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A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Click the flash player below to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary.
Nearly a fifth of US oil imports come from West Africa and that proportion is only expected to grow. Western oil companies, chiefly Shell, BP and Chevron have pumped trillions of dollars worth of black gold from eastern Nigeria, but it remains the poorest and most polluted places on earth. Although oil company scofflaws have settled out of court with representatives of the families of a handful of the murdered the pitiless rape of eastern Nigeria continues.
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Shell Oil Settles with 1995 Niger Delta Victims’ Families, But War Escalates
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“Shell executives made the obscene assertion that the settlement was a ‘humanitarian gesture.’”
The Royal Dutch Shell oil corporation will pay $15.5 million to the families of the late Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and others executed by a Nigerian military regime in 1995. The settlement ends a suit, that charged Shell oil with
complicity in the torture and killing of the activists, who were protesting environmental and economic crimes against the people of the oil-rich Niger River Delta. The settlement is unusual, in that the dollar amount and other terms were made public. Most often, the parties in court settlements agree not to divulge how much money changed hands. But this was a profoundly political case, whose outcome was celebrated by the victim’s families and their lawyers at the New York-based
Center for Constitutional Rights.
Some of the fifteen and a half million will go to a fund for the Ogoni people. Shell oil may have believed it was purchasing some good will by settling with the Ogoni plaintiffs, but if so, the company spoiled the whole effect by continuing to claim it had nothing to do with the executions. Shell executives made the obscene assertion that the settlement was a “humanitarian gesture.” The company then called attention to the $240 million it claims to have contributed to so-called “community development” in the Delta, last year – which sounds more like a clever way to describe a chunk of the corporation’s massive bribery budget. $240 million dollars, whether in bribes or community development funds, might have gone a long way back in 1995, when Saro-Wiwa and his comrades were murdered by Shell’s partners in crime, the military government. Today, the payments are dwarfed by massive oil production losses due to a state of war between government and rebel forces in the region.
“Hundreds of civilians have been killed – no one knows precisely how many.”
Since May 15, the government has been engaged in a military offensive called
Operation Cordon and Search, ostensibly aimed at rebels of the Movement for Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND. The fighting has resulted in significant casualties among the combatants, but the greatest suffering has fallen on civilians. At least 20,000 people are thought to be hiding in the bush. Many thousands of others languish in refugee camps, short on food and medicines. Hundreds of civilians have been killed – no one knows precisely how many. Soldiers have burned villages to the ground, and even the palace of a local king was bombed by Nigerian air forces.
The regional war has cost the oil industry at least 24 million barrels in production, causing Nigeria to fall to second place among African producers, behind Angola. However, that’s largely a loss among thieves: the same Nigerian and Big Oil conspirators that decided Ken Saro-wiwa and his comrades should be hanged 14 years ago for advocating fair distribution of oil profits, and respect for the land and people. Those chickens have come home to roost in the Delta, with a vengeance.
Time has shown that festering crimes produce bitter fruit. The issue in the Niger River Delta region has become one of national sovereignty affecting the whole of Nigeria. The lesson, is that no regime has the right to sell the national sovereignty and treasure out from under its people. For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to
www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
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A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
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The multinational oil corporation Royal Dutch Shell faces civil charges of complicity in Nigerian government crimes against its citizens, most notably the execution of writer/activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and others in 1995. Shell will no doubt present itself as a victim. "It is a false dichotomy to separate the corruption of Nigeria’s governments - military or civilian - from the predatory presence of Big Oil. The two are locked in the deepest embrace." Both the paymasters and the thugs are equally guilty of the crime.
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Big Oil on Trial For 1995 Nigerian Executions
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“Shell can be compared to a businessman who hires a hit man to kill a union organizer.”
The Royal Dutch Shell oil corporation is
on trial, in New York, charged in a civil suit with complicity in the death of Nigerian writer and environmental activist
Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight comrades in 1995. Saro-Wiwa’s execution drew world attention to the environmental catastrophe that oil production has brought to the delta region of the Niger River, home to the Ogoni people. Saro-Wiwa and his co-defendants were tried by a military government, but Shell oil is charged with collaboration in the hangings, and in the torture of many other Ogonis – all to facilitate multi-billion dollar profits. Multinational corporations everywhere are following the case, fearing they too may called to account for their symbiotic relationships with murderous regimes in the resource-rich regions of the world.
Nigeria’s environmental degradation is a by-product of the moral and political rot that flows from neocolonialism. It is the physical manifestation of the total surrender of national sovereignty to foreigners – like Shell oil – by those native classes that rule the land for the benefit of foreigners. To put one’s country’s resources at the disposal of foreigners is the ultimate corruption – which leads to every other conceivable crime.
It is a false dichotomy to separate the corruption of Nigeria’s governments – military or civilian – from the predatory presence of Big Oil. The two are locked in the deepest embrace. The foreign corporations pay the regime to maintain peace – and the regime reciprocates by imposing on the people a “peace of the dead.” There are other sources of corruption in the developing world, other contradictions between people and their governments, but the dominance of economic resources by foreigners exacerbates every other division in society. The competition to get into the foreigners’ money flow becomes the Great Game of national political life. The bigger the money flow, the greater the imperative to keep the people in check. The police and army serve as paid thugs for the foreigners’ protection. The national debasement is total. Nigeria’s most important city, Lagos, is also one of the most expensive in the world – yet 70 percent of Nigerians subsist on a dollar or less a day. There is no greater corruption imaginable.
