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The US is at it again. Having been labelled by its soothsayers as the "world�s policeman" the US has carried out terrorist operations in literally every part of the world. The Americans have bombed over 18 countries since the end of the Second World War, and if one were to include the military invasions, the number would rise incredibly. Given this, one cannot help but be surprised at their painstaking efforts to maintain dominance in the world over. Theirs is to export terror to people�s backyards simply to keep radical or popular movements in check, lest this dominance is threatened. It doesn�t matter what financial or human costs. They then impose smart sanctions, which operate much in the same way as smart bombs. Smart bombs are supposed to pinpoint a target but have instead destroyed hospitals, and schools. In the same way, smart sanctions are really economic sanctions meant to cripple the country and inspire political uprising. As much as there cannot be smart bombs, there cannot be smart sanctions, hence the term collateral damage. They ask us to believe that what is right for them is right for the world, and want us to believe that they are protecting world peace when they invade other countries. Rather than advance their electorate�s interests they have taken to representing corporate interests. Now we wait with baited breath as these corporate interests take centre stage once again in the Middle East. The threats against Iraq continue and as has been the case, the ten-year sanctions that have cost the lives of 1 million children, or a daily casualty of 500 children, seem of little consequence to the engineers of war. A few years ago when a student asked Madeline Albright, former Secretary of State, why she sanctioned the killing of innocent children in Iraq, she replied: "We think they are worth the price." Marred with controversy and even more contradictions, Bush and Blair seem relentless in their endeavour to once against terrorise the people of Iraq. Only yesterday the US armed Saddam, notwithstanding his past, with the most sophisticated weaponry during the 1980-1988 Iran/Iraq war. Three years after Iraq had considerably weakened Iran with US artillery and intelligence, Saddam was declared a threat to world peace. But they needed an excuse to invade Iraq. As we know Noriega was the excuse for the US invasion of Panama, not the reason. In the same way, the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq was simply an excuse not the reason for the bombing of Iraq. Similarly, the accusation that Saddam is keeping weapons of mass destruction is also an excuse to bomb Iraq and is certainly not the reason. Is it not great hypocrisy that the US, the world�s most militarised country, can even raise the question of weapons of mass destruction in another country? The US foreign policy in the Middle East has little to do with world peace and is really about securing the flow of oil. They are afraid that a hostile regime could eliminate the privileged position of Western oil companies. They would like to continue control of the oil reserves by maintaining dictatorship and by crushing any resemblance of defiance or democracy. The Gulf States possess over 60 percent of the world�s oil reserves, and if the US controls these oil reserves, then they are able to exert significant influence on those countries that are heavily dependent on the Gulf oil. We should not, therefore, be surprised that the US and its allies have refused to enter into any meaningful negotiation with Iraq that could bring about, at the very least, a diplomatic solution. Bush is reluctant to let the UN do its job and the UN, weakened by its reliance on US dollars, is unable to exert itself. Therefore, it does seem that the bombs will rain on the Iraqi peoples until Bush and Blair feel that they are safely in control of the Gulf oil. The perpetration of chaos in the Middle East is definitely not about democracy or "rule of law" as we are led to believe. The world�s most dangerous terrorists, who are really the threat to world peace, author these terrors in order to secure material wealth. They have changed little over the years and the same principles that led them to enslave and colonise people are the same principles that guide their foreign policy. The only difference is that over the years, the plunder and exploitation of wealth has taken on a more vicious path. In a conference this March, Cuban President Fidel Castro stated that, "the existing world economic order constitutes of a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history". These missions of plunder are rampant especially in Africa and other parts of the developing world. In a most bizarre cycle of pillage, the West invests capital in developing nations where raw materials and cheap labour are readily available. The profits and dividends are then transferred back to the imperial West. In Latin America for instance, for every blood-filled dollar that America invests, it makes six in return. The local governments who emerge penniless from these investments then seek loans from these Western governments. However, the loans come with exorbitant interest rates leaving the countries heavily in debt. In an attempt to offset these debts they are often forced to transfer most of the remaining production generated by the masses to the West, and this has even more adverse effects on the population. In most cases the economies are restructured as the IMF and World Bank provide programmes that enhance productivity geared to generate income for Western nations. Any measure to overturn this flight of capital from home countries is met with grave hostility. Like in the Middle East, any semblance to re-position these privileges invites terror. Cuba right under the imperialist nose managed to pull itself out of the quagmire of imperial plunder, but they have paid heavy prices for that. Zimbabwe is now on the hot plate for its agrarian reform so the terror and the plunder go on, and the US continues to enjoy 80 percent of the world�s resources. The US corporate profit rates in Africa and Latin America continue to be 50 percent greater than in developed countries. In other words, our labour continues to be serviced for the Western world. Against all these odds, however, there has been a growing awareness all over the world that is challenging this West-driven market. The "Anti-globalisation Movement", for example, flawed as it is, shows this growing consciousness. The "50 Years is Enough Campaign," a network for global economic justice is gaining ground and has been organising awareness campaigns and demonstrations in many parts of the world. In Zimbabwe, the land redistribution exercise has continued and has now reached its final stage. In the US, contradictions are going to sharpen as the government in its continued endeavour to maintain control of the world economy heightens its military expenditure by reducing its social welfare and increasing taxes. As the monopoly corporate companies buy out small profit companies, the US government will have to contend with repercussions of the growing gap between the rich and the poor. At one point or another they will have to account to the American people why they merely act as a proxy for corporate interests. As these movements opposed to capitalist globalisation and neo-liberalism broaden and increase in Africa, Europe and South America, the Western governments will find it harder to keep manufacturing wars as the masses locate themselves in a continuum of peoples all over the world engaged in a similar struggle. Closer to home, the visiting contingents of African Americans � who are marginalised in the US and who are joined to Africa by ancestry, slavery and oppression � speaks of this growing solidarity. We, in turn, have to build on this solidarity and continue to solidify our home-grown solutions so we can overturn situations. Situations whereby our people are forced to work for meagre wages when in a more organised economic growth policy, where people own both land and factories, they could be self-sufficient and not reduced to mere fodder for other nation states. In the meantime, the "empires" will continue with their insatiable needs guided by their belief in their own righteousness and their need to always over-extend themselves and resort to violence even when peaceful means are on the horizon. However, the one thing that history has taught us is that empires fall and that is one lesson no emperor learns. The Mulindwas
communication group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" |
