Page 3 of 5 FirstFirst 12345 LastLast
Results 21 to 30 of 45

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

  1. #21
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    South West Florida (Behind friendly lines but still in Occupied Territory)
    Posts
    117,696
    Don’t Be Scammed Into Another War - 7 Ways Kony 2012 Does Exactly That

    Submitted by Allan Stevo on Mon, 03/19/2012 - 09:09
    Bio | Blog



    There’s a 30-minute long YouTube sensation that’s gotten more than 70 million views in just a few days. The stated goals of the expertly produced Kony 2012 is to make an African warlord a household name and to keep U.S. military advisors in Uganda.

    Because ideas presented in the documentary are stated as “something we can all agree on,” I find it important to step forward and say that I do not in the slightest agree with the idea of U.S. military advisors in Uganda. In fact, I think that the work being done by Kony 2012 director Jason Russell and a number of organizations and activists on this topic is flat wrong.

    Kony 2012 has a “power-to-the-people” feel to it and calls for action that is humanitarian in nature, making it ideal in convincing naïve, well-intentioned people about the justness of having foreign troops in Uganda.

    However, my years of political involvement have shown me that people must not be judged on what they say, but on what they do. As well-intentioned as they are couched, Russell’s actions move us toward American military involvement in Uganda under popular pressure and under a veneer of justice. This is not an admirable goal and the talking points are familiar ones.

    In fact, his techniques are so familiar that the maker of this film sounds like a neo-conservative, especially from September 10, 2001 until W’s mission accomplished speech on May 1, 2003.
    I’m not going to spend time addressing the valid concerns that Uganda has oil reserves coveted by American interests, that U.S. interests wants to beat China to Africa’s resources and are looking for ways to have more of a military presence, that Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army might not be the threat they once were, that the crimes mentioned in Kony 2012 are an issue of the past and not ongoing, that Kony is believed to no longer be in Uganda, or that a tremendous amount of criticism has come out among Ugandans and other Africans against Kony 2012 and Kony 2012-type thinking. All of that can easily be found by a person approaching this video with a critical mind and an Internet connection.





    Instead I will address more fundamental issues that are as pertinent today as they are in any other conflict and in assessing any other piece of pro-war propaganda meant to impassion. These are seven familiar techniques used by the neo-conservatives then and the neo-liberal Kony 2012 filmmakers today:

    It’ll Be Easy
    The makers of the film inform us that intervention in Uganda will be easy. However, we all know that a warlord doesn’t get to be a warlord because it’s easy to kill him. We’ve heard before that wars are easy. I remember how Iraq part II was supposed to be a cakewalk. If Americans understood that we were agreeing to 10+ years in Afghanistan, a post 9/11 assault on the Taliban and occupation would have been a harder sell. I’m not sure that Americans today would support a war in Vietnam with our 20/20 hindsight about the conflict. War isn’t easy. That can be easy to forget.

    Are we to imagine that Joseph Kony doesn’t have a single general willing to follow in his footsteps? Will the brainwashed and abused child soldiers welcome us with open arms? Both of those concepts make this “easy” fight more complex and these questions don’t even begin to scratch the surface.

    I’m not convinced that this will be easy. How poor of a memory does someone need to have to be IN THE MIDDLE of a war and to forget that military conflict is never guaranteed to be easy.
    Calling hard things easy is nothing new. Door-to-door salesmen came up with a name for this technique – “the foot in the door technique.” It’s a technique that has surely been around as long as interpersonal communication has existed. “C’mon, it won’t be as hard as you think” is the gist of it. Sometimes that’s true. When it comes to war, that’s generally a lie.
    He Has No Friends
    “[Kony] is not supported by anyone,” we are told in Kony 2012. Presumably everyone is Joseph Kony’s enemy. He has no friends. Everyone in the region is against him. Well, then it should be easy for him to be killed or captured without U.S. assistance right? If U.S. assistance is needed, this claim sounds hard to believe.


    There Won’t Be Unintended Consequences
    If the unintended consequences were apparent to the warmonger, then the modifier “unintended” would not be needed. Causing problems and then coming along later saying “Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that” isn’t responsible. It’s even less responsible to screw up another country with one of our interventions and to pretend that we could not possibly have imagined that there might be unintended consequences.

    Ultimately, Americans can just get in planes and leave Uganda if we screw things up. Ugandans, on the other hand, are stuck there. We have no way of predicting what our intervention will do to their homeland. This Ugandan writer, Javie Ssozi, even goes so far as to suggest that the movement could cause Kony to fight back, which could mean abducting more children to secure his position and go on the offensive in now peaceful Northern Uganda.

    Take Up the White Man’s Burden
    This is an ugly and seldom questioned aspect of every war America involves itself in. People who are so devoid of racism in all other aspects of their lives can so easily buy into this concept written about by Rudyard Kipling in 1899 when the U.S. invaded the Philippines.

    Essentially, it’s the burden of the “advanced” white man to bring a better life to the “less advanced” non-whites. Put a twist on that and we have a version of Manifest Destiny – it is the duty of the advanced Americans – God’s chosen people – to ride to Africa and help; their lands will be better off under our control than in their current state.

    It’s so blindly arrogant to look at our lives and to say that our lives are better than the lives of people who we do not know in a place far away. In the event that you’ve never slept under the roofs of poor families in third world countries, I should share with you that people smile all over the world and quite enjoy their lives. My experience has been that even in the face of much adversity and even extreme poverty, the good people I’ve encountered would rather be left alone by America than ever lay eyes on an American soldier and the inevitable war zone that surrounds him. Many people the world over are happy without America’s help even if their lives (like the lives of all human beings) are imperfect.
    Attack Anti-War Ideology
    Anti-war views can be ideological and inflexible. Some who are anti-war guard against others coming along and tearing away at the firm
    ideas of being against war. Common attacks to anti-war views propose moral questions intended to ruin the resolve of someone who is anti-war. For example, the unlikely event of ticking time bomb scenarios are used in this way to try to erode at a person’s peaceful values.



    In case Obama’s presidency (the anti-war vote of 200 hasn’t done enough to undermine the anti-war movement, Russell, who probably hates the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is calling for new military intervention. That’s probably because he’s flexible on the role war should play as a tool and encourages others to be more flexible. A war advocated by Dick Cheney to increase American military and corporate influence in the Middle East might be lousy, but if it’s advocated by someone I like for reasons I like then it’s suddenly grand to kill people. Is a bloody war, a bloody women-and-children-killing, community-destroying, body-maiming, soil-polluting war, with unpredictable additional consequences okay if it’s done for humanitarian reasons and has a really cool marketing campaign?

    Simplistic Thinking
    Even a child can see right and wrong. The director demonstrates this by allowing us to watch as he tells his son about Joseph Kony. It can be hard to understand right and wrong from the other side of the globe. From my experience of years living abroad, it would surprise me if even 1% of people living outside of the U.S. have the vaguest sense of what life is like in America.

    At the same time, we Americans have no idea what life is like in Uganda. An American expert living and studying in Uganda for 20 years might be able to really give a solid estimate of all kinds of facets of life in Uganda provided that you considered him trustworthy. Six weeks in wartime Iraq, six weeks in wartime Afghanistan, six weeks in wartime Vietnam and even a soldier who is far removed from the day-to-day life of the average person in those countries can tell you that it’s a lot more complicated of a situation than anyone at home realizes. He may not be able to describe the differences, but he recognizes that vast complexities exist.
    Almost 20 years after the first invasion of Iraq, it’s still asking too much to expect an American to explain the difference between Sunni and Shia in the land that we’ve been occupying, let alone make an educated argument for taking sides in an armed conflict. Can any of us really be expected to discern what constitutes just and unjust in the context of Uganda’s internal politics? Yet in the example of Kony 2012, that’s exactly what we’re being called on to do, each one of us individually is being asked to step forward and to argue on behalf of military intervention in Uganda – a country that few of us know much about. As discerning thinkers seek to make themselves knowledgeable about Uganda, the more we learn about Uganda the less we’ll see we understand. Just like our own country and any other country, the internal matters are complex, often more complex than most outsiders realize.

    Ignoring the Hypocrisy of It All
    America’s the cleanest country out there, right? It’s an example of perfection, right? Forget that there are American citizens who would like to see our last two presidents, Henry Kissinger, and many others indicted by the same war crime tribunal that has indicted Joseph Kony.

    The following, from Glenn Greenwald, is such a good accounting of some of President Obama’s horrific behavior that I like to reference it regularly:
    “President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack.He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs.He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.

    “He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs,including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy,efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.

    Don
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  2. #22
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    South West Florida (Behind friendly lines but still in Occupied Territory)
    Posts
    117,696
    Don’t Be Scammed Into Another War - 7 Ways Kony 2012 Does Exactly That

    Submitted by Allan Stevo on Mon, 03/19/2012 - 09:09
    Bio | Blog

    There’s a 30-minute long YouTube sensation that’s gotten more than 70 million views in just a few days. The stated goals of the expertly produced Kony 2012 is to make an African warlord a household name and to keep U.S. military advisors in Uganda.

    Because ideas presented in the documentary are stated as “something we can all agree on,” I find it important to step forward and say that I do not in the slightest agree with the idea of U.S. military advisors in Uganda. In fact, I think that the work being done by Kony 2012 director Jason Russell and a number of organizations and activists on this topic is flat wrong.