“To put one’s country’s resources at the disposal of foreigners is the ultimate corruption.”
In court, Shell oil will seek to present itself as an innocent party – even a victim of African brutality and corruption. Shell is more properly compared to a businessman who hires a hit man to kill a union organizer. The businessman and the hit man are both guilty of capital murder. The greater onus is on the businessman, whose money made the crime possible.
In the Niger Delta, Ogoni rebels have cut Nigeria’s
oil production in half, putting the squeeze on U.S.-based Chevron Oil (where, incidentally, Condoleezza Rice used to work). According to Amnesty International, hundreds of civilians have been killed in the fighting. The Nigerian government has declared the entire delta a military zone. No doubt, great crimes are being committed, at the behest of Big Oil. Before he was put to death, Ken Saro-Wiwa predicted it would come to this.
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Almost a fifth of the oil imported by the U.S. comes from Africa, and in the decade to come this percentage will rise. The eastern part of Nigeria, from which Big Oil has pumped more than a trillion dollars worth of black gold since the 1960s, remains the poorest part of the country, and one of the most ravaged and polluted on earth. Thousands of gas flares have burned for decades, generating acid rains that have poisoned fisheries and crops. The land is crisscrossed by thousands of miles of leaking pipes and dotted with oil slicks. The air is unbreathable, cancers are endemic, there are no schools or hospitals and life expectancies are among the lowest on the African continent. Shell Oil is on trial in a New York courtroom, accused of hiring the Nigerian government to murder its own citizens for protesting the pollution of their environment and demanding a share of oil revenues be spent where the oil is extracted.
Need to know more? Check out http://shellguilty.com.
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In order to secure its oil and resources for the West, the US has inflicted two decades of wars and invasions upon Somalia. With no effective central government, Somalia also has no diplomats or coast guard, leaving European fishing fleets and waste dumpers to deplete and poison its fisheries. When Somalis who have fished thousands of years for a living challenge foreign vessels in their territorial waters it is they, not the interlopers who are labeled “pirates.” And although Somalia’s so-called pirates have never harmed or killed a single foreigner, they find themselves the target of Western military operations.
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Somali Teenager Pleads “Not Guilty” to Piracy Charges
Originally published at Rebel Reports by Jeremy Scahill
His lawyers say he is a scared 15 year old kid who fished in Somalia. Prosecutors say he is the pirate ringleader who threatened to kill a US ship’s captain.
Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, the Somali teenager accused by US prosecutors of being the “ringleader” of the group of “pirates” who allegedly attempted to seize control of the Maersk Alabama last month, has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him. Muse, who is facing 10 counts including piracy, hostage-taking, and firearms charges, appeared alongside his lawyers in federal court in New York. “We plead not guilty on all counts,” said his attorney, Phil Weinstein, during the 15 minute hearing. Weinstein protested Muse’s detention conditions, saying “they are giving him medications that he doesn’t understand,” adding that Muse was “unable to communicate with anyone exept us, once or twice a week.” Muse’s father in Somalia says his son is just 15 years old, but prosecutors convinced the judge to try him as an adult.
As we have previously noted:
Omar Jamal, executive director of Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, said his Somali immigrant organization made contact with family members of the pirates during the hostage standoff.
Muse’s family members “don’t have any money. The father has some camels and cows and goats outside the city. … The father goes outside with the livestock and comes home at night. Father said they don’t have any money, they are broke,” Jamal said.
Muse’s mother sells milk at a small market every day, saving around $6 every month for school fees for her oldest son. She pays $15 a month in rent.
According to Reuters:
[Muse’s] lawyers told the court that he needed an operation for his hand that was injured during the attack, and had been granted little contact with his mother and family in Somalia since being held in U.S. Custody.
Prosecutors and representatives for Muse disagree about his age. Outside the courthouse, lawyers said they were looking for witnesses in Somalia to prove Muse is a juvenile after a judge ruled in April he is aged 18 and would be tried as an adult.
The defense lawyers said they had difficulty communicating with Muse and he did not understand why he had been given medication. They said they could not reveal what the medication was for.
“It’s heart-wrenching. He is confused,” said one of his lawyers, Deirdre von Dornum.
She said Muse was just “a boy who fishes and now he has ended up in solitary confinement here so it is a truly terrifying situation.”
The specific charges against Muse include eight counts that each could carry a maximum sentence of life in prison: piracy, possession of a machine gun while seizing a ship by force, hostage-taking, conspiracy to commit hostage-taking, possession of a machine gun during hostage-taking, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and possession of a machine gun during kidnapping. He also faces two charges that carry a maximum sentence of 20 years: seizing a ship by force and conspiracy to seize a ship by force.
Prosecutors allege that Muse threatened Capt. Richard Phillips with a firearm and then “threatened to kill the captain unless his demands were satisfied.”
One of Muse’s lawyers, Fiona Doherty, said her client’s defense in part will rely on the fact that Muse turned himself voluntarily over to the US Navy. “We think he will be exonerated. He was the one who requested permission to board the US ship. He was trying to negotiate for the safety of captain Phillips.”
The Maersk Alabama belongs to a major Department of Defense contractor, which provides the Pentagon with its largest fleet of US-flagged ships in the world.
Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist and author of BlackWater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Find more of his work at http://rebelreports.com.
by Mark P. FancherThe U.S. military’s African Command – AFRICOM – extends its tentacles on the east and west coasts and deep into the interior of the continent. Its mission: “to keep Africa safe for western corporations that need access to the continent’s oil and mineral resources.” All indigenous opposition to imperial policies and interests is deemed “criminal” or “terrorist” – whether along the internationally exploited shores of Somalia or in the oil-rich delta of the Niger River. As African Liberation Day approaches, we must understand that “AFRICOM…is really all about building the capacity of western corporations to hold fast to Africa.”
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Freedom Fighters or Criminals? AFRICOM Doesn’t Care.
by Mark P. Fancher
“The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has been establishing an extensive high profile presence on Africa’s western coast.”
After U.S. Navy sharpshooters put bullets into the heads of companions of Somalia-born Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, the problem of “piracy” in the waters off the Horn of Africa dominated the news. Muse and other Somalians had allegedly hijacked an American ship and held its captain hostage until the captors were all killed or, in the case of Muse, taken into custody.
These events caused many progressive observers to have concerns comparable to those expressed nearly 40 years ago by Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president. He said: “By means of press and radio, accounts are given of the capture of ‘terrorists’ by ‘security forces’ …the ‘terrorists’ being usually described as poorly-trained, ill-equipped, demoralized and uncertain of the cause for which they are fighting.” Nkrumah went on to observe: “This refusal to recognize freedom fighters as soldiers is again part of imperialist strategy designed to pour scorn on the armed revolutionary movement, and at the same time to discourage further recruits.”
It is not suggested here that Muse and his companions were freedom fighters, and there are likely many petty criminals among the ranks of those who have captured ships off the coast of Somalia. But the western media has been so relentless in its characterization of all who hijack ships as “pirates” that few people know that one of the first of these groups, known as the “Somalia National Volunteer Coast Guard,” was, according to some reports, established by fishermen who armed themselves and chased away foreign ships that were suspected of engaging in illegal fishing and the dumping of waste in Somali waters.
“One of the first of these groups is known as the ‘Somalia National Volunteer Coast Guard.’”
When U.S. right wing media pundits began urging the U.S. military to conduct full scale operations to clean out the “nests” of pirates in Somalia, there was reason to worry that legitimate freedom fighters would be caught up in the dragnet. Already, the U.S. has engaged in military activities and covert actions that have included complicity in a 2006 regime change in Somalia. There is also a significant U.S. presence at a special military installation in Djibouti. The U.S. search for “pirates,” “terrorists” and other purported “evil-doers” (as Bush used to call them) has not been limited to the Horn of Africa. For some time now, the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has also been establishing an extensive high profile presence on Africa’s western coast - specifically in the Gulf of Guinea and the Niger Delta.
Notwithstanding its official mission statements, AFRICOM is proving itself to be a vehicle for the U.S. to use proxy troops drawn from Africa’s armies to keep Africa safe for western corporations that need access to the continent’s oil and mineral resources. It is understandable then why AFRICOM’s directors have been just as interested in West Africa as they are in Somalia. A study by the Nigerian government shows that during 2008, the country lost nearly $28 billion as a result of armed groups having blown up oil pipelines. These organizations have also kidnapped oil company personnel. The government study estimates that about 1,000 lives were lost last year in connection with oil thefts and sabotage.
“AFRICOM is proving itself to be a vehicle for the U.S. to use proxy troops drawn from Africa’s armies to keep Africa safe for western corporations.”
The attacks on the oil industry have not emerged from a vacuum. Oil operations have caused widespread environmental catastrophe, ruining fishing, farming and sources of fresh water for many villages in the Niger Delta. Unemployment in these areas that (according to government estimates) exceeds 80 percent fuels a spirit of rebellion and resistance among the youth that continues to spread. Patrick Aziza, a traditional leader in the Okpe Kingdom in the Niger Delta, has urged rebels to lay down their arms, but he has also acknowledged that their deep-seated frustration is justified. His conclusion is particularly significant because he is also a retired Nigerian army general. Nevertheless, the Nigerian government has begun to chart plans for bolstering the capacity of special military forces to fight the rebels. With so much oil at stake, AFRICOM has not been sitting idly by. It has collaborated in the operation of an “Africa Partnership Station” that has cruised from port to port along Africa’s western coast training African naval personnel to conduct military operations that are helpful to U.S. corporate interests in the region.
AFRICOM has justified its activities by claiming that the region is plagued by crime and terrorism. It has also protested accusations of imperialist military intervention by insisting that the U.S. has been “invited” into the region by Africans themselves. Admiral Robert T. Moeller, a high level AFRICOM official said: “Recognizing (threats of piracy, oil smuggling and other crimes) themselves, the Africans have requested that we provide this kind of assistance.” Also, to calm fears that the U.S. is in Africa to militarize the continent, much has been made of AFRICOM’s humanitarian work. For example, during one mission, the Africa Partnership Station delivered food to AIDS patients and orphans.
“Nkrumah understood four decades ago how easy it is for the underlying causes of armed struggle to be forgotten because of media lies.”
