Obama comes out against self-determination

pcrBy Paul Craig Roberts.

The White House Fool has repeatedly declared erroneously and foolishly that it is “against international law” for Crimea to exercise self-determination. Self-determination, as used by Washington, is a propaganda term that serves Washington’s empire but is not permissible for real people to exercise.

On March 6 Obama telephoned Putin to tell the Russian President again that only Washington has the right to interfere in Ukraine and to insist against all logic that only the “government” in Kiev installed by the Washington-organized coup is “legitimate” and “democratic.”

In other words, the elected government in Crimea pushed by the people in Crimea to give them a vote on their future is “undemocratic” and “illegitimate,” but a non-elected government in Kiev imposed by Washington is the voice of self-determination and legitimacy.

Washington is so arrogant that it never occurs to the hubris-infected fools what the world thinks of Washington’s blatant hypocrisy.

Since the Clinton regime, Washington has done nothing but violate international law–Serbia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Honduras, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia.

Does Russia have an Africa Command? No, but Washington does.

Is Russia surrounding the US with military bases? No, but Washington has used the NATO organization, whose purpose disappeared 23 years ago, to organize western, eastern, and southern Europe into an empire army with forward bases on Russia’s borders. Washington is determined to extend the boundaries of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Georgia in central Asia and to Ukraine on the Black Sea. Both Georgia and Ukraine are former constituent parts of both Russia and the Soviet Union.

Washington is doing the same thing to China and Iran. Washington is working to establish new air and naval bases in Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, with which to block the flow of oil and other resources into China. Iran is surrounded by some 40 US military bases and has US fleets standing off its coastline.

In Washington’s propaganda, this rank militarism is presented as “defending democracy.”

The Russian government continues to act as though Washington’s thrusts at Russia’s independence and strategic interests can be defused with good sense and good will. But Washington has neither.

Since the Clinton regime, Washington has been in the hands of a collection of ideologues who are convinced that the US is “the exceptional indispensable country” with the right to world hegemony. Everything that Washington has done in the 21st century is in pursuit of this goal.

Washington intends to break up the Russian Federation itself. Washington funnels huge sums of money into NGOs inside Russia that serve as Washington Fifth Columns and work hand-in-hand with Washington to discredit Russian free elections, to demonize Putin and the Russian government, to spread anti-Russian propaganda and agitation. It is amazing how many Russians actually believe the Western propaganda.

Washington is also working to isolate China with the Trans-Pacific-Partnership, but at this time is primarily focused on destabilizing and isolating Russia. Washington is desperate to break up the BRICS, the emerging organization of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. With the largest countries and half of the world’s population, the BRICS organization is emerging as a political and economic power, especially with the organization’s plan to cease using the US dollar as reserve currency. Ringing Russia with US missile bases on Russia’s borders impairs Russian sovereignty and independence and, thus, weakens the BRICS as a countervailing power to Washington.

Many have been deceived by Washington’s propaganda. The world is slowly waking up, but is it in time?

The US media and much of Europe’s speak with one voice parroting Washington’s propaganda, demonizing Washington’s targets, and preparing insouciant Western populations for more war. The Western media, like Western governments, is devoid of integrity. Liars and whores rule.

Paul Craig Roberts is an economist and a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as the “Father of Reaganomics”. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, among others. He has recently published How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds and is coauthor with Lawrence Stratton of The New Color Line and The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Obama puts security in Africa first

Michelle holding the carrot

Four years ago Africa greeted Barack Obama’s election with rapture, predicting America’s first black president would smother the continent with attention. But instead of warm hand-holding, Africa got hard-headed, security-first policies.

Africa’s response to Obama’s election in November 2008 was nothing short of ecstatic. A Nigerian foreign minister wept, Nelson Mandela hailed it as proof that people should “dare to dream,” and Kenya declared a national holiday.

The fawning was quickly reciprocated, with Obama visiting Ghana just five months after his inauguration.

“I have the blood of Africa within me,” he emotively told the Ghanaian parliament and rapt television viewers across the continent. Africa, the new president declared, was now “a fundamental part of our interconnected world.”

But as America’s Great Recession deepened, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan trundled on and the Arab Spring exploded, sub-Saharan Africa found itself in a familiar spot; on the back-burner.

“There was an expectation that he was going to be the US President for Africa,” said long-time South African diplomat Thomas Wheeler, now of the South African Institute of International Affairs. “It was just an unrealistic expectation.”

“The fact that he had an African father did not mean that he was going to devote a lot more time to Africa.”

Symbolically, Obama’s visit to Ghana was to be his only trip to the region. Equally symbolically, it took until June this year for his White House to come up with a nine-page “US strategy toward sub-Saharan Africa”.

Yet the continent was far from ignored.

Air Force One has been conspicuous in its absence, but the US Air Force and other branches of the US security services have not.

Quietly, US policy toward Africa has started to look a lot more hard-headed and a lot more like policy toward the rest of the world.

“Obama to my mind is more engaged in Africa, but the nature of how the United States is engaging has changed. It is mostly security related,” said Jason Warner, a Harvard-based expert on African security.

According to Warner, Obama has helped “normalise” Africa policy. “There is no other region in the world that the US engages on simply humanitarian grounds.”

Since Obama took office it has been widely reported that the administration has expanded a network of air bases across Africa, training its might on al Qaeda affiliated militants and other groups.

Clandestine bases in Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Uganda are said to have been used variously to spy on al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and track elements of the Lord’s Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony.

Unconfirmed US drone strikes are reported with some frequency in Somalia.

According to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, between 58 and 170 people have been killed in 10 to 23 strikes on Somalia, although some took place during George W. Bush’s administration.

“The nature of what he is doing is definitely more covert. But you do get these glimpses every few months that the US is really deeply embedded in Africa,” said Warner.

A year ago Obama deployed 100 US special forces to help Ugandan troops scour thick African jungles of the Central African Republic for Kony – an indicted war criminal – backed up by surveillance planes.

The linchpin for this newly securitised policy toward Africa is the United States Africa Command, or Africom, which operates as a nerve centre for US military operations and military-to-military contacts in the region.

The command became operational barely one month before Obama was elected and now boasts 2,000 designated staff. By one count that is more Africa staff than the foreign aid department USAID.

But much like Obama’s security policy in Africa, Africom has remained largely low-key. It is based in Stuttgart, Germany, rather than in the region, in part to allay accusations of neo-colonial ambitions.

Officials are keen to talk up military training programmes and not so willing to discuss covert operations.

That lack of bombast has been welcomed by many on the continent.

According to Chidi Odinkalu, head of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission and a respected activist, Obama’s policy toward one crisis – Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamist insurgency – has struck a balance.

“It would’ve been easy to overreach… and take Nigeria into the realm of the global war on terror. But I think the US has recognised the particularities of the situation.”

Still, there is little doubt that Obama has missed an opportunity to create goodwill through more high-profile appearances in African capitals, but according to John Campbell, a former US ambassador to Nigeria, the impact of the loss is limited.

“I don’t doubt that for many people on the street it is somehow or other disappointing,” he said. “But you keep looking for concrete examples of where it has damaged relations, and I don’t really see any.”

Regardless of the perceived neglect, Obama’s power to grasp the African imagination remains undimmed, according to Nigerian rights activist Odinkalu.

“I think the success of the Obama presidency goes beyond whatever he’s done for Africa.” – Sapa/AFP