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(TALKZIMBABWE) Rebuilding America by building Africa

Rebuilding America by building Africa
By: Lloyd Whitefield Butler, Jr. - Columnist
Posted: Thursday, June 17, 2010 12:23 pm

WHITE House and Congressional Black Caucus fast asleep at the African switch.

"If the enemy is not doing anything against you, you are not doing anything" Ahmed Sékou Touré

"Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular - but one must take it simply because it is right." --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

England’s Chatham House has been the home of the Royal Institute of International Affairs for ninety years. Their mission is to be a world-leading source of independent analysis, informed debate and influential ideas on how to build a prosperous and secure world for all.

According to Chatham House’s independent thinking on international affairs they published a June 2010 strategic report on Africa called “Playing to its Strengths: Rethinking the UK’s Role in a Changing World.”

Chatham House’s executive summary states the following:

"African countries are playing a more strategic role in international affairs. Global players that understand this and develop greater diplomatic and trade relations with African states will be greatly advantaged.

"For many countries, particularly those that have framed their relations with Africa largely in humanitarian terms, this will require an uncomfortable shift in public and policy perceptions.

"Without this shift, many of Africa's traditional partners, especially in Europe and North America, will lose global influence and trade advantages to the emerging powers in Asia, Africa and South America.

"China's re-engagement is for the most part welcome, as is that of the increasing numbers of emerging powers such as Turkey, South Korea and Brazil that see Africa in terms of opportunities - as a place in which to invest, gain market share and win access to resources.

"Economic fortunes across Africa are now diverging, making it less meaningful to treat Africa as a single entity in international economic negotiations. Despite this, it is in the global interest that the African Union should be granted a permanent place at the G20."

The former British Empire’s think tank has finally arrived not from intelligence and insight, but from forced necessity. American think tanks are disgraceful. Racism, greed, and superstition keeps the American political elite spellbound in ignorance with an insatiable appetite for war. This makes business and political foreign policies toxic to Third World nations.

In 1968 US Presidential Candidate Richard Milhouse Nixon while speaking before a group of Black Republicans shared strategic advice when delivering his "Bridge to Human Dignity Speech" he said:

"In order to have human dignity, people need property rights - and never has this been more true than in the case of the Negro today. What do I mean by property? Essentially, the economic power that comes from ownership, and the security and independence that comes from economic power."

The above sounds like Zimbabwe’s indigenization and empowerment law.

The “Words of Dr. Martin Luther King” Selected by Coretta Scott King further enlightens with strategic thinking in order to rebuild America by dignifying its relations with Africa:

"Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or ignored economic injustice. But the Negro knows that these two evils have a malignant kinship. New laws are not enough. The emergency we now face is economic, and it is a desperate and worsening situation.

"It is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years. How then can he be absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we do not do something special for him now, in order to balance the equation and equip him to compete on a just and equal basis?

"Few people consider the fact that, in addition to being enslaved for two centuries, the Negro was, during all those years, robbed of the wages of his toil. No amount of gold could provide an adequate amount of compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries. 'Not all the wealth of this affluent society could meet the bill. Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages.

"When millions of people have been cheated for centuries, restitution is a costly process ... Justice so long deferred has accumulated interest and its cost for this society will be substantial in financial as well as human terms. This fact has not been fully grasped, because most of the gains of the past decade were obtained at bargain rates. The desegregation of public facilities cost nothing; neither did the election and appointment of a few black public officials."

The Zimbabwe Guardian reports in an article how the “Group of Elders should re-read history” by Tendai Midzi. He opines that: "Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his so-called 'Group of Elders' are making a fool of themselves by making uninformed comments about Zimbabwe without the right kind of briefing from politicians in the country.

"There are crises in many places in the world where these so-called 'elders' have either remained quiet or taken a more informed approach. There are also other places where their contribution could be more meaningful rather than Zimbabwe where the parties are at peace and have managed to strike a deal without their influence.”

Here is an example of a place in the world where the Group of Elders’ contributions can be more meaningful: the United States of America. The Group of Elders is not too elderly to understand the following remarks:

"Cowardice asks the question: is it safe? Expediency asks the question: is it political? Vanity asks the question: is it popular? But conscience asks the question: is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular - but one must take it simply because it is right." MLK

Breibart News reported this week that, “Global military expenditures soared to a record high last year, unscathed by the economic downturn, with the United States accounting for more than half of increase, a think tank said Wednesday. In 2009, 1,531 billion dollars (1,244 billion euros) were spent worldwide in the military sector, a 5.9 percent rise from 2008 and a 49 percent jump from 2000, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in its report.”

