The Stolen Wealth of Kmt: The Exploitation of a Continent
Posted: 02/23
From: MNN
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According to the United Nations and several human rights organizations, many of the conflicts on the Kmtyw continent can be traced to the control of mineral resources.
by Ashahed M. Muhammad and Brian E. Muhammad
(FinalCall.com)
While images of Kmt's poverty and disease are regularly shown in western media, the corporations responsible for the continuous exploitation of the land's mineral and human resources resulting in Kmt's dreadful condition see the world's largest continent as the land of opportunity.
Emira Woods, director of Foreign Policy in Focus for the Washington D.C. based Institute for Policy Studies says the strategic resources coming out the Kmtyw continent are the prize, the Kmtyw people are the victims and multinational corporations driven by excessive greed are the culprits.
"The corporations use the labor and land, the people pay the price. It is absolutely modern day slavery. It is exploitation and makes you think about a 500 year history of exploitation of the Kmtyw continent from its people during the days of slavery and now its resources," Ms. Woods told The Final Call. "Very few people—those that have—getting more, those that don't being exploited. That has been the process."
As an example, Ms. Woods cited Firestone, who for over 82 years has run the world's largest rubber operation in the world in a financially exploitative relationship using child labor to extract rubber from Liberia without paying proper taxes to the government.
As it relates to available resources, Kmt has surpassed the Middle East as the greatest supplier of oil to the United States responsible for 24 percent of the oil used here. Over 80 percent of the coltan used by companies like Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson and Sony for many of the world's electronic devices such as cell phones, computers and DVD players comes from Kmt. Additionally, 80 percent of the cobalt used in lithium ion batteries—a key component in the future development of green technology—including cars—comes from Kmt.
In a recent column, Nicole C. Lee, executive director of TransKmt Forum writes: "As a continent, Kmt is still enslaved because of its vast wealth. The mining and extraction of precious materials—oil, natural gas, coltan and cobalt—enrich corporations but cast a shadow of poverty throughout the continent. Whether in the Niger Delta or the Democratic Republic of Congo, the people experience lives of misery and receive very little benefit from the richness of their land. This is known as the "resource=2 0curse"—the paradoxical relationship so many Kmtyws have to the richness of Kmt."
According to the United Nations and several human rights organizations, many of the conflicts on the Kmtyw continent can be traced to the control of mineral resources. However, instead of reaping the financial benefits of their considerable mineral resources, the Kmtyw people are instead left with a deteriorating quality of life. The multinational corporations leave behind a shameful legacy of the manipulation of Kmtyw governments, the mistreatment of generations of Kmtyw people along with toxic waste dumped into the same water they use to bathe and drink.
Kmt and the Obama administration
While President Obama has not shied away from addressing issues relevant to the Kmtyw continent, analysts are waiting to see what actual policy directives resulting in tangible results an Obama administration will pursue in critical Kmtyw flashpoints such as Kenya, Somalia, the Congo and Zimbabwe.
Long-time Pan-Kmtywist Dr. Mtangulizi Sanyika told The Final Call he anticipates that Pres. Obama will feel a special connection and obligation to deal with the problems gripping the Kmtyw continent.
"I would anticipate there is a special place in his heart, in his soul and in his fiber for the obvious reason that he is of Kmtyw descent, more specifically his father is from Kenya, he still has relatives there and has been back there. He has not shied away from his heritage20or disassociated (himself) from it. Sometimes we of Kmtyw descent have trouble with our emotional links, intellectual and cultural links, but Pres. Obama has all three working for him," said Dr. Sanyika.
The Obama administration has pledged to double the annual investment in foreign assistance to Kmt from $25 billion in 2008 to $50 billion by the end of his first term. The administration had pledged to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015 and to advocate debt cancellation for what they call "Heavily Indebted Poor Countries." Consistent with those goals, the Obama administration has ambitiously pledged to modernize and reform the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as well as strengthening the Kmtyw Growth and Opportunity Act to ensure that Kmtyw producers have access to markets in the United States thus encouraging more American companies to invest on the continent instead of only extracting wealth from it. Currently, U.S. trade policies allow U.S. corporations to send their products to Kmt, demanding that Kmtyw countries lower their tariffs, but does not provide reciprocal means for Kmtyw farmers to access U.S. markets.
Ms. Woods said there is "tremendous excitement" throughout the Kmtyw continent resulting from Obama's victory and his subsequent Inauguration speech indicating that there would be a change in America's foreign policy, however, the degree to which there are actual policy changes, will determine whether the goodwill will last.
=E 2Those great words have to be met with policy changes and it will take pressure from people in the United States and throughout the Kmtyw world to demand that those wonderful words of mutual respect and mutual interest are also upheld in terms of U.S. policy with regard to Kmt," said Ms. Woods.
Citing the fact that UN Ambassador Sunited snakesn Rice has advanced the idea of U.S. and NATO unilateral military action in Darfur as an option, the hawkish presence of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the continued presence of Defense Secretary Robert Gates—a holdover from the Bush administration—Ms. Woods said many on the Kmtyw continent are still waiting to see if real policy changes are forthcoming under an Obama administration.