History has proven that for as long as foreign corporate operations create instability and hardship for Africa’s people, it is all but certain that there will be those who will be moved to resist – with arms if necessary. Nkrumah understood four decades ago how easy it is for the underlying causes of armed struggle to be forgotten because of media lies and caricatures of Africans who resist foreign exploitation.
When African Liberation Day arrives later this month, we who wish to ensure African self-determination should heed the call of event organizers and “honor Nkrumah” (see:
www.africanliberationday.net) by striving to become as skillful as he was in cutting through the crap. When Moeller says: “It is all about building the capacity of our African partners to be able to attend to their own security needs,” we must instinctively know that, for AFRICOM it is really all about building the capacity of western corporations to hold fast to Africa in leech-like fashion and to suck the continent bone dry of all of its most valuable natural resources.
Mark P. Fancher is an attorney, writer and activist. He can be contacted at mfancher(at)Comcast.net.
by BAR Editor and Senior Columnist Margaret KimberleyWhen it comes to delivering health care and building economic opportunities for the poor, Barack Obama could learn a lot from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. But with Obama repeating the same false charges that justified a US sponsored coup a few years ago, it seems that the empire and its president have learned nothing and forgotten nothing in their relations with Latin America over the last half century. On this front as many others, the Obama administration seems not to be much of a change from the arrogant imperial politics of the past.
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Freedom Rider: Viva Hugo Chavez!
by BAR Editor and Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley
The American public are fed lie upon lie about Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. He has been elected and re-elected president by the citizens of his country, and his party continues to emerge victorious in parliamentary elections. The Bush administration very openly bragged out wanting to over throw the Chavez government and used military force in the region to intimidate Venezuela and Ecuador. Chavez is not alone in generating American hostility. Interference with the current Bolivian government was so blatant that the American ambassador was kicked out of the country along with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Hugo Chavez should be thanked by people around the globe for his willingness to openly scorn the United States of America and its leaders. It is a good thing that Chavez called Bush the devil from the podium at the United Nations. It is a good thing that he led a demonstration of 25,000 people against Bush in Argentina in 2007.
Now Hugo Chavez has done the world another favor by taking Barack Obama to school. At the Summit of the Americas conference held in Trinidad and Tobago, Obama created a photo opportunity by seeking Chavez out for a much photographed handshake. The publicity was interesting, considering that as he was on the verge of being inaugurated, Obama repeated the Bush administration lie that Chavez “exported terrorism” and was an “obstacle” to peace.
Chavez, never at a loss for words, responded that Obama was "a poor
ignoramus," who had “the same stench as Bush.” “…the real obstacle has been the empire that he today presides over, which has exported terrorism for nearly 200 years, has launched atom bombs on innocent cities, has bombarded, invaded and issued orders to kill whenever they have taken the notion.” He also added, “He should study so that he knows the reality of Latin America.” Just to be certain that Obama learns a thing or two about that region of the world, Chavez gave him a copy of the book “
The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Hundred Years of the Pillage of a Continent.”
After having created the great handshake scene, the Obama administration then didn’t know what to do with their own public relations coup that could have been followed up with real changes in policy. It was sad to see the immediate backpedaling from the administration over a smile and a handshake. One official claimed that Chavez was
less popular than Obama among Venezuelans. David Axelrod said that Venezuela must stop "
rampant and tasteless, anti-Americanism."
Chavez is not alone in his willingness to take on Uncle Sam. Almost all of the member nations of the Organization of American States are in favor of Cuba rejoining that organization. They are also agitating for the United States led embargo of Cuba to end.
None of the new leaders are unduly deferential to Barack Obama.
Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, bristled at the United States criticism of Cuba’s human rights record. He pointed out, “The United States doesn’t have any authority to speak about democracy, because from over there they install coup d’etats, like these civil coups now in Bolivia.” Morales and Chavez will not be lectured by a president who allowed Bush regime torturers to get away with their war crimes scott free.
The bankruptcy of United States foreign policy was on full display for all to see. Osama’s actions and the words of his top advisers prove that they do not want partnerships with other nations that are based on any kind of mutual interest. If foreign leaders object to American policy they are demonized and attacked and the corporate media dutifully joins in and repeats whatever the president says.
The American people are once again dependent on the rest of the world to tell them anything of significance. Hugo Chavez made Open Veins of Latin America an overnight bestseller and in the process proved that many Americans realize they aren’t getting the full story of the country’s history.
That is why Hugo Chavez should be lionized more than anyone who manages to get into the white house. American presidents are elected because a critical mass of wealthy people choose them before any voter arrives at a polling place. While Hugo Chavez rewrites history, Obama has no clue and no desire to join him in revolutionizing American foreign policy. We are left with a one party foreign policy. Fortunately, people in other parts of the world are able to make better choices.
Viva Hugo Chavez!
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Click the flash player to listen to or the mic above to download this BA Radio Commentary
The mounting hue and cry in the US press over the menace to civilization posed by Somali "pirates" is yet another Big Lie, to justify the latest chapter in America’s imperial quest for African oil and other resources. US missiles and drones in the air, and perhaps US boots on the ground are all but inevitable, ordered to kill near-defenseless African civilians, by America’s First Black President.
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US Aircraft and Elite Navy SEALs Defeat Three Somalis in a Lifeboat
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“An estimated $300 million worth of Somali sea life is pirated by foreigners every year.”