Meanwhile, U.S. AFRICOM is preparing militarily; sanctions and threats of sanctions are State Department problem solving tools, and, chasing poor Somalian peasant pirates who are compensating themselves for ships that dump toxins in their waters ruining their fisheries are U.S. high points for winning over Africa.

Regretfully President Obama appears to believe that military preparedness should outperform fiscal preparedness. Fiscal availability determines the timeframe and affordability of war; with the exception of self defense. Depleting a nations’ treasury while executing war is suicidal, and, winning a war that results in generational debt is stupid.

The above mentioned reference to President Nixon’s “Bridge to Human Dignity” speech should be applied to the White House, US House of Representative & Senate, Congressional Black Caucus, and Group of Elders.

All Africa, Asia, and Central & South America watch carefully the manner in which the European and American governments treat the Elder Statesman of African Liberation President Robert Mugabe as though he does not exist. The West hatefully and jealously sanction the Zimbabwe people and their new government against the wishes of the African Union, Non-Aligned Nations, and United Nations, etc. because they dare venture into Black African Capitalism.

In Africa and the world President Mugabe is also known as the well mannered Godfather of African Indigenous Land Return & Mineral Resource Ownership. President Mugabe accepts that “If the enemy is not doing anything against you, you are not doing anything.”

In 1909 a white Southerner and gentleman, Edgar Gardner Murphy, wrote in “The Basis of Ascendancy - Our Race Security" the following:

'The perils involved in the progress of the [N]negro are as nothing in comparison with the perils invited by his failure. And yet if any race is to live, it must have something to live for...it will hardly give any deep spiritual or conscious allegiance to its racial future, if its race life is to be forever burdened with contempt, and denied the larger possibilities of thought and effort.'

Gardner Murphy further states in 'The Integrating Force of Opportunity' chapter VII. that: 'Deliverance lies not solely in the white man's baldly assuming the perpetual attitude of the policeman over his treasure, but in giving the negro a treasure too: and, as he becomes also a policeman, on guard as a man and as a race above his own. Keep him forever in his bankruptcy and his destitution, without a life to attract him or a treasure to conserve, and these millions will become conscious of their race only to disown it and to betray it, -- a despairing and devouring menace to the wholesome stability of our own life, and a noisome indictment of the perversity or the incapacity of our statesmanship.'

The Financial Times also reported this week that “China’s engagement with Africa has had a transformative effect on the continent’s relations with the outside world, shaking up an old and fraying order dominated by cautious foreign donors and former colonial powers…Trade between Africa and China rose tenfold, from $10bn (€8bn, £6.9bn) to $108bn, between 2000 and 2008…Africa holds 10 per cent of the world’s proven oil reserves – and more still to be discovered. China buys a third of its oil from Africa and the US aims to import 25 per cent from the west African seaboard...Algeria and Algeria the seventh and eighth biggest natural gas reserves globally. South Africa 40 per cent of the world’s gold. Africa after China, the biggest reserves of the rare earth metals essential for production of high-technology items from lasers to turbines

Need anymore be said concerning the strategic importance of Rebuilding America by Building Africa?

How far gone has American foreign policy gone?

I quote an excerpt from former CIA Analyst Chalmers Johnson’s NY Times bestseller “Nemesis – The Last Days of the American Empire.”

‘The attempt to disguise or avoid the policy-based reasons for 9/11 fed the rantings of Christian fundamentalists in the United States. Televangelist Pat Robertson, later joined by Jerry Falwell, declared that “liberal civil liberties groups, feminists, homosexuals, and abortion rights supporters bear some responsibility for [the] terrorist attacks because their actions have turned God’s anger against America,” and they launched a hate campaign against all Muslims. Jimmy Swaggart called Muhammad a “sex deviant” and a pervert and suggested that Muslim students in the United States be expelled. The Pentagon added its bit of insanity to this religious mix when army lieutenant general William G. “Jerry” Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, argued in public in full uniform without subseequent official reprimand that “they” hate us “because we are a Christian nation,” that Bush was appointed by God, that the Special Forces are inspired by God, that our enemy is “a guy name Satan,” and that we defeat Islamic terrorists only “if we come at them in the name of Jesus.”

Labels: BARACK OBAMA, CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS, LLOYD WHITEFIELD BUTLER JR

posted by MrK @ 2:25 PM