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International NGOs serve imperialism; Africa needs own independent development organizations

Nosakhare Boadi Published Dec 2, 2011

International non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are global contractors, hired to execute the foreign policies of imperialism. They largely work without questioning the existing social system. Surely they complain about poverty and the suffering of the world's poor, but most blindly only look to solutions within the confines of the system of imperialism and global capitalism. This is impossible. As Jamaicans say, they "too follow fashion." NGOs fashion themselves in the cloak of the left and put on a show of resistance. But most have no vision to finance this resistance nor to accomplish their goals beyond the free surplus milk of the system that sustains their very existence. This is the dialectic of poverty reduction. Their enterprise is a contradiction in terms. International NGOs believe wishfully that imperialism will finance them to orchestrate its own demise. They fail to understand that the system derives its wealth and surplus exactly because it imposes poverty on the people of the world. Capitalist economy requires poverty Under the current economic system, poverty may be reduced in one place, but then it must be reproduced equally somewhere else. If a larger middle class is to be produced, either wealth must be taken from the rich or blood must be sucked from the poor. With very little power to protect themselves, we can be sure that blood will more easily be sucked from the poor than the swill of the hogs taken away. NGOs have been co-opted into imperialisms anesthetic projects of hope and are now used to make that blood sucking process less painful and less obvious. In all fairness, many NGOs work hard at what they do and they do it well. They do exactly what theyre supposed to be doing: putting foreign aid money to work. They fill a niche and provide a very valuable service for governments who wish to dispose of various sums of foreign aid. Without international NGOs it would be difficult for these governments to efficiently inject sums of this aid. The only other choice would be to give these funds directly to the receiving government, and indeed this is done. But money given directly to governments is not intended for development. It is given to coerce and entice government leaders, curry favor with local people, or to further place these governments in debt. The recent bold confessions of economic hit men and the leaks of diplomatic operatives have shown clearly how the seeming lifeline of aid money can so easily be transformed into chains of obedience.

By adding carefully crafted conditions and invoking well-placed threats when necessary, the real magic of foreign aid and its potential use as a political wand become evident. Foreign governments fear that by handing this money directly to the receiving governments, a portion of this money could be squandered and siphoned off in corruption. If it is squandered away then it cannot be effective as a political tool. NGOs deliver the appearance of forward motion When donor governments really need this foreign aid money to amount to a physical showpiece that looks like development on the ground, they point to international NGOs. Within the cogs of the system, NGOs act as the worker bees which catalyze electronic foreign aid monies into a sweet substance and help to demonstrate its potency as an effective, albeit addictive, fuel for development. However, literally unable to bite the hand that feeds them, NGOs become locked onto a financial treadmill and find it a complex task to challenge the system that replicates the very poverty and misery they supposedly go in to mop up. As implementers of predetermined foreign policy and the proscribed political outcomes of international donors, non-governmental organizations are in a sense not very non-governmental at all. Betraying the notion of being autonomous and far from being the independent thinkers and actors we may think they are, they essentially rely on the steady stream of foreign aid available from the governments of developed nations. Their almost exclusive reliance on government funds renders the term non-governmental organization an oxymoron. They may act independently of the governments in the countries where they work, but they are essentially a long arm for the foreign policy objectives of the donor governments they rely upon almost exclusively for financial sustenance. The reputation from the 1940s and 1960s of NGOs as civil society activists has now been betrayed and they have morphed into mobile mop rags of unsightly poverty that fit neatly into the pockets of donors. They are mercy for hire. Although a few innovative international NGOs try to seek a balance between government funds and donations from private individuals, most simply do not. Doctors Without Borders stands as an anomaly Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders (MSF/DWB) is an exception amongst multi-national NGOs and is perhaps one of the most forward thinking. Over time, MSF has achieved an intake of up to 90 percent of their funding from private sources. This has allowed MSF to act outside of the box by deploying immediately anywhere in the world where there is a medical emergency whether or not it is politically acceptable to the most important government donors. They are able to involve themselves in advocacy that lies outside the prescribed Millennium Development Goal (MDG) boxes set aside for NGO activism.

As a result, within the NGO world MSF stands as an anomaly. For the rest of the NGO players, the most common and most important donors in the world of emergency relief are the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the European Commission Humanitarian Office (ECHO), the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom, and United Nations (UN) organizations such as UNICEF, WFP, and UNHCR. This UN funding is itself sourced once again from the annual contributions of governments with the largest of these contributions coming from the most developed nations. These most developed nations are also some of the most powerful and most aggressive nations with complex and far-reaching agendas to fulfill. Amongst them there are warmongers and militaryindustrial predators. Not surprisingly, international NGOs are also now an integral part of their war equation. As seen in the war on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, there is a new war policy of total obliteration from the air with an already predetermined plan to rebuild both physically and politically in the likeness of the aggressor. This orchestrated reconstruction plan typically includes a long list of infamous private sector contractors, a host of expatriate consultants, a scattering of multi-national corporations, and a plethora of international NGOs. Contractors, consultants, and corporations act as the inner organs of the beast being constructed while the NGOs act as its soft underbelly; comforting the misery and foulness which accompanies warfare. This reliance on the dirty money and bloodied spoils of warmongering governments also means that the ideological positioning of these NGOs must, at least outwardly, conform to that of their donors. It is by no surprise then that there are no international NGOs pushing for what would seem to be extreme or radically different development approaches such as socialism. They simply wouldnt get any funding. NGOs dont have African-centered mission or vision More importantly for African people, no international NGOs have any vision for the African poor that is Pan-Africanist and African-centered. None have a vision for African people to arrive at a firm unity. None have a vision for Africans to truly understand imperialism. I am not aware of ANY international NGO that has a vision for African people to achieve their true greatness. None of them have a vision for African people to restore and utilize their culture as an arm of resistance and upliftment. Yet these NGOs speak of resistance. None have a culture of historical truth in their orientation and none orient African people towards the truth. Not one. In fact, many of the development worker expatriates working in Africa do not hold a true picture of African history or know very much about African culture and politics beyond the archaic versions in their high school textbooks. A lot of the expats that Ive come across in my own work within the international NGO sector are downright racist and spiritually ugly people with very little to offer development in general or the African struggle in particular.