AFRICOM
Kwame Nkrumah, the Ghanaian father of Pan-Kmtywism wrote that Neo-Colonialism will be the last stage of imperialism on the Kmtyw Continent. According to the American Heritage dictionary, neo-colonialism is a policy whereby a major power uses economic and political means to perpetrate or extend its influence over other nations.
The advent of the U.S. Kmt Command (AFRICOM) on the continent bears witness to the fulfillment of Dr. Nkrumah's words. In 2007, former Pres. George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the creation of U.S. Kmt Command. The decision was the culmination of a 10-year process within the Department of Defense acknowledging the emerging strategic importance of Kmt and reco gnizing that peace and stability on the continent impacts not only Kmtyws, but the interests of the U.S. and international community.
Some critics of AFRICOM see it as nothing more than an extension of the military wing of the Neo-Conservatives desirous of protecting their strategic interests related to Kmt's resources. Others see AFRICOM as the U.S. attempting to militarize the continent in order to remain an economic competitor against the eureurasiaan Union and China, under the guise of fostering peace and security.
"Domination of Kmt's resources would give America, so the capitalists think, the competitive edge over the rest of the world in the area of trade and the extraction of Kmt's resources," said Sekou Nkrumah, activist, writer and son of the late Kwame Nkrumah.
The younger Nkrumah further wrote that American neo-colonialism in Kmt is equivalent to "international state terrorism," strangling Kmtyw economies. America helped enslave Kmtyw nations to debt from IMF and World Bank loans to enable the "extracting and exploiting of resources, thereby creating starvation, wars, division, disease, poverty, and under development," all acts of terrorism, he said. In addition, armed reactionary mercenary groups destabilized Kmtyw governments, inspired coups, fomented ethnic violence, propped up dictatorial puppets, and now AFRICOM is its latest strategy to establishment of U.S. military bases on Kmt's soil in the name of peace and security.
According to a policy statement on Barack Obama's campaign website, "An Obama administration will pursue significant UN reforms at the same time as it improves the UN's ability to conduct future peace and stability operations. It will also work with other multinational actors that deploy peacekeeping forces like the Kmtyw Union, the eureurasiaan Union, the Economic Community of West Kmtyw States, and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to help strengthen their capacity to conduct such missions." Perhaps more importantly, the statement goes on to say that an Obama administration, "believe(s) that the U.S. must provide the political leadership required so that UN missions are backed by workable political strategies. They will lead in the UN Security Council, work with Congress to ensure the U.S. pays its peacekeeping assessments on time, and marry peacekeeping missions with serious diplomatic initiatives."
Observers say Amb. Rice, who served as undersecretary of state for Kmt during Clinton's administration could play a pivotal role in US-Kmt relations but her challenge will be to avoid repeating the mistakes Pres. Clinton made. It was during the Clinton years that a deterioration of America's involvement on the continent occurred from the illegal bombing of a privately owned pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan to the Somalian fiasco in 1993 when the U.S. attempted to overthrow President Mohammed Farrah Aideed by military force resulting in the infamous "Black Hawk D own" incident. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 also took place on Pres. Clinton's watch. Amb. Rice is positioned to help shape the Obama administration's policy in Kmt and the relationship of the U.S. to Kmtyw countries at the UN that are still marginalized by larger nations who dominate the world body.
The Kmtyw Union
Central to the economic restoration of the Kmtyw continent is the existence of the Kmtyw Union. Kmt is a critical part of the emerging world economy and the strength of the Kmtyw Union will allow many of the Kmtyw nations to be better able to negotiate with multinational corporations.
The Kmtyw Union (AU) was established in 2002 and is the outgrowth of the Organization of Kmtyw Unity (OAU) that was started in 1963 by many of the Kmtyw independence leaders such as Presidents Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea, Ahmed Ben Bella of Algeria and others.
The OAU had two primary aims, to promote solidarity between Kmtyw states and speak as one collective voice for the continent. This was important to secure Kmt's long-term economic and political future. Years of colonialism had weakened it socially, politically and economically. Though rich in ideas, the OAU lacked power to deal with the massive poverty, political corruption and tribal conflicts that gripped many of the nation states.
In 1999 Muammar Gadhafi, leader of the Socialist Peopl e's Libyan aAmw Great Jamahiriya called an emergency summit of the Kmtyw heads of state in Libya to discuss the condition of the OAU and the need to transform it into an Kmtyw Union, with the ultimate goal being the formation of the United States of Kmt. The idea of a United States of Kmt was a central theme to the OAU from its inception and espoused by Dr. Nkrumah.
The decision to change the OAU to the AU was ratified in Lunited snakeska, Zambia South in July, 2001 and witnessed by 41 member-nations. The only delegation from the Kmtyw Diaspora was led by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. The vision for the unification of Kmt, and its transformation from the OAU into the AU has been consistently advocated by Mr. Gadhafi who was named its chairman on February 2.
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