What a weekend for American foreign policy! The United States Navy, backed up by warships from 20 other nations, knocked off three Somali guys crouching with rifles in a lifeboat tied by a rope to a U.S. destroyer. To hear the U.S. corporate media tell it, the Americans had won a
huge victory over the forces of evil. The sole surviving Somali was in custody – a 16-year-old who essentially gave himself up, earlier, after being hurt in a scuffle with the American cargo ship captain who is now celebrated as a hero of the seven seas and defender of United States national honor.
There is something obscene about a superpower whose media and population find great satisfaction, and some sick form of national catharsis, every time they manage to overcome a weak and desperate opponent.
Some dreaded seagoing Somalis began taking up piracy in 1991, when the Somali government disintegrated and there was no one to patrol the country’s coasts. About the same time, and not coincidentally, commercial fishing fleets from around the world took advantage of the lack of a Somali coast guard, to steal every fish they could find in Somali waters. That’s “robbery on the high seas,” the definition of piracy. An estimated $300 million worth of Somali sea life is
pirated by foreigners every year. Other kinds of pirates nowadays often leave something behind – the piratical poisonous waste dumpers. They seem to be mafia-connected outfits that dump the radioactive waste from European hospitals into Somali waters, along with heavy metals and dangerous chemicals of all kinds. A survey by the Somali news agency
Wardheer News shows that 70 percent of Somalis “strongly supported piracy as a form of national defense of the country’s territorial waters."
Having seen their coastal waters pirated by foreigners since 1991, Somalis were then forced to endure the land and air piracy of the Ethiopians and the United States, who collaborated in late 2006 to invade the country and oust the only relatively effective government Somalia had had in 15 years. Occupied by Ethiopia with the backing of the American superpower, Somalis were stripped of the last thing they had on land or sea – their national sovereignty. The foreign super-pirates had taken everything.
“70 percent of Somalis ‘strongly supported piracy as a form of national defense of the country’s territorial waters.’"
But the Somalis kept fighting back, anyway, driving out the Ethiopians and making the Americans fume with rage. The Somalis refused to roll over and die, or beg. Black U.S. Congressman Donald Payne’s airplane was targeted by mortars when he visited Somalia’s ravaged capital, Mogadishu, over the weekend. Payne opposed the U.S.-Ethiopia invasion of Somalia, but some of the Islamist fighters battling for control of the country may not make distinctions among the foreigners who pass through or over their land – and who can blame them? Barack Obama’s Ambassador to the United Nations, a young Black woman named Susan Rice, is
positively rapid when it comes to beating Somalia into submission. She was more gung-ho for the U.S.-Ethiopian invasion than George Bush. Susan Rice is no doubt searching for a military solution to Somali 20090415Piracygfpiracy – which would amount to more piracy by the same foreigners that have driven Somalis to such desperate measures. For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to
www.BlackAgendaReport.com.
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret KimberleyA wise political analyst once said that the United States didn’t have two parties, just two wings of a single party, the Party of Business. The Bush-McCain wing might have been the oil companies and Wall Street. The Obama wing might be just Wall Street, a distinction without a great deal of difference, unless you include symbolic factors, like the first family’s skin color and the ability of the president to speak off the cuff in complete, grammatical sentences.
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Freedom Rider: No Better Off with the Democrats
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“If economic policy consists only of Democratic banksters instead of Republican banksters calling the shots in favor of more failed policy, why is there any cause for celebration?”
How much better off are we because Democrat Barack Obama defeated Republican John McCain for the presidency? What do Americans have to look forward to this year that they did not last year? The departure of a Republican administration and the arrival of a Democratic one ought to mean that sweeping changes in domestic and foreign policy have come to the United States.
The occupation of Iraq ought to be ending. Instead, Obama’s so-called end to war means keeping 50,000 soldiers in Iraq and boosting the Bush Defense Department budget by an additional $20 billion. Of course, the Obama administration Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, was also the Bush administration Defense Secretary. That fact alone doesn’t augur well for any improvement in foreign and defense policy.
If Obama’s recent meetings with foreign leaders were any improvement over Bush efforts, it is only because people all over the world breathed a collective sigh of relief when Marine One carried Bush out of Washington. The press may have supported Michelle Obama’s fashion choices, but her husband came away pretty much empty handed.
“Obama went to Europe carrying the same discredited baggage that Bush used to bring.”
That is because he went carrying the same discredited baggage that Bush used to bring. European leaders may make statements saying that al-Qaeda is run by wicked people, but they won’t commit to sending more troops into America’s quagmire or risking their own economic security with American style stimulus plans that are not needed in countries that actually have safety nets for their citizens.
The lack of improvement in this administration is not confined to foreign policy. The economic collapse that began under Bush is ongoing. The new administration’s policy consists of the same discredited moves that began in the waning days of Republican rule. Billions of dollars have been poured down an endless black hole of welfare to the financial services industry, a policy blessed by then candidate Obama.
Policy changes that might truly help working people, such as single payer health care, are off the table. Legislation that would permit bankruptcy judges to “cram down,” or reduce mortgage loan balances has also not made it onto the Obama agenda.
Obama and congressional Democrats could pave the way for true change with one significant piece of legislation. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), also known as “card check,” would give workers the right to simply indicate with a check mark their wish to form a union. The simplified process would allow union organizers easy access to workers who would then be able to organize without the threat of employer intimidation and threats of job loss. Increased union representation in the work force would create the benefits and incomes that would prevent Americans from falling victim to the modern day debtor prisons and work place insecurity that are all too common in this country.