Although there are some I can count on my hands who are genuine and good-hearted people that have actually managed to fully shake off their chains of racial superiority, in my experience, the majority are ideologically void. Most are straight-up adrenaline junkies seeking extreme travel experiences. Others are social misfits who deeply question the meaning of their mundane existence within the gleaming but empty material prosperity of their home countries and now seek an outlet for their inner pain. Many are simply clients of the development tourism afforded them through their globetrotting NGO work. The global NGO system offers such development tourists and misfits an outlet to work off their inner pain and social guilt. They are able to do so without threatening the system at home through possible protest and anarchist activities aimed at provoking fundamental change within the system. Through their guided tours of charity they are perhaps led to believe that they can instead heal the system from within by being a soldier of mercy and hope rather than a mercenary of truth and radical change. As global contractors of the system, most international NGOs are led to miss the point completely and focus mainly on addressing symptoms of perverse global capitalism. By focusing solely on symptoms they render themselves inert. It is their focus on the material condition of the poor rather than the ideological condition of the poor that leads to their irrelevance as agents of fundamental change. In this mainstream approach to development there is no consideration given to the understanding the poor have of the system, of themselves as Africans, or of the cultural resources they have to combat their own poverty and exclusion. With this typical development approach there would apparently be more development work to be done in materially underdeveloped Liberia or DR Congo than the glossy but warped capitalism of South Africa. War of ideas would support development in South Africa Indeed there is more work of pity and swollen, hungry bellies to feed amongst the poorest nations of Africa but there is equally important work amongst the super-capitalism of neo-apartheid. In South Africa, production within the economy is still largely owned by descendants of European settlers despite the economic arrangement negotiated by the African National Congress (ANC) near the ending of apartheid aimed essentially at creating a buffer class of wealthy Africans who would buy shares in European controlled industries. Despite this class of cash takers and share buyers there still remain millions of Africans who have never been rescued from apartheid-induced poverty and who perhaps never will. These millions of black people still live in shacks and violence-filled ghettoes. Their grandchildren will also most likely live in the same conditions. These African people comprise at least nine different ethnic groups, kept apart and hating each other during apartheid, they generally still despise and are suspicious of each other today.

Essentially, there is a plethora of ideological work to be done in South Africa and for an African centered approach to development. There is much more work to do in South Africa in that respect than in Liberia or DR Congo. African identity is key Even in those parts of Africa that are torn by ethnic strife, an obvious part of the solution would be the promotion of African unity and a binding African identity. However, not one international NGO in Africa does this. In fact, they perhaps have no clue that they should. Amongst them, there are programs for food security, water and sanitation, shelter, entrepreneurship, health, education, and even gender equality, but none dare touch the hot potato of promoting unity amongst African people. If, for example, one could be so intimately involved in a huge social undertaking such as the brokering of gender equality how could one then be completely oblivious of the equally important need for the mainstreaming of a Pan-Africanist identity? This is because the possible areas of activism and knowledge production are already circumscribed for international NGOs by their donors even before those NGOs begin to write their proposals. With a more African centered approach to development, what Africa and Africans would need are not global contractors who self-censor development possibilities but our own global contractors of radical change. We would need forward-thinking, multinational organizations that respond to the aspirations of private African donors both at home and in the Diaspora. Experience has shown that our own African NGOs, which have also gotten onto the foreign aid treadmill, are soon misdirected from their natural path and neutralized. African resources in African hands If Africa was able to harness the donor power of both its old diaspora of African descendants in the Americas and the new global diaspora of African emigrants abroad there would be no need for the contractors of the system to manage the development affairs of Africans. Remittances sent home by Africans now represent 50 percent more than net Official Development Assistance (ODA) (foreign aid) from all sources, and, for most countries, the amount also exceeds Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). This speaks volumes. It indicates clearly that Africa has its own dormant development financiers. Once awakened and reoriented, this consolidation of private African donors will need their own international implementers and their own African centered development organizations to which they can donate. As such, our donors will need international actors but not international NGOs. African implementers must therefore not structure their identity around being non-governmental because the need to operate outside of the foreign aid system of governments is painfully obvious and clear. Our implementers must learn lessons from the experiences of international NGOs and rather orient themselves around being liberated and independent, innovative and relevant, non-conformist, and conscious of their potential agency to write a new development history for our children and grandchildren.

Author statement: I am a staunch African-Centered, Pan-Africanist. I am African-Caribbean and was born on the island of Barbados. At 10 years old my family moved to Toronto, Canada. I completed my education there and obtained a degree in civil engineering (water resources) at the University of Waterloo. Within weeks of graduation I was already on a plane for my first trip to Africa. My first job after school was in Ghana where I worked for a Canadian planning consulting firm on a resettlement project. After working in Ghana for six months I backpacked throughout West Africa (Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali). I returned to North America and settled in Atlanta for three years working in the field of land development engineering. I left Atlanta to pursue a Masters in Development Studies at the University College London. Since then I have worked in both the development consultancy sector and the NGO sector and I have had the pleasure to live and work in DR Congo, Uganda, South Africa, Haiti, South Sudan, Liberia, and Zimbabwe, where I am now based. I am married to a Zimbabwean architect/artist and I am the father of two daughters

Wwf
Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest mining companies, has major interests in uranium mining in Australia and in Namibia. It is the world's second largest producer of uranium. [1] In 2005, eight mining companies accounted for 78% of world uranium mine production. The three main companies are Cameco (20%), Rio Tinto (13%), and Areva (12%). Canada produces 28% and Australia 23%.[2] The company has major shareholdings in two operating uranium mines:
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Energy Resources of Australia Ltd (ERA) in Australia, in which Rio Tinto has a 68 per cent interest; and Rossing Uranium in Namibia, in which Rio Tinto has a 69 per cent interest.

