegemony

Nigeria: The Next Front for AFRICOM

On a recent trip to West Africa, the newly appointed managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde ordered the governments of Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon, Ghana and Chad to relinquish vital fuel subsidies. Much to the dismay of the population of these nations, the prices of fuel and transport have near tripled over night without notice, causing widespread violence on the streets of the Nigerian capital of Abuja and its economic center, Lagos. Much like the IMF induced riots in Indonesia during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, public discontent in Nigeria is channelled towards an incompetent and self-serving domestic elite, compliant to the interests of fraudulent foreign institutions.

Although Nigeria holds the most proven oil reserves in Africa behind Libya, it’s people are now expected to pay a fee closer to what the average American pays for the cost of fuel, an exorbitant sum in contrast to its regional neighbours. Alternatively, other oil producing nations such as Venezuela, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia offer their populations fuel for as little as $0.12 USD per gallon. While Lagos has one of Africa’s highest concentration of billionaires, the vast majority of the population struggle daily on less than $2.00 USD. Amid a staggering 47% youth unemployment rate and thousands of annual deaths related to preventable diseases, the IMF has pulled the rug out from under a nation where safe drinking water is a luxury to around 80% of it’s populace.

Although Nigeria produces 2.4 million barrels of crude oil a day intended for export use, the country struggles with generating sufficient electrical power and maintaining its infrastructure. Ironically enough, less than 6% of bank depositors own 88% of all bank deposits in Nigeria. Goldman Sachs employees line its domestic government, in addition to the former Vice President of the World Bank, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is widely considered by many to be the de facto Prime Minister. Even after decades of producing lucrative oil exports, Nigeria has failed to maintain it’s own refineries, forcing it to illogically purchase oil imports from other nations. Society at large has not benefited from Nigeria’s natural riches, so it comes as no surprise that a severe level of distrust is held towards the government, who claims the fuel subsidy needs to be lifted in order to divert funds towards improving the quality of life within the country.

Like so many other nations, Nigerian people have suffered from a systematically reduced living standard after being subjected to the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP). Before a loan can be taken from the World Bank or IMF, a country must first follow strict economic policies, which include currency devaluation, lifting of trade tariffs, the removal of subsidies and detrimental budget cuts to critical public sector health and education services.

SAPs encourage borrower countries to focus on the production and export of domestic commodities and resources to increase foreign exchange, which can often be subject to dramatic fluctuations in value. Without the protection of price controls and an authentic currency rate, extreme inflation and poverty subsist to the point of civil unrest, as seen in a wide array of countries around the world (usually in former colonial protectorates). The people of Nigeria have been one of the world’s most vocal against IMF-induced austerity measures, student protests have been met with heavy handed repression since 1986 and several times since then, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. As a testament to the success of the loan, the average laborer in Nigeria earned 35% more in the 1970’s than he would of in 2012.

Working through the direct representation of Western Financial Institutions and the IMF in Nigeria’s Government, >a new IMF conditionality calls for the creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund. Olusegun Aganga, the former Nigerian Minister of Finance commented on how the SWF was hastily pushed through and enacted prior to the countries national elections. If huge savings are amassed from oil exports and austerity measures, one cannot realistically expect that these funds will be invested towards infrastructure development based on the current track record of the Nigerian Government. Further more, it is increasingly more likely that any proceeds from a SWF would be beneficial to Western institutions and markets, which initially demanded its creation. Nigerian philanthropist Bukar Usman prophetically writes “I have genuine fears that the SWF would serve us no better than other foreign-recommended “remedies” which we had implemented to our own detriment in the past or are being pushed to implement today.”

The abrupt simultaneous removal of fuel subsidies in several West African nations is a clear indication of who is really in charge of things in post-colonial Africa. The timing of its cushion-less implementation could not be any worse, Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan recently declared a state of emergency after forty people were killed in a church bombing on Christmas day, an act allegedly committed by the Islamist separatist group, Boko Haram. The group advocates dividing the predominately Muslim northern states from the Christian southern states, a similar predicament to the recent division of Sudan.

As the United States African Command (AFRICOM) begins to gain a foothold into the continent with its troops officially present in Eritrea and Uganda in an effort to maintain security and remove other theocratic religious groups such as the Lord’s Resistance Army, the sectarian violence in Nigeria provides a convenient pretext for military intervention in the continuing resource war. For further insight into this theory, it is interesting to note that United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania conducted a series of African war game scenarios in preparation for the Pentagon’s expansion of AFRICOM under the Obama Administration.

In the presence of US State Department Officials, employees from The Rand Corporation and Israeli military personnel, a military exercise was undertaken which tested how AFRICOM would respond to a disintegrating Nigeria on the verge of collapse amidst civil war. The scenario envisioned rebel factions vying for control of the Niger Delta oil fields (the source of one of America’s top oil imports), which would potentially be secured by some 20,000 U.S. troops if a US-friendly coup failed to take place At a press conference at the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2008, AFRICOM Commander, General William Ward then went on to brazenly state the priority issue of America’s growing dependence on African oil would be furthered by AFRICOM operating under the principle theatre-goal of “combating terrorism”.

At an AFRICOM Conference held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008, Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller openly declared the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market”, before citing China’s increasing presence in the region as challenging to American interests. After the unwarranted snatch-and-grab regime change conducted in Libya, nurturing economic destabilization, civil unrest and sectarian conflict in Nigeria is an ultimately tangible effort to secure Africa’s second largest oil reserves. During the pillage of Libya, its SFW accounts worth over 1.2 billion USD were frozen and essentially absorbed by Franco-Anglo-American powers; it would realistic to assume that much the same would occur if Nigeria failed to comply with Western interests. While agents of foreign capital have already infiltrated its government, there is little doubt that Nigeria will become a new front in the War on Terror.

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