“The new administration’s policy consists of the same discredited moves that began in the waning days of Republican rule.”
Yet the passage of EFCA is certain only in the House, where it won approval last year. Democratic control of the Senate is not sufficient to prevent a Republican veto, and Democratic senators like Dianne Feinstein and Blanche Lincoln have already stated they will not vote for EFCA in its current form. That is to say, it must be watered down and rendered useless by corporate approval before they are willing to support it.
Obama has not given any indication that he will fight for EFCA either. He would have to use his bully pulpit to bring all Democrats along with him and he doesn’t appear to be predisposed to ever fight against corporate interests. If a Democratic president and a Democratically controlled congress can’t assure passage of EFCA, why would it have been so terrible for John McCain to have won? If economic policy consists only of Democratic banksters instead of Republican banksters calling the shots in favor of more failed policy, why is there any cause for celebration?
“Democratic senators like Dianne Feinstein and Blanche Lincoln have already stated they will not vote for EFCA in its current form.”
Democratic victories in 2006 were followed by two years of caving into an extremely unpopular president. Now a Democratic president still refuses to stand up for the interests of working people and for true change in America’s relationship with the rest of the world.
Barack Obama is clearly a very smart, charismatic man. He is smoother and smarter than Bush or McCain, but at the end of the day that matters little if the economy continues failing or if the United States increases its body count in Afghanistan and Pakistan. No one should apologize any longer for pointing out the lack of difference between Democrats and Republicans. This country and the world are in as much trouble in 2009 with Obama as in 2008 with Bush. Our only hope is for citizens to acknowledge these painful facts and seek ways to bring about change themselves. Change certainly won’t come from a president, even of the Democratic party.
Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com.
by michael hureaux perezThe name on the door, and the family in the White House has changed. We have a president who speaks in complete, grammatically correct sentences. But with more than 800 US military bases around the planet, and spending more on things military than the other 95% of the globe’s population combined, America is the same old arrogant bully. Dr. King once said that a nation which spends more on things military than on human uplift is doomed. If he were alive today he might add, no matter the skin color of its leaders.
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Eshu’s blues: The Black President of the American Empire
by michael hureaux perez
The man who laughs has not yet heard the terrible news.—Bertolt Brecht
President Obama has now been to Baghdad and the great white way of U.S. leftism is busy choking up over the footage of the Prez with “our troops.” For those of you out there who don’t understand what an imperialist doggie the new president is just yet, here he is in living color, boots on, Clint Eastwood bravado at the ready. If you are still “feeling” Obama, you must accept the fact that this man went into Baghdad, waded through the wreckage from a civil war our U.S. foreign policy deliberately created, and grins Kool-aid smiles when asked about the agony this “civilization” we live with has caused. According to the president, this mayhem he celebrates is “success beyond our wildest dreams.” Why, not even Meyer Lansky could have put that better.
One point two million people dead, four million displaced, the infrastructure of an autonomous people destroyed. Four thousand U.S. troops dead. Thousands more troops maimed physically and psychically. Billions and billions more dollars to be spent on an ongoing, residual occupation that has no purpose or moral base other than the sheer exercise of raw, naked power, the crime for which people were convicted at Nuremburg. The imperial project is pursued regardless of how the waste of material resource affects our people here in the United States in a time of great economic crisis. We’re told there’s not enough jobs, there’s not enough money to fund the further education of people who need jobs. There’s not enough money for public health. There’s not enough resource for mental health. Housing is in short supply while undersold housing stands vacant and tent cities abound.
“The occupation has no purpose or moral base other than the sheer exercise of raw, naked power.”
But there’s enough money for the corporate software military establishment, the bankers and arms manufacturers who profit off of this bloody empire, these software barons of international piracy. This piracy that runs the world, this piracy that wants to roar with outrage at the teeny, tiny gaggle of piracy off the coast of Somalia, wants to steal, and kill, and maim and irradiate both children and veterans with depleted uranium shell casings, and lecture the world on responsibility and morality. And we let them do it. We let them get away with it. In the words of Dalton Trumbo, in the introduction to his classic
Johnny Got His Gun, instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast.
Barack Obama says it’s time for the Iraqi people to take responsibility for their future. Barack Obama does this as leader of the United States, which has gone out of its way to destroy any autonomous future Iraq was inching towards for itself. In taking such a stance, he has joined a violent, arrogant and Eurocentric chorus led by war criminals like the Clinton and Bush dynasties. Barack Obama knows full well that the U.S. conducted this atrocity for no reason apart from imperial venture, and at this moment, he declares it to have been a sacrifice made for the honor of our so-called civilization. Barack Obama rises to tasks demanded of him by the Warlords of the Empire, their eyes glinting with the malicious demand of the self-satisfied mercenary that their victim rise to the moment and assume responsibility for a bloodying that the victim never asked for. This is success beyond their wildest dreams. This is the world that capitalism wants to have.
“Barack Obama rises to tasks demanded of him by the Warlords of the Empire.”