Rio Tinto also a majority interests in one undeveloped uranium ore bodies. These is the Jabiluka lease in the Northern Territory held by ERA. Rio Tinto also held the Kintyre lease in Western Australia is owned by Canning Resources Pty Ltd, which was a wholly owned by Rio Tinto. [1]However, in July 2008 the company sold its interest in the project to joint venture consortium "comprising subsidiaries of Cameco Corporation and Mitsubishi Development Pty Ltd for US$495 million".[3] Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) was prosecuted following a series of severe radiation safety failures at the Ranger Mine. [4] Ranger has, so far, produced over 30 million tonnes of radioactive tailings, and there have been more than 120 documented leaks, spills and licence breaches. The mine, which opened in 1981, is located in the Kakadu National Park. The incidents have got more sever and more frequent as the infrastructure has aged

Puppets in Revolt: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and the United States


07.22.2011 :: United States Introduction

Empires are built through the promotion and backing of local collaborators who act at the behest of imperial rulers. They are rewarded with the outward symbols of authority and financial handouts, even as it is understood that they hold their position only at the tolerance of their imperial superiors.

Imperial collaborators are referred to by the occupied people and the colonial resistance as puppets or traitors; by western journalists and critics as clients; by the imperial scribes and officials as loyal allies as long as they remain obedient to their sponsors and paymaster. Puppet rulers have a long and ignoble history during the 20th century. Subsequent to US invasions in Central America and the Caribbean a whole string of bloody puppet dictators were put in power to implement policies favorable to US corporations and banks and to back US regional dominance. Duvalier (father and son) in Haiti, Trujillo in the Dominion Republic, Batista in Cuba, Somoza (father and son) in Nicaragua and a host of other tyrants served to safeguard imperial military and economic interests, while plundering the economies and ruling with an iron fist. Rule via puppets is characteristic of most empires. The British excelled in propping up tribal chiefs as tax collectors, backing Indian royalty to muster sepoys to serve under British generals. The French cultivated a francophone African elite to provide cannon fodder for its imperial wars in Europe and Africa. Late imperial countries like Japan set up puppet regimes in Manchura and Germany promoted the Vichy puppets in occupied France and the Quisling regime in Norway. Post-Colonial Rule: Nationalists and Neo-Colonial Puppets Powerful national liberation, anti-colonial movements following World War II, challenged European and US imperial dominance in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Faced with the enormous costs of reconstruction in Europe and Japan and domestic mass movements opposed to continuing colonial wars, the US and Europe sought to retain their economic holdings, military bases via political collaborators. They would assume administrative, military and political responsibilities, forging new links between the formally independent country and their old and new imperial masters. The economic and military institutional continuities between colonial and post-colonial regimes were defined as neo-colonialism. Foreign aid gave birth to and enriched an indigenous kleptocratic bourgeoisie which provided a fig leaf to imperial resource extraction. Military aid, training missions and overseas scholarships trained a new generation of military and civilian bureaucrats inculcated with imperial-centered world views and loyalties. The military-police-administrative apparatus was perceived by imperial rulers as the best guarantor of the emerging order, given the fragility of neo-colonial rulership, their narrow base of appeal and the demands of the masses for substantive socioeconomic structural changes to accompany political independence.

The post-colonial period was riven with long term large-scale anti-imperial social revolutions (China, Indo-China), military coups (throughout the three continents), international civil wars (Korea) and mostly successful nationalist-populist transformations (Iraq, India, Indonesia, Egypt, Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Ghana, etc.). The latter became the bases for the non-aligned movements. Outright colonial settler regimes (South Africa, Israel/Palestine, Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe) were the exception. Complex associations, depending on the specific power relations between empire and local elites, generally increased income, trade and investments for the decolonized newly independent countries. Independence created an internal dynamic based on large scale state intervention and a mixed economy. The post-colonial period of radical nationalist and socialist uprisings, lasted less than a decade in most of the three continents. By the end of the 1970s, imperial backed coups overthrew national-populist and socialist regimes in the Congo, Algeria, Indonesia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and in numerous other countries. The newly independent radical regimes in the former Portuguese colonies, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and the nationalist regimes and movements in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Latin America were severely weakened by the collapse of the USSR and Chinas conversion to capitalism. The US appeared as the sole superpower without a military and economic counterweight. US and European military and economic empire builders saw an opportunity to exploit natural resources, expropriate thousands of public enterprises, build a network of military bases and recruit new mercenary armies to extend imperial dominance. The question arose as to the form the new US empire would take: the means through which the remaining nationalist rulers would be ousted. Equally important: with the demise of the USSR and China/Indo-Chinas conversion to capitalism, what ideology or even argument would serve to justify the powerful thrust of post-colonial, empire building? Washingtons New World Order: Colonial Revivalism and Contemporary Puppetry: Western imperialisms recovery from the defeats during the national independence struggles (1945-1970s) included the massive rebuilding of a new imperial order. With the collapse of the USSR, the incorporation of Eastern Europe as imperial satellites and the subsequent conversion of radical nationalists (Angola, Mozambique etc.) to kleptocrat free marketers, a powerful thrust was given to White House visions of unlimited dominance, based on projections of uncontested unilateral military power. The spread of free market ideology between 1980 2000, based on the ascendancy of neoliberal rulers throughout Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and a large swathe of Asia opened the door for unprecedented pillage, privatizations (mostly the same thing) and the concentration of wealth. Corresponding to the pillage and the concentration of a unipolar military power, a group of ultra-militarists, so-called neo-conservatives ideologue, deeply imbued with the Israeli colonial mentality entered into the strategic decision-making positions in Washington, with tremendous leverage in European spheres of power especially in England. History went into reverse. The 1990s were inaugurated with colonial style wars, launched against Iraq and Yugoslavia, leading to the break-up of states and the imposition of puppet

