Africa - Where the Next US Oil Wars Will Be

[razors edge]

http://www.rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blackagendareport.com%2Findex.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D114%26Itemid%3D37

"It's about the oil. And the diamonds. And the coltan. But mostly about the oil."

The Pentagon does not admit that a ring of permanent US military bases is operating or under construction throughout Africa. But nobody doubts the American military buildup on the African continent is well underway. From oil rich northern Angola up to Nigeria, from the Gulf of Guinea to Morocco and Algeria, from the Horn of Africa down to Kenya and Uganda, and over the pipeline routes from Chad to Cameroon in the west, and from Sudan to the Red Sea in the east, US admirals and generals have been landing and taking off, meeting with local officials. They've conducted feasibility studies, concluded secret agreements, and spent billions from their secret budgets.

Their new bases are not bases at all, according to US military officials. They are instead "forward staging depots", and "seaborne truck stops" for the equipment which American land forces need to operate on the African continent. They are "protected anchorages" and offshore "lily pads" from which they intend to fight the next round of oil and resource wars, and lock down Africa's oil and mineral wealth for decades to come.

BAR caught up with Chicago's Prexy Nesbitt, one of the architects of the US anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s and ‘80s. We asked Dr. Nesbitt about the importance to Africans and African Americans of George Bush's Feb. 7 announcement of AFRICOM, the new Pentagon command for the African continent.

"It means a tremendous amount to Africans, because African people, from working people to university elites all follow very closely everything that the US government does wherever it does it in the world. ...More and more African Americans in the US are following carefully what's the US is doing in Africa, but not enough... What we're seeing (is) ...a US military penetration of the African continent and that this penetration is...motivated by the US quest...for new sources of oil and other minerals."

[rwenos]

1. Nigeria. (nt)

[sweetheart]

2. uuhh, the irony the wars started decades if not centuries ago nt

[razors edge]

3. Yep, so its really

just a question of how/if they will end.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

4. Supposedly, China is becoming very influential in Africa

Will the U.S. and China confront each other over Africa's rich natural resources one day?

[razors edge]

5. We are now the two biggest

kids on the block, and one is acting like a bully.

Kinda reminds me of a knife fight I saw in the movie Long Riders, David Caradine and an Indian (forgot the name) keep a scarf in their teeth as they fight.

The scarf is like the US dollar, neither can drop it but it keeps them a little too close for comfort.

[IDemo]

6. Please read this article from the February National Geographic

for a look at the wonderful effect Nigeria's oil wealth has had on its people and environment:

Curse of the Black Gold -- Hope and Betrayal in the Niger Delta

[razors edge]

7. Vanity Fair did a great piece on it too

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/02/junger200702


Blood Oil
Could a bunch of Nigerian militants in speedboats bring about a U.S. recession? Blowing up facilities and taking hostages, they are wreaking havoc on the oil production of America's fifth-largest supplier. Deep in the Niger-delta swamps, the author meets the nightmarish result of four decades of corruption.
by Sebastian Junger February 2007

Also on VF.com: A web-only slide show of Michael Kamber photographs from Nigeria.

On June 23, 2005, a group of high-ranking government officials were convened in a ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C., to respond to a simulated crisis in the global oil supply. The event was called "Oil ShockWave," and it was organized by public-interest groups concerned with energy policy and national security. Among those seated beneath a wall-size map of the world were two former heads of the C.I.A., the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The scenario they were handed was this: