 |
| Rosa Whitaker, wife of Arch Bishop Duncan Williams |
Published on March 25, 2013
By Ekow
Mensah
The advice to Christians to save up
their treasures in Heaven has become outdated.
Today, church leaders and their
families and friends are busily struggling in the world of business to
accumulate as much surplus value (Profit) as they can on earth.
According to “Joyonline” Ms Rosa
Whitaker, wife of Archbishop Duncan Williams of the Christian Action Faith
Ministry has been named as one of the “25 influential Black Women In Business”
for 2013.
Ms Whitaer is President and Chief
Executive officer of the Whitaker Group (TWG) and she will be profiled in the
March 2013 issue of The Network Journal which named her.
She is “an experienced leader in
international business and served as the first –ever Assistant Trade
Representative for Africa during the administrations of President George W.
Bush and William J. Clinton.”
In that position she was credited with
many successful US economic activities in Africa.
Ms Whitaker has been widely recognized for her
leadership and success in advancing trade and business in Africa and was named
one of Foreign Policy's Magazine Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2010.
Her company is believed to have been
responsible for the inflow of more than $2billion investment capital into
Africa.
There can be no
doubt that a lot of money flows through Ms Whitakers enterprises and one
wonders what her real impact has been in the struggle to eradicate poverty in
Ghana.
EDITORIAL
The Media Development Fund
One of the most
commendable things that the Mills administration did was to establish a Media
Development Fund.
Anybody who has
listened to news in local languages on radio especially other private radio
stations can understand how far back Ghanaian media work has gone.
It is our hope that the fund will be used to
improve the capacity of and standards in the media.
The media
development Fund should not be treated as “soli” money to be distributed to
individual journalists.
The Ministry of Information, the Ghana
Journalist Association, The National Media Commission and others in the
industry ought to think together about how to utilize this fund.
This was a very
good initiative and it must not be allowed to fail.
Prof Chinua Achebe is dead
 |
| The late Chinua Achebe |
Nigeria’s literary
icon and publisher of several novels, Chinua Achebe, is dead.
Mr. Achebe, 82,
died in the United States where he was said to have suffered from an
undisclosed ailment.
Premium Times
learnt he died last night in a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, United
States.
A source close to
the family said the professor had been ill for a while and was hospitalised in
an undisclosed hospital in Boston.
The source
declined to provide further details, saying the family would issue a statement
on the development later today.
Contacted,
spokesperson for Brown University, where Mr. Achebe worked until he took ill,
Darlene Trewcrist, is yet to respond to our enquiries on the professor’s
condition.
Until his death,
the renowned author of Things Fall Apart was the David and Marianna Fisher
University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown.
The University
described him as “known the world over for having played a seminal role in the
founding and development of African literature.”
“Achebe’s global
significance lies not only in his talent and recognition as a writer, but also
as a critical thinker and essayist who has written extensively on questions of
the role of culture in Africa and the social and political significance of
aesthetics and analysis of the postcolonial state in Africa,” Brown University
writes of the literary icon.
Mr. Achebe was the
author of Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, and considered the most widely
read book in modern African Literature. The book sold over 12 million copies
and has been translated to over 50 languages worldwide.
Many of his other
novels, including Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease, Anthills of the Savannah,
and A man of the People, were equally influential as well.
Prof Achebe was
born in Ogidi, Anambra State, on November 16, 1930 and attended St Philips’
Central School at the age of six. He moved away from his family to Nekede, four
kilometres from Owerri, the capital of Imo State, at the age of 12 and
registered at the Central School there.
 |
| Things Fall Apart, a book written by Achebe |
He attended
Government College Umuahia for his secondary school education. He was a pioneer
student of the University College, now University of Ibadan in 1948. He was
first admitted to study medicine but changed to English, history and theology
after his first year.
While studying at
Ibadan, Mr. Achebe began to become critical of European literature about
Africa. He eventually wrote his final papers in the University in 1953 and
emerged with a second-class degree.
Prof Achebe taught
for a while after graduation before joining the Nigeria Broadcasting Service in
1954 in Lagos.
While in Lagos
with the Broadcast ing Service, Mr. Achebe met Christie Okoli, who later became
his wife; they got married in 1961. The couple had four children.
He also played a
major role during the Nigeria Civil War where he joined the Biafran Government
as an ambassador.
His latest book,
There Was a Country, was an autobiography on his experiences and views of the
civil war. The book was probably the most criticised of his writings especially
by Nigerians, with many arguing that the professor did not write a balanced
account and wrote more as a Biafran than as a Nigerian.
Mr. Achebe was a
consistent critic of various military dictators that ruled Nigeria and was a
loud voice in denouncing the failure of governance in the country.
Twice, he rejected
offers by the Nigerian government to grant him a national honour, citing the
deplorable political situations in the country, particularly in his home state
of Anambra, as reason.
 |
| Chinua Achebe in his young age |
Below is how Brown
University profiled him on its website.
“Nigerian writer
Chinua Achebe is known the world over for having played a seminal role in the
founding and development of African literature. He continues to be considered
among the most significant world writers. He is most well known for the
groundbreaking 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, a novel still considered to be
required reading the world over. It has sold over twelve million copies and has
been translated into more than fifty languages.
“Achebe’s global
significance lies not only in his talent and recognition as a writer, but also
as a critical thinker and essayist who has written extensively on questions of
the role of culture in Africa and the social and political significance of
aesthetics and analysis of the postcolonial state in Africa. He is renowned, for
example, for “An Image of Africa,” his trenchant and famous critique of Joseph
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Today, this critique is recognized as one of the
most generative interventions on Conrad; and one that opened the social study
of literary texts, particularly the impact of power relations on 20th century
literary imagination.
Iraq
war: A requiem for humanity
 |
| A victim of the Iraq war |
The US-led invasion of Iraq has
destabilized the country. An Iraqi child is shown in the photo lying on a
hospital bed following a bomb attack in Baghdad.
By David Swanson
At 10 years since the launch of Operation Iraqi Liberation
(to use the original name with the appropriate acronym, OIL) and over 22 years
since Operation Desert Storm, there is little evidence that any significant
number of people in the United States have a realistic idea of what our
government has done to the people of Iraq, or of how these actions compare to
other horrors of world history.
A majority of Americans believe the war since 2003 has hurt the United States but benefitted Iraq. A plurality of Americans believe not only that Iraqis should be grateful, but that Iraqis are in fact grateful.
A number of US academics have advanced the dubious claim that war making is declining around the world. Misinterpreting what has happened in Iraq is central to their argument. As documented in the full report, by the most scientifically respected measures available, Iraq lost 1.4 million lives as a result of OIL, saw 4.2 million additional people injured, and 4.5 million people become refugees. The 1.4 million dead was 5% of the population.
That compares to 2.5% lost in the US Civil War, or 3 to 4% in Japan in World War II, 1% in France and Italy in World War II, less than 1% in the U.K. and 0.3% in the United States in World War II. The 1.4 million dead is higher as an absolute number as well as a percentage of population than these other horrific losses. US deaths in Iraq since 2003 have been 0.3% of the dead, even if they’ve taken up the vast majority of the news coverage, preventing US news consumers from understanding the extent of Iraqi suffering.
 |
| George W. Bush, a wanted war criminal |
In a very American parallel, the US government has only been willing to value
the life of an Iraqi at that same 0.3% of the financial value it assigns to the
life of a US citizen.
The 2003 invasion included 29,200 airstrikes, followed by another 3,900 over the next eight years. The US military targeted civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances. It also made use of what some might call “weapons of mass destruction,” using cluster bombs, white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a new kind of napalm in densely settled urban areas.
Birth defects, cancer rates, and infant mortality are through the roof. Water supplies, sewage treatment plants, hospitals, bridges, and electricity supplies have been devastated, and not repaired. Healthcare and nutrition and education are nothing like they were before the war. And we should remember that healthcare and nutrition had already deteriorated during years of economic warfare waged through the most comprehensive economic sanctions ever imposed in modern history.
Money spent by the United States to “reconstruct” Iraq was always less than 10% of what was being spent adding to the damage, and most of it was never actually put to any useful purpose. At least a third was spent on “security,” while much of the rest was spent on corruption in the US military and its contractors.
The educated who might have best helped rebuild Iraq fled the country. Iraq had the best universities in Western Asia in the early 1990s, and now leads in illiteracy, with the population of teachers in Baghdad reduced by 80%.
For years, the occupying forces broke the society of Iraq down, encouraging ethnic and sectarian division and violence, resulting in a segregated country and the repression of rights that Iraqis used to enjoy even under Saddam Hussein’s brutal police state.
The 2003 invasion included 29,200 airstrikes, followed by another 3,900 over the next eight years. The US military targeted civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances. It also made use of what some might call “weapons of mass destruction,” using cluster bombs, white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a new kind of napalm in densely settled urban areas.
Birth defects, cancer rates, and infant mortality are through the roof. Water supplies, sewage treatment plants, hospitals, bridges, and electricity supplies have been devastated, and not repaired. Healthcare and nutrition and education are nothing like they were before the war. And we should remember that healthcare and nutrition had already deteriorated during years of economic warfare waged through the most comprehensive economic sanctions ever imposed in modern history.
Money spent by the United States to “reconstruct” Iraq was always less than 10% of what was being spent adding to the damage, and most of it was never actually put to any useful purpose. At least a third was spent on “security,” while much of the rest was spent on corruption in the US military and its contractors.
The educated who might have best helped rebuild Iraq fled the country. Iraq had the best universities in Western Asia in the early 1990s, and now leads in illiteracy, with the population of teachers in Baghdad reduced by 80%.
For years, the occupying forces broke the society of Iraq down, encouraging ethnic and sectarian division and violence, resulting in a segregated country and the repression of rights that Iraqis used to enjoy even under Saddam Hussein’s brutal police state.
 |
| Tony Blair, another war criminal |
While the dramatic escalation of violence that for several years was predicted
would accompany any US withdrawal did not materialize, Iraq is not at peace.
The war destabilized Iraq internally, created regional tensions, and -- of
course - generated widespread resentment for the United States. That was the
opposite result of the stated one of making the United States safer.
If the United States had taken five trillion dollars, and - instead of spending it destroying Iraq - had chosen to do good with it, at home or abroad, just imagine the possibilities. The United Nations thinks $30 billion a year would end world hunger. For $5 trillion, why not end world hunger for 167 years? The lives not saved are even more than the lives taken away by war spending.
A sanitized version of the war and how it started is now in many of our school text books. It is not too late for us to correct the record, or to make reparations. We can better work for an actual reduction in war making and the prevention of new wars if we accurately understand what past wars have involved.
If the United States had taken five trillion dollars, and - instead of spending it destroying Iraq - had chosen to do good with it, at home or abroad, just imagine the possibilities. The United Nations thinks $30 billion a year would end world hunger. For $5 trillion, why not end world hunger for 167 years? The lives not saved are even more than the lives taken away by war spending.
A sanitized version of the war and how it started is now in many of our school text books. It is not too late for us to correct the record, or to make reparations. We can better work for an actual reduction in war making and the prevention of new wars if we accurately understand what past wars have involved.
Mali,
France and the war on terror in Africa
 |
| French President Francois Hollande |
By Horace
G. Campbell
Africa has
been demonized in the West for decades. To justify military intervention and
imperialist expansion, Africa is today being depicted again as the scene of instability,
violence and terrorism. The progressive forces for peace and social justice
should mobilize against this planned remilitarization of the continent
INTRODUCTION
Imminent
threat is a term used in international law to justify a preemptive military
strike. This concept of imminent threat had been articulated prior to the war
against the people of Iraq by the George W Bush Administration when the peoples
of the world were bombarded with information that Saddam Hussein possessed
weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Ten years after the destruction of Iraq with
millions killed or displaced, we now know that the case for war had been
presented with dubious evidence. Today, there is a new propaganda war, that
Jihadists across the Sahel pose an imminent threat to the United States.
Recently, U.S. Senator Christopher Coons, chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee stated in Bamako, Mali, that al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb
(AQIM) posed a “‘very real threat’ to Africa, the United States and the wider world.”
Who or
what is this AQIM? What are its origins? What are their sources of sustenance,
finance and logistics?
These
questions are not raised when the hype about imminent threat is being bandied
about in the media. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have been
prolific in carrying stories about the new threats of terrorism from Africa.
Those who do not know about Africa would be carried away by these incessant
stories about terrorism in the Sahel, Al Queda in the Horn of Africa and the
spread of Islamic terrorists across the length and breadth of Africa.
This idea
that AQIM was on the verge of taking over Mali and West Africa had been
promoted by France to justify the military intervention under the banner of
Operation Serval. France had dispatched approximately 4000 troops to repel
Jihadists who had taken over Northern Mali. After these Jihadists seized a
number of towns and desecrated important cultural centers, international
opinion was sufficiently outraged to mute criticisms of the French intervention.
 |
| Map of West Africa |
Progressive African opinion was divided over this invasion of Mali as France
promoted the idea through a massive propaganda and disinformation campaign that
it was ‘invited’ by the government of Mali. Furthermore, select pictures of
Malian citizens celebrating the routing of the Jihadists from towns that had
been seized since January 12 gave legitimacy to the idea that Africans welcomed
the French military intervention. After this ‘successful’ intervention, western
media outlets are replete with stories that it is the alliance between France
and her allies along with the United States that can protect this region of
Africa (from Mauritania to Sudan) from being overrun by terrorists. I will
argue in this submission that the French intervention is also part of a wider
struggle within the Western world and within the foreign policy establishment
in Washington.
In a
written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Army Gen. David M.
Rodriguez, who has been nominated to be the next leader of the Pentagon’s
Africa Command, estimated that the U.S. military needs to increase its
intelligence-gathering and spying missions in Africa by nearly 15-fold. Members
of the Senate Armed Services Committee who support the expansion of the budget
of the Pentagon at a moment of financial crisis for the majority of citizens on
the planet pressed General Rodriquez to spell out how the United States will
respond to threats and crisis in Africa in the future. This call to beef up the
Africa Command is coming from the same section of the foreign and military
establishment that opposes Chuck Hagel to become the next Secretary of Defense
in the United States.
We are
informed by the biographers of Petraeus that General David Rodriquez was
mentored by General David Petraues. Even though both Petraeus and General John
Allen have been diminished by scandals relating to their conduct, their ideas
about terror and counter terror still hold a lot of sway among sections of the
foreign and military establishment. This establishment is torn asunder because
the United States cannot continue to finance a large military budget without
greater austerity imposed on the US society. Black and brown citizens along
with other sections of the working poor have borne the brunt of the austerity
measures and the transfer of wealth from the poor to the top one per cent
inside the United States. These sections of the population have borne the brunt
of police harassment and killings. From this domestic policy flowed the foreign
policy imperative to kill indiscriminately with drones.
 |
| John Brennan, newly appointed CIA boss |
In the
context of the confirmation of John Brennan as the Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) a section of the media was able to get its hands on a
Department of Justice white paper, which spells out exactly why it’s perfectly
alright for the U.S. to enact extrajudicial assassination of its own citizens
by drone strikes. Here was another instance where the idea of imminent threat
was being used to justify killings. In the face of the massive anti-war sentiments
in the USA, the Pentagon and the CIA resorted to fighting using Special Forces
and drones. These drone strikes have killed thousands of persons in Africa and
Asia with President Obama giving himself the authority to dispense with human
life without trials. One only has to be a suspected terrorist to be targeted.
The document is titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a
U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated
Force.” The Memo from the Department of Justice said that its definition of
"imminent threat" doesn't require "clear evidence that a
specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate
future .”
In the
consciousness of the establishment of the United States, Africans had been
demonized for decades. Now, with the divisions inside that establishment over
its future, and the future projection of military force, Africa is now being
conjured again as the scene of instability, violence and terrorism. We will
argue in this contribution that it is urgent for the peace and social justice
forces internationally to mobilize against this planned remilitarization of
Africa. Just as how, ten years after the war against Iraq, we know that the WMD
threat was fabricated, it is urgent that the peace forces inside the United
States expose the linkages between the military, the Algerian DRS and the
Jihadists. This conclusion of this intervention will reassert the claim that it
is only the unity of the peoples of Africa across the artificial borders that
can start to resolve the outstanding questions of the divisions of peoples such
as the Tuareg in differing states. Until the unification of Africa, the Tuaregs
will be like the Kurds, manipulated by external forces to suit their own interests.
MALI AND
THE TRADITIONS OF PAN AFRICANISM AND UNITY
When the
Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara gathered together the cultural artists in Mali
on January 17, 2013 at the Voices United for Mali press conference and sang for
peace, she was taking the leadership in calling for the people of Africa to
join together to bring peace to Mali. She was carrying forward a deep tendency
of popular organizing among the people of Mali. The society of Mali sits at the
crossroads of numerous tendencies in Africa. One of the proudest tendencies has
been the intellectual and cultural history that boasts the archive of the
Africa’s contribution to the intellectual culture of humanity with one of the
oldest of the institutions centered in the city of Timbuktu. It was this proud
tradition that shepherded the reconquest of the independence of the region of
West Africa that had been invaded by France after 1830. Because of the cultural
and political strength of the independent states beyond the Coast, the imperial
penetration of France beyond the coastal areas could only gain ground after the
collective military scramble that resulted in the Berlin Conference of 1885.
 |
| Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah |
When
France was weakened by World War II, the peoples of West Africa organized to
regain their independence and it was in this region where there were the
loudest calls for the establishment of a United States of Africa- then called
Union of Independent African States. Soon after the independence of Ghana in
1957, the leaders of Ghana, Guinea and Mali proclaimed a unity based on
Pan-African cooperation. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Sekou Toure started this
union that was later joined by Modibo Keïta of Mali. Mark DeLancey in his
bibliographical essay on the The Ghana - Guinea - Mali Union: exposed the deep
interest in that elementary Union and the deployment of western intellectuals
to understand the internal dynamics of that Pan African experiment. [1] After
the western intellectuals came the military interventions. First Ghana met the
fate of the removal of Nkrumah in 1966 and then in 1968 General Moussa Traoré
organized a coup d'état against Modibo Keïta, and sent him to prison in the
northern Malian town of Kidal.
Moussa
Traore with the support of external ‘donors’ dominated the politics of Mali
until 1991 when he was removed by an uprising of workers, students and others
groups that had fought for the removal of the military from the center of
Malian politics. After the overthrow of Traore, Alpha Konare carried forward
the Pan African traditions of Mali and went on to become the first Chairperson
of the African Union Commission (2003-2008). On the international stage, Konaré
worked for peace and integration in the West African region. Among the people
of Mali, he understood that the outstanding problems of the place of the Tuareg
could not be settled outside of the context of unity and so he worked hard for
African unity, serving as president of Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS) in 1999 and of the West African Monetary Union (UEMOA) in 2000.
Leaders such as Keita and Konare were feared by western powers and France
maintained a strong military presence in Africa with permanent bases in Côte
d'Ivoire, Senegal, Gabon, Chad and Djibouti.
FRENCH
MILITARY INTERVENTIONS IN AFRICA
In the
book, France Soldiers and Africa, Anthony Clayton laid out in graphic detail
the military system of France and its impact on both France and Africa. One of
the little known aspects of this militarization of Africa was how the French
intellectual culture was negatively affected by the history of military
engagement and interventions. Between 1960 and 2012 France had undertaken more
than one hundred military interventions in Africa. The lowest point of this
engagement and its intellectual variant was when France invaded Central Africa
to assist those who were carrying out genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
The
embarrassment of shepherding the genocidaires to Zaire and the aftermath of war
and destabilization of the entire Eastern African region had led to a temporary
retreat by France with the military intellectuals propagating the view that
France was reviewing its military policies towards Africa and was going to
reform her security policy in Africa, claiming to mark the start of a ‘new
African politics’.
 |
| Map of Africa |
Nearly
fifteen years after the appearance of the book by Clayton, Christopher Griffin
wrote a detailed study, French Military Interventions in Africa: French Grand
Strategy and Defense Policy since Decolonization. The importance of this study
was in the full documentation of how this Grand Strategy was connected by three
circles, (a) the national independence of French foreign and defense policy,
(b) European defense and (c) a global or geostrategic defense of France’s
overseas territories, the DOM-TOM, and other regions and states outside of
Europe where French national interests were at stake, primarily in sub-Saharan
Africa.
This study
of Griffin was written before two major events that changed the world. The
first was the capitalist depression and the financial crisis within Europe and North
America (after 2008). The second was the revolutionary upheavals within Africa
that toppled the regimes of Tunisia and Egypt.
Both of
these seismic changes in the international system affected the projection of
force by France and this was most clearly manifest in the manipulations by
France in relation to the intervention in Libya.[2] Despite the catastrophic
failure of that intervention and the instability that has ensued in Africa
(with the deepening military engagements in the Sahara), the momentum for
French military activities are driven not only by the grand strategy, but by
the necessity to draw the United States and the United States Africa Command
into a closer alliance, with the US underwriting the intervention by France.
The alliance and cooperation between the COIN strategists of the US military
and the former colonial generals of France have been well documented and
epitomized by the correspondence between General David Petraeus and the late
Gen. Marcel Bigeard, 1916-2010. Bigeard had been the quintessential colonial
military torturer whose life and exploits followed the colonial and
neo-colonial history of France in Africa and IndoChina.
The fall
of Petraeus after the elections in the United States in November 2012 had
provided one opportunity for the top military brass in the United States to
rethink its future, especially at a moment when the crisis of capitalism
demanded deep cuts in the military budget. The intervention by France was part
of a larger strategy to influence the debate inside the foreign and military
policy establishment about whether the war on terror is coming to an end.
 |
| David Petraeus, former CIA Boss |
Those who
are promoting a continuous war on terror have been propagating the idea that
West Africa has become a hot bed of terrorism and that the terrorists in the
Maghreb threaten the vital interests of the United States. Those who have
followed the expenditures of the United States since 2003 in the Trans Sahara
Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) and later the US Africa Command will know
that of the more than half a billion dollars that was spent, the money went to
train many of the forces that are now called terrorist have been trained by the
United States. Even from within the corridors of the media in Washington DC
writers such as Walter Pincus have documented the huge expenditures of the US
military in Mali since 2002.
In the same period when the hype of weapons of
mass destruction was being propagated by the Bush administration, another
fiction was being presented. This was the idea that terrorists were spreading
out from Afghanistan and spreading terror from Asia through the Horn of Africa
and over to West Africa. This was presented as the banana theory of terrorism
and documented in the book, The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa.
[3]
Pincus
wrote about the monies spent after 2002 in the counterterror offensives in Mali
and West Africa. “With that money, U.S. European Command (EUCOM) sent U.S.
Special Forces training units to work with the Mali military.” The fear was
that Islamic fighters driven from Afghanistan would settle in northern Mali.
Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeffrey B. Kohler, then head of planning at EUCOM, said,
“We’re helping to teach them [the Malian military] how to control this area
themselves so they can keep it from being used by terrorists.” [4]
Figures
now produced by varying agencies in the USA show that in the counterterror
offensives, Mali was the largest recipient of US funds amounting to more than
half a billion dollars. The Pentagon had started out with the Pan Sahel Initiative
(PSI) but by 2005, the PSI was replaced by the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism
Partnership (TSCTP), a partnership of State, Defense and the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) meant to focus on improving individual
country and regional capabilities in northwest Africa.
As one
writer in the USA summed up this relationship between the USA and the corrupt
military establishment in Mali, “In the past decade, the U.S. alone has poured
close to $1 billion into Mali, including development aid as well as military
training to battle an al-Qaida offshoot in the north. In doing so, the U.S.
unwittingly also helped prepare the soldiers for the coup: Sanogo himself
benefited from six training missions in the U.S., the State Department
confirmed, starting in 1998 when he was sent to an infantry training course at
Fort Benning, Ga. He returned in 2001, 2002, 2004, 2008 and 2010 to attend some
of the most prestigious military institutions in America, including the Defense
Language Institute at the Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. He took a basic
officer course at Quantico, Virginia, and learned to use a light-armored
vehicle at Camp Pendleton, Calif.”
The aid
packages to Mali represented a systematic buildup of the US military
involvement in the Sahel region, with a focus on Mali because of the strong
history of popular struggles for democratic change in Mali. As far back as
November 2009, in his testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Africa
hearing on 'Counter-terrorism in the Sahel' on 17 November 2009, Secretary of
State for Africa Johnnie Carson identified Mali – along with Algeria, Mali, and
Mauritania – as one of the 'key countries' in the region for the US
counter-terrorism strategy. “We believe that our work with Mali to support more
professional units capable of improving the security environment in the country
will have future benefits if they are sustained”, he stated.
The
current insecurity in Mali is a direct result of the US military presence and
the instability represents one more piece of evidence why Africans must be more
forthright in opposing the expansion of the US Africa Command. It was when the
full extent of the US engagement with the forces in combat became known that
the lame duck leader of AFRICOM, General Carter Ham, admitted, “We made
mistakes.” [5]
USA ON THE
WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY
The US
foreign policy establishment was always on the defensive in relation to the
formulation of policies towards Africa, because their domestic policy towards
Africans has been dominated by racism. During the era of colonialism and
apartheid the US foreign policy was informed by the support for the white
racist regimes in Africa and for dictators. From the assassination of Patrice
Lumumba in 1960 to the execution of Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011, the US
hard interests have been dominated by oil, needs of finance capital (IMF),
wars, and global US diplomatic and military hegemony. The US Africa Command is
the latest iteration of the combination of these hard interests with the
counter-terrorism discourse losing its luster. During the period of the support
for apartheid, when the peoples of Angola were about to defeat the South
African racist army at Cuito Cuanavale, the United States mounted Operation
Flintlock to give support to the white racist regime.
In the era
of ‘counterterror, Operation Flintlock was again launched to spread instability
and corruption in the Sahel. Operation Flintlock exercises were held in Mali in
2007 and 2008. In 2009, Mali got equipment worth $5 million, including 37 “new
Land Cruiser pickup trucks, along with powerful communications equipment” for
the desert, according to a U.S. statement. Mali also got $1 million in U.S.
mine-detector equipment.
WHO OR
WHAT IS AQIM?
For this
author, AQIM has the same status as the weapons of mass destruction that was
supposed to be in Iraq. From the time of the launch of the Pan Sahel
Initiative, the United States had partnered with repressive regimes in the
region of North and West Africa. Moammar Gaddaffi had gone out of his way to ingratiate
himself with the United States associating with the war on terror, until the
United States and France turned to the very same jihadists to remove Gaddafi.
The names and personalities have been changing over the past ten years but
there is a certain consistency with which there has been shifting allegiances
in North Africa. One allegiance that has been constant has been the
relationship between the US military and intelligence services with the Algeria
Secret Police DRS (Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité) Department
of Intelligence and Security (DRS).
From the
period of the well documented Dirty War in Algeria that started in 1992, there
has been documented evidence of the fabrication of terrorism by this DRS. Habib
Souaïdia, a former military officer from Algeria has written for posterity the
role of the DRS in the ‘netherworld of torture, murder and terrorism. [6] The
book by Souaidia about the world of the Generals of the DRS had been written
before September 11, 2001. After the Global War on Terror was declared by
George W. Bush, the neo-conservatives embraced the DRS as an ally and partner
to fight terrorism. Haliburton entered into the lucrative business of building
defense institutions as well as profiting from the oil and gas business in
Algeria. The collusion between the firms such as Haliburton and the DRS has
been documented. Although the complex linkages between terrorism, corruption
and a section of the politico-military power concealed the exact base for
support for AQIM, from inside the national Security apparatus in Washington
there were writers who exposed the overlap between governments, smugglers, drug
dealers and those who were dubbed as terrorists. [7]
Western
news agencies such as the BBC have been running stories on “Mali's main
Islamist militants.” These stories have listed five main Islamists groups in
Mali and the Sahel. The sixth group is from time to time listed with the groups
that are called Jihadists.
These are:
1. Ansar
Dine – identified as one movement with a number of Tuareg fighters who returned
from Libya after fighting alongside Muammar Gaddafi's troops.
2. Islamic
Movement for Azawad - an offshoot of Ansar Dine which says it rejects
"terrorism" and wants dialogue
3.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) - al-Qaeda's North African wing, with
roots in Algeria
4.
Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao) - an AQIM splinter group
whose aim is to spread jihad to the whole of West Africa
5.
Signed-in-Blood Battalion - an AQIM offshoot committed to a global jihad and
responsible for Algerian gas facility siege.
6.
The National Movement Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) is a secular Tuareg group
which seeks independence for a homeland they call Azawad [8]
The
shifting alliances of these so-called jihadists that were supposed to have
threatened Bamako , West Africa and the world are then reproduced by other
western journalists without the kind of critical examination of the roots of
these organizations. Given the history of the US counter-terror operations and the
shifting alliances it would be important for the Senate Armed Services
Committee to investigate the claim of Jeremy Keenan that “at the heart of AQIM
is the DRS.” [9]
African
progressives have to seriously investigate the relationship between the DRS and
these so-called jihadists because Algeria has been one of the strongest
supporters of the African Union and the African Liberation Project. Up to today
the diplomats of Algeria are held in the highest regard within the corridors of
the African Union and the Algerian leadership has gained praise for its
unstinting support for the independence of Western Sahara. From the period of
the internal war against Islamists in 1992, there had been numerous stories
about the DRS and its role in corruption and torture. Algeria and the DRS
consider the Sahel to be the backyard of Algeria and hence it has been
difficult to separate drug traffickers, smugglers of cigarettes, Jihadists, and
corrupt secret services in this region.
From the
evidence provided by the Government Accountable Office of the United States,
the large sums of money expended by the United States in Mali since 2005 went
to support some of the regional barons who were involved in underground
channels that overlapped with the jihadists. A leader of the so called
jihadists called Iyad Ag Ghaly has enjoyed the support of leaders inside and
outside of Mali functioning at one moment as the envoy of Mali in Saudi Arabia.
[10] An unflattering profile of Iyad Ag Ghaly, ‘Mali's whisky-drinking rebel
turned Islamist chief,’ [11] gives some indication of the interpenetration
between terror, counter terror, the world of drug dealers, kidnappers and
organized mafia groups.
African
progressives and intellectuals will have to work hard to expose the linkages
between Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States conservatives and the jihadists
across West Africa. One direct result of the Libya intervention was the reality
that France, the United States and Britain financed the Islamist forces who
they are now supposed to be fighting. For the past sixty years, France
intervened militarily ostensibly to protect French nationals but in the main,
these interventions have been to support corrupt and unpopular leaders.
When
General Gen. David M. Rodriguez, who is poised to become the next leader of the
Pentagon’s Africa Command, estimated that the U.S. military needs to increase
its intelligence-gathering and spying missions in Africa, it is important to
point out that the Obama administration is empowering a general who was
mentored by General David Petraeus.
WHAT
LESSONS MUST BE LEARNT FROM THE PRESENT INSTABILITY IN MALI?
There are
many lessons to be learnt from the role of France, the United States and
Britain in North and West Africa. From Africa, one of the most important
lessons is to draw from the discourse on imminent threat to be able to isolate
those corrupt officials who participate with external forces in counter-terror
activities. And then, ten years later turn around and start to fight wars
against the very same forces that they have trained and nurtured. There was no
time when the forces of the jihadists numbered more than 6000. It is clear that
France jumped the gun to intervene pre-empting the deployment of the forces of
ECOWAS. International pundits blamed Africans for their slowness in responding
to the takeover of Northern Mali. Experience from Sierra Leone and from Liberia
pointed to the capabilities of forces from ECOWAS, especially Nigeria, to
eradicate forces of military destabilization.
There are
divisions between progressive Africans as to the danger that was presented by
AQIM. These divisions should not divert attention from the fact that the
Tuaregs have real grievances all across the region of the Sahel. The challenges
of resolving the outstanding questions of self-determination and autonomy for
the Tuareg in this region cannot be carried out in the context of the present
borders. The French intellectuals and military understand this and hence,
France has presented itself as a supporter of the Tuareg while jumping in to
fight other sections of the Tuareg.
The
African people know full well that the so-called jihadists have been those who
were trained and supported by the USA, the DRS with finance from Qatar and
Saudi Arabia. In reality, in order to root out terror in Africa, it will be
necessary to excise the sources of funding that is flowing to the Wahabists.
The bulk of the weapons and finance for these jihadists come from allies of the
USA where the Wahabist forces are financially and militarily well endowed.
The entire
Sahara region abuts the revolutionary zone of Egypt. Every society in North
Africa is threatened by revolutionary uprisings. The inequalities and
exploitation of the poor all across the region have provided fertile ground for
revolutionary openings. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the USA understand the
potential for change after Tahrir Square, hence the tremendous investments to
remilitarize this entire region.
BEYOND THE
IMMINENT THREAT
Ten years
after the war in Iraq and two years after the NATO intervention in Libya, the
western media is again preparing citizens of the West for an escalation of
military destabilization of Africa. Since last November, there has not been a
week when the western media did not carry a story about how AQIM threatens the
west. From these reports, carried especially in the Washington Post and the New
York Times, one may be forgiven if one forgets that there is another dynamic at
work in Africa, that of a new force of economic dynamism across the continent.
 |
| US President Obama loves the drone |
The recent
report about the location of US surveillance drones in Niger was another
instance of hyping the so-called terror threat from Africa. The reporting in
the New York Times on ‘U.S. Weighs Base for Spy Drones in North Africa’ was
part of a wider ongoing debate within the Administration about the future of
the US military budget. The New York Times is part of this debate and is on the
side of those who want to see the maintenance of the high military budget. In
the past 50 years there has not been a major war or deployment of US military
force that the New York Times opposed. This organization supported the war in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now the expansion of western military intervention
in North Africa. The reporting in my opinion is part of the effort to promote the
idea that Africa is a hotbed of terrorist activity and that the rag tag groups
that are called jihadists are a threat to the United States.
This is
patently false.
What needs
to be done is for there to be a clear assessment of how much the US military
supported some of these same groups that they are now fighting. When Jeh
Charles Johnson, the Defense Department’s general counsel, gave a speech in
Oxford in November to say that the war on terror is not endless and that there
will be a time when this mopping up of terrorists will be a police operation,
the New York Times did not give this story the same exposure as European
papers. The item was front and center for British newspapers such as the
Guardian. In his speech Jeh Johnson held that, ‘When that point is reached, the
primary responsibility for mopping up scattered remnants of the group and
unaffiliated terrorists will fall to United States law enforcement and
intelligence agencies, and pressing questions will arise about what to do with
any military detainees who are still being held without trial as wartime
prisoners.’
‘I do believe that on the present course,
there will come a tipping point — a tipping point at which so many of the
leaders and operatives of Al Qaeda and its affiliates have been killed or
captured and the group is no longer able to attempt or launch a strategic
attack against the United States, such that Al Qaeda as we know it, the
organization that our Congress authorized the military to pursue in 2001, has
been effectively destroyed.’
Jeh
Johnson did not survive in the pentagon much longer after this speech. The
present struggles over the next Secretary of Defense in the United States is
intricately linked to the struggle of whether the CIA and the military can
continue to create terrorists and then turn around and fight them. One
indication of this tension in the administration was exposed when Senator John
McCain questioned Leon Panetta (Outgoing Secretary of Defences) on the US
military support for those fighting the Assad regime. In testimony before the
Senate Armed Services Committee in early February, Defense Secretary Leon E.
Panetta acknowledged that he and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, had supported a plan last year to arm carefully vetted
Syrian rebels. But it was ultimately vetoed by the White House, Mr. Panetta
said, although it was developed by David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director at
the time, and backed by Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the secretary of state.’
[12]
 |
| Badge of the CIA |
The CIA
had been using Libya as a base for the recruitment of jihadists to fight in
Syria. Some of the very same groups that had been trained by the CIA are now
fighting in Mali.
This kind
of duplicity is not new in Africa. For the past twenty years, the Pentagon and
the CIA have been fighting on both sides in Somalia. When insiders from the
western establishment warn that there is a new phase of a war on terror in
Africa, serious policy makers in Africa and beyond should take serious note. It
has now devolved to the integrated East African Community to bring in Somalia
and carry out a process of demilitarization. Such a process of demilitarization
weakens the hands of those in the USA who see Africa as a hotbed of terrorism.
The present struggles in Mali require new commitment for social and economic
transformation in Africa, especially incorruptible leaders who can resist drug
dealers, jihadists and smugglers. It is in Nigeria where the forces of
destabilization are most active because these forces understand that a democratic
and committed Nigeria will be a major force for unity and emancipation in
Africa.
* Horace G
Campbell is a professor of African American Studies and Political Science at
Syracuse University in Syracuse, NY. He has a book coming out in March titled,
‘Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya’.
END
NOTES
[i] Mark
Delancey, “The Ghana - Guinea - Mali Union: A Bibliographic Essay” African
Studies Bulletin > Vol. 9, No. 2, Sep., 1966 ,
[ii]
Horace Campbell, Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya, Monthly
Review Press, New York 2013
[iii]
Jeremy Keenan, The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa, Pluto Press
London 2009
[iv]
Walter Pincus, “Mali insurgency followed 10 years of U.S. counterterrorism
programs,” Washington Post, January 16, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/b5q8epq
[vi]
NICHOLAS LE QUESNE, Algeria’s Shameful war, Time Magazine, April 16, 2001 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,105720,00.html
[vii] John
Schindler, “The Ugly truth about Algeria.” The National Interest 10 July 2012. http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-ugly-truth-about-algeria-7146
[viii] BBC
, Mali Crisis: Key Players, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17582909
[ix]
Jeremy Keenan, 'Secret hand' in French Sahel raid,” Al Jazeera, August 29,
2010, http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/2010/08/201085183329292214.html
See also
John Schindler, “Algeria’s hidden hand.” The National Interest 22 January 2013.
http://tinyurl.com/bzfw5se
and Jeremy Keenan, “A New Phase in the War on Terror?: “ International State
Crime Initiative, February 14, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/a5p3kl7
[x] Peter
Beumont, “The man who could determine whether the west is drawn into Mali's
war,” Guardian UK, October 27, 2012, http://tinyurl.com/bjz4xat
[xi] Leela
Jacinto, “Mali's whisky-drinking rebel turned Islamist chief,” http://tinyurl.com/8g547nm
[xii]
Michael Gordon and Mark Landler, “ Senate Hearing Draws Out a Rift in U.S.
Policy on Syria,” New York Times, February 7, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/ase9347
B.F.Bankie
Sudan Sensitisation Project (SSP)
‘Iraq
war planning wholly irresponsible’
 |
| Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is wanted for war crimes |
The former top commander, who chaired the defense staff
between 1997 and 2001, said the then US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has a
“lot to answer” over allowing the Iraqi army to be taken apart, rather than
removing its top commanders and clasping “the army to their bosom”.
This comes as Guthrie also pointed the finger of blame at the then Prime Minister Tony Blair for going to the war along with the US without adequate justification.
The top commander’s views were backed by other senior military figures including Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge, ex-Army chief General Mike Jackson, chief of the defense staff at the time of the invasion Lord Boyce and Lord Dannatt, Jackson’s successor.
The commanders all stressed the fact that the war lacked a “proper” planning with the US making things worse by “totally disbanding the Iraqi army and the Ba'ath party, the two instruments of the Iraqi state that could have exercised some control", as Dannatt put it.
The result they said was an “enormous vacuum” that created a security chaos in Iraq.
"It was a national disgrace that, having flown over much of the country for 13 years, you could have not done better in building up a proper intelligence picture," Burridge added.
He also said that Blair had a burning enthusiasm for “solidarity with the US”.
This comes as former Cabinet Secretary Lord Wilson had also told the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war that Blair had an appetite for military intervention.
"There is a gleam in his eye that worries me,” he said.
All of the commanders have already given evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry that will report on the legality of the invasion of Iraq and Britain’s participation in the conflict later this year.
The Iraq war turned into a headache for the British government only months after the invasion, with talks of Blair misleading the MPs to go to war, raising questions about its very legality.
Lord Goldsmith, Tony Blair's top legal advisor and attorney general at the time of the 2003 invasion, told the Iraq War Inquiry (Chilcot Inquiry) in January 2011 that Blair hoodwinked the MPs by claiming that Britain could legally attack Iraq even without a United Nation's approval.
Goldsmith also told the inquiry that the former Labor PM told the MPs in a statement on 15 January 2003 that there were “circumstances” in which an attack could be legal without UN approval.
This comes as Guthrie also pointed the finger of blame at the then Prime Minister Tony Blair for going to the war along with the US without adequate justification.
The top commander’s views were backed by other senior military figures including Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge, ex-Army chief General Mike Jackson, chief of the defense staff at the time of the invasion Lord Boyce and Lord Dannatt, Jackson’s successor.
The commanders all stressed the fact that the war lacked a “proper” planning with the US making things worse by “totally disbanding the Iraqi army and the Ba'ath party, the two instruments of the Iraqi state that could have exercised some control", as Dannatt put it.
The result they said was an “enormous vacuum” that created a security chaos in Iraq.
"It was a national disgrace that, having flown over much of the country for 13 years, you could have not done better in building up a proper intelligence picture," Burridge added.
He also said that Blair had a burning enthusiasm for “solidarity with the US”.
This comes as former Cabinet Secretary Lord Wilson had also told the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war that Blair had an appetite for military intervention.
"There is a gleam in his eye that worries me,” he said.
All of the commanders have already given evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry that will report on the legality of the invasion of Iraq and Britain’s participation in the conflict later this year.
The Iraq war turned into a headache for the British government only months after the invasion, with talks of Blair misleading the MPs to go to war, raising questions about its very legality.
Lord Goldsmith, Tony Blair's top legal advisor and attorney general at the time of the 2003 invasion, told the Iraq War Inquiry (Chilcot Inquiry) in January 2011 that Blair hoodwinked the MPs by claiming that Britain could legally attack Iraq even without a United Nation's approval.
Goldsmith also told the inquiry that the former Labor PM told the MPs in a statement on 15 January 2003 that there were “circumstances” in which an attack could be legal without UN approval.
New
pope’s economic stance
 |
| Pope Francis |
By Dr. Webster G. Tarpley
The election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as head of the Roman
Catholic Church marks a watershed, since this is the first time that a prelate
from a third world or developing country has become Pope.
Bergoglio is also strongly identified with Catholic social doctrine, which has traditionally stressed a preferential option in favor of the needs of the poor, rather than a concern with the privileges of the rich, combined with a rejection of laissez-faire, neoliberal, or monetarist economics in favor of social solidarity. Francis has set his first official day in office on the March 19 festival of St. Joseph the carpenter, the patron saint of workers.
This papal election was also remarkable for what did not occur. Elements of the US Catholic hierarchy, evidently backed by forces within the State Department and the Obama White House, had made no secret of their desire to take control of the Vatican and employ it henceforth as an abject tool of US imperial policy. The New York Times and Washington Post contributed articles seeking to highlight the many advantages which they claimed would derive from electing the first American pope. The delegation of US cardinals, second in numbers only to the Italians, attempted to act as a political machine in Rome on the eve of the conclave, giving daily press conferences in an attempt to stampede the 115 members of the College of Cardinals into electing an American.
According to insider reports, the manager of this effort to elect an American pope was New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who focused on the effort to install Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley as the new pontiff. Italian newspaper accounts revealed that O’Malley’s main advisor was the clergyman Terrence Donilon, the brother of Tom Donilon, the political operative who currently serves as the director of the National Security Council in the Obama White House. The danger was thus clear enough that, if O’Malley had prevailed, the next pope would get his inspiration from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
To pose this danger in slightly different terms: Governor
Martin O’Malley of Maryland is currently a quite serious candidate for the
Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. If Sean O’Malley were to become
pope, the potential might then exist to have within a few years President
O’Malley in Washington and Pope O’Malley in Rome. As the great Italian poet
Dante argued 700 years ago in his Divine Comedy, it is essential for the
spiritual and religious power of the papacy to be kept separate from the
political and military power of the empire. The virtual absorption of the
Vatican by Washington could well have spelled the final collapse of the
Catholic Church.
Since the 1943 Anglo-American invasion of Italy during the time of Pius XII, the Vatican has continuously found itself under pressure to toe the London-Washington imperial line. Some popes were able to assert a significant degree of independence, notably Paul VI Montini, whose reign marked the high point of influence within the church by veterans of the wartime European resistance against fascism. More recently, the Polish Pope John Paul II sought to condemn the aggression committed by the Bush administration, but was always pulled in the other direction by the Polish tendency to look to Washington as a counterweight against Russia. Benedict XVI turned out to be far weaker, reflecting the postwar subordination of Germany to the United States. He was always on the defensive because he had taken part in German air defense during World War II.
The anti-imperialist tradition is strong in Argentina
But now we have a pope whose national origin will tend to impel him towards independence from Washington. Among all the nations in Latin America, Argentina is surely second to none in its tradition of national sovereignty and resistance to imperialism, a tradition which has persisted through many changes of political regime. According to some reports, 10 Downing Street in London has already witnessed apoplectic scenes by Prime Minister David Cameron due to the fact that Pope Francis I Bergoglio, as the Argentinean that he is, regards the Malvinas (or Falkland) Islands as an integral part of Argentina, regardless of any referendum staged there by the British among their colonizers.
On the day after his election, Francis went personally to the guesthouse where
he had been staying in Via della Scrofa in downtown Rome to pay his bill and
pick up his baggage. As part of this gesture of humility, he had no elaborate
security and no disruptive motorcade, but rode in a single automobile of the
papal gendarmes. Under Benedict XVI, the Vatican had appeared under siege,
doubtless as a result of the pope’s gullible acceptance of the Anglo-American
phantom of a global war on terror. The Vatican remains haunted by the
mysterious death of John Paul I in 1978, and by the 1981 attack carried out by
Ali Agca, a co-worker of Frank Terpil of the CIA. But Francis is signaling that
he is not afraid, and is not willing to hunker down behind the Vatican walls.
 |
| The Vatican City |
Another danger which has been avoided is the election of an oligarch
camouflaged as a modernizer or reformer. This was the role sought by the late
Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milan, who did not live to see this year’s
conclave. This year’s plausible oligarch-reformer might have been Cardinal
Schonborn of Vienna, a representative of the feudal aristocracy of the Holy
Roman Empire. And there were others seeking to play this role. Instead, Bergoglio
brings with him the concerns of the global South, starting with the imperative
of economic development and the eradication of poverty.
Bergoglio’s track record in this regard is instructive. The Argentine military junta of 1976-1983 and the neoliberal economic policies it started wrecked the nation’s economy during the 1990s. By the end of the military government, unemployment was at 18% officially, and there were bouts of hyperinflation at the end of the 1980s. Under the pro-IMF economics Minister Domingo Cavallo, Argentina established a fixed rate of exchange to the US dollar. The propertied classes indulged in massive tax evasion and sent flight capital to foreign banks. Taking power in the midst of this crisis, President de la Rua imposed seven rounds of brutal austerity, driving unemployment up to 20% in December 2001. When the IMF cut off further loans to Argentina, there was a panic run on the banks. Strikes and riots forced de la Rua to resign and flee on December 21, 2001.
During the latter months of 2001, Bergoglio did not hesitate to lecture President de la Rua to his face Sunday after Sunday about the bankruptcy of neoliberal economics and the terrible social consequences, as Rua sat in his pew of the cathedral in Buenos Aires. During this time, Bergoglio commented that extreme poverty and the “unjust economic structures that give rise to great inequalities” constituted violations of human rights and that social debt was “immoral, unjust and illegitimate.” During a strike by public employees in Buenos Aires, Bergoglio noted the differences between, “poor people who are persecuted for demanding work, and rich people who are applauded for fleeing from justice.” (“Argentines protest against pay cuts,” BBC, August 8, 2001)
A subsequent president, the Peronist Adolfo Rodriguez Saà, declared a debt moratorium, causing Argentina to default on $132 billion in foreign debt, one of the biggest burdens of any developing country in the world. The link between the peso and the dollar was severed, and the resulting devaluation lowered the standard of living - just as in Iceland over the last few years. After an 11% fall in GDP during 2002, Argentina stabilized and recovered under Presidents Duhalde and Kirchner. Although the debt moratorium policy substantially reduced foreign debt, the International Monetary Fund demanded full payment of every penny, with no discounts and no haircuts.
Bergoglio’s track record in this regard is instructive. The Argentine military junta of 1976-1983 and the neoliberal economic policies it started wrecked the nation’s economy during the 1990s. By the end of the military government, unemployment was at 18% officially, and there were bouts of hyperinflation at the end of the 1980s. Under the pro-IMF economics Minister Domingo Cavallo, Argentina established a fixed rate of exchange to the US dollar. The propertied classes indulged in massive tax evasion and sent flight capital to foreign banks. Taking power in the midst of this crisis, President de la Rua imposed seven rounds of brutal austerity, driving unemployment up to 20% in December 2001. When the IMF cut off further loans to Argentina, there was a panic run on the banks. Strikes and riots forced de la Rua to resign and flee on December 21, 2001.
During the latter months of 2001, Bergoglio did not hesitate to lecture President de la Rua to his face Sunday after Sunday about the bankruptcy of neoliberal economics and the terrible social consequences, as Rua sat in his pew of the cathedral in Buenos Aires. During this time, Bergoglio commented that extreme poverty and the “unjust economic structures that give rise to great inequalities” constituted violations of human rights and that social debt was “immoral, unjust and illegitimate.” During a strike by public employees in Buenos Aires, Bergoglio noted the differences between, “poor people who are persecuted for demanding work, and rich people who are applauded for fleeing from justice.” (“Argentines protest against pay cuts,” BBC, August 8, 2001)
A subsequent president, the Peronist Adolfo Rodriguez Saà, declared a debt moratorium, causing Argentina to default on $132 billion in foreign debt, one of the biggest burdens of any developing country in the world. The link between the peso and the dollar was severed, and the resulting devaluation lowered the standard of living - just as in Iceland over the last few years. After an 11% fall in GDP during 2002, Argentina stabilized and recovered under Presidents Duhalde and Kirchner. Although the debt moratorium policy substantially reduced foreign debt, the International Monetary Fund demanded full payment of every penny, with no discounts and no haircuts.
Bergoglio opposed “anonymous and perverse mechanisms of speculative economy”
These were the conditions in which Bergoglio operated around the time that he was named Cardinal in February 2001. Bergoglio organized soup kitchens and food banks in the favelas (slums) of Buenos Aires and other cities for the relief of the poor. He condemned the policies that were leaving the Argentine people “strangled by the anonymous and perverse mechanisms of a speculative economy.”
These were the conditions in which Bergoglio operated around the time that he was named Cardinal in February 2001. Bergoglio organized soup kitchens and food banks in the favelas (slums) of Buenos Aires and other cities for the relief of the poor. He condemned the policies that were leaving the Argentine people “strangled by the anonymous and perverse mechanisms of a speculative economy.”
In an interview with the magazine Trenta Dias of the
Communion and Liberation movement, Bergoglio declared: “the current imperialism
of money also shows an idolatrous face. Where there is idolatry, God is
canceled, and human dignity is canceled.” For this he blamed “left-wing
ideologies just as much as the imperialism of money.” Bergoglio can thus be
considered a principled opponent of both neoliberal economic doctrine, and of
the ultra-left liberation theology. (Geninazzi and Rizzi, Avvenire, March 13,
2013)
An article by Dylan Matthews posted on March 13 on the Washington Post blog points out that the Argentine bishops, with Bergoglio chief among them, were sharp critics of the laissez-faire or neoliberal economic policies of Argentine President Carlos Menem, who was in office from 1989 to 1999. Citing the essay “Argentina, the Church, and Debt” by Thomas Trebat, Mathews argues that, at the height of the debt crisis in 2002, Bergoglio was a leading voice in calling for a debt restructuring in which social programs would be considered more important than repaying and servicing existing financial debt. Statements by the Argentine bishops at that time diagnosed the main problems of the Argentine economy as “social exclusion, a growing gap between rich and poor, insecurity, corruption, social and family violence, serious deficiencies in the educational system and in public health, the negative consequences of globalization, and the tyranny of markets.” These were technically joint statements of all the Argentine bishops, but there is every reason to believe that these were above all Bergoglio’s own views.