    Kony 2012 has a “power-to-the-people” feel to it and calls for action that is humanitarian in nature, making it ideal in convincing naïve, well-intentioned people about the justness of having foreign troops in Uganda.

    However, my years of political involvement have shown me that people must not be judged on what they say, but on what they do. As well-intentioned as they are couched, Russell’s actions move us toward American military involvement in Uganda under popular pressure and under a veneer of justice. This is not an admirable goal and the talking points are familiar ones.

    In fact, his techniques are so familiar that the maker of this film sounds like a neo-conservative, especially from September 10, 2001 until W’s mission accomplished speech on May 1, 2003.

    I’m not going to spend time addressing the valid concerns that Uganda has oil reserves coveted by American interests, that U.S. interests wants to beat China to Africa’s resources and are looking for ways to have more of a military presence, that Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army might not be the threat they once were, that the crimes mentioned in Kony 2012 are an issue of the past and not ongoing, that Kony is believed to no longer be in Uganda, or that a tremendous amount of criticism has come out among Ugandans and other Africans against Kony 2012 and Kony 2012-type thinking. All of that can easily be found by a person approaching this video with a critical mind and an Internet connection.


    Instead I will address more fundamental issues that are as pertinent today as they are in any other conflict and in assessing any other piece of pro-war propaganda meant to impassion. These are seven familiar techniques used by the neo-conservatives then and the neo-liberal Kony 2012 filmmakers today:

    It’ll Be Easy
    The makers of the film inform us that intervention in Uganda will be easy. However, we all know that a warlord doesn’t get to be a warlord because it’s easy to kill him. We’ve heard before that wars are easy. I remember how Iraq part II was supposed to be a cakewalk. If Americans understood that we were agreeing to 10+ years in Afghanistan, a post 9/11 assault on the Taliban and occupation would have been a harder sell. I’m not sure that Americans today would support a war in Vietnam with our 20/20 hindsight about the conflict. War isn’t easy. That can be easy to forget.

    Are we to imagine that Joseph Kony doesn’t have a single general willing to follow in his footsteps? Will the brainwashed and abused child soldiers welcome us with open arms? Both of those concepts make this “easy” fight more complex and these questions don’t even begin to scratch the surface.

    I’m not convinced that this will be easy. How poor of a memory does someone need to have to be IN THE MIDDLE of a war and to forget that military conflict is never guaranteed to be easy.

    Calling hard things easy is nothing new. Door-to-door salesmen came up with a name for this technique – “the foot in the door technique.” It’s a technique that has surely been around as long as interpersonal communication has existed. “C’mon, it won’t be as hard as you think” is the gist of it. Sometimes that’s true. When it comes to war, that’s generally a lie.

    He Has No Friends
    “[Kony] is not supported by anyone,” we are told in Kony 2012. Presumably everyone is Joseph Kony’s enemy. He has no friends. Everyone in the region is against him. Well, then it should be easy for him to be killed or captured without U.S. assistance right? If U.S. assistance is needed, this claim sounds hard to believe.


    There Won’t Be Unintended Consequences
    If the unintended consequences were apparent to the warmonger, then the modifier “unintended” would not be needed. Causing problems and then coming along later saying “Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that” isn’t responsible. It’s even less responsible to screw up another country with one of our interventions and to pretend that we could not possibly have imagined that there might be unintended consequences.

    Ultimately, Americans can just get in planes and leave Uganda if we screw things up. Ugandans, on the other hand, are stuck there. We have no way of predicting what our intervention will do to their homeland. This Ugandan writer, Javie Ssozi, even goes so far as to suggest that the movement could cause Kony to fight back, which could mean abducting more children to secure his position and go on the offensive in now peaceful Northern Uganda.

    Take Up the White Man’s Burden
    This is an ugly and seldom questioned aspect of every war America involves itself in. People who are so devoid of racism in all other aspects of their lives can so easily buy into this concept written about by Rudyard Kipling in 1899 when the U.S. invaded the Philippines.

    Essentially, it’s the burden of the “advanced” white man to bring a better life to the “less advanced” non-whites. Put a twist on that and we have a version of Manifest Destiny – it is the duty of the advanced Americans – God’s chosen people – to ride to Africa and help; their lands will be better off under our control than in their current state.

    It’s so blindly arrogant to look at our lives and to say that our lives are better than the lives of people who we do not know in a place far away. In the event that you’ve never slept under the roofs of poor families in third world countries, I should share with you that people smile all over the world and quite enjoy their lives. My experience has been that even in the face of much adversity and even extreme poverty, the good people I’ve encountered would rather be left alone by America than ever lay eyes on an American soldier and the inevitable war zone that surrounds him. Many people the world over are happy without America’s help even if their lives (like the lives of all human beings) are imperfect.

    Attack Anti-War Ideology
    Anti-war views can be ideological and inflexible. Some who are anti-war guard against others coming along and tearing away at the firm
    ideas of being against war. Common attacks to anti-war views propose moral questions intended to ruin the resolve of someone who is anti-war. For example, the unlikely event of ticking time bomb scenarios are used in this way to try to erode at a person’s peaceful values.

    In case Obama’s presidency (the anti-war vote of 2008 hasn’t done enough to undermine the anti-war movement, Russell, who probably hates the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is calling for new military intervention. That’s probably because he’s flexible on the role war should play as a tool and encourages others to be more flexible. A war advocated by Dick Cheney to increase American military and corporate influence in the Middle East might be lousy, but if it’s advocated by someone I like for reasons I like then it’s suddenly grand to kill people. Is a bloody war, a bloody women-and-children-killing, community-destroying, body-maiming, soil-polluting war, with unpredictable additional consequences okay if it’s done for humanitarian reasons and has a really cool marketing campaign?

    Simplistic Thinking
    Even a child can see right and wrong. The director demonstrates this by allowing us to watch as he tells his son about Joseph Kony. It can be hard to understand right and wrong from the other side of the globe. From my experience of years living abroad, it would surprise me if even 1% of people living outside of the U.S. have the vaguest sense of what life is like in America.

    At the same time, we Americans have no idea what life is like in Uganda. An American expert living and studying in Uganda for 20 years might be able to really give a solid estimate of all kinds of facets of life in Uganda provided that you considered him trustworthy. Six weeks in wartime Iraq, six weeks in wartime Afghanistan, six weeks in wartime Vietnam and even a soldier who is far removed from the day-to-day life of the average person in those countries can tell you that it’s a lot more complicated of a situation than anyone at home realizes. He may not be able to describe the differences, but he recognizes that vast complexities exist.

    Almost 20 years after the first invasion of Iraq, it’s still asking too much to expect an American to explain the difference between Sunni and Shia in the land that we’ve been occupying, let alone make an educated argument for taking sides in an armed conflict. Can any of us really be expected to discern what constitutes just and unjust in the context of Uganda’s internal politics? Yet in the example of Kony 2012, that’s exactly what we’re being called on to do, each one of us individually is being asked to step forward and to argue on behalf of military intervention in Uganda – a country that few of us know much about. As discerning thinkers seek to make themselves knowledgeable about Uganda, the more we learn about Uganda the less we’ll see we understand. Just like our own country and any other country, the internal matters are complex, often more complex than most outsiders realize.

    Ignoring the Hypocrisy of It All
    America’s the cleanest country out there, right? It’s an example of perfection, right? Forget that there are American citizens who would like to see our last two presidents, Henry Kissinger, and many others indicted by the same war crime tribunal that has indicted Joseph Kony.

    The following, from Glenn Greenwald, is such a good accounting of some of President Obama’s horrific behavior that I like to reference it regularly:
    “President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack.He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs.He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.

    “He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs,including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy,efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.

    Don
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  3. #23
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    South West Florida (Behind friendly lines but still in Occupied Territory)
    Posts
    117,696
    Human Rights Watch jump on sinking KONY 2012 ship
    Tony Cartalucci
    Infowars.com
    March 21, 2012

    Human Rights Watch (HRW) during the height of the Kony 2012 hysteria, dusted off one of its old propaganda videos titled, “Joseph Kony – LRA” uploaded on November of 2010, to try and capitalize on the attention Invisible Children raised earlier this month. However, the Kony 2012 campaign imploded just as fast, and perhaps even more spectacularly than it rose – with vast numbers of people pointing out the untenable narrative it attempted to peddle and the fact that it served as nothing more than a pretext for an expanded US AFRICOM presence in Africa.
    Both Human Rights Watch and Invisible Children are funded by Wall Street speculator George Soros through his Open Society Institute and the myriad of corporate-funded foundations it funnels money through. At least one foundation behind Invisible Children (.pdf, page 22), “Enough,” who is also involved in the George Clooney promotion of a US AFRICOM intervention in oil-rich Sudan, actually counts Human Rights Watch a partner.




    Image: HRW’s partners include Wall Street speculator George Soros’ Open Society Institute which also funds Invisible Children through a myriad of proxy foundations. Note on the right-hand side the “Dear Obama” video which is featured below. It was originally uploaded in 2010, but has just recently been featured on HRW’s website in the midst of the recent Kony 2012 hysteria.
    ….
    After Invisible Children collapsed under the weight of overexposure – simply the sheer volume of people scrutinizing and exposing the fraud being peddled – we can begin to appreciate the necessity the Wall Street-London elite see in cultivating a vast array of redundant “human rights” fronts. This is to compartmentalize catastrophes like Invisible Children, and just like a ship that loses an entire section to flooding, it can be sealed off and the agenda kept afloat. In this case, the AFRICOM agenda can still keep moving forward even with “all hands lost” at Invisible Children.