2600 years after the defeat of Greek democracy by the Spartans, the democratic impulse which western capital claims to defend can’t find its ass with both hands in the great capitalist center. Five centuries after the early days of the capitalist
system, with no global threat that compels the development of an imperial order, western capital still chooses imperialism. Western capital chooses imperialism over its own financial solvency. Western capital chooses imperialism over the tattered remnants of its own democratic integrity.
We’re dealing with spoiled children with high tech toys of destruction, and it is time for any anti-war movement worth a damn in this country to begin to figure out how we can make the political culture that exists in this country learn to live with the rest of the world, whatever it costs the imperial order to forfeit the empire, and whatever it costs we who speak out in opposition to that order. We have to pledge, as the Declaration of Independence put it so eloquently, “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” We have to form a new independent political movement, based in the organizations that still exist at the behest of the working class majority in this country and their allies among critical and revolutionary thinking entrepreneurs, a movement that is willing to fight, and even die if necessary, in a battle for the revolutionary promise of democracy.
For all the flowery rhetoric of themselves or their charming Golden Child in the White House, the Obamians are not up to this needful task.
“House slaves like Powell, Rice, and Obama have been “skinnin’ and grinnin’ for a long time.”
You can tell because many of them are shocked at Obama’s decision to defend the CIA’s right to spy on the people of this country. The Obamians feel “betrayed.” The truth is that they lied to themselves about who Obama and the “democrats” are, and many of them are lying still. They believe that if a man allowed to rise within the ranks of the imperial order is black, that the system is more just. The experience of Colin Powell’s miserable lies at the UN six years ago taught them nothing. The brutal farce led by the U.S. State Department under the tutelage of the mercenary Condoleezza Rice taught them nothing. The hard cold fact is that house slaves are allowed a larger role in the global plantation that the imperial order forces upon the so-called “underdeveloped world,” and house slaves like Powell, Rice, and Obama have been “skinnin’ and grinnin’ for a long time. Many more will be outed as the struggle against the imperial order takes larger shape.
The question of anti-imperialism is decisive in this political battle in the United States and internationally. The question of anti-imperialism is decisive, because it is the question of race and class writ large. Capital will not forego the so-called rights of the nations at the center of the world’s economy to live at the expense of those at the bottom of the world economy, most of whom are impoverished and exhausted peoples of color. Capital cannot and will not exist without imperialism. And the dreams of the so-called anti-war movement in this country, the geniuses at MoveOn, the deluded individuals at United for Peace and Justice, who believe that Obama offers “a different approach to imperialism,” and the Center for American Progress, all of these people believe they can ride the tiger’s back. They will wind up on the inside of the beast. No wild thing ever voluntarily cuts its claws.
“All of these people believe they can ride the tiger’s back. They will wind up on the inside of the beast.”
The rest of the world knows. The imperial leadership of the United States is sowing the dragon’s teeth of global terror. It may claim otherwise, but its actions belie its words. People in Pakistan, who at this moment are evading President Obama’s Predator drone attacks; people of Iran, who have seen Barack Obama’s current “good cop, bad cop” routine come from many a U.S. president; people on the Gaza Strip, who watched family members die as the president-elect solemnly declared during the Israeli siege that “there is only one president at a time.”
It is a terrible thing when a man as intelligent as Barack Obama, and the people who support his imperial policies choose to use cunning over critical reason. It is a terrible thing when legions of people believe that words measured in political expediency are the only available form of political discourse acceptable in a country that supposedly upholds a democratic tradition of expression. It is a terror that so many have eyes but will not see. Terror is terror. If humanity survives this period, history will record that United States politics were overtaken by a layer of what used to be called “good Germans,” or people who denied the terrifying evidence provided by their own senses in the years during the holocaust directed against the Jews of Europe. The game is the same, but the name is changed.
But, oh, as the poet said, the shark has pearly teeth, dear. And they’re there for all to see.
BAR columnist michael hureaux perez is a writer, musician and teacher who lives in southwest Seattle, Washington. He is a longtime contributor to small and alternative presses around the country and performs his work frequently. Email to: tricksterbirdboy@yahoo.com
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir had no choice but to expel the western "aid" organizations that had merged with the American propaganda machine aimed at regime change in Khartoum. Obama operatives like UN Ambassador Susan Rice have for years been "eager to blockade Sudan’s ports" and to launch "selective" bombing raids against Sudan. When imperial doctrine claims the right to intervene whenever disasters overtake sovereign countries - and proceeds to create and exacerbate those disasters - then no government is safe against regime change. President Obama "appears to be fine-tuning a ‘humanitarian’ interventionist doctrine that is applicable to any point on the planet."
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Sudan/Darfur is Test Case for Obama’s “Humanitarian” Aggression
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“Obama has not broken the American mold, but rather, appears to be fine-tuning a ‘humanitarian’ interventionist doctrine.”
Any government in the world that believes it has been targeted for regime change by the United States and its allies would be foolish to allow western-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to operate freely in its territory. When Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir evicted 13 western NGOs from his country last month, he was responding quite rationally to the clear threat of so-called “humanitarian” military intervention by the U.S. under the pretext of “rescuing” Sudanese in the war-torn Darfur region.
