[Why should we not form a secret society with but one object, the
furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole world under
British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for making the Anglo
Saxon race but one Empire?
. . . Africa is still lying ready for us. It is our duty to take
it--"Cecil
Rhodes," PBS]
Enver Masud, "If Hutus And Tutsis Were
Muslim Media Would Say So," The Wisdom Fund, December 10, 1996
Eric Margolis, "Where is
Clinton's 'African Renaissance'," Toronto Sun, January 31, 1999
Amy Chua, "Free-Market Democracy: Our
Most Dangerous Export," Guardian, February 28, 2004
Enver Masud, "Sudan, Oil, and the
Darfur Crisis," The Wisdom Fund, August 7, 2004
Elizabeth Davies, "Curse
of gold has fuelled slaughter and rape in Congo," Independent, June 2, 2005
[While 70% of Nigerians exist on a dollar a day, Shell continues to make
megaprofits from oil drilling in the country, taking an estimated $30bn out
of the ground since the 1950s.
At present 12% of US oil comes from Africa and by 2015, when the UN's
Millennium Goals to halve world poverty will be laughably incomplete, that
proportion will have reached 25%.--Torcuil Crichton, "When it comes to Africa, Bush has
more on his mind than aid," Sunday Herald, June 12, 2005]
George Monbiot, "A truckload of nonsense: The G8 plan to save Africa comes with
conditions that make it little more than an extortion racket," Guardian,
June 14, 2005
[This not a bailout of Africa's poor or Latin American peasants. This is a
bailout of the IMF, the World Bank, and the African Development
Bank.--Patrick J. Buchanan, "Reviving the Foreign Aid
Racket," Antiwar.com, June 15, 2005]
John Pilger, "Tony
Blair's 'vision for Africa' is about as patronising and exploitative as a
stage full of white pop stars (with black tokens now added)," New
Statesman, June 27, 2005
[The US and Britain are putting the multinational corporations that created
poverty in charge of its relief--George Monbiot, "Africa
's new best friends," Guardian, July 5, 2005]
Todd Pitman, "U.S. strategic interests rise in West Africa's
oil-rich Gulf of Guinea," Associated Press, August 7, 2005
[. . . the fragility of contemporary Africa is a direct consequence of two
centuries of slaving, followed by another of colonial despotism. Nor was
"decolonisation" all it seemed: both Britain and France attempted to corrupt
the whole project of political sovereignty.--Richard Drayton, "The
wealth of the west was built on Africa's exploitation," Guardian, August
20, 2005]
[Last month, a Nigerian court ordered Shell to pay $1.5 billion dollars in
environmental damages. But the oil giant refused to pay the fine and is now
appealing the ruling. Rebels have also made similar demands of oil
conglomerate ExxonMobil.--James Marriot, "The Next
Gulf: London, Washington & the Oil Conflict in Nigeria,"
democracynow.org, March 10, 2006]
[Equatorial Guinea has the fortune to be Africa's third-largest oil
producer. The money from black gold helps to explain how the president,
Teodoro Obiang Nguema, has bought large homes in France and Morocco, as well
as two in Potomac, and how his son and presumed heir bought a Lamborghini
and two Bentleys during a shopping spree in South Africa. But oil has done
little to help Equatorial Guinea's 540,000 people, some 400,000 of whom
suffer from malnutrition.--Editorial: "Condoleezza Rice's inglorious moment," Washington
Post, April 18, 2006]
Joan Roelofs, "The NED, NGOs and
the Imperial Uses of Philanthropy: Why They Hate Our Kind Hearts,
Too," counterpunch.org, May 13, 2006
David White, "Wen woos seven African nations in quest for oil," Financial Times,
June 19, 2006
[But what has most made Sudan a violent place has been the discovery of oil.
The Khartoum government has already lost control of the south, where most of
its reserves lie. The plains of Darfur have been only partly surveyed, but
look promising. . . .
To the east lies Somalia, where the descent into war is portrayed as
historical enmity between Somalis and their Ethiopian neighbours. Yet
Ethiopia's Christian regime runs a big risk in its border incursions, given
that a large portion of its own people are Muslim and of Somali descent. The
real reason is likely to be that the Ogaden region, which borders Somalia,
sits on a not yet exploited gas field.--Daniel Whitaker, "Race
for riches is Africa's torment," Observer, November 12, 2006]
VIDEO: Nigeria is the largest producer of oil in Africa, and actually
it produces more oil than Iraq and Kuwait combined.--"As
Hundreds Die in an Oil Pipeline Explosion in Lagos, A Look At the Fight Over
Nigeria's Natural Resources," democracynow.org, December 26, 2006
Tom O'Neill, "Nigerian Oil, Curse of the Black Gold," National Geographic,
February 2007
Philip Pullella, "Pope says rich nations "plundered" Third World," Reuters, April
4, 2007
[It was the kind of "social responsibility" agreement that is encouraged by
the World Bank--John Vidal, "Vast
forests with trees each worth £4,000 sold for a few bags of sugar,"
Guardian, April 11, 2007]
VIDEO: The book
compares the global competition for the continent's oil resources to the
nineteenth century scramble for colonization.--John Ghazvinian, "Untapped:
The Scramble for Africa's Oil," democracynow.org, May 17, 2007
["Creating an African Command," write the two analysts in a Heritage
Foundation study entitled U.S. Military Assistance for Africa: A Better
Solution, "would go a long way toward turning the Bush Administration's
well aimed strategic priorities for Africa into a reality."
While the Bush Administration says the purpose of AFRICOM will be
humanitarian aid and "security cooperation," not "war fighting," says Ryan
Henry, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. The Heritage
analysts were a tad blunter about the application of military power:
"Pre-emptive strikes are justified on grounds of self-defenseAmerica must
not be afraid to employ its forces decisively when vital national interests
are threatened."
Carafano and Gardner are also quite clear what those "vital interests" are:
"The United States is likely to draw 25 percent of its oil from West
Africa by 2015, surpassing the volume imported from the Persian
Gulf."--Conn Hallinan, "How the Far
Right Targets Africa: Guns, Foundations and Free Trade,"
counterpunch.org, July 14, 2007]
Howard W. French and Lydia Polgreen, "China, Filling a Void, Drills for Riches in Chad," New York
Times, August 13, 2007
Chris McGreal, "The
devastating cost of Africa's wars: £150bn and millions of lives,"
Guardian, October 11, 2007
Michael Peel, "The big
African oil grab," New Statesman, April 10, 2008
[The islands of Sao Tome and Principe make up a single sovereign country,
population 160,000. Until a few years ago the islands' only claim to fame
were Marilyn Monroe postage stamps, fraudulent sex hotlines and a key export
crop, cacao. . . . That was until oil was discovered under the sea floor
off the country's coast.--"
How to Rob an African Nation," Der Spiegel, April 18, 2008]
[The Gulf of Guinea is the water thatÕs right off the coast of Nigeria,
where there is, by some estimates, more than ten times the untapped oil
thatÕs in Saudi Arabia, and the AFRICOM base is proposed for Nigeria.--Sandy
Cioffi, "Oil Politics in the Niger
Delta," democracynow.org, May 9, 2008]
