Abayomi Azikiwe, Pan-African News Wire Editor, speaking at the Central United Methodist Church in Detroit at an anti-war rally on March 15, 2008. PANW articles have been published in many newspapers and websites around the world. (Photo: Rudy Simons)., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
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World News
Kony 2012: Concern or Deception?
By Brian E. Muhammad-Contributing Writer-
Updated Apr 20, 2012 - 10:59:05 AM
Many believe movement is a tool of Imperialist forces
(FinalCall.com) - Recently the African Union announced a commitment of five thousand troops to Central Africa to hunt down Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)—a reputed Christian fundamentalist group who waged a gory armed struggle against Uganda’s pro-Western President Yoweri Museveni. The move came after wide spread attention on a film about the rebel called Kony 2012 by the organization ‘Invisible Children’ that reached over 100 million hits on YouTube.
However, some observers expressed disdain at the video’s overly simplistic narrative of an otherwise nuanced and complicated African issue. They said the high quality cinematography and gripping scenes of child soldiers and disfigured Ugandans was designed to tap the emotions of gullible, uninformed viewers and gain public support for a U.S. military agenda in Africa.
“The issue is the increased use of the U.S. military in Africa under the guise of humanitarian intervention,” said Kambale Musavuli, a national spokesman for Friends of the Congo, an advocacy group.
If anything, Kony 2012 and the role of social media in its exposure was an attempt at U.S. “soft power” diplomacy to advance U.S. “hard power” of American military interests in Africa, added Mr. Musavuli.
Then in a strange twist of events, its creator, Jason Russell suffered a “mental melt down” and was arrested for a lewd public act after screaming and running nude in the streets of San Diego, California. But before his personal drama unfolded, there were mixed feelings, controversy and strong scrutiny of the project that critics say is a propaganda tool that “racketeers of capitalism” are using to exploit misery in a diabolical plan for world domination.
Other Africa watchers said the film’s message to “get Kony” is out of touch with current geopolitics in the region and its call for U.S. military intervention is dangerous.
They opine the demand plays into the hands of an active Imperialist agenda for re-colonization, militarization and looting the valuable resources on the continent.
“I am hurting for Africa,” lamented the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan during a March 21 press conference in Trinidad. The Nation of Islam leader said forthright that Kony is a ruse for U.S. military presence in East and Central Africa.
“Now the United States has inserted AFRICOM into Africa; soldiers are there supposedly trying to track down Mr. Kony, but in reality it has nothing to do with the Lord’s Resistance Army. It has everything to do with the mineral strength in Central Africa,” he said.
AFRICOM is the Pentagon’s military command for Africa, where a theater for economic warfare is intensifying between America and other foreign powers like China and Russia. “America will never be a super power in the 21st century, if she doesn’t have access to those strategic metals and minerals,” said Minister Farrakhan.
Based on a high global demand for raw assets, new battle lines are being drawn in Africa, setting the stage for a geo-economic region, no longer dominated by America; but shared with other emerging players and China as the main competitor. An example is the B.R.I.C.S. bloc of nations consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa that’s attempting to unify behind the creation of an independent currency and a development bank.
China is a major owner of U.S. foreign debt and “could sink the U.S. dollar by calling in the debt that America owes China, or exchanging her huge dollar reserve for other currencies,” the Muslim leader said in an April 8, 2007 speech called The War of Armageddon.
If successful, experts say the shift will rival the World Bank and potentially replace the U.S. dollar as a global standard of exchange. These self-sufficient steps by up-and-coming powers led primarily by China—that does major business with Africa and the Middle East—is problematic to Western interests.
Abayomi Azikiwe, political analyst and Editor of Pan African Newswire added, AFRICOM is America’s counter move and “part of a broader strategy” towards destabilization and control in Africa that includes the turmoil in Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti and the March 21 coup d’état in the West African nation of Mali.
Mr. Azikiwe referenced the overthrow of Libya and brutal assassination of Muammar Gadhafi in October 2011 as AFRICOM’S “first major project” and gateway to the recent events on the continent. Leader Gadhafi established the African Union to facilitate the vision of a United States of Africa with a single government, military and currency tied to gold, which would have rearranged the world power equation in Africa’s favor.
He was eliminated by the Western powers who considered him an obstacle to unfettered access to Africa’s wealth.
“There’s gold and tremendous iron-ore deposits … recently they found oil in Uganda. And whereever you find gold and precious minerals or natural resources; you find that the Western world—America included—is engaged in some conflict in that country,” said A. Akbar Muhammad, International Representative of the Nation of Islam.
African leaders, willing collaborators
Furthermore since the demise of Col. Gadhafi, and with the billions of dollars in aid he gave to other African leaders gone, the AU is floundering.
Now the AU is hiring itself out as collaborators to major powers like America, at the expense of African self-determination and empowerment.
“Weak leadership, weak, cowardly leadership that is so frightened of North America and Europe that they allow themselves to be trodden under foot so that the next generation receives nothing but the legacy of cowardice,” said Minister Farrakhan, rebuking the frail state of the AU.
In October 2011 under the pretext of removing Kony and the LRA, President Barack Obama authorized one hundred combat ready “advisers” into Central Africa to aid U.S. regional “partner forces” –which means Uganda and the governments of Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan.
However, Kony has not been a factor in the region for several years and the focus on the LRA distracts from America’s alliance with President Museveni, whose hands aren’t clean of crimes against humanity according to Mr. Musavuli. He cited Northern Uganda where hundreds of thousands of Ugandans perished under squalor conditions over a ten-year period in “Internal Displaced People’s” camps that became known as death camps ran by the Ugandan government during its conflict with the LRA.
Furthermore, along with laying blame on President Museveni for human rights violations of his own people, activists also want attention to his role in the U.S. financed war and resource pillaging in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo that Kony 2012 omits.
From the mid-1990’s to 2003 President Museveni and Rwandan President Paul Kagame were willing accomplices and U.S. proxies for mayhem in the DRC resulting in six Million Congolese killed in what analysts call Africa’s world war that also drew in armies from Zimbabwe, Burundi and Angola.
Deceptive Intelligence and Hollywood
Mr. Muhammad noted striking similarities in the tactics used by the relatively unknown “Invisible Children” group and Zionist concoction, “Save Darfur” organization that raised millions of dollars in the name of alleged atrocities in Sudan, only to be discredited for dubious schemes and financial practices. He said both organizations employed staged protests and enlisted endorsements of the cause by Hollywood names like actor George Clooney and others to give credibility.
“The very same U.S. and Israeli military and intelligence officials involved in genocide and war crimes and regime change in Sudan are responsible for these same atrocities in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Congo … these are the same people tied to phony Kony 2012 agenda,” said Investigative Journalist, Keith Harmon Snow, in a Pacifica AfroBeat radio interview.
Mr. Snow described the build-up in Africa as the “sub-Saharan extension” of the full scale military and propaganda war on Iran and Syria, as was already seen in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq.
However, “we are clear there is no military solution for African problems,” said Mr. Musavuli.
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