    HRW video has Africans “begging” for AFRICOM to carry out its mission.



    Video: HRW’s video features “Africans” operating under the false perception that the US President is a global arbiter. These “Africans” are also suspiciously eager for the US to intervene in their respective nations and “bring security” – which just so happens to be AFRICOM’s stated objective.
    ….
    Examining the mission statement of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), as provided on their official website we see:

    Africa Command’s activities, plans, and operations are centered on two guiding principles:
    1. A safe, secure, and stable Africa is in our national interest.
    2. Over the long run, it will be Africans who will best be able to address African security challenges and that AFRICOM most effectively advances U.S. security interests through focused security engagement with our African partners.
    Upon watching the HRW propaganda video we see “Africans” addressing President Obama regarding atrocities being committed by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). As they plea for help, they claim the indigenous people are powerless and incapable of stopping “the war,” and that Africans “want” Obama to intervene. One character conveniently wearing an Obama medallion literally says, “with tears in our eyes, we ask the President to end this terrible suffering and bring security to our region.”
    “Bring security to our region,” indeed – which of course just so happens to be AFRICOM’s stated mission objective. When we consider that Kony was last believed to be in the Congo and hasn’t been seen in 6 years (4 years when HRW uploaded this video in 2010) and that the war in Uganda against the LRA has long since ended, it is clear that HRW, like Invisible Children, is grossly mischaracterizing the alleged plight in the region to serve as a pretext for AFRICOM expansion.



    Like Invisible Children, Human Rights Watch is a corporate-backed fraud.
    Just like the Kony 2012 fraud and Invisible Children, Human Rights Watch merely leverages legitimate concerns regarding human rights to carry out the neo-imperial ambitions of their corporate sponsors. HRW claims that they have “gathered evidence at massacre sites,” but seem to have overlooked the very real and quite extensive abuses and atrocities committed by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. In fact, while Kony has been MIA for years, Museveni is currently carrying out mass displacements affecting tens of thousands of Ugandans as he auctions off their land to British and American corporations.
    That HRW and Invisible Children ignore this inconvenient truth, as well as propose supporting, funding, and further arming Museveni who has undemocratically reigned over Uganda for nearly 30 years while selling out his nation, exposes the true mission of US AFRICOM. It is the continued pillaging of Africa started by European Empires during the “scramble for Africa.”

    Image: Cecil Rhodes whose British South Africa Company (BSAC) (1889-1965) helped conquer a commanding swath of the African continent in the name of the British Empire. His megalomania was “honored” by the British later naming an entire nation after him, “Rhodesia,” now modern-day Zimbabwe.
    ….

    Image: The coat of arms of the British South Africa Company (BSAC) (1889-1965) – a predecessor of modern neo-imperialism. The BSAC was chartered by the British Empire and lent its resources and capabilities to help loot the natural wealth of Africa. This mirrors exactly AFRICOM and the legion of corporate-backed NGOs carrying out the modern-day looting of Africa. Note the terms “justice” and “freedom” used upon the company’s coat of arms. Humanitarian concerns have long been used to mask wide scale human exploitation. The term “commerce” is also present in both the coat of arms pictured above and in the intents of AFRICOM Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller openly declaring AFRICOM’s guiding principle as “protecting the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market.”
    ….




    Video: “Colonialism in 10 Minutes: The Scramble For Africa” explains why Africa is the way it is and that the “scramble” is still very much ongoing today. AFRICOM, Kony 2012, and HRW are just the latest tricks and perpetrators of what can easily be described as the rape of a continent.
    ….
    When we look at the history of Africa and the genesis of the current strife being manipulated and used as a pretext for continued Western intervention, we will realize that it was the West that created many of these problems in the first place. It then stands to reason that the West’s return in the form of Wall Street-funded “humanitarian NGOs” and US AFRICOM are the least likely solutions to improving the long-plighted continent.
    ….
    Tony Cartalucci is editor of Land Destroyer Report.

    » Human Rights Watch jump on sinking KONY 2012 ship Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

    Last edited by AirborneSapper7; 03-21-2012 at 09:50 PM.
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  4. #24
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    South West Florida (Behind friendly lines but still in Occupied Territory)
    Posts
    117,696
    Beyond “Kony 2012”. What is Happening in Uganda? America's "Invisible" Military Agenda


    by Daniele Scalea
    Global Research, March 21, 2012



    mar 20 2012
    Kony 2012 is the title of a campaign launched by the organization Invisible Children Inc., focused for now on the half hour video of the same name, which has had a viral diffusion on the internet reaching in a few days almost one hundred million views (it was published only on the 5th March). The campaign aims at supporting the arrest of Joseph Kony, an Ugandan guerrilla leader accused of “crimes against humanity” by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.


    The campaign’s stated purpose is to encourage international efforts to arrest Kony, by making his case as widely known as possible. Nothing original here, but it’s interesting that Invisible Children Inc. is trying to rally volunteers on the one hand to lobby dozens of famous people (politicians and show business personalities) to convince them to be spokespeople for the campaign, and on the other hand to buy a kit complete with posters, bracelets and other propaganda material.

    In that sense something leaps immediately out. Kony’s story is told hastily and in a trenchant way as that of a brutal man without ideals and supporters, who kidnaps children to make them fight at his service. The reason why many people (who presumably would not have even been able to find Uganda on the map before having watched the video) should rally around the campaign occupies only a relatively short part of the video. A large part of it, on the contrary, is dedicated to extolling the potential of the internet and grassroots mobilization and to showing young photogenic activists spreading the cause and its gadgets, decorated with logos and symbols graphically very well crafted. The messages and images recall the happenings of the “Arabic Spring” and its interpretation – in my opinion strained as I’ve argued elsewhere – as the revolt of “Facebook and Twitter users”. And that of the so called “coloured revolts” orchestrated in different countries (Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine) during the last years by the widespread and professional network of US “NGOs”.
    Another noteworthy element is that in Kony 2012 the sending of US troops by Obama to Uganda is supported. Indeed the continuation of military support to the Ugandan armed forces is the main goal of the whole campaign: a decision by Congress to disengage from the African country must be prevented. President Obama’s choice is portrayed as the result of grassroots pressure exerted by Invisible Children Inc. during the past years, and as a military mission decided upon “simply because it is the right thing to do”. This interpretation is simplistic just like the superficial and Manichean description of Ugandan situation. Before giving reason for these opinions, a digression on the inventors of Kony 2012 campaign must be made.
    Invisible Children Inc. was founded in 2004 with the specific purpose of opposing Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army activity. Its founders, Jason Russel, Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole, university students at that time, had been affected by what they had seen in Uganda during a journey in 2003. Today Invisible Children Inc. collects almost 14 million dollars a year, with a net profit of almost 5 millions. In 2011, 16.24% of expenditure went on “Management & General”. On the 30th June 2011 the organization declared assets amounting to a little less than 7 million dollars. Jason Russel, director and narrative voice of Kony 2012, receive a salary of 1% of all organization spending, that is 89,669 dollars a year. Similar wages are received also by the co-founder Laren Poole and the executive director Ben Kessey. But these numbers are meant to be outclassed this year. According to what Jason Russel has just declared, Invisible Children Inc. should have already sold 500,000 kits, each one costing $30, in only a week for a total income of 15 million dollars.



    The organization, as it also boasts in the video, was one of the supporters of the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act signed by president Barack Obama in May 2010, with which one hundred US military advisers were sent to the African country to support the national army against LRA rebels. Nevertheless, the White House decision, as it’s easy to imagine and in contrast to what seems to be suggested in Kony 2012, was not solely or even principally dictated by humanitarian reasons. But to understand this a digression on the Ugandan situation must be made.



    Like many African countries, whose borders were arbitrarily drawn by colonial European states, Uganda is strewn with ethnic conflicts. The most important is that between the Baganda (or Ganda), the inhabitants of the south and east of the country, and the Acholi who live in the north and also beyond the Ugandan border into southern Sudan. Uganda’s history after independence (1962) has been marked by coups d’état and civil wars often fought along ethnic fault lines. The first president of independent Uganda, Edward Mutesa, was also Mutesa II the Buganda’s king, even though the main powers were held by government chief Milton Obote (belonging to Lango ethnic group, similar to Acholi). In 1966 Obote became president with a coup d’état in response to the parliament’s attempt to incriminate him, but in 1979 he, in turn, was overthrown and replaced by his ex-ally, the army commander Idi Amin. In 1978 a war broke out with Tanzania and in 1979, supported with foreign arms, the exiles (mainly Lango and Acholi) succeeded in bringing Obote back to office. Obote’s comeback was legitimized by a popular vote, considered lacking in transparency by his opponents however. Yoweri Museveni from the southern Bantu region founded the National Resistance Army (NRA). In fact the conflict was between the NRA, supported by the Buganda, and the government’s National Liberation Army (UNLA) of Lango and Acholi. In 1985 Obote was overthrown by a new military coup d’état organized by the Acholi, but in January 1986, despite the intervention of Mubutu’s Zaire, the NRA won the war and Museveni became president. He still holds power in a regime where all political parties are banned, and so he has given a certain stability to the troubled country.



    Nevertheless, Museveni’s long presidency was not all a bed of roses. His neoliberal agenda has inflicted heavy social costs in exchange for economic growth, which in addition has been concentrated mainly in the Bantu regions where its support is rooted, while the Nilotic north has been neglected.