Under the Obama administration, a military interventionist doctrine is rapidly crystallizing around the concept of “Responsibility to Protect,” or R2P, which holds that nations have a responsibility to forcibly intervene when a state is judged to be unwilling or unable to protect or otherwise fulfill its responsibilities to its people – responsibilities that can be broadly or narrowly defined. United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice and Samantha Power, a member of Obama’s National Security Council, are leading advocates of a broad and unilateralist interpretation of R2P. Both are very close to President Obama, and can be assumed to reflect his thinking on foreign policy. And both are implacably hostile to Omar Al-Bashir’s government in Sudan. Rice is eager to blockade Sudan’s ports and to launch “selective” bombing raids.
“Almost the entire Arab and African world supports Sudan against the ICC.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is also a hawk on Sudan, who talks of enforcing no-fly zones over Darfur. That’s the same policy the U.S. pursued against Iraq in the interim between the 1991 and 2003 wars. The logic leads inexorably to incremental invasion and regime change in Sudan.
The crisis exploded when Bashir was indicted for “crimes against humanity” – a step below formal charges of genocide – by the International Criminal Court (ICC), a body whose prosecutorial urges seem limited to Africa. As reported by IRIN, a news service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: “Almost the entire Arab and African world supports Sudan against the ICC, arguing it is a biased and political tool that only targets Africans and infringes sovereignty.” The African Union and the Arab League have long opposed ICC action against Sudan, on national sovereignty grounds and because an indictment could have been predicted to lead to disruptions in international aid to Darfuran refugees.
President Obama has dispatched a U.S. Air Force general as his special envoy to Sudan to deal with, in Obama’s words, the 
“immediate crisis prompted by the Khartoum government’s expulsion of non-governmental organizations that are providing aid to displaced persons inside of Sudan." Obama is reaching for the heights of hypocrisy. First, the United States is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court, fearing that its own numerous and constant violations of international law might land an American president in the dock, one day. Second, the entire purpose of U.S. policy toward Sudan is to create a crisis in hopes of toppling the regime and transforming the largest country in Africa – or big, dismembered chunks of it – into a client of the United States. Susan Rice can’t wait for her “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Sudan” moment to arrive. Obama’s envoy/general would like to get an audience with his Sudanese military counterparts, and talk coup.
“Susan Rice can’t wait for her ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Sudan’ moment to arrive.”
The American search for a pretext for “humanitarian” military intervention is perfectly understood by the Darfur rebel groups seeking to topple Bashir, who control the refugee camps in Darfur. No sooner had President Bashir kicked the western NGOs out, than “activists” in the 88,000-person Kalma refugee camp organized a “strike” against accepting aid from United Nations relief organizations. As the Los Angeles Times reported on March 21:
"’We want the international [aid groups] back,’ said Ali Abdel Khaman Tahir, the chief sheik at Kalma, speaking by telephone because the government is refusing to allow journalists in the camp, which is on the edge of Nyala, the capital of Southern Darfur province.
"’If we allow them to distribute the food, then the government will be able to say to the world that everything is OK in Kalma,’ said Mubarak Shafi, a camp activist. ‘We want all the other problems solved first.’"
The “problems” the “activist” refers to are political, ultimately devolving to autonomy or independence for the region. The rebel groups are intimately involved with U.S. allies in the region and western individuals and NGOs attached to the aid effort. In accordance with Washington’s wishes, the rebel-led refugees demanded that their pipelines to western media, the NGOs, be allowed back in. Food and medicine were not the issue. Nor is refugee relief a priority of the Obama administration. It’s all about regime change.
“The rebel groups are intimately involved with U.S. allies in the region and western individuals and NGOs attached to the aid effort.”
The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), a major rebel faction, has offices in Tel Aviv. ABC News reports that “Israel has conducted three military strikes against targets in Sudan since January in an effort to prevent what were believed to be Iranian weapons shipments from reaching Hamas in the Gaza Strip.” The alleged Gaza/Iran connection is for western consumption. In fact, Israel is in the vanguard of U.S. clients, including Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Chad, that connive to dissolve the Sudanese state.
When “humanitarian” intervention and “Responsibility to Protect” are the watchwords of superpower imperial destabilization policies, no targeted nation can afford to host western “aid” groups that feed the propaganda machines of aggressors. Ethnic and other conflicts in Sudan are quite complex (see Mahmood Mamdani, “What’s Really Happening In Darfur?” BAR), and the numbers and nature of mortality in Darfur are in serious dispute everywhere except in the U.S. corporate media. The Washington narrative is constructed for the sole purpose of overthrowing the Sudanese government.
States will do whatever is necessary to preserve themselves, and in Sudan’s case, that meant the western echo-operatives in the “aid” industry in Darfur had to go. The U.S. knew full well that its destabilization campaign against Sudan would ultimately achieve just such a result.
“The Washington narrative is constructed for the sole purpose of overthrowing the Sudanese government.”
The United Nations has also adopted a form of R2P, which authorizes the UN Security Council to intervene in the affairs of individual states when "national authorities [are] manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.” But the United States cannot count on manipulating the UN Security Council, which includes China and Russia, to achieve its narrow imperialist goals – in this case, regime change in Sudan. The Americans are unilateralists. They can’t even bring themselves to join the International Criminal Court – although they revel in its indictments of Africans. Obama has not broken the American mold, but rather, appears to be fine-tuning a “humanitarian” interventionist doctrine that is applicable to any point on the planet where crises can be exploited to create chaos worthy of the Lone Ranger’s armed attentions.
Call it Disaster Imperialism.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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