regimes in (Northern Iraq) Kurdistan, Kosova, Montenegro and Macedonia (former Yugoslavia). Military success, quick and low cost victories, confirmed and hardened the beliefs of the neo-conservative and neo-liberal ideologues that empire building was the inevitable wave of the future. Only an appropriate political trigger was necessary to mobilize the financial and human resources to pursue the new military driven empire. The events of 9/11/2001 were thoroughly exploited to launch sequential wars of colonial conquest. In the name of a word wide military crusade against terrorism, plans were made, massive funds were allocated and a mass media propaganda blitz was launched, to justify a series of colonial wars. The new imperial order began with the invasion of Afghanistan (2001) and the overthrow of the Taliban Islamic-nationalist regime, (which never had anything to do with 9/11). Afghanistan was occupied by the US NATO mercenary armies but not conquered. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq led to the regroupment of Islamic, nationalist and trade union anti-colonial forces and prolonged armed and civil resistance movements. Because of widespread nationalist and anti-Zionist influence within the existing Iraqi civilian, police and military apparatus, neo-conservative ideologues in Washington opted for the total dismantling of the state. They attempted to refashion a colonial state based on sectarian leaders, local tribal chiefdoms, foreign contractors and the appointment and clearance of reliable exile politician as presidential or prime ministerial national fig leafs for the colonized state. Pakistan was a special case of imperial penetration, military intervention and political manipulation, linking large scale military aid, bribes and corruption to establish a puppet regime. The latter sanctioned sustained violations of sovereignty by US warplanes (drones and piloted), commando operations and the large scale mobilization of the Pakistan military for US counter-insurgency operations displacing millions of Pakistan tribal peoples. The Puppet Regime Imperative Contrary to US and EU propaganda, the invasions and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the military interventions in Pakistan were never popular. They were actively and passively opposed by the vast majority of the population. No sooner were the colonial civil officials imposed by force of arms and efforts began to administer the country then passive popular and sporadic armed resistance emerged. The colonial officials were seen for what they were: an alien, exploitative, presence. Treasuries were looted, the entire economy was paralyzed, elementary services (water, electricity, sewage systems, etc.) did not function, and millions were uprooted. The wars and occupations radically decimated the pre-colonial society and the colonial officials were hard pressed to create a replacement. Billions in military spending failed to create a civil service capable of governance. The colonial rulers had severe problems locating willing collaborators with technical or administrative experience. Those willing to serve lacked even a modicum of popular acceptance.

The colonial conquest and occupation eventually settled on establishing a parallel collaborator regime which would be financed and subordinate to the imperial authorities. Imperial strategists believed they would provide a political faade to legitimate and negotiate with the occupation. The enticement to collaborate was the billions of dollars channeled into the colonized state apparatus (and easily plundered through phony reconstruction projects) to compensate for the risks of political assassination by nationalist resistance fighters. At the pinnacle of the parallel regimes were the puppet rulers, each certified by the CIA for their loyalty, servility and willingness to sustain imperial supremacy over the occupied people. They obeyed Washingtons demands to privatize public enterprises and supported Pentagon recruitment of a mercenary army under colonial command. Hamid Karzai was chosen as the puppet ruler in Afghanistan, based merely on his family ties with drug traffickers and compatibility with warlords and elders on the imperial payroll. His isolation was highlighted by the fact that even the presidential guard was made up of US Marines. In Iraq, US colonial officials in consultation with the White House and the CIA chose Nouri al Maliki as the Prime Minister based on his zealous hands on engagement in torturing resistance fighters suspected of attacking US occupation forces. In Pakistan the US backed a convicted felon on the lam, Asif Ali Zardari as President. He repeatedly demonstrated his accommodating spirit by approving large scale, long term US aerial and ground operations on the Pakistan side of the Afghan border. Zardari emptied the Pakistani treasury and mobilized millions of soldiers to assault and displace frontier population centers sympathetic to the Afghan resistance. Puppets in Action: Between Imperial Subservience and Mass Isolation The three puppet regimes have provided a fig leaf for the imperial savaging of the colonized people of the countries they preside over. Nouri al Maliki has over the past 5 years, not only justified the US occupation but actively promoted the assassination and torture of thousands of anti-colonial activists and resistance fighters. He has sold billion dollar oil and gas concessions to overseas oil companies. He has presided over the theft (disappearance or unaccountable) of billions of dollars in oil revenues and US foreign aid (squeezed from US tax payers). Hamid Karzai, who has rarely ventured out of the presidential compound without his US Marine bodyguards, has been ineffective in gathering even token support except through his extended family. His main prop was narco warlord brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, killed by his CIA certified Chief of Security. Since Karzais domestic support is extremely narrow, his main functions include attending external donors meetings, issuing press statements and rubber stamping each increase (surge) in US troops. The intensified use of Special Forces death squads and drone warplanes, inflicting high civilian casualties, has further enraged Afghans. The entire civilian and military apparatus nominally under Karzai is unquestionably, penetrated by Taliban and other nationalist groups, making him totally dependent on the US troops and warlords and drug traffickers on the CIA payroll. The Pakistani puppet Arif Ali Zardari, despite strong resistance from sectors of the military and intelligence agencies, and despite 85% popular hostility to the US, has plunged the country into a series of sustained large scale military offenses against Islamist communities in the Northeast