    Museveni has shown a certain aggressiveness towards neighbouring countries, culminating in Ugandan intervention in the Somali civil war; an intervention strongly wanted by the United States and that could make one think that the military aid ordered by Obama is granted more to help a military ally which in Somalia has already lost hundreds of soldiers, rather than for humanitarian reasons.

    Since its installation, Musenevi’s government has faced a series of ethnic insurrections and resistance movements. In fact the northern region of the country has been subjected to military occupation by the NRA, noted (also by Amnesty International) for its commission of war crimes. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) of Joseph Kony, an Acholi Christian soldier, emerged in this atmosphere. The fight between LRA and NRA has been a no holds barred contest: government soldiers have been accused more or less of the same vileness blamed on the LRA, including the exploitation of children, the Kony 2012 Leitmotif. But in 2005 the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants only for LRA leaders. It is worthwhile remembering that the ICC was established in 2002 and at the moment is recognized by 120 countries. Among those states which do not recognize its authority on themselves are the United States, China, India and Russia.



    Uganda’s domestic struggle soon captured the non-disinterested attention of other countries. The LRA has been supported by Sudan, which wanted revenge for Musaveni’s support to the nationalists of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). Thanks to the SPLA South Sudan has recently gained its independence but great tension with Khartoum remains. In the meantime the LRA has been strongly cut down, and moreover it moved towards South Sudan. The Ugandan government, on the contrary, as already said, has the support of the United States (while Sudan has been and still is close to China). Even before the already mentioned order from Obama, the United States had sent soldiers and weapons to support Musenevi in AFRICOM operations, NATO’s Africa command instituted a few years ago as a reaction to the political and trading penetration of China in Africa. In 2008-2009 the United States supported the so called Garamba Offensive in Congo, made by Ugandan and Congolese government armies and the Sudanese SPLA against Kony’s LRA. The LRA seems, in fact, to have almost disappeared from Uganda. In recent years it showed signs of activity only in neighbouring countries.
    Kony 2012 has also been criticised. Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire has noticed the great simplification of events made in the video. This is what a source of undoubted prestige like Foreign Affairs, journal of the Council of Foreign Relations, unanimously considered the most influential think tank in the United States, has written about organizations like Invisible Children Inc. which supported the US participation in the Ugandan conflict: “In their campaigns these organizations have manipulated facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the extent of kidnappings and murders made by the LRA, emphasizing the use of innocent children as soldiers and portraying Kony – without any doubt a brutal man – as the unique personification of evil forces, a sort of Kurtz [main character of Heart of Darkness by Conrad].

    They have rarely made reference to the atrocities perpetrated by the Ugandan government or the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (including attacks against civilians and plundering of homes and businesses) or the complex regional politics behind the conflict”. Michael Deibert, a famous journalist who studied in depth the Ugandan situation writing a book about it, has commented critically on the Kony 2012 campaign. Far from defending the LRA leader, Deibert has nevertheless noticed that “the Ugandan government now in office got to power using also kadogos (soldier children) and by fighting together with armies which use soldier children in the Democratic Republic of Congo; all these things seem to be deliberately ignored by Invisible Children”. The argument of a lack of impartiality from the organization seems to be confirmed also by a photo showing the three founders posing with weapons in a hostile stance, together with South Sudan rebels. Glenna Gordon, who took the photo, has declared that she thinks the three are “colonialists” and are proud of it.




    Doubt about the good faith of promoters, activists and Invisible Children’s supporters is not to be raised. But reality is far more complex than how it is described in the half hour video Kony 2012.

    Kony, who in the video (and on propaganda posters) is expressly portrayed as a new Hitler and a new Bin Laden, is without any doubt a censurable figure but he is the product of the struggle of a people, the Acholi, who feel oppressed by president Musenevi, who surely has not distinguished himself by his liberalism, respect for popular sovereignty or human rights.

    The good faith presumption does not save Kony 2012 from criticism when it expressly supports US military intervention in Uganda. An intervention that only out of a certain ignorance of events in Africa and with great naivety could be considered motivated only by the desire “to do the right thing”, as is stated in the documentary.

    The United States has intervened in Uganda within the framework of increased militarization in its relationship with the continent, made necessary by the political and trading penetration of China in Africa. The sending of military advisers to Museveni, possibly a prelude to military escalation (maybe what the Kony 2012 viral campaign wants to achieve?), is to be taken in conjunction with drone bombardments in Somalia, intervention in Libya to overthrow Gaddafi, French intervention in Ivory Coast to depose Gbagbo. Julien Teil’s documentary The Humanitarian War has shown the role, not too clear, of NGOs in preparing the ground for NATO intervention in Libya.





    Invisible Children emphasizes the need to send US troops to Uganda at a time when the LRA seems weakened and, according to many people, Kony hasn’t been in the country for years. At this point it does not seem rash to include also Kony 2012 in the arsenal of US soft power that should support the spread – not necessarily in a peaceful way – of Washington’s influence in Africa.
    Daniele Scalea is co-editor-in-chief of the Italian Geopolitica review and scientific secretary of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Geopolitics and Auxiliary Sciences (IsAG) in Rome. He is author of two books: La sfida totale. Equilibri e strategie nel grande gioco delle potenze mondiali [“The Total Challenge: Balances and Strategies in the Great Game among World Powers”] (2010) and Capire le rivolte arabe. Alle origini del fenomeno rivoluzionario [“Understanding Arab Revolts. Origins of Revolutionary Phenomenon”] (2011). He is currently finishing a book on the life, works and thought of Halford John Mackinder

    Beyond “Kony 2012”. What is Happening in Uganda? America's "Invisible" Military Agenda








    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  5. #25
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    South West Florida (Behind friendly lines but still in Occupied Territory)
    Posts
    117,696
    Beyond “Kony 2012”. What is Happening in Uganda? America's "Invisible" Military Agenda


    by Daniele Scalea
    Global Research, March 21, 2012



    mar 20 2012
    Kony 2012 is the title of a campaign launched by the organization Invisible Children Inc., focused for now on the half hour video of the same name, which has had a viral diffusion on the internet reaching in a few days almost one hundred million views (it was published only on the 5th March). The campaign aims at supporting the arrest of Joseph Kony, an Ugandan guerrilla leader accused of “crimes against humanity” by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.


    The campaign’s stated purpose is to encourage international efforts to arrest Kony, by making his case as widely known as possible. Nothing original here, but it’s interesting that Invisible Children Inc. is trying to rally volunteers on the one hand to lobby dozens of famous people (politicians and show business personalities) to convince them to be spokespeople for the campaign, and on the other hand to buy a kit complete with posters, bracelets and other propaganda material.

    In that sense something leaps immediately out. Kony’s story is told hastily and in a trenchant way as that of a brutal man without ideals and supporters, who kidnaps children to make them fight at his service. The reason why many people (who presumably would not have even been able to find Uganda on the map before having watched the video) should rally around the campaign occupies only a relatively short part of the video. A large part of it, on the contrary, is dedicated to extolling the potential of the internet and grassroots mobilization and to showing young photogenic activists spreading the cause and its gadgets, decorated with logos and symbols graphically very well crafted. The messages and images recall the happenings of the “Arabic Spring” and its interpretation – in my opinion strained as I’ve argued elsewhere – as the revolt of “Facebook and Twitter users”. And that of the so called “coloured revolts” orchestrated in different countries (Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine) during the last years by the widespread and professional network of US “NGOs”.
    Another noteworthy element is that in Kony 2012 the sending of US troops by Obama to Uganda is supported. Indeed the continuation of military support to the Ugandan armed forces is the main goal of the whole campaign: a decision by Congress to disengage from the African country must be prevented. President Obama’s choice is portrayed as the result of grassroots pressure exerted by Invisible Children Inc. during the past years, and as a military mission decided upon “simply because it is the right thing to do”. This interpretation is simplistic just like the superficial and Manichean description of Ugandan situation. Before giving reason for these opinions, a digression on the inventors of Kony 2012 campaign must be made.
    Invisible Children Inc. was founded in 2004 with the specific purpose of opposing Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army activity. Its founders, Jason Russel, Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole, university students at that time, had been affected by what they had seen in Uganda during a journey in 2003. Today Invisible Children Inc. collects almost 14 million dollars a year, with a net profit of almost 5 millions. In 2011, 16.24% of expenditure went on “Management & General”. On the 30th June 2011 the organization declared assets amounting to a little less than 7 million dollars. Jason Russel, director and narrative voice of Kony 2012, receive a salary of 1% of all organization spending, that is 89,669 dollars a year. Similar wages are received also by the co-founder Laren Poole and the executive director Ben Kessey. But these numbers are meant to be outclassed this year. According to what Jason Russel has just declared, Invisible Children Inc. should have already sold 500,000 kits, each one costing $30, in only a week for a total income of 15 million dollars.



    The organization, as it also boasts in the video, was one of the supporters of the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act signed by president Barack Obama in May 2010, with which one hundred US military advisers were sent to the African country to support the national army against LRA rebels. Nevertheless, the White House decision, as it’s easy to imagine and in contrast to what seems to be suggested in Kony 2012, was not solely or even principally dictated by humanitarian reasons. But to understand this a digression on the Ugandan situation must be made.



