Update Nigeria: Kidnapping or Economic War?

“There is another war going on in Africa: economic war. A continent so rich in natural resources sees many of its citizens live in terrible conditions. In President Jonathan’s Nigeria, economic growth has not trickled down to the poor. Healthcare and education are beyond the reach of many.

There is widespread corruption, yet weapons and armies are paid to protect the wealthy and the foreign companies, such as Shell, that want to access the country’s resources, especially oil. This corruption and inequality is not separate from the role of the west, but an integral part of a system that is prepared to go to war over resources such as oil and gas, but will not go to war on poverty or to provide education for all.

It is this background that
informs the terrible plight
of the kidnapped girls in
Nigeria.

It will not be improved
by more Western weapons
and armies on the ground
or in the air.”
http://www.theguardian.com/…/western-intervention…
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I am outraged knowing that U.S. policy-makers don’t give a damn about the school girls in Nigeria because their real objective is to use the threat of Boko Haram in the Northern part of the country to justify the actual goal of occupying oil fields in the South and blocking the Chinese in Nigeria.

Exposing the whole sordid story of the destruction of Libya and the role of
Al-Qaeda as the “boots on the ground”
for U.S. geo-strategic objectives in North Africa and the Middle East represents the only strategy that an independent and principled left could pursue in wake of the fact that the hearings are going to occur. Anything other than that is capitulation, something that the left has routinely done over the last six years, and some of us still struggle against in the hope that one day the “responsible” left will eschew the privileges that stem from its objective collaboration with the interests and world-view of neo-liberal white power and re-ground itself in authentic radical principles and the world-wide struggle against Western domination.

Ajamu Baraka is a long-time human rights activist, writer and veteran of the Black Liberation, anti-war, anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity Movements in the United States. He is currently an Associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. He can be reached through his website.

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~We already have more than 100 troops on the ground in Nigeria…
that they have told us about.
~tmf

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Is Boko Haram a CIA asset?

In 2012, The Nigerian Tribune reported Boko Harm’s funding was traced to the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia, specifically from the Al-Muntada Trust Fund. In 2005, The Center for Security Policy stated “Al-Muntada has, incidentally, been particularly active in promoting Wahhabi-style Islamism in Nigeria…

Al-Muntada… pays for Nigerian clerics to be ‘brainwashed’ in Saudi universities and imposed on Nigerian Muslims through its well-funded network of mosques and schools.”

Similar schools, known as madrassas, were established in Pakistan during the CIA’s covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. They were financed by Saudi Arabia and its network of charities. “Between 1982 and 1992, some 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Central Asia and the Far East would pass their baptism under fire with the Afghan mujahideen,” writes P hil Gasper. The Afghan mujahideen
would ultimately produce al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

www.infowars.com/boko-haram-terror-attack-in-nigeria-opens-door-to-africom/
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Big oil and kidnapping girls
Some people are asking the US White House to intervene in Nigeria to rescue 230 girls kidnapped by the ‘terrorist’ Boko Haram (aka Western Education is a Sin)? But didn’t the White House and their oil barons set up Boko Haram to be begin with, while sla nigeria10 ughtering more rational paths to liberation? Meanwhile, over 1,000 indigenous women have gone missing in Canada in the recent past. And a great percentage of crimes in the US involve attacks on young girls. Yet only this heinous kidnapping of 230 girls in Nigeria sees headline coverage in the corporate mass media. Not mentioning of course, exploitation by major ‘terrorist’ oil corporations such as Exxon and Shell in Nigeria. Nigeria is also where Unilever began – a ‘fair-and-lovely’ multinational who slathers on the toxic margarine on our children. –
See more at:

www.nation.lk/edition/lens/item/28989-yakonet-xvi.html#sthash.SYrDTO9S.dpuf
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“Kirby confirmed that six troops from U.S. Africa Command had arrived in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, on Friday. Two more Africom troops were expected to arrive over the weekend, Kirby said, and they will work with 11 troops assigne

d to the U.S. Embassy on the rescue effort. The U.S. troops will be part of a “coordination cell” working out of the U.S. Embassy with FBI and CIA agents to assist the Nigerian security services with intelligence, communications and logistics, Kirby said.”

http://www.military.com/…/six-us-troops-arrive-in…

“U.S. troops are on the ground in Nigeria… The 16 military personnel from AFRICOM augment an existing U.S. military presence at U.S. Embassy Abuja and U.S. Consulate Lagos. “We have a total of 50 or 60 military personnel assigned to the embassy there as part of the country team,” Warren added. The 16 additional military personnel have been attached to an “interdisciplinary” search team.”

http://www.upi.com/…/US-troops-join…/4351399985257/…

“Since 9/11, the U.S. military has been ramping up missions on the African continent, funneling money into projects to woo allies, supporting and training proxy forces, conducting humanitarian outreach, carrying out air strikes and commando raids, creating a sophisticated logistics network throughout the region, and building a string of camps, “cooperative security locations,” and bases-by-other-names.

All the while, AFRICOM downplayed the expansion and much of the media, with a few notable exceptions, played along. With the end of the Iraq War and the drawdown of combat forces in Afghanistan, Washington has, however, visibly “pivoted” to Africa and, in recent weeks, many news organizations, especially those devoted to the military, have begun waking up to the new normal there.

While daily U.S. troop strength continent-wide hovers in the relatively modest range of 5,000 to 8,000 personnel, an under-the-radar expansion has been constant, with the U.S. military now conducting operations alongside almost every African military in almost every African country and averaging more than a mission a day.Since 9/11, the U.S. military has been ramping up missions on the African continent, funneling money into projects to woo allies, supporting and training proxy forces, conducting humanitarian outreach, carrying out air strikes and commando raids, creating a sophisticated logistics network throughout the region, and building a string of camps, “cooperative security locations,” and bases-by-other-names.
…
Quickly politicized by Congressional Republicans and conservative news outlets, “Benghazi” has become a shorthand for many things, including Obama administration cover-ups and misconduct, as well as White House lies and malfeasance. Missing, however, has been thoughtful analysis of the implications of American power-projection in Africa or the possibility that blowback might result from it. ”

http://truth-out.org/…/23724-the-us-militarys-new…