territories, displacing over 4 million refugees. Under orders from the White House to escalate the war against Taliban sanctuaries and their Pakistan armed allies, Zardari has lost all credibility as a national politician. He has outraged nationalist loyalties by covertly approving US gross violations of sovereignty by allowing US Special Forces to operate from Pakistan bases in their murderous operations against local Islamic militants. The daily US drone bombing of civilians in villages, on highways and in markets has led to a near universal consensus of his puppet status. While puppet rulers provide a useful faade for external propaganda purposes, their effectiveness diminishes to zero domestically, as their subservience before the imperial slaughter of noncombatants increases. The initial imperial propaganda ploy portraying the puppets as associate or power-sharers loses credibility as it becomes transparent that the puppet rulers are impotent to rectify imperial abuses. This is especially the case with pervasive human rights violations and the destruction of the economy. Foreign aid is widely perceived as nurturing widespread extortion, corruption and incompetent administration of basic services. As the domestic resistance grows and as the imperial countries will to continue a decade long war and occupation wanes, the puppet rulers, feel intense pressure to make, at least, token expressions of independence. The puppets begin to talk back to the puppet-masters, attempting to play to the vast chorus of mass indignation over the most egregious occupation crimes against humanity. The colonial occupation begins to sink, under the weight of billion dollar a week expenditures from depleted treasuries.The token troop withdrawals, signal the growing importance and dependence on a highly suspect native mercenary force, causing the puppets increasingly to fear for loss of office and life. Puppet rulers begin to contemplate that it is time to probe the possibilities of making a deal with the resistance; time to voice popular indignation at civilian killings; time to praise the withdrawal of troops,but nothing consequential. No abandoning the protection of the imperial Praetorian Guard or, god forbid the latest tranche of foreign aid. An opportune time for Ali Zardari to criticize the US military intrusion, killing Bin Laden.Time for Al Maliki to call on the US to honor its troop withdrawal in Iraq.Time for Karzai to welcome the Afghan military takeover of a province of least resistance (Bamiyan). Are the puppets in some sort of revolt against the puppet master? Washington apparently is annoyed: $800 million in aid to Pakistan has been held up pending greater military and intelligence collaboration in scourging the countryside and cities in search of Islamic resistance fighters. The Taliban assassination of Karzais brother and top political adviser Jan Mohamed Khan, important assets in buttering the puppet regime, signals that the puppet rulers occasional critical emotional ejaculations are not resonating with the Taliban shadow government which covers the nation and prepares a new military offensive. The puppet revolts neither influence the colonial master nor attract the anti-colonial masses. They signal the demise of a US attempt at colonial revivalism. It spells the end of the illusion of the neo-conservative and neo-liberal ideologists who ferverently believed that US military power was capably of invading, occupying and ruling the Islamic world via shadow puppets projected over a mass of submissive peoples. The colonial example of Israel, a narrow strip of arid coastline, remains an anomaly in a sea of independent Islamic and secular states. Efforts by its US advocates to reproduce Israels relative consolidation through wars, occupations and puppet regimes has instead led to the bankruptcy of the US and the collapse of the colonial state. Puppets will be in flight; troops are in retreat; flags will be lowered and a period of prolonged

civil war is in the offering. Can a democratic social revolution replace puppets and puppet masters? We in the United States live in a time of profound and deepening crises, in which rightwing extremism has penetrated the highest office and has seized the initiative for now but hopefully not forever. The overseas colonial wars are coming to a close, are domestic wars on the horizon?

Obamas Rollback Strategy: Honduras, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan (and the Boomerang Effect)
James Petras, 09 July 2009

The recent events in Honduras and Iran, which pit democratically elected regimes against pro-US military and civilian actors intent on overthrowing them can best be understood as part of a larger White House strategy designed to rollback the gains achieved by opposition government and movements during the Bush years. In a manner reminiscent of Ronald Reagans New Cold War policies, Obama has vastly increased the military budget, increased the number of combat troops, targeted new regions for military intervention and backed military coups in regions traditionally controlled by the US . However Obamas rollback strategy occurs in a very different international and domestic context. Unlike Reagan, Obama faces a prolonged and profound recession/depression, massive fiscal and trade deficits, a declining role in the world economy and loss of political dominance in Latin America, the Middle East, East Asia and elsewhere. While Reagan faced off against a decaying Soviet Communist regime, Obama confronts surging world-wide opposition from a variety of independent secular, clerical, nationalist, liberal democratic and socialist electoral regimes and social movements anchored in local struggles. Obamas rollback strategy is evident from his very first pronouncements, promising to reassert US dominance (leadership) in the Middle East, his projection of massive military power in Afghanistan and military expansion in Pakistan and the destabilization of regimes through deep intervention by proxies as in Iran and Honduras. Obamas pursuit of the rollback strategy operates a multi-track policy of overt military intervention, covert civil society operations and soft-sell, seemingly benign diplomatic rhetoric, which relies heavily on mass media propaganda. Major ongoing events illustrate the rollback policies in action. In Afghanistan, Obama has more than doubled the US military forces from 32,000 to 68,000. In the first week of July his military commanders launched the biggest single military offensive in decades in the southern Afghan province of Helmand to displace indigenous resistance and governance. In Pakistan, the Obama-Clinton-Holbrooke regime successfully put maximum pressure on their newly installed client Zedari regime to launch a massive military offensive and rollback the long-standing influence of Islamic resistance forces in the Northwest frontier regions, while US drones and Special Forces commandoes routinely bomb and assault villages and local Pashtun leaders suspected of supporting the resistance. In Iraq, the Obama regime engages in a farcical ploy, reconfiguring the urban map of Baghdad to include US military bases and operations and pass off the result as retiring troops to their barracks. Obamas multi-billion-dollar

