UGANDA OIL: US Africa Command, a tool to Recolonize the African Continent

[Makalakumu]

http://www.informafrica.com/blog/ug...d-a-tool-to-recolonize-the-african-continent/

Interesting thoughts...in really makes one rethink the whole Kony2012 phenomenon.

 

[billc]

Don't worry, my friend just came back from Africa, and he said the Chinese are already colonizing africa. You won't have to worry about the U.S. doing it ...

 

[Bill Mattocks]

http://www.informafrica.com/blog/ug...d-a-tool-to-recolonize-the-african-continent/

Interesting thoughts...in really makes one rethink the whole Kony2012 phenomenon.

It's mostly crap. There's a basis for some of the speculation, but really, this is nonsense.

But here's some information you might like:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=African_Oil_Policy_Initiative_Group

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=U.S._Africa_Command

Let it be known that I am not against Africom or US extraction of oil in Africa. China is buying up major parts of Africa; entire mountains for copper and other minerals. Radical Islam is being exported to Africa. Understand that if we (the US) don't get involved in Africa, others will. There is no option in which Africa is simply left alone. That won't happen. So it's us or the other guys. I vote us.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Don't worry, my friend just came back from Africa, and he said the Chinese are already colonizing africa. You won't have to worry about the U.S. doing it ...

I've been saying that for years. Africa has huge resources. Africa has a large population of moderate Christians, native religions, and moderate Muslims. Radical Islam is being exported, instability is being increased. Oil and mineral resources are being extracted. If we're late to this party, we'll regret it. Leaving Somalia was a huge mistake.

 

[Archtkd]

I've been saying that for years. Africa has huge resources. Africa has a large population of moderate Christians, native religions, and moderate Muslims. Radical Islam is being exported, instability is being increased. Oil and mineral resources are being extracted. If we're late to this party, we'll regret it. Leaving Somalia was a huge mistake.

The U.S. has been in Africa since the days that the now defunct New York Herald sent Henry Morton Stanley to the continent to search for David Livingstone, in the 1870s. In the 1890s, William Astor Chanler, another American -- who later became a politician and was involved in the Spanish-American War -- became the first Westerner to reach the parts of Eastern Kenya where I come from.

The biggest problem is that very few Americans see Africa as place worth doing business in, despite the early inroads and years of heavy investment in the continent in the way of direct economic aid by the U.S government, and indirect aid in things like education and healthcare by non-governmental and quasi-government agencies.

The Chinese have been doing business in Africa since the 1420s, but in the last decade -- especially after Sept. 11 -- they've upped the ante in dramatic ways. What I've seen first-hand in the last three years in Kenya, for example, is scary in both speed and scope. Almost every major construction project in Kenya that would have been carried out by an American, European or Israeli company in the past is now the domain of Chinese companies.

While we American are busy sending folk to often do silly missionary religious work, aid projects and political advising in slums and remote villages, the Chinese government and companies are sending their people there to strike business deals, build factories, super highways, airports and power generating plants, etc. Some of those facilities are in locations no one would have thought have any economic viability. There's current talk, for example, of a highway that will cut through Kenya' arid lands from the coastal town of Lamu all the way north to Ethiopian border in the north. Such a highway will enable the Chinese to get their from Kenya to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan.

On a side note. it's interesting that Stanley, a Welsh-American, would later return to African as an agent of European interests and participate in events that led to the terrible Berlin Conference of 1885, in which European powers divvied up Africa among themselves, for the sole purpose of exploiting her people and resources. At the conference, in which no African participated or was asked for an opinion, the European powers created brand new countries and carved up boundaries -- many of which are catalysts for conflict today.

It is at that conference, as Gary Stewart put it so eloquently in his wonderful book "Rumba on the River, "with a few pen strokes and the firepower to enforce them, the old nations of Africa were sundered and fused into counterfeit states to be run from the capitals of Europe. .... The 900,000 square mile of central Africa Stanley had carved out for the King (Leopold II) covered eighty times the area of tiny Belgium. The saddened land sustained an estimated five to six million people of more than 200 national groups, many of whom were cut off from their brothers and sisters by colonialism's illogical arbitrary boundaries."