In 2001-2004 Argentine crisis, bergoglio supported debt reduction, rejected austerity
In one of his own later speeches, Cardinal Bergoglio commented: “We live, apparently, in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least,” where “the unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.” (National Catholic Reporter, March 3, 2013) Plutocratic ideologues intent on shredding the social safety net will get no comfort from Francis.
According to Carlos Burgueno of the Argentine business newspaper Ambito Financiero, Bergoglio is “Anti-liberal. A tough critic of the IMF and the policies of adjustment. A defender of the process of debt restructuring.” “Anti-liberal” can be understood as a rejection of economic policies designed to benefit a narrow financier oligarchy. In IMF jargon, “adjustment” and “structural adjustment” are euphemisms for genocidal austerity and killer cuts targeting the poor, the sick, the old, the very young, and the underprivileged. “Debt restructuring” means debt moratoriums, debt freezes, defaults, haircuts, write-downs and other means of reducing the illegitimate debt burden which is now crushing so many of the world’s people.
A major statement on the economic crisis was issued by the conference of Argentine bishops under Bergoglio’s leadership in August 2001. This landmark statement pointed out that “some of the most serious social ills we suffer in economic and political affairs are a direct reflection of the crudest liberalism.” The state was defined as “an instrument created to serve the common good, and to be the guarantor of equity and solidarity of the social fabric." The Argentine bishops with Bergoglio at their head condemned the lack of a “social safety net” to care for those cast out by the existing economic model. They targeted in particular “two diseases, tax evasion and squandering of state funds, which are funds sweated by the people.” Organized labor was advised to exercise moderation in using the right to strike.
But the bishops saw the foreign financial debt of Argentina as the biggest negative factor, taking care to condemn the “external debt that increases every day and makes it difficult for us to grow.” (Ambito Financiero, March 14, 2013; Buenos Aires Herald, March 14, 2013)
In 2005, the Argentine government offered foreign creditors a reimbursement of thirty cents on the dollar. Many of the most rapacious hedge fund hyenas rejected this offer, instead launching lawsuits and unsuccessful attempts to seize Argentine assets held abroad, including Argentine airliners, ships, and the Argentine central bank deposits at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Bergoglio intervened in these conflicts several times, supporting the ability of the Argentine government to reduce and restructure the foreign debt. (Ambito Financiero, March 14, 2013; Buenos Aires Herald, March 14, 2013)
In October 2009, Cardinal Bergoglio again sought to call attention to the unsolved problems of poverty in Argentina under the presidency of Nestor Kirchner. According to the Spanish newspaper El Pais, “Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio harshly criticized the government and society for failing to prevent the rise of poverty in the country, a situation he called ‘immoral, unjust and illegitimate’ because it occurs in a nation that has the capacity to avoid or correct the damage. ‘Instead, it seems that it has chosen to exacerbate the inequalities,’ said the head of the Catholic Church in Argentina, for whom ‘human rights are violated not only by terrorism, repression and murder, but also by unjust economic structures that cause great inequalities.’” He added that the position of the Catholic Church was “very clear” as it had “warned for some time about the social deficit of Argentines.”
Bergoglio supported justice and peace October 2011 call for Wall Street sales tax
As the world economic depression was felt more and more in Argentina, Bergoglio sharpened his confrontation the plutocrats, telling them in May 2010: “You avoid taking the poor into account.” In the following year, Bergoglio spoke out against the terrible wages and working conditions prevailing in the Argentine capital, which he compared to a form of modern slavery: “In this city, slavery is the order of the day in various forms. In this city, workers are exploited in sweatshops and, if they are immigrants, are deprived of the opportunity to get out. In this city, there are kids who have been on the streets for years. The city has failed and continues to fail in the attempt to free them from this structural slavery that is homelessness.” (La Nacion, September 24, 2011)
The main Vatican response to the European financial crisis which broke out in early 2010 was the document entitled Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority, issued by the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace in late October 2011. Although Bergoglio was apparently not formally a member of Justice and Peace, press accounts from Buenos Aires indicate that in the eyes of Argentine public opinion he was closely associated with this initiative and the reforms it recommended. The Argentine journalist Carlos Burgue?o writes: “As worldwide recognized church representative and leader of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, [Bergoglio] signed along with his Ghanian fellow cardinal Peter Turkson in October 2011 the Vatican’s harsh document against adjustment policies that were beginning to be applied in the European countries in crisis.” (“Ya como referente mundial de la Iglesia y conductor, junto con el tamién papable ghanés Peter Turkson, del Pontificio Consejo para Justicia y Paz, firmo en octubre de 2011 una dura cr?tica del Vaticano contra las politicas de ajuste que se comenzaban a aplicar en los paises europeos en crisis.” Ambito Financiero, March 14, 2013; Buenos Aires Herald, March 14, 2013.)
The Council for Justice and Peace blamed the 2008 world panic triggered by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on “a liberalist approach, unsympathetic towards public intervention in the markets” which “chose to allow an important international financial institution to fall into bankruptcy, on the assumption that this would contain the crisis and its effects.” According to this document, a central threat to the world economy and to world peace comes from “an economic liberalism that spurns rules and controls.”
The Council for Justice and Peace criticized in particular the International Monetary Fund for being an institution now totally inadequate for the needs of world economic development, citing “…the gradual decline in efficacy of the Bretton Woods institutions beginning in the early 1970s. In particular, the International Monetary Fund has lost an essential element for stabilizing world finance, that of regulating the overall money supply and vigilance over the amount of credit risk taken on by the system. To sum it up, stabilizing the world monetary system is no longer a ‘universal public good’ within its reach.”
A key aspect of the Vatican’s October 2011 recommendation for dealing with the new world economic depression was the enactment of a financial transaction tax, also known as a Tobin tax, and in the United States increasingly referred to as a Wall Street Sales Tax. The document states: “… it seems advisable to reflect, for example, on taxation measures on financial transactions through fair but modulated rates with changes proportionate to the complexity of the operations, especially those made on the ‘secondary’ market. Such taxation would be very useful in promoting global development and sustainability according to the principles of social justice and solidarity.” Bergoglio has thus endorsed the approach of Pope Paul VI as seen in the famous encyclical letter Populorum Progressio of 1967, which “clearly and prophetically denounced the dangers of an economic development conceived in liberalist terms because of its harmful consequences for world equilibrium and peace.” (Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, October 24, 2011
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| Newly elected Chinese President Xi Jinping |
Were the new pope’s first words a veiled opening to China?
Another significant novelty is doubtless the fact that Bergoglio is the first member of the Jesuit order to become pope. The Jesuits have a well-earned reputation for using intrigue to seek political power. As some commentators have pointed out, Jesuits are traditionally associated with elite education, which grew out of their desire to serve as tutors of the children of kings and princes with a view to shaping the opinions of future rulers. Even today, the Jesuits are considered one of the most cohesive and powerful of the Catholic orders. Should this situation be seen in negative terms? Maybe not, as a glance at history might suggest.
The Jesuits were founded under Venetian auspices in 1534, but, gravitating towards a greater power, soon entered into a close alliance with the Spanish Empire. The Spanish-Jesuit alliance lasted until about 1767, the year when the Jesuit order was banned by the Portuguese Empire, France, the Spanish Empire, and some Italian states. This was followed by the suppression of the Jesuit order by Pope Clement XIV in 1773. The Jesuits survived only by fleeing to the non-Catholic states of Prussia and Russia.
The response of the Jesuits to their suppression took the form of a de facto alliance with the British Empire. This meant specifically that the Jesuits threw their considerable influence on the side of the movements for independence that arose during the Napoleonic wars throughout the Spanish and Portuguese possessions in Latin America. When Lisbon and Madrid lost most of their possessions in Latin America, the revenge of the Jesuits was complete, and many of these states passed under predominantly British influence. After the British had eliminated Napoleon as a competitor for world domination, the Jesuit order was restored in 1814 by Pope Pius VII.
We can thus say, simplifying somewhat, that the Jesuit order has been in uneasy alliance with the British and later Anglo-American world system since about 1770. The election of Pope Francis I may mark a real departure from this arrangement. And the reason for the change may well have to do with the Vatican’s policy towards China.
Francis I and a possible Vatican opening to China
At a time when church membership is declining in Europe, and when American Catholics are becoming increasingly secular, the Vatican is looking to Africa as any area of future growth. But China may offer even greater possibilities for expansion, and the Vatican may consider an opening to the Middle Kingdom as more valuable than an alliance with the declining US empire. There are today an estimated 12 million Roman Catholics in China, but the actual number may be far higher. The Chinese government sponsors a national Catholic Church, styled the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which does not recognize the Roman papacy and which claims some 5.3 million members. Rome claims the sole ability to appoint bishops, and this is rejected by the Beijing government. Because of this conflict, the Vatican has failed in its attempts to establish full diplomatic relations with Beijing. The Vatican very much wants a concordat or treaty which would resolve these outstanding issues.
One of the most sensational elements in the so-called Vatileaks document dump engineered by Anglo-American intelligence in 2012 was a report of a conversation allegedly held between Cardinal Paolo Romeo, a Jesuit-trained Vatican diplomat serving as the Archbishop of Palermo, Sicily and (apparently) Chinese officials in Beijing in the autumn of 2011. According to this account as reported in the pro-US Italian newspaper Il Fatto, Romeo told the Chinese that Benedict XVI Ratzinger would no longer be Pope a year later, or in other words by about November 2012. As it turned out, this prediction was off by just a few months. But, perhaps as part of the doctoring of Vatileaks documents by the CIA or by MI-6, this prediction morphed into the exposure of a supposed plot to assassinate Ratzinger. However, Romeo may have only intended to inform the Chinese government that the diplomatically inept Benedict XIV, considered incapable of defying Washington and London by re-orienting the Vatican towards China, was about to be eased out in favor of a new pope more open to an accommodation with Beijing. (Marco Lillo, “Complotto contro Benedetto XVI entro 12 mesi morirà,” Il Fatto Quotidiano, February 10, 2012) The first events of Francis’ papacy would seem to lend credence to this view.
When Bergoglio appeared for the first time as Pope on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, the second sentence of his speech noted that the conclave had chosen a new bishop of Rome “from almost the end of the world.” According to Professor Filippo Mignini, an expert in the history of philosophy from the University of Macerata quoted by Il Giornale of Milan, these words are a quotation from the Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci, a missionary sent to Imperial Chinese court of the Ming dynasty in 1601. Ricci and his fellow Jesuits were able to interest the Chinese emperor and many of the leading nobles in exhibits of European technology, including steam engines but also chronometers, telescopes, and other precision instruments. The successes of Ricci and other Jesuits were envied by the competing Dominicans and Franciscans, and this issue was still alive at the time the Jesuits were dissolved in 1773. But by 1958 the Vatican had endorsed Ricci. Does the Vatican now believe that the developing sector and China are more important for its future growth than Europe and America? The coming months will tell.
Anglo-American propaganda has already turned hostile against Pope Francis, attempting to dredge up discredited old charges that he was somehow in collusion with the 1976-1983 Argentine military junta. The murderous excesses of that regime were in fact encouraged by US Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, as revealed by secret State Department documents released in September 2002. As for Bergoglio, one Jesuit he is accused of betraying has come forward to deny the charges. The Argentine human rights activist and leading opponent of the military junta, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, has formally stated that Bergoglio was not one of the churchmen who collaborated with the dictatorship.
Finally, there remains the question of where this project might go wrong. Bergoglio has taken the name of Francis, after a saint who is celebrated for his humility and simple lifestyle. But there is also the more recent attempt to recast St. Francis as the patron saint of environmental fanaticism, radical ecology, and even green fascism. The rich elitists who fund the main environmental groups will try to influence the new pope in the direction of Agenda 21 and its anti-human doctrines. One example is the Italian demagogue Beppe Grillo, who greeted the new pope with the claim that his Five Star Movement -- largely devoted to implementing Agenda 21 -- represents the true followers of St. Francis today. The new pope would do well to avoid such false friends.
Another significant novelty is doubtless the fact that Bergoglio is the first member of the Jesuit order to become pope. The Jesuits have a well-earned reputation for using intrigue to seek political power. As some commentators have pointed out, Jesuits are traditionally associated with elite education, which grew out of their desire to serve as tutors of the children of kings and princes with a view to shaping the opinions of future rulers. Even today, the Jesuits are considered one of the most cohesive and powerful of the Catholic orders. Should this situation be seen in negative terms? Maybe not, as a glance at history might suggest.
The Jesuits were founded under Venetian auspices in 1534, but, gravitating towards a greater power, soon entered into a close alliance with the Spanish Empire. The Spanish-Jesuit alliance lasted until about 1767, the year when the Jesuit order was banned by the Portuguese Empire, France, the Spanish Empire, and some Italian states. This was followed by the suppression of the Jesuit order by Pope Clement XIV in 1773. The Jesuits survived only by fleeing to the non-Catholic states of Prussia and Russia.
The response of the Jesuits to their suppression took the form of a de facto alliance with the British Empire. This meant specifically that the Jesuits threw their considerable influence on the side of the movements for independence that arose during the Napoleonic wars throughout the Spanish and Portuguese possessions in Latin America. When Lisbon and Madrid lost most of their possessions in Latin America, the revenge of the Jesuits was complete, and many of these states passed under predominantly British influence. After the British had eliminated Napoleon as a competitor for world domination, the Jesuit order was restored in 1814 by Pope Pius VII.
We can thus say, simplifying somewhat, that the Jesuit order has been in uneasy alliance with the British and later Anglo-American world system since about 1770. The election of Pope Francis I may mark a real departure from this arrangement. And the reason for the change may well have to do with the Vatican’s policy towards China.
Francis I and a possible Vatican opening to China
At a time when church membership is declining in Europe, and when American Catholics are becoming increasingly secular, the Vatican is looking to Africa as any area of future growth. But China may offer even greater possibilities for expansion, and the Vatican may consider an opening to the Middle Kingdom as more valuable than an alliance with the declining US empire. There are today an estimated 12 million Roman Catholics in China, but the actual number may be far higher. The Chinese government sponsors a national Catholic Church, styled the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which does not recognize the Roman papacy and which claims some 5.3 million members. Rome claims the sole ability to appoint bishops, and this is rejected by the Beijing government. Because of this conflict, the Vatican has failed in its attempts to establish full diplomatic relations with Beijing. The Vatican very much wants a concordat or treaty which would resolve these outstanding issues.
One of the most sensational elements in the so-called Vatileaks document dump engineered by Anglo-American intelligence in 2012 was a report of a conversation allegedly held between Cardinal Paolo Romeo, a Jesuit-trained Vatican diplomat serving as the Archbishop of Palermo, Sicily and (apparently) Chinese officials in Beijing in the autumn of 2011. According to this account as reported in the pro-US Italian newspaper Il Fatto, Romeo told the Chinese that Benedict XVI Ratzinger would no longer be Pope a year later, or in other words by about November 2012. As it turned out, this prediction was off by just a few months. But, perhaps as part of the doctoring of Vatileaks documents by the CIA or by MI-6, this prediction morphed into the exposure of a supposed plot to assassinate Ratzinger. However, Romeo may have only intended to inform the Chinese government that the diplomatically inept Benedict XIV, considered incapable of defying Washington and London by re-orienting the Vatican towards China, was about to be eased out in favor of a new pope more open to an accommodation with Beijing. (Marco Lillo, “Complotto contro Benedetto XVI entro 12 mesi morirà,” Il Fatto Quotidiano, February 10, 2012) The first events of Francis’ papacy would seem to lend credence to this view.
When Bergoglio appeared for the first time as Pope on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, the second sentence of his speech noted that the conclave had chosen a new bishop of Rome “from almost the end of the world.” According to Professor Filippo Mignini, an expert in the history of philosophy from the University of Macerata quoted by Il Giornale of Milan, these words are a quotation from the Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci, a missionary sent to Imperial Chinese court of the Ming dynasty in 1601. Ricci and his fellow Jesuits were able to interest the Chinese emperor and many of the leading nobles in exhibits of European technology, including steam engines but also chronometers, telescopes, and other precision instruments. The successes of Ricci and other Jesuits were envied by the competing Dominicans and Franciscans, and this issue was still alive at the time the Jesuits were dissolved in 1773. But by 1958 the Vatican had endorsed Ricci. Does the Vatican now believe that the developing sector and China are more important for its future growth than Europe and America? The coming months will tell.
Anglo-American propaganda has already turned hostile against Pope Francis, attempting to dredge up discredited old charges that he was somehow in collusion with the 1976-1983 Argentine military junta. The murderous excesses of that regime were in fact encouraged by US Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, as revealed by secret State Department documents released in September 2002. As for Bergoglio, one Jesuit he is accused of betraying has come forward to deny the charges. The Argentine human rights activist and leading opponent of the military junta, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, has formally stated that Bergoglio was not one of the churchmen who collaborated with the dictatorship.
Finally, there remains the question of where this project might go wrong. Bergoglio has taken the name of Francis, after a saint who is celebrated for his humility and simple lifestyle. But there is also the more recent attempt to recast St. Francis as the patron saint of environmental fanaticism, radical ecology, and even green fascism. The rich elitists who fund the main environmental groups will try to influence the new pope in the direction of Agenda 21 and its anti-human doctrines. One example is the Italian demagogue Beppe Grillo, who greeted the new pope with the claim that his Five Star Movement -- largely devoted to implementing Agenda 21 -- represents the true followers of St. Francis today. The new pope would do well to avoid such false friends.
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