investment in long-term, large-scale military infrastructure, including bases, airfields and compounds speaks to a permanent imperial presence, not to his campaign promises of a programmed withdrawal. While staging fixed election between US-certified client candidates is the norm in Iraq and Afghanistan where the presence of US troops guarantees a colonial victory, in Iran and Honduras, Washington resorts to covert operations to destabilize or overthrow incumbent Presidents who do not support Obamas rollback policies. The covert and not-so-invisible operation in Iran found expression in a failed electoral challenge followed by mass street demonstrations centered on the claim that the electoral victory of the incumbent anti-imperialist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a result of electoral fraud. Western mass media played a major role during the electoral campaign exclusively providing favorable coverage of the opposition and negative accounts of the incumbent regime. The mass media blanketed the news with pro-demonstrator propaganda, selectively presenting coverage to delegitimize the elections and elected officials, echoing the charges of fraud. The propaganda success of the USorchestrated destabilization campaign even found an echo among broad sections of what passes for the US left who ignored the massive, coordinated US financing of key Iranian groups and politicos engaged in the street protests. Neo-conservative, liberal and itinerant leftist free-lance journalists, like Reese Erlich, defended the destabilization effort from their own particular vantage point as a popular democratic movement against electoral fraud. The right/left cheerleaders of US destabilization projects fail to address several key explanatory factors: 1. None, for example, discuss the fact that several weeks before the election a rigorous survey conducted by two US pollsters revealed an electoral outcome very near to the actual voting result, including in the ethnic provinces where the opposition claimed fraud. 2. None of the critics discussed the $400 million dollars allocated by the Bush Administration to finance regime change, domestic destabilization and cross border terror operations. Many of the students and civil society NGOs in the demonstrations received funding from overseas foundations and NGOs which in turn were funded by the US government. 3. The charge of electoral fraud was cooked up after the results of the vote count were announced. In the entire run-up to the election, especially when the opposition believed they would win the elections neither the student protesters nor the Western mass media nor the freelance journalists claimed impending fraud. During the entire day of voting, with opposition party observers at each polling place, no claims of voter intimidation or fraud were noted by the media, international observers or left backers of the opposition. Opposition party observers were present to monitor the entire vote count and yet, with only rare exception, no claims of vote rigging were made at the time. In fact, with the exception of one dubious claim by free-lance journalist Reese Erlich, none of the worlds media claimed ballot box stuffing. And even Erlichs claims were admittedly based on unsubstantiated anecdotal accounts from anonymous sources among his contacts in the opposition. 4. During the first week of protests in Tehran, the US, EU and Israeli leaders did not question the validity of the election outcome. Instead, they condemned the regimes repression of the protestors. Clearly their well-informed embassies and intelligence operative provided a more accurate and systematic assessment of the Iranian voter preferences than the propaganda spun by the Western mass media and the useful idiots among the Anglo-American left.

The US-backed electoral and street opposition n Iran was designed to push to the limits a destabilization campaign, with the intention of rolling back Iranian influence in the Middle East, undermining Tehrans opposition to US military intervention in the Gulf, its occupation of Iraq and , above all, Irans challenge to Israels projection of military power in the region. Anti-Iran propaganda and policy making has been heavily influenced for years on a daily basis by the entire pro-Israel power configuration in the US. This includes the 51 Presidents of the Major America Jewish Organizations with over a million members and several thousand full-time functionaries, scores of editorial writers and commentators dominating the opinion pages of the influential Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times as well as the yellow tabloid press. Obamas policy of roll back of Iranian influence counted on a two-step process: Supporting a coalition of clerical dissidents, pro-Western liberals, dissident democrats and right-wing surrogates of the US. Once in office, Washington would push the dissident clerics toward alliances with their strategic allies among pro-Western liberals and rightists, who would then shift policy in accordance with US imperial and Israeli colonial interests by cutting off support for Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, Venezuela, the Iraqi resistance and embrace the pro-US Saudi-Iraqi--Jordan-Egypt clients. In other words, Obamas roll back policy is designed to relocate Iran to the pre-1979 political alignment. Obamas roll back of critical elected regimes to impose pliant clients found further expression in the recent military coup in Honduras. The use of the high command in the Honduras military and Washingtons long-standing ties with the local oligarchy, who control the Congress and Supreme Court, facilitated the process and obviated the need for direct US interventionas was the case in other recent coup efforts. Unlike Haiti where the US marines intervened to oust democratically elected Bertrand Aristide, only a decade ago,and openly backed the failed coup against President Chavez in 2002, and more recently, funded the botched coup against the President-elect Evo Morales in September 2008, the circumstances of US involvement in Honduras were more discrete in order to allow for credible denial. The structural presence and motives of the US with regard to ousted President Zelaya are readily identifiable. Historically the US has trained and socialized almost the entire Honduran officer corps and maintained deep penetration at all senior levels through daily consultation and common strategic planning. Through its military base in Honduras, the Pentagons military intelligence operatives have intimate contacts to pursue policies as well as to keep track of all polical moves by all political actors. Because Honduras is so heavily colonized, it has served as an important base for US military intervention in the region: In 1954 the successful US-backed coup against the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz was launched from Honduras. In 1961 the USorchestrated Cuban exile invasion of Cuba was launched from Honduras. From 1981-1989, the US financed and trained over 20,000 Contra mercenaries in Honduras which comprised the army of death squads to attack the democratically elected Nicaraguan Sandinista government. During the first seven years of the Chavez government, Honduran regimes were staunchly allied with Washington against the populist Caracas regime. Obviously no military coups ever occurred or could occur against any US puppet regime in Honduras. The key to the shift in US policy toward Honduras occurred in 2007-2008 when the Liberal President Zelaya decided to improved relations with Venezuela in order to secure generous petro-subsidies and foreign aid from Caracas. Subsequently Zelaya joined Petro-Caribe, a Venezuelan-organized Caribbean and Central American association to provide longterm, low-cost oil and gas to meet the energy needs of member countries. In more recent days, Zelaya joined ALBA, a regional integration organization sponsored by President Chavez to promote greater trade and investment among its member countries in opposition to the US-promoted regional free trade pact, known as ALCA.

Since Washington defined Venezuela as a threat and alternative to its hegemony in Latin America, Zelayas alignment with Chavez on economic issues and his criticism of US intervention turned him into a likely target for US coup planners eager to make Zelaya an example and concerned about their access to Honduran military bases as their traditional launching point for intervention in the region. Washington wrongly assumed that a coup in a small Central American banana republic (indeed the original banana republic) would not provoke any major outcry. They believed that Central American roll-back would serve as a warning to other independent-minded regimes in the Caribbean and Central American region of what awaits them if they align with Venezuela. The mechanics of the coup are well-known and public: The Honduran military seized President Zelaya and exiled him to Costa Rica; the oligarchs appointed one of their own in Congress as the interim President while their colleagues in the Supreme Court provided bogus legality. Latin American governments from the left to the right condemned the coup and called for the re-instatement of the legally-elected President. President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, not willing to disown their clients, condemned unspecified violence and called for negotiations between the powerful usurpers and the weakened exile President a clear recognition of the legitimate role of the Honduran generals as interlocutors. After the United Nations General Assembly condemned the coup and, along with the Organization of American States, demanded Zelays re-instatement, Obama and Secretary Clinton finally condemned the ousting of Zelaya but they refused to call it a coup, which according to US legislation would have automatically led to a complete suspension of their annual ($80 million) military and economic aid package to Honduras. While Zelaya met with all the Latin American heads of state, President Obama and Secretary Clinton turned him over to a lesser functionary in order not to weaken their allies in Honduran Junta. All the countries in the OAS withdrew their Ambassadorsexcept the US, whose embassy began to negotiate with the Junta to see how they might salvage the situation in which both were increasingly isolated especially in the face of Honduras expulsion from the OAS. Whether Zelaya eventually returns to office or whether the US-backed junta continues in office for an extended period of time, while Obama and Clinton sabotage his immediate return through prolonged negotiations, the key issue of the US-promoted roll-back has been extremely costly diplomatically as well as politically. The US backed coup in Honduras demonstrates that unlike the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada and President George Bush (Papa) invaded Panama, the situation and political profile of Latin America (and the rest of the world) has changed drastically. Back then the military and pro-US regimes in the region generally approved of US interventions and collaborated; a few protested mildly. Today the center-left and even rightist electoral regimes oppose military coups anywhere as a potential threat to their own futures. Equally important, given the grave economic crisis and increasing social polarization, the last thing the incumbent regimes want is bloody domestic unrest, stimulated by crude US imperial interventions. Finally, the capitalist classes in Latin Americas center-left countries want stability because they can shift the balance of power via elections (as in the recent cases in Panama, Argentina) and pro-US military regimes can upset their growing trade ties with China, the Middle East and Venezuela/Bolivia.

Obamas global roll-back strategy includes building offensive missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, not far from the Russian border. Concomitantly Obama is pushing hard to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, which will increase US military pressure on Russias southern flank. Taking advantage of Russian President Dimitry Medvedevs malleability (in the footsteps of Mikail Gorbechev) Washington has secured free passage of US troops and arms through Russia to the Afghan front, Moscows approval for new sanction against Iran, and recognition and support for the US puppet regime in Baghdad. Russian defense officials will likely question Medvedevs obsequious behavior as Obama moves ahead with his plans to station nuclear missiles 5 minutes from Moscow. Roll-Back: Predictable Failures and the Boomerang Effect Obamas roll-back strategy is counting on a revival of right-wing mass politics to legitimize the re-assertion of US dominance. In Argentina throughout 2008, hundreds of thousands of lower and upper-middle class demonstrators took to the streets in the interior of the country under the leadership of pro-US big landowners associations to destabilize the center-left Fernandez regime. In Bolivia, hundreds of thousands of middle class students, businesspeople, landowners and NGO affiliates, centered in Santa Cruz and four other wealthy provinces and heavily funded by US Ambassador Goldberg, Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy took to the streets, wrecking havoc and murdering over 30 indigenous supporters of President Morales in an effort to oust him from power. Similar rightist mass demonstrations have taken place in Venezuela in the past and more recently in Honduras and Iran. The notion that mass demonstrations of the well-to-do screaming democracy gives legitimacy to US-backed destabilization efforts against its democratically-elected adversaries is an idea promulgated by cynical propagandists in the mass media and parroted by gullible progressive free-lance journalists who have never understood the class basis of mass politics. Obamas Honduran coup and the US-funded destabilization effort in Iran have much in common. Both take place against electoral processes in which critics of US policies defeated pro-Washington social forces. Having lost the electoral option Obamas roll-back looks to extra-parliamentary mass politics to legitimize elite effort to seize power: In Iran by dissident clerics and in Honduras by the generals and oligarchs. In both Honduras and Iran, Washingtons foreign policy goals were the same: To roll-back regimes whose leaders rejected US tutelage. In Honduras, the coup serves as a lesson to intimidate other Central American and Caribbean countries who exit from the US camp and join Venezuelan-led economic integration programs.Obamas message is clear: such moves will result in US orchestrated sabotage and retaliation. Through its backing of the military coup, Washington reminds all the countries of Latin America that the US still has the capability to implement its policies through the Latin American military elites, even as its own armed forces are tied down in wars and occupations in Asia and the Middle East and its economic presence is declining. Likewise in the Middle East, Obamas destabilization of the Iranian regime is meant to intimidate Syria and other critics of US imperial policy and reassure Israel(and the Zionist power configuration in the US ) that Iran remains high on the US roll-back agenda.

Obamas roll-back policies in many crucial ways follow in the steps of President Ronald Reagan (1981-89). Like Reagan, Obamas presidency takes place in a time of US retreat, declining power and the advance of anti-imperialist politics. Reagan faced the aftermath of the US defeat in Indo-China, the successful spread of anti-colonial revolutions in Southern Africa (especially Angola and Mozambique), a successful democratic revolt in Afghanistan and a victorious social revolution in Nicaragua and major revolutionary movements in El Salvador and Guatemala. Like Obama today, Reagan set in motion a murderous military strategy of rolling-back these changes in order to undermine, destabilize and destroy the adversaries to US empire. Obama faces a similar set of adversarial conditions in the current post-Bush period: - Democratic advances throughout Latin America with new regional integration projects excluding the US; defeats and stalemates in the Middle East and South Asia; a revived and strengthened Russia projecting power in the former Soviet republics; declining US influence over NATO military commitments , a loss of political, economic, military and diplomatic credibility as a result of the Wall Street-induced global economic depression and prolonged un-successful regional wars. Contrary to Obama, Ronald Reagans roll-back took place under favorable circumstances. In Afghanistan Reagan secured the support of the entire conservative Muslim world and operated through the key Afghan feudal-tribal leaders against a Soviet-backed, urban-based reformist regime in Kabul. Obama is in the reverse position in Afghanistan. His military occupation is opposed by the vast majority of Afghans and most of the Muslim population in Asia. Reagans roll-back in Central America, especially his Contra-mercenary invasion of Nicaragua, had the backing of Honduras and all the pro-US military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Brazil, as well as rightwing civilian government in the region. In contrast, Obamas roll-back coup in Honduras and beyond face democratic electoral regimes throughout the region, an alliance of left nationalist regimes led by Venezuela and regional economic and diplomatic organizations staunchly opposed to any return to US domination and intervention. Obamas roll-back strategy finds itself in total political isolation in the entire region. Obamas roll-back policies cannot wield the economic Big Stick to force regimes in the Middle East and Asia to support his policies. Now there are alternative Asian markets, Chinese foreign investments, the deepening US depression and the disinvestment of overseas US banks and multi-nationals. Unlike Reagan, Obama cannot combine economic carrots with the military stick. Obama has to rely on the less effective and costly military option at a time when the rest of the world has no interest or will in projecting military power in regions of little economic significance or where they can attain market access via economic agreements. Obamas launch of the global roll-back strategy has boomeranged, even in its initial stage. In Afghanistan, the big troop build-up and the massive offensive into Taliban strongholds has not led to any major military victories or even confrontations. The resistance has retired, blended in with the local population and will likely resort to prolonged decentralized, small-scale war of attrition designed to tie down several thousand troops in a sea of hostile Afghans, bleeding the US economy, increasing casualties, resolving nothing and eventually trying the patience of the US public now deeply immersed in job losses and rapidly declining living standards.

The coup, carried out by the US-backed Honduran military, has already re-affirmed US political and diplomatic isolation in the Hemisphere. The Obama regime is the only major country to retain an Ambassador in Honduras, the only country which refuses to regard the military take-over as a coup, and the only country to continue economic and military aid. Rather than establish an example of the US power to intimidate neighboring countries, the coup has strengthened the belief among all South and Central American countries that Washington is attempting to return to the bad old days of pro-US military regimes, economic pillage and monopolized markets. What Obamas foreign policy advisers have failed to understand is that they cant put their Humpty Dumpty together again; they cannot return to the days of Reagans roll-back, Clintons unilateral bombing of Iraq,Yugoslavia ana Somalia and his pillage of Latin America. No major region, alliance or country will follow the US in its armed colonial occupation in peripheral (Afghanistan/Pakistan) or even central (Iran) countries, even as they join the US in economic sanctions, propaganda wars and electoral destabilization efforts against Iran. No Latin American country will tolerate another US military putsch against a democratically elected president, even national populist regimes which diverge from US economic and diplomatic policies. The great fear and loathing of the US-backed coup stems from the entire Latin American political class memory of the nightmare years of US backed military dictatorships. Obamas military offensive, his roll-back strategy to recover imperial power is accelerating the decline of the American Republic. His administrations isolation is increasingly evidenced by his dependence on Israel-Firsters who occupy his Administration and the Congress as well as influential pro-Israel pundits in the mass media who identify roll-back with Israels own seizure of Palestinian land and military threats to Iran. Roll-back has boomeranged: Instead of regaining the imperial presence, Obama has submerged the republic and, with it, the American people into greater misery and instability.

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