 

[Bill Mattocks]

The U.S. has been in Africa since the days that the now defunct New York Herald sent Henry Morton Stanley to the continent to search for David Livingstone, in the 1870s. In the 1890s, William Astor Chanler, another American -- who later became a politician and was involved in the Spanish-American War -- became the first Westerner to reach the parts of Eastern Kenya where I come from.

Yes, but except for setting the stage by inculcating Christianity and the entire Liberia business, not much of it really matters now.

The biggest problem is that very few Americans see Africa as place worth doing business in, despite the early inroads and years of heavy investment in the continent in the way of direct economic aid by the U.S government, and indirect aid in things like education and healthcare by non-governmental and quasi-government agencies.

That is because Americans in general are as dumb as a sack of hair.

The Chinese have been doing business in Africa since the 1420s, but in the last decade -- especially after Sept. 11 -- they've upped the ante in dramatic ways. What I've seen first-hand in the last three years in Kenya, for example, is scary in both speed and scope. Almost every major construction project in Kenya that would have been carried out by an American, European or Israeli company in the past is now the domain of Chinese companies.

Correct. And the US continues to ignore that at our own peril.

While we American are busy sending folk to often do silly missionary religious work, aid projects and political advising in slums and remote villages, the Chinese government and companies are sending their people there to strike business deals, build factories, super highways, airports and power generating plants, etc. Some of those facilities are in locations no one would have thought have any economic viability. There's current talk, for example, of a highway that will cut through Kenya' arid lands from the coastal town of Lamu all the way north to Ethiopian border in the north. Such a highway will enable the Chinese to get their from Kenya to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan.

Modern civilization, such as it is, is built upon the notions of commerce, which requires trade routes and something to trade. The Panama Canal, awesome undertaking that it was, was built because it served the needs of commerce. We're forgotten that. China has not.

On a side note. it's interesting that Stanley, a Welsh-American, would later return to African as an agent of European interests and participate in events that led to the terrible Berlin Conference of 1885, in which European powers divvied up Africa among themselves, for the sole purpose of exploiting her people and resources. At the conference, in which no African participated or was asked for an opinion, the European powers created brand new countries and carved up boundaries -- many of which are catalysts for conflict today.

It is at that conference, as Gary Stewart put it so eloquently in his wonderful book "Rumba on the River, "with a few pen strokes and the firepower to enforce them, the old nations of Africa were sundered and fused into counterfeit states to be run from the capitals of Europe. .... The 900,000 square mile of central Africa Stanley had carved out for the King (Leopold II) covered eighty times the area of tiny Belgium. The saddened land sustained an estimated five to six million people of more than 200 national groups, many of whom were cut off from their brothers and sisters by colonialism's illogical arbitrary boundaries."

Africa's story is one of exploitation without a word of a lie.

 

[Archtkd]

Yes, but except for setting the stage by inculcating Christianity and the entire Liberia business, not much of it really matters now.

Not in all cases. When I was growing up in Kenya we had tons of American product and commercial influence in the country. As a kid I knew almost every model of Caterpillar tractor/earth mover because I saw them on Kenyan roads. I knew Chevrolet, because of the GM assembly in Nairobi was churning out trucks that local could afford. We knew Ford, Coca Cola, Pepsco, NCR, Kodak, IBM, Energizer Battery, Monsanto, etc. because their products could be bought at reasonable price in Kenyan stores. We played basketball, developed amazing long distance running skills, learned good math, science and English because there were many highly educated American teachers around. Kenya is East Africa's economic engine and for the most part an oasis of peace in a volatile region, in part because of that early America influence. What has happened in the last decade is that America slept -- taking for granted the foundations and gains it had made in Africa -- and let China walk in and use the paths Americans had laid.