Counterpunch African Paradigm Leaves Much to Be Desired
The West's War Against African Development Continues … Africa's classic depiction in the mainstream media, as a giant basketcase full of endless war, famine and helpless children creates an illusion of a continent utterly dependent on Western handouts. In fact, the precise opposite is true – it is the West that is reliant on African handouts. These handouts come in many and varied forms. They include illicit flows of resources, the profits of which invariably find their way into the West's banking sector via strings of tax havens (as thoroughly documented in Nicholas Shaxson's Poisoned Wells) … The African Union, established in 2002 was a threat to all of this: a more integrated, more unified African continent would be harder to exploit. Of special concern to Western strategic planners are the financial and military aspects of African unification. – Counterpunch
Dominant Social Theme: Africa is under attack again by a colonial mentality that wants to shatter its unity and rape its wealth.
Free-Market Analysis: Counterpunch, one of the United States's top leftist media facilities, has launched a long screed analyzing the attack that Africa has now come under from the West.
This attack has been going on for years, but the editors at Counterpunch – in this article, anyway – want to provide a definitive analysis, or so it seems. They seem to want to define the current attacks as part of a larger neo-colonialism that is doing to Africa in modernity just what the colonial powers did to Africa several hundred years ago.
This is not true, from our perspective, and is even pernicious because it obscures the larger reality of what's going on that we've tried to document in numerous articles over an extended period of time.
The Counterpunch paradigm is typical leftist, as it presents the world in terms of a corporate (private sector) dedicated to rapine and postulates, to some degree anyway, that government can be an effective counterweight to private misdeeds.
This is a fairly ancient narrative at this point but one that is still effective and provides a base for much alternative media analysis of the Way the World Works. It is at least to some degree an elite meme, for it reinforces the idea that elite dominated government efforts are an effective way of opposing and confronting a corrupt private sector. Here's more from the article:
NATO reduced Libya to a devastated failed state and facilitated its leader's torture and execution, thus taking out their number one opponent. For a time, it appeared as though the African Union had been tamed. Three of its members – Nigeria, Gabon and South Africa – had voted in favour of military intervention at the UN Security Council, and its new chairman – Jean Ping – was quick to recognize the new Libyan government imposed by NATO, and to downplay and denigrate his predecessor's achievements. Indeed, he even forbade the African Union assembly from observing a minute's silence for Gaddafi after his murder.
However, this did not last. The South Africans, in particular, quickly came to regret their support for the intervention, with both President Zuma and Thabo Mbeki making searing criticisms of NATO in the months that followed. Zuma argued – correctly – that NATO had acted illegally by blocking the ceasefire and negotiations that had been called for by the UN resolution, had been brokered by the AU, and had been agreed to by Gaddafi.
Mbeki went much further and argued that the UN Security Council, by ignoring the AU's proposals, were treating "the peoples of Africa with absolute contempt" and that "the Western powers have enhanced their appetite to intervene on our Continent, including through armed force, to ensure the protection of their interests, regardless of our views as Africans". A senior diplomat in the South African Foreign Ministry's Department of International Relations said that "most SADC [Southern African Development Community] states , particularly South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Tanzania, Namibia and Zambia which played a key role in the Southern African liberation struggle, were not happy with the way Jean Ping handled the Libyan bombing by NATO jets".
In July 2012, Ping was forced out and replaced – with the support of 37 African states – by Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma: former South African Foreign Minister, Thabo Mbeki's "right hand woman" – and clearly not a member of Ping's capitulationist camp. The African Union was once again under the control of forces committed to genuine independence.
This is not a true narrative but a wishful one. African leaders, cowed by Western military initiatives, did not complain about what happened to Libya and Gaddafi until it was too late to do anything about it. As for the African Union, it is not "committed to genuine independence." This is simply rhetoric.
The Western powers are consolidating Africa. That much seems certain. They are also attacking secular states and installing quasi-Islamic governments run by the CIA-penetrated Muslim Brotherhood.
We have shown in other articles (just this past weekend, for instance) that news organizations like Al Jazeera are being radicalized and positioned as enemies of free speech and moderate Christian values. Will Al Jazeera's Dimming Shed More Light on Elite Middle Eastern Plans?
Finally, contrary to the thrust of the Counterpunch article, Africa is NOT being deliberately impoverished but is being set up as the next China or Japan.
We believe the world is headed for substantial monetary chaos that will give rise to some sort of elite-backed global currency. In the meantime, the elites will pursue business-as-usual, which means they will need a new continent on which to lay off debt.
The dollar reserve system allows the top elites that run central banking to print virtually as much money as they want, provided they can find another country to hold debt. Japan was willing to purchase debt in the 1980s so that its consumer goods could be sold in the West. The Chinese played the same game in the 1990s and 2000s.
But now both of those countries hold an aggregate of well over two trillion dollars of US debt and a new entity must be found. Enter Africa.
The elites will likely build up Africa's economy with phony monetary stimulation while prevailing on African leaders to buy US debt, in particular. If Africa is "consolidated" via an African Union, this effort will be made more convenient and efficient.
So from our perspective, these are the operative forces at work in Africa: The continent is to be Islamified so as to pose as a faux-enemy of the West. At the same time, it is to be unified so that it can act as a single, mighty continent doing the bidding of top Western elites. Finally, it is to be brought into the "modern era" via enormous money printing that will see African leaders begin to buy Western debt aggressively.
The corollary to the purchase of Western debt is that Africa itself must begin to produce the meaningless consumer trinkets of the sort that China and Japan sold to the West during their respective "miracles."
The end result will be a centralized but shattered economy and a mythology that "capitalism" brought Africa into the 21st century. This is the same mythology that has been spread about China and Japan. It is not true, however. Japan and China enjoyed the stimulative benefits of central banking super-money that created a simulation of prosperity without its reality.
The paradigm that Counterpunch offers us, one of neo-colonialism and exploitation, is partially true but avoids explaining the full impact of elite machinations, worldwide, as well as the elite goal which is from what we can tell ever-expanding world government. Such a paradigm does not adequately contribute to our understanding and may even mislead us.
You don’t have to play by the rules of the corrupt politicians, manipulative media, and brainwashed peers.
When you subscribe to The Daily Bell, you also get a free guide:
How to Craft a Two Year Plan to Reclaim 3 Specific Freedoms.
This guide will show you exactly how to plan your next two years to build the free life of your dreams. It’s not as hard as you think…
Identify. Plan. Execute.
Yes, deliver THE DAILY BELL to my inbox!
Your $50 Ticket to the "$100 Billion Pot Stock Bonanza"
The $100 billion marijuana industry is dominated by penny stocks...
With legalization sweeping the country, these penny stocks have already begun skyrocketing in price...
Take action TODAY, and you have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to turn a tiny $50 investment into an absolute fortune.
Biggest Currency Reboot in 100 Years? In less than 3 months, the biggest reboot to the U.S. dollar in 100 years could sweep America. It has to do with a quiet potential government agreement you’ve never heard about. >>>>>Click here now for the details<<<<<