    Like many African countries, whose borders were arbitrarily drawn by colonial European states, Uganda is strewn with ethnic conflicts. The most important is that between the Baganda (or Ganda), the inhabitants of the south and east of the country, and the Acholi who live in the north and also beyond the Ugandan border into southern Sudan. Uganda’s history after independence (1962) has been marked by coups d’état and civil wars often fought along ethnic fault lines. The first president of independent Uganda, Edward Mutesa, was also Mutesa II the Buganda’s king, even though the main powers were held by government chief Milton Obote (belonging to Lango ethnic group, similar to Acholi). In 1966 Obote became president with a coup d’état in response to the parliament’s attempt to incriminate him, but in 1979 he, in turn, was overthrown and replaced by his ex-ally, the army commander Idi Amin. In 1978 a war broke out with Tanzania and in 1979, supported with foreign arms, the exiles (mainly Lango and Acholi) succeeded in bringing Obote back to office. Obote’s comeback was legitimized by a popular vote, considered lacking in transparency by his opponents however. Yoweri Museveni from the southern Bantu region founded the National Resistance Army (NRA). In fact the conflict was between the NRA, supported by the Buganda, and the government’s National Liberation Army (UNLA) of Lango and Acholi. In 1985 Obote was overthrown by a new military coup d’état organized by the Acholi, but in January 1986, despite the intervention of Mubutu’s Zaire, the NRA won the war and Museveni became president. He still holds power in a regime where all political parties are banned, and so he has given a certain stability to the troubled country.



    Nevertheless, Museveni’s long presidency was not all a bed of roses. His neoliberal agenda has inflicted heavy social costs in exchange for economic growth, which in addition has been concentrated mainly in the Bantu regions where its support is rooted, while the Nilotic north has been neglected.

    Museveni has shown a certain aggressiveness towards neighbouring countries, culminating in Ugandan intervention in the Somali civil war; an intervention strongly wanted by the United States and that could make one think that the military aid ordered by Obama is granted more to help a military ally which in Somalia has already lost hundreds of soldiers, rather than for humanitarian reasons.

    Since its installation, Musenevi’s government has faced a series of ethnic insurrections and resistance movements. In fact the northern region of the country has been subjected to military occupation by the NRA, noted (also by Amnesty International) for its commission of war crimes. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) of Joseph Kony, an Acholi Christian soldier, emerged in this atmosphere. The fight between LRA and NRA has been a no holds barred contest: government soldiers have been accused more or less of the same vileness blamed on the LRA, including the exploitation of children, the Kony 2012 Leitmotif. But in 2005 the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants only for LRA leaders. It is worthwhile remembering that the ICC was established in 2002 and at the moment is recognized by 120 countries. Among those states which do not recognize its authority on themselves are the United States, China, India and Russia.



    Uganda’s domestic struggle soon captured the non-disinterested attention of other countries. The LRA has been supported by Sudan, which wanted revenge for Musaveni’s support to the nationalists of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). Thanks to the SPLA South Sudan has recently gained its independence but great tension with Khartoum remains. In the meantime the LRA has been strongly cut down, and moreover it moved towards South Sudan. The Ugandan government, on the contrary, as already said, has the support of the United States (while Sudan has been and still is close to China). Even before the already mentioned order from Obama, the United States had sent soldiers and weapons to support Musenevi in AFRICOM operations, NATO’s Africa command instituted a few years ago as a reaction to the political and trading penetration of China in Africa. In 2008-2009 the United States supported the so called Garamba Offensive in Congo, made by Ugandan and Congolese government armies and the Sudanese SPLA against Kony’s LRA. The LRA seems, in fact, to have almost disappeared from Uganda. In recent years it showed signs of activity only in neighbouring countries.
    Kony 2012 has also been criticised. Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire has noticed the great simplification of events made in the video. This is what a source of undoubted prestige like Foreign Affairs, journal of the Council of Foreign Relations, unanimously considered the most influential think tank in the United States, has written about organizations like Invisible Children Inc. which supported the US participation in the Ugandan conflict: “In their campaigns these organizations have manipulated facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the extent of kidnappings and murders made by the LRA, emphasizing the use of innocent children as soldiers and portraying Kony – without any doubt a brutal man – as the unique personification of evil forces, a sort of Kurtz [main character of Heart of Darkness by Conrad].

    They have rarely made reference to the atrocities perpetrated by the Ugandan government or the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (including attacks against civilians and plundering of homes and businesses) or the complex regional politics behind the conflict”. Michael Deibert, a famous journalist who studied in depth the Ugandan situation writing a book about it, has commented critically on the Kony 2012 campaign. Far from defending the LRA leader, Deibert has nevertheless noticed that “the Ugandan government now in office got to power using also kadogos (soldier children) and by fighting together with armies which use soldier children in the Democratic Republic of Congo; all these things seem to be deliberately ignored by Invisible Children”. The argument of a lack of impartiality from the organization seems to be confirmed also by a photo showing the three founders posing with weapons in a hostile stance, together with South Sudan rebels. Glenna Gordon, who took the photo, has declared that she thinks the three are “colonialists” and are proud of it.




    Doubt about the good faith of promoters, activists and Invisible Children’s supporters is not to be raised. But reality is far more complex than how it is described in the half hour video Kony 2012.

    Kony, who in the video (and on propaganda posters) is expressly portrayed as a new Hitler and a new Bin Laden, is without any doubt a censurable figure but he is the product of the struggle of a people, the Acholi, who feel oppressed by president Musenevi, who surely has not distinguished himself by his liberalism, respect for popular sovereignty or human rights.

    The good faith presumption does not save Kony 2012 from criticism when it expressly supports US military intervention in Uganda. An intervention that only out of a certain ignorance of events in Africa and with great naivety could be considered motivated only by the desire “to do the right thing”, as is stated in the documentary.

    The United States has intervened in Uganda within the framework of increased militarization in its relationship with the continent, made necessary by the political and trading penetration of China in Africa. The sending of military advisers to Museveni, possibly a prelude to military escalation (maybe what the Kony 2012 viral campaign wants to achieve?), is to be taken in conjunction with drone bombardments in Somalia, intervention in Libya to overthrow Gaddafi, French intervention in Ivory Coast to depose Gbagbo. Julien Teil’s documentary The Humanitarian War has shown the role, not too clear, of NGOs in preparing the ground for NATO intervention in Libya.





    Invisible Children emphasizes the need to send US troops to Uganda at a time when the LRA seems weakened and, according to many people, Kony hasn’t been in the country for years. At this point it does not seem rash to include also Kony 2012 in the arsenal of US soft power that should support the spread – not necessarily in a peaceful way – of Washington’s influence in Africa.
    Daniele Scalea is co-editor-in-chief of the Italian Geopolitica review and scientific secretary of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Geopolitics and Auxiliary Sciences (IsAG) in Rome. He is author of two books: La sfida totale. Equilibri e strategie nel grande gioco delle potenze mondiali [“The Total Challenge: Balances and Strategies in the Great Game among World Powers”] (2010) and Capire le rivolte arabe. Alle origini del fenomeno rivoluzionario [“Understanding Arab Revolts. Origins of Revolutionary Phenomenon”] (2011). He is currently finishing a book on the life, works and thought of Halford John Mackinder

    Beyond “Kony 2012”. What is Happening in Uganda? America's "Invisible" Military Agenda








    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  6. #26
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    South West Florida (Behind friendly lines but still in Occupied Territory)
    Posts
    117,696
    Joseph Kony And More AFRICOM Oil Wars
    By F. William Engdahl*
    engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net
    3-22-12


    According to their website, the American NGO, Invisible Children, claims now to have had over 80 million viewers to their YouTube video, “Kony2012,” since its release on YouTube a few weeks ago. For anyone with the patience to sit through the entire YouTube of Kony2012, it is questionable how truthful the figure of 80 million viewers is. Eighty million is unprecedented in YouTube history by all accounts.

    The video features such prominent Hollywood personalities as Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Lady GaGa, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs and other notables. It’s a slick, sentimental story directed by Jason Russell, a 33-year-old now-hospitalized American filmmaker who apparently just underwent a bizarre mental disconnect on the streets of San Diego. The YouTube video depicts a young Ugandan, Jacob Acaye, whom Russell claims he befriended some ten years earlier after Acaye escaped conscription into Joseph Kony’s Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) as an 11-year-old killer. The film portrays Kony as the world’s worst beast and terrorist, in effect, Africa’s Osama bin Laden.

    The Invisible Children NGO is itself opaque. It reportedly rakes in millions from sales of such things as buttons, Invisible Children T-shirts, bracelets and posters priced from $30-$250, but it ranks low on transparency regarding other donors. The group, which employs around 100 people, is expected to raise millions of dollars from their “Kony2012” video, but so far it refuses to say how much has been donated or how it will spend the money. The founders of the group, who advocate direct US military intervention in response to the LRA, had been previously criticized for posing with guns alongside members of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in 2008, an organization widely accused of rape and looting. The group issued a statement in response: "We thought it would be funny to bring back to our friends and family a joke photo. You know, ‘Haha ­ they have bazookas in their hands but they're actually fighting for peace'." HaHa…

    According to the London Guardian, Invisible Children's “accounts show it is a cash-rich operation, which more than tripled its income in 2011” to nearly $9 million, mainly from personal donations. Of this, nearly 25% was spent on travel and film-making. Most of the money raised has been spent in the US, not for Africa’s “invisible children” or even visible ones. According to information obtained by the Guardian, “the accounts show $1.7million went to US employee salaries, $850,000 in film production costs, $244,000 in ‘professional services’ ­ thought to be Washington lobbyists ­ and $1.07 million in travel expenses. Nearly $400,000 was spent on office rent in San Diego” Charity Navigator, a US charity evaluator, gave the organization only two stars for "accountability and transparency." The USAID, a State Department agency which coordinates its foreign interventions with the Pentagon and CIA, openly states on its website that it has funded Invisible Children Inc. in the past.

    The bizarre thing about “Kony2012” is that Joseph Kony either fled Uganda or was killed fleeing more than six years ago. It is claimed he fled to the wilds of Congo or Central Africa, hence he makes a perfect echo of the elusive Osama bin Laden, justifying US military action across the rich terrain of central Africa from Uganda to the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Uganda and beyond. Like Joseph Kony, Osama bin Laden was reliably reported to have died in Afghanistan years before his staged murder by Navy Seals a year ago. But his legend was kept alive to justify spreading the US War on Terror; so now, with the legend of Joseph Kony propagated by Invisible Children Inc. in San Diego. The issue is not whether Kony had committed atrocities; that is beyond dispute. The issue is whether “Kony2012” is being falsely promoted to justify US military intervention where it is unwanted by all parties.

    One American human rights worker in Uganda in a recent interview declared, “Invisible Children's campaign is…an excuse that the US government has gladly adopted in order to help justify the expansion of their military presence in central Africa. Invisible Children are ‘useful idiots’, being used by those in the US government who seek to militarize Africa, to send more and more weapons and military aid, and to bolster the power of states who are US allies. The hunt for Joseph Kony is the perfect excuse for this strategy - how often does the US government find millions of young Americans pleading that they intervene militarily in a place rich in oil and other resources?”

    The “Kony2012” video is being credited with giving the US Congress the spur to demand US military forces be sent to not just Uganda, but to the entire region of central Africa where the elusive Kony and his child army warriors are allegedly terrorizing the land. Democrat Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Republican Ed Royce have just introduced a resolution in Congress calling on the Pentagon’s AFRICOM (Africa Command) to proceed with “expanding the number of regional forces in Africa to protect civilians and placing restrictions on individuals or governments found to be supporting Kony.” Last year before the “viral” YouTube airing of “Kony2012”, McGovern and Royce also sponsored "The Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act." The media attention to the YouTube makes their case easier for military intervention. After all, it’s “humanitarian”; it’s about children, isn’t it?

    Even the politically correct Washington Post was moved to write critically, “The very viral campaign to capture Kony by the nonprofit Invisible Children has largely been a U.S. phenomenon. Ugandans say the LRA has not been active for years.”

    Already President Obama has sent 100 US elite special forces troops to Central Africa to serve as “advisers” in efforts to hunt down Kony. If it all has echoes of Vietnam in the early 1960’s it is not accidental. This is now the prelude to a huge Pentagon militarization of the entire region of central Africa, following the NATO destruction of order in Libya, and the chaos in Egypt and other Islamic states targeted by the US State Department’s “Arab Spring,” better termed these days as, “Arab Nightmare.”

    “Kony2012” was produced by an apparently well-financed NGO headed by Russell called Invisible Children Inc. in San Diego. The video reeks of US State Department propaganda with its slick camera effects and repeated scenes of Russell’s small boy to make it appear credible. Rosebell Kagumire, an award-winning Ugandan journalist responded to the clamor over Invisible Children’s “Kony2012” video, accusing Invisible Children Inc. of “using old footage to cause hysteria.” Kagumire adds,

    Is it about the dollars or a false belief that unless Americans know about it, no solution comes our way? … the Juba Peace Talks 2006-2008, which restored stability and paved way for the end to abductions in northern Uganda, was not an American invention. It was local civil society and peace actors like the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiatives (ARLPI) who pushed for a negotiated solution. In fact the moment America got involved, we witnessed “Operation Lightening Thunder”- a military operation with disastrous effects as the LRA eluded air strikes, and scattered into DR Congo and the Central African Republic where they continue to commit atrocities in retaliation.

    The entire brouhaha over Joseph Kony appears to be a flank in a major AFRICOM and US State Department campaign especially to undermine Chinese influence in central Africa -- now that they have successfully driven the Chinese oil companies out of Libya, and carved out a new “republic” of South Sudan containing much of the oil that fuels China’s economy. That splitting of South Sudan and its oil, for those who did not follow it closely, was a consequence of sending in US and NATO special forces to “stop genocide” in Darfur. George Clooney was also the poster boy for the Darfur action.

    There is good reason for the apparent sudden interest of the Pentagon and politicized US NGOs to focus on action in central Africa. So long as the world largely ignored it, Washington policy was to let institutions such as the IMF bleed the countries like Congo and allow western mining companies to extract valuable mineral wealth for pennies on the dollar. A few years ago all that began to change when China turned its attention to Africa, and especially its Great Rift Belt.

    Great Rift Belt

    The region in question, according to the filmmakers of “Kony2012”, includes not only Uganda where in recent years a giant oil field was discovered, but also some of the planet’s richest mineral lands -- including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and the US-sponsored Republic of South Sudan. The area lies in the extraordinary geographical conjuncture called the Great Rift Belt or Valley stretching from Syria in the north, down through Sudan and Eritrea and the Red Sea, and deep into southern Africa across the eastern Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and into Mozambique.

    This East African Rift System, as geologists term it, is “one of the geologic wonders of the world,” and also prospectively, one of the richest treasures of subsurface minerals, including clearly vast untapped reserves of oil and gas.

    The red line on this map shows the eastern and western faults of the Great Rift Valley, which runs 4,500 miles from southern Africa, under the Red Sea, and into Syria in southwestern Asia. it is so huge a geological feature that it is prominently visible to lunar and
    space-shuttle astronauts.


    Ever since British oil company, Tullow Oil, discovered an estimated 2 billion barrels of oil in Uganda in 2009 the geopolitical importance of the entire central African region suddenly underwent change. CNOOC Ltd., China's biggest offshore oil explorer, is in a joint venture with Tullow Oil to develop three oil blocks in Uganda's Lake Albert basin.

    According to geologists, “the East African Rift is suspected to be one of the last great oil and natural gas deposits on earth.” In a recent article, Time noted, “Seismic tests over the past 50 years have shown that countries up the coast of East Africa have natural gas in abundance. Early data compiled by industry consultants also suggest the presence of massive offshore oil deposits.”

    This region of central and east Africa is considered one of the hottest unexplored regions in the world for potential hydrocarbons—oil and gas. In 2010 Texas oil company Anadarko Petroleum discovered a giant reservoir of natural gas off the coast of Mozambique. Estimates are that Somalia holds perhaps 10 billion barrels of untapped oil. The chronic political unrest and AFRICOM-backed tensions there—convenient for western oil majors seeking to maintain absurdly high oil prices by controlling supply—prevent the development of the oil. While West and North Africa have undergone tens of thousands of oil well drillings over the last decades, East and Central Africa, including Darfur and South Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic are all but terra incognita in terms of drilling.

    This all runs smack up against the popular talk of “Peak Oil.” Far from exhausting the Earth’s resources of oil and gas, oil companies everywhere, from the eastern Mediterranean to offshore Brazil to the Gulf of Mexico and now the Great Rift Belt of eastern and central Africa, are discovering huge new potentials almost daily. We are, as oil economist Peter Odell once noted, not running out of oil, “We’re running into oil.”

    Oil is one of the most highly politicized businesses on the planet, and secrecy in the industry among the four giant Anglo-American companies makes the CIA and MI6 look like amateurs. Since the publication in 1956 by Shell Oil geologist King Hubbert of his unproven thesis that oil fields deplete like Gaussian Bell Curves, Big Oil has fostered the myth of looming oil scarcity. It serves an obvious aim of maintaining their grip on the prime energy source for the world economy. Oil and its control is a geopolitical foundation of the post-1945 American Century.

    China alters African geopolitical calculus

    So long as Africa was the “forgotten Continent” in terms of independent oil and gas explorations, Washington policy was to ignore it. As former South African President Thabo Mbeki recently put it, “Liberated from the obligation to secure the allegiance of independent Africa in the context of its global anti-Soviet struggle, the US had found that Africa was otherwise not of any importance in terms of its global strategic interests.”

    But as Mbeki pointed out, by 2007 that all began to change as China began making economic and diplomatic inroads all over Africa: “There was increasing international competition for access to Africa’s oil and other natural resources, including by China. China was becoming a ‘formidable competitor for both influence and lucrative contracts on the Continent.’”

    But Washington’s vision of so-called ‘globalization’ of the world economic system allows for no one who does not read from their sheet of music. Hillary Clinton put it clearly enough: “If you’ve got people who are choosing a different path, then you have to use all the tools of your suasion to try to convince them that the path that you wish to follow is also the one that is in their interest as well.” George W. Bush put it more succinctly: “You’re either with us or you’re against us….”

    Since China hosted more than 40 African heads of state in 2006 in Beijing, and followed that with highest-level state visits across Africa -- with Chinese oil companies and industry signing multi-billion deals with the “forgotten” Africa -- Washington suddenly took notice. In 2008 President Bush authorized creation for the first time of a single Pentagon command, AFRICOM, for the African continent. As Daniel Volman, director of the African security Research Project in Washington stated, “a number of developments—especially the continent’s increasing importance as a source of energy supplies and other raw materials—have radically altered the picture. They have led to the growing economic and military involvement of China, India, and other emerging industrial powers in Africa and to the re-emergence of Russia as an economic and military power on the continent. In response the United States has dramatically increased its military presence in Africa and created a new military command—the Africa Command or AFRICOM—to protect what it has defined as its “strategic national interests” in Africa. This has ignited what has come to be known as the “new scramble for Africa” and is transforming the security architecture of Africa.”

