Tag: Africom

The images emerging from the current siege of Bani Walid are gruesome. NATO’s henchmen are attacking their own people with bombs and chemical weapons, injuring and killing scores of civilians. Women, children and old people lie maimed or dismembered on the side of the roads, many of them buried in the rubble. Ethnic cleansing of people with black skin is being carried out by Arab supremacists, but the Muslims of Bani Walid refuse to accept that people with black skin are to be hunted and killed.

The LRA is a raggedy bunch of a few hundred at most, poorly equipped, poorly armed and poorly trained. Addressing the problem called the LRA does not call for a military operation. Rather than the reason for accelerated military mobilization in the region, the LRA is the excuse for it. Alas, this message has no room in the Invisible Children video that ends with a call to arms.

Tripoli port area, Aug. 23 – This observer’s tentative appraisal of Tuesday’s events along the North Tripoli port area as of late afternoon Aug. 23 is that the “65,000 well trained and well armed troops” hyped Sunday by the Qaddafi government don’t in fact exist and that the pockets of government troops here in Tripoli and across Libya that do will continue to resist what it views as NATO aggression – designed to usurp the country’s oil and add Libya to Africom.

Are the so-called rebels furthering the aims of heads of state by shattering communities in eastern Congo, driving people into refugee camps and thus separating them from the vast resources that corporations and the major world powers are so determined to control?

In the CIA kick-started war on Libya, The New York Times report Monday by John F. Burns, calling Libyan civilian casualties “propaganda,” does not square with a series of WBAIX in-hospital interviews.

The rationale for the U.S. intervention in Libya is to protect vulnerable civilians from mass slaughter by the Libyan regime. Why has the U.S. has pursued a military path to “protect” civilians in Libya, when there is a far greater humanitarian crisis unfolding in the heart of Africa, in the Congo. President Obama has the diplomatic tools at his disposal to help alleviate the human suffering in the Congo but has not used them. Watch the videos and sign the petition.

“All of our institutions have failed us if they do not use their power and act against this crime against humanity being carried out in Africa today. I received a call this morning from an Ivorian friend who calls it genocide what Sarkozy’s troops are doing there. Blood, blood, everywhere. Depleted uranium in Libya. Generations to come will suffer the health effects. We must try to stop President Obama. He has the power to say no. So far, he is good at saying yes to all the wrong people. So we must do more than we think we can. Anything less places more blood on everyone’s hands.” - Cynthia McKinney

I am pleased to stand with my colleagues today who are outraged at Nobel Peace Laureate President Obama’s decision to wage war on Africa in Libya. At the outset, let me state that Libya is home to tens of thousands of foreign students and guest workers. The students come from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. The messages I have received from concerned Africans state that these young, innocent people, inaccurately labeled by the U.S. press as “Black mercenaries,” have been trapped in hostile territory and are hated by the U.S.-allied Al Qaeda insurgents.

The fundamental stimulus of the attack on Libya is greed, not the protection of the Libyan people. In fact, the people of Libya have suffered more during this bombardment by Western powers and their allies than during the entire 41 years of the leadership of Muammar al-Gaddafi. We must be clear that the attack on Libya is an attack on Africa. The great danger of the attacks on Libya is that they are being used by the U.S. to test the effectiveness of AFRICOM, the African Command, and this adventure will open the door to direct military intervention in Africa.

Western imperialism continues to interfere in the governance of independent African states. We see a trend not just of neo-colonialism but one which moves towards re-colonization. And if we add to this the purchase of huge tracts of African land for agriculture by Middle East countries and China, the people of Africa are being betrayed once again.

U.S. law professor Peter Erlinder returned from three weeks imprisonment, from May 28 to June 17, in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, where he had traveled to act as defense counsel for embattled presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. Ingabire remains under house arrest, unable to leave the country, and faces a possible 20-year prison sentence.

As global awareness grows around the Congo and the silence is finally being broken on the current and historic exploitation of Black people in the heart of Africa, a myriad of Western based “prescriptions” are being proffered. Most of these prescriptions are devoid of social, political, economic and historical context and are marked by remarkable omissions. The conflict mineral approach or efforts emanating from the United States and Europe are no exception to this symptomatic approach which serves more to perpetuate the root causes of Congo’s challenges than to resolve them.

Coltan is a mineral necessary for making electronic things work – like cellphones, ipods, PS3s and laptops. Over 6 million Congolese have been murdered to assure that the corporations and governments involved have a corner on the market for the minerals that the Congo produces. This is "Break the Silence" Congo Week. Check out the events and get involved!

Will the Obama-Nation become an abomination if it fails to stop the bombing of nations? From Gaza to Afghanistan, the American people must take a stand and tell Obama to forge a better plan to free the land.

To an African hip hop beat, learn about the struggle by Africans and Americans to stop the U.S. military from occupying Africa - on...

On Oct. 1, the much-anticipated United States Africa Command (Africom) was officially launched. This military reorganization of U.S. forces to oversee developments in the entire continent has been met with strong objection from the major political states and regional blocs there.