    By 2012 China had become the second largest foreign investor in Uganda after Britain. It is the major investor in the oil resources of South Sudan. In July 2007, the China oil company CNOOC signed an agreement with the Somali government to search for oil in the Mudug region where some estimate that reserves could amount to five to ten billion barrels of oil. The Chinese investments in this part of Africa also include the joint venture which CNOOC signed with Tullow Oil in 2011 for the Ugandan fields.

    What is clear is that “Kony2012” is not documentary fact but manipulative propaganda, which is being used to advance an AFRICOM military presence in the richest mineral region in the world before China and perhaps India and Russia preempt it. It hearkens back to the colonial resource wars of the 19th century, with the only difference being the presence of the Internet and YouTube to propagandize it at warp speed.

    *F. William Engdahl is author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. He may be contacted from his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net


    Endnotes

    Agence France-Presse, Kony 2012: Uganda PM launches online response, March 17, 2012, accessed in Kony 2012: Uganda PM launches online response

    Jason Russell, Kony 2012, accessed in KONY 2012 - YouTube

    Julian Borger, John Vidal, and Rosebell Kagumire, Child abductee featured in Kony 2012 defends film's maker against criticism, guardian.co.uk, 8 March 2012, accessed in Child abductee featured in Kony 2012 defends film's maker against criticism | World news | The Guardian

    Ibid.

    USAID, USAID/OTI Uganda Quarterly Report, Washington, DC, January - March 2009, accessed in http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/cross-...a/rpt0309.html

    Mike Tuttle, Kony: Ugandan Says He’s Already Dead--Is Movement a Sham?, March 9, 2012, accessed in http://www.webpronews.com/kony-ugand...y-dead-2012-03

    Adam Branch, Dangerous ignorance: The hysteria of Kony 2012, March 12, 2012, accessed in Dangerous ignorance: The hysteria of Kony 2012 - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

    Stephanie Condon, Joseph Kony resolution introduced in House, March 13, 2012, CBSNews, accessed in
    Joseph Kony resolution introduced in House - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

    Elizabeth Flock, Forget Joseph Kony. What Ugandan children fear is the ‘nodding disease,’ March 13, 2012, accessed in http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...if9R_blog.html

    Rosebell Kagumire, More perspective on Kony2012, March 9, 2012 accessed in
    More perspective on Kony2012 « Rosebell's Blog

    Ibid.

    James Wood and Alex Guth, East Africa's Great Rift Valley: A Complex Rift System, accessed in East Africa's Great Rift Valley: A Complex Rift System

    Bloomberg News, CNOOC in `Final Discussions' With Tullow on Ugandan Oil Block Exploration, July 8, 2010, accessed in Cnooc in `Final Discussions' With Tullow on Ugandan Oil Block Exploration - Bloomberg

    Christian DeHaemer, Cutting the Dark Continent, 3 September 2010, accessed in
    Making Deals and Profits in the East African Rift

    Ibid.

    M. King Hubbert, "Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels," Presented before the Spring Meeting of the Southern District Division of Production, American Petroleum Institute, San Antonio, Texas, March 8, 1956. Publication No. 95. Houston: Shell Development Company, Exploration and Production Research Division, 1956.

    Thabo Mbeki, Is Africa there for the taking?, New African, London, March 2012.

    Ibid.

    Ibid.

    Daniel Volman, The Security Implications of Africa's New Status in Global Geopolitics, Washington DC, accessed in http://ruafrica.rutgers.edu/events/m...volman_nai.doc

    Barney Jopson, Somalia oil deal for China, Financial Times, London, July 13, 2007.

    Xinhua, China ranks second in investment in Uganda, January 8, 2010, accessed in
    China ranks second in investment in Uganda _English_Xinhua



    http://www.rense.com/general95/konyjj.html
    Last edited by AirborneSapper7; 03-23-2012 at 03:51 AM.
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  7. #27
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    South West Florida (Behind friendly lines but still in Occupied Territory)
    Posts
    117,696
    a column double posted; just deleting it to keep this clear
    Last edited by AirborneSapper7; 03-24-2012 at 05:59 AM.
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  8. #28
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    South West Florida (Behind friendly lines but still in Occupied Territory)
    Posts
    117,696
    No excuse for Congress failing to protect U.S. law and the Constitution from Obama’s pro-U.N. schemes

    Rubber-stamping Obama’s African War Policy

    Cliff Kincaid Friday, March 23, 2012

    As media-induced frenzy over African warlord Joseph Kony reaches a fever pitch, Democratic Senator Christopher Coons has introduced a resolution that seems to provide legal cover for President Obama’s deployment of U.S. combat troops to Africa.

    Obama ordered the military intervention last October, without the approval of Congress, saying he wanted the “removal” of Kony from “the battlefield,” wherever that may be.

    Coons serves as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs.

    Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) under a 2005 warrant for crimes against humanity in his native Uganda, could be anywhere in Africa or may in fact be dead. The ICC says he is “at large” while Coons says the “exact location” of Kony and his forces, who may number as few as 200-300 men or as many as several thousand, is “unknown.”

    Kony is certainly a minor player compared to his reported patron, the Islamic government of Sudan, which is accused of killing more than two million civilians in the South but provides oil to the Chinese government.

    “On October 14, 2011, the President notified Congress that he had authorized approximately 100 combat-equipped U.S. forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of Joseph Kony and senior LRA [Lord’s Resistance Army] commanders from the battlefield,” according to a resolution issued without comment. The resolution also highlights the ICC warrant against Kony as justification for this international action and cites efforts by the United Nations and the African Union to bring Kony to justice and address the threat posed by the LRA.

    Obama, who has criticized Republicans for their alleged war-making rhetoric over Iran, believes his African adventure did not need explicit approval from Congress because the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, passed by Congress in 2010, authorized U.S. efforts “to help mitigate and eliminate the threat posed by the LRA to civilians and regional stability.” However, it did not authorize the use of combat troops in Africa.

    The resolution does not take issue with the deployment and appears to be designed, at least in part, to give it the appearance of legality and constitutionality. The Senate action comes as a “Kony 2012” video that focuses attention on the Ugandan warlord has now surpassed 84 million YouTube views.

    The media have failed to question Obama’s military intervention in Africa, with Politico being one of the latest news organizations claiming that Obama had sent the 100 U.S. military troops “with Congress’ blessing.” In fact, Congress did not authorize this deployment.
    We’re in another war,” commented Andrew McCarthy on National Review online, at the time Obama announced the action. Noting that Obama had justified the deployment in the name of “our national security interests,” McCarthy rhetorically asked: “…didn’t Kony just try to rub out the Saudi ambassador or something? This’ll teach him to mess with us. Oh, he didn’t mess with us? Well, whatever—‘duty to protect,’ right?” The “duty to protect” is a U.N. doctrine justifying foreign intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign countries, supposedly to prevent atrocities.

    It looks like Obama is primarily using U.S. troops to carry out the orders of the International Criminal Court

    It looks like Obama is primarily using U.S. troops to carry out the orders of the International Criminal Court, which wants Kony apprehended and put on trial. However, the ICC treaty, known as the Rome Statute, has not been approved by the U.S. Senate.

    The Kony mission also seems to be part of an administration campaign through Presidential Study Directive 10 to expand U.S. military involvement in U.N.-approved missions while cutting back on those defending U.S. national interests. PSD-10 seems designed to transform the U.S. military into a vehicle for preventing atrocities, rather than fighting wars.

    Senators Coons’ resolution is also sponsored by Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a conservative who usually opposes the U.N.’s global initiatives. In this case, however, he has put a release on his website that explicitly supports “ongoing international efforts to remove Kony from the battlefield…” U.N. peacekeepers operating through the U.N. Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) and other countries have been brought into the campaign against Kony and the LRA, primarily by protecting civilians from the group.
    Inhofe aide Jared Young told AIM that the senator believes the mission is justified by existing legislation and didn’t need any additional authority from Congress. He added, “Senator Inhofe does not support U.N. interference in Africa. The U.N. does not have a mandate related to Kony or the LRA, and Senator Inhofe believes that we should be helping African countries deal with African problems (that is what the current mission does). He also does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC.”

    In addition to pointing to an “international obligation” to get Kony, Obama sent a letter to Congress claiming the deployment of U.S. troops was “consistent with the War Powers Resolution.” However, the War Powers Resolution says the president can go to war on his own without advance congressional approval only if there is an imminent threat to the U.S. The act also requires withdrawal of U.S. forces in 60 days.
    Although Kony has been designated a “global terrorist” by the U.S. Government, he has never been blamed for any attacks on U.S. troops or civilians.

    The Coons/Inhofe resolution is cosponsored by Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Dan Coats (R-Ind.), Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), Jack Reed (D-RI), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Jeff Merkley, (D-Ore.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).

    A similar resolution (H. Res. 583) was introduced in the House on March 13 by Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern and Republican Rep. Edward Royce. It justifies Obama’s deployment of troops to Africa by saying it is “consistent” with a “Strategy to Support the Disarmament of the Lord’s Resistance Army” that was developed by the Obama Administration, in response to the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act.

    This 33-page strategy, however, does not authorize U.S. military force and in fact states that “United States Government assistance will be provided in a manner that is consistent with U.S. and international law…”

    Obama called it an “international obligation” in an interview with ABC News but it is not backed by a U.N. Security Council Resolution.

    Writing on the Lawfare blog, Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith noted that Obama claimed his deployment was “in furtherance of the Congress’s stated policy” but relied as authority for the intervention solely on his “constitutional authority to conduct U.S. foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive.” Goldsmith added, “It will be interesting to see whether the White House consulted with congressional leadership before the intervention, and how Congress reacts.”

    The results are in: many members of Congress in the House and Senate from both political parties are lining up with Obama and supporting another U.S. military intervention, which appears to be lacking justification under U.S. and international law. The latest legislative effort seems based almost completely on the power of a video whose director, Jason Russell, was himself captured on film running around the streets of San Diego shouting about the devil and pounding the pavement.

    Russell is said to have experienced a mental breakdown or psychosis. However, there is no excuse for Congress failing to protect U.S. law and the Constitution from Obama’s pro-U.N. schemes.

    Rubber-stamping Obama’s African War Policy
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  9. #29
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    South West Florida (Behind friendly lines but still in Occupied Territory)
    Posts
    117,696
    OBAMA'S SECRET WAR-MAKING FOR THE U.N.
    By Cliff Kincaid
    March
    24, 2012
    NewsWithViews.com

    You may not have heard of PSD-10 because it has received no significant coverage from the major media. Yet, President Obama issued “Presidential Study Directive 10” last August 4, 2011, and posted it on the White House website. It amounts to a new and potentially far-reaching exercise of American military power cloaked in humanitarian language and conducted under the auspices of the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.

    Under this new “Obama doctrine,” U.S. troops can be deployed to arrest or even terminate individuals wanted by the International Criminal Court, which is based on a treaty that has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate and isn’t even up for Senate consideration.

    This “Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities,” another name for PSD-10, declares that “Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.” This is at sharp variance with the traditional role of the U.S. military—self-defense and protection of the homeland. Toward this end, an “Interagency Atrocities Prevention Board” is being formed to develop and implement this new Obama doctrine. However, it is apparent that the doctrine is already going forward.

    Members of the public haven’t heard of PSD-10, but they may have heard of a decision Obama made on October 14, 2011, when he informed Congress that he had authorized “a small number of combat equipped U.S. forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield.”

    Kony, a Ugandan warlord who runs the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), is better known than most foreigners, since he is the subject of the viral “Kony 2012” video about the more than 30,000 “invisible children” he has allegedly murdered or abducted. His whereabouts are unknown, although it is believed he is no longer in Uganda.

    Despite the name of his group, Kony is not a Christian and instead receives backing from the Islamic regime in northern Sudan. Although he poses no direct threat to the United States and has not carried out terrorist attacks on the U.S. or killed any American citizens, the Department of Treasury has designated him as a “global terrorist” under Executive Order 13224, a measure signed into law by President Bush after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

    In regard to seeking Kony’s “removal,” Obama told Congress, “I have directed this deployment, which is in the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States, pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct U.S. foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive.”

    Obama noted that Congress, in passing the “Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009,” had “expressed support for increased, comprehensive U.S. efforts to help mitigate and eliminate the threat posed by the LRA to civilians and regional stability.” But it did not authorize deployment of combat forces. What’s more, a statement from Obama after signing the law did not give any indication any would be sent.

    One of the sponsors of the bill, Rep. Edward Royce (R-CA), has subsequently introduced “Rewards for Justice” legislation (H.R. 4077) that would allow the State Department to offer a reward for the apprehension of Kony.

    For his part, Obama is basically deploying the U.S. Armed Forces on behalf of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which indicted Kony for war crimes in 2005 and issued an arrest warrant for him. However, not only has the U.S. Senate not ratified the ICC treaty, Congress has never authorized the use of U.S. troops to carry out the ICC’s edicts. So where does Obama get the power to deploy U.S. troops in this manner?

    The question is made more relevant because Obama has such an expansive view of his own executive power to wage war. He claims the power to kill American citizens overseas, on the grounds that they collaborate with foreign terrorist groups, and FBI Director Robert Mueller has told Congress that he is not sure whether the president also has the power to kill American citizens on American soil, inside the United States. Mueller testified, “I have to go back. Uh, I’m not certain whether that was addressed or not.”

    In the case of Kony, Obama seems to be taking his cue from the ICC. Its prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, appears in the “Kony 2012” video, noting that Kony was the first person ever indicted by the court. The video also celebrates Obama’s decision to use U.S. troops to try to apprehend Kony. It does not take a big exercise in connecting the dots to arrive at the conclusion that Obama is using U.S. troops to carry out the orders of the ICC. But rather than seek ratification of the ICC and then obtain the approval of Congress to apprehend Kony, and perhaps even to kill him, Obama simply issues orders to U.S. troops and bypasses the Congress.

    Last October Jake Tapper of ABC News asked Obama about the decision to deploy troops “to help eliminate Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army.” Obama replied:

    “Well none of these decisions are easy, but those who are familiar with the Lord’s Resistance Army and their leader, Mr. Kony, know that these are some of the most vicious killers. They terrorize villages, they take children into custody and turn them into child soldiers, they engage in rape and slaughter in villages they go through. They have been a scourge on Uganda and that entire region, eastern Africa. So there has been strong bi-partisan support and a coalition, everything from evangelical Christians to folks on the left and human rights organizations who have said it is an international obligation for us to try to take them on. And so given that bipartisan support across the board belief that we have to do something about this, what we’ve done is we’ve provided these advisors. They are not going to be in a situation where they are called upon to hunt down the Lord’s Resistance Army or actively fire on them, but they will be in a position to protect themselves. What they can do is provide the logistical support that is needed, the advice, the training and the logistical support that hopefully will allow this kind of stuff to stop.”

    Notice the use of the term “international obligation.” That is not the same as a declaration of war or resolution on the use of force from Congress.

    Indeed, the Obama Administration seems to have the view that it has to seek authorization for military action against foreign regimes or individuals from the U.N. or NATO, but not from Congress. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently told a Senate committee that the U.S. military would have to seek “international permission” before intervening in Syria. Senator Jeff Sessions responded, “I’m really baffled by the idea that somehow an international assembly provides a legal basis for the United States military to be deployed in combat. I don’t believe it’s close to being correct. They provide no legal authority. The only legal authority that’s required to deploy the United States military is of the Congress and the president and the law and the Constitution.”

    On top of this announcement, we now learn, also from Tapper, that “according to a senior administration official, President Obama first heard about the [Kony 2012] video the same way so many people have: from one of his children. In this case, it was from Malia, 13.”

    Some liberals are now complaining that the “Kony 2012” video has become a “pretext for military intervention.” If so, it is after the fact. They fear the intervention may not really be designed to find Kony. Still, it is not too late for liberals and conservatives alike to question whether Obama has superseded his constitutional and legal authority. It is certainly time for the major media to examine what Obama is getting the United States into in Africa—and on what legal basis, if any, he is doing it.

    While Obama had ordered U.S. troops to apprehend Kony, he has been careful not to order them to arrest and detain Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, a patron of Kony’s who has also been indicted by the ICC on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Sudan is a member in good standing of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The crimes of Al-Bashir dwarf those of Kony.

    It should be apparent what is happening here. The Obama Administration has what the United Nations Association calls an “evolving policy” of “positive engagement” toward the ICC. It doesn’t seem to matter that the administration isn’t seeking ratification of the ICC, also known as the Rome Statute, and has no plans to do so.

    The policy is an open secret. Rosemary A. DiCarlo, the U.S. Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, has said, “Although the United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, over the past several years we have sent observer delegations to the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) sessions and the Review Conference in Kampala. In December, we cosponsored a high-level panel at the ASP to highlight the importance of ensuring protection for witnesses and judicial officers. We have engaged with the Office of the Prosecutor and the Registrar to consider ways to support specific prosecutions already underway, and we have responded positively to a number of informal requests for assistance.”

    She spoke of the need for “transnational justice,” saying that the review undertaken as part of implementing Presidential Study Directive-10 would focus on “how we can work with our international partners to more effectively prevent and respond to atrocities. We look forward to working with our partners to strengthen the international community’s capabilities in this area.”

    So while the Pentagon prepares for across-the-board cuts in national security and defense programs, plans are underway by the Obama Administration to use some of what’s left of our military to operate on behalf of the United Nations and the ICC. The “fundamental transformation” of the United States is now underway at the Department of Defense.

    © 2012 Cliff Kincaid - All Rights Reserved

    Cliff Kincaid, a veteran journalist and media critic, Cliff concentrated in journalism and communications at the University of Toledo, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

    Cliff has written or co-authored nine books on media and cultural affairs and foreign policy issues. One of Cliff's books, "Global Bondage: The UN Plan to Rule the World" is still awailable.

    Cliff has appeared on Hannity & Colmes, The O’Reilly Factor, Crossfire and has been published in the Washington Post, Washington Times, Chronicles, Human Events and Insight.

    Web Site: www.AIM.org

    E-Mail: cliff.kincaid@aim.org


    Cliff Kincaid -- Obama’s Secret War-making for the U.N.
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  10. #30
    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    South West Florida (Behind friendly lines but still in Occupied Territory)
    Posts
    117,696
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

Page 3 of 5 FirstFirst 12345 LastLast

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •