Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About

[loyola llothta]

 

[loyola llothta]

 

[Red Shield]

Just slowly watchin SA circle the drain...
gotta wonder when it's gonna finally go

 

[Secure Da Bag]

The ANC needs to get out of power. They've been there too long. They are too corrupt.

Isn't this the 2nd President to get caught up in some major financial fraud?

 

[loyola llothta]

 

[loyola llothta]

Only 4 of 55 African Leaders Attend Zelensky Call, Showing Neutrality on Ukraine and Russia

France and Germany pressured African Union leaders for months to join a brief Zoom call with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. 51 of 55 African heads of state (93%) boycotted the meeting, showing clear neutrality over the Western proxy war with Russia.

This article was originally published in Multipolarista .

Western governments have tried to rally the nations of Africa to join their war on Russia. But the vast majority of the continent has ignored their pressure campaign.

For months, Ukraine attempted to organize a video conference between the African Union and Western-backed leader Volodymyr Zelensky.

France and Germany put heavy pressure on African governments to attend the Zoom call, which was held on June 20.

The conference ended up being a total failure, however. The heads of state of just four of the 55 members of the African Union joined the meeting.

In other words, 93% of the leaders of the African continent did not attend the video conference with Zelensky.

This was a clear sign of Africa’s overwhelming neutrality in the proxy war between the West and Russia .

France’s major newspaper Le Monde described Zelensky’s video call as “an address that the African Union (AU) has delayed for as long as possible and has been keen to keep discreet, almost secret.”

Ukraine had tried to organize the conference since April, but the AU had repeatedly pushed it back.

Le Monde noted that “the organization of the simple video message illustrates the tense relationships between Mr. Zelensky and the leaders of the continent,” who are “sticking to a neutral position.”

Citing an internal source, The Africa Report identified the very few African heads of state who attended the call as Senegal’s President Macky Sall, Côte d’Ivoire’s President Alassane Ouattara, and the Republic of the Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso.

Also at the video conference was Mohamed al-Menfi, the leader of the Libyan Presidential Council, which is recognized by some countries as a legitimate government, although this is disputed by many nations, and Libya has remained territorially divided since a 2011 NATO war destroyed the central state.

At the meeting with Zelensky, these three or four heads of state were joined by Moussa Faki, a politician from Chad who serves as chair of the African Union, and some lower level diplomats of other countries.

The African Union apparently tried to keep the conference as quiet as possible. It did not post anything about the call on its official website . It did not tweet about the meeting either.

The only official recognition of the call came from Faki, in a lone tweet, in which he cautiously “reiterated the AU position of the urgent need for dialogue to end the conflict to allow peace to return to the Region and to restore global stability.”

The United States and European Union frequently claim that they are acting on behalf of the “international community ,” but events like this demonstrate that when Washington and Brussels say international community, they actually just mean the roughly 15% of the global population in the West and their loyal allies in Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan.

Multipolarista detailed in a report in March how the vast majority of the world’s population , which resides in the Global South, has remained neutral over the Western proxy war in Ukraine.

Countries with some of the largest populations on Earth, such as China, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Mexico, and Vietnam, have remained neutral.

Many more nations in the Global South, such as South Africa, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, and Eritrea, have openly blamed NATO and the United States for causing the war in Ukraine.

Establishment British newspaper The Guardian, which is closely linked to UK intelligence agencies , published an article in March reluctantly acknowledging that many African countries “remember Moscow’s support for liberation from colonial rule, and a strong anti-imperialist feeling remains.”

The report noted that a significant number of African leaders are “calling for peace but blaming Nato’s eastward expansion for the war, complaining of western ‘double standards’ and resisting all calls to criticise Russia.”

It conceded that nations like South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, and Mozambique, “are still ruled by parties that were supported by Moscow during their struggles for liberation from colonial or white supremacist rule.”

Russia today also has important trade relations with Africa. As one of the world’s top producers of wheat, Russia is a significant source of food for the continent.

While food insecurity is an endemic problem in formerly colonized nations in Africa that were ravaged by centuries of Western imperialism, the United States has threatened to make this crisis even worse.

The New York Times reported that the US government is pressuring food-insecure countries in Africa not to buy Russian wheat .

 

[loyola llothta]

 

[loyola llothta]

Egypt And Its TPLF Proxies Are Plotting To Divide And Rule Ethiopia And Sudan​

Egypt And Its TPLF Proxies Are Plotting To Divide And Rule Ethiopia And Sudan

By Andrew Korybko

What Cairo is cleverly doing is setting Sudan up to fail in an attempt to divide and rule both it and Ethiopia in order to create the conditions for exerting Egyptian hegemony over the wider region at both of their expense. Patriotic Sudanese probably already suspected that something foul was afoot but might not yet have realized that Egypt is literally plotting to stab them in the back.​

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The Economist’s weaponization of fake news in late May was meant to provoke war between Ethiopia and Sudan, but sceptics scoffed that this interpretation of that outlet’s biased editorial line towards their border conflict was just a so-called “conspiracy theory”. As it turned out, this information warfare provocation actually preceded Sudan’s recent armed provocations against Ethiopia, which vindicated the prior analysis. Sudanese soldiers advanced from occupied Alfashaga deeper into Ethiopia late last month where they ultimately met their end, the details of which are disputed by both sides. This was followed by Sudan ordering strikes against Ethiopian forces, thus bringing them to the brink of war.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed released a statement in Arabic on Twitter directed towards the Sudanese people, which he reaffirmed are fraternal with his own and warned against letting third parties divide and rule them. He also expressed optimism that they can peacefully work out their differences in order to mutually develop one another’s countries for the betterment of their citizens. This aligns with his worldview as articulated by his Prosperity Party, which places people-driven development front and centre on its political platform. It remains to be seen whether Prime Minister Abiy’s advice will be heeded but his diplomatic intervention should nonetheless be commended.

What’s really happening is that Egypt and its terrorist-designated TPLF proxies, the latter of which have been secretly being resupplied under the cover of UN humanitarian aid shipments, are plotting to divide and rule Ethiopia and Sudan in order to advance their shared aims of destabilizing the Horn of Africa giant through Hybrid War. This is being done to hamstring its rise as one of the continent’s multipolar leaders as well as to punish it at the behest of their shared US-led Western patrons for its principled neutrality in the New Cold War. Ethiopia, unlike Egypt, isn’t beholden to any foreign organizations like the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) but proudly maintains its strategic autonomy.
It’s also the historical cradle of anti-imperialism and Pan-Africanism whereas Egypt has long ago surrendered its role as the leader of Pan-Arabism, hence why Cairo remains geostrategically jealous of Addis to this day.

Ethiopia, not Egypt, is therefore destined to become one of Africa’s multipolar leaders throughout the course of the global systemic transition to multipolarity. That, however, is precisely why Egypt began to sabotage Ethiopia years ago by politicizing its sovereign right to build the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) for ensuring its own people’s electricity needs and enabling itself to export excess electricity throughout the rest of this still largely impoverished region.

GERD doesn’t truly pose a threat to downstream countries like Sudan and Egypt but the last-mentioned saw a “publicly plausible” pretext for politicizing the same green energy project that’ll improve the living standards of tens of millions of people in this part of Africa. That in turn became the cover through which Cairo began clandestinely destabilizing Ethiopia in order to advance its self-interests geostrategic aim of hamstringing its rise as a multipolar leader through Hybrid Warfare, which has nowadays manifested itself in two ways. The first is through the TPLF-driven Hybrid War of Terror on Ethiopia that began in November 2020 and the second is by unofficially seizing control of Sudan as its proxy state.

The TPLF and de facto Egyptian-controlled Sudan are two sides of the same Hybrid War coin, both of which are supported to different extents by the US-led West that’s delegated primary operational control of these interconnected proxy wars to their regional Egyptian partner. The timing of Sudan’s latest provocations coincides with the third filling of GERD, which is the informal “publicly plausible” pretext for what just happened though it also deserves mentioning that this dangerous warmongering is taking place at the most sensitive moment in nearly a century following the unprecedented acceleration of the global systemic transition to multipolarity caused by the Ukrainian Conflict.

The grand strategic goal is to sabotage GERD in parallel with “Balkanizing” Ethiopia along the Bosnian model of de facto partitioning it through the weaponization of federalization for indefinitely institutionalizing this outcome. Sudan and the TPLF are being employed as the tip of this Egyptian Hybrid War spear, which is once again being thrust into Ethiopia but this time against the backdrop of the newfound global systemic context that’s intended to put maximum pressure upon the authorities to unilaterally concede on their objective national interests. In pursuit of this, a two-front war is being plotted between Ethiopia on one hand and Egyptian-backed Sudan and the TPLF on the other.

That said, this ominous prediction isn’t inevitable and can still be averted. The Sudanese people know that Ethiopia and its people aren’t their enemy but that third parties are salivating at the thought of provoking a war between their states in order to simultaneously destroy both of them. The US-led West is the mastermind of this plot but their Egyptian partner is most directly leading operations through their shared TPLF proxies and the Cairo-controlled Sudanese leadership. Self-interest is supposed to influence policy among rational actors, so if the Sudanese military leadership has any sense left, then it should realize how counterproductive it is to its interests to go along with this proxy war plot.

It was always a bad idea for them to patronize the TPLF, and it’s an even worse one to continue doing so after that terrorist group was pushed back into its eponymous region. They’ll never succeed in overthrowing the Ethiopian state and “Balkanizing” it like their overlords want, but their cause is so symbolically important for Egyptian prestige as its leadership considers it to be that Cairo just can’t bring itself to finally cut them off. For that reason, it’s still pulling their strings and those of the Sudanese leadership that it unofficially controls in order to make a last-ditch desperate attempt at destabilizing Ethiopia.
Alfashaga and GERD are the informal “publicly plausible” pretexts behind this latest interconnected Hybrid War aggression that’s actually timed to coincide with the most chaotic phase yet of the global systemic transition to multipolarity. The Sudanese leadership is being sent on a suicide mission after being misled by false “nationalist narratives” surrounding Alfashaga and GERD in order to blind it to the military asymmetry between itself and neighbouring Ethiopia, not to mention making it downplay the domestic political consequences at home with respect to how its inevitably unsuccessful war could embolden the opposition that’s already stepping up their anti-government protests.
The two-front war that Egypt is planning to wage against Ethiopia by proxy via Sudan and the TPLF is actually also a two-front war against Khartoum since it’ll have to contend with both the Ethiopian National Defence Forces (ENDF) at the frontier and the emboldened political opposition in the heart of the country. What Cairo is therefore cleverly doing is setting Sudan up to fail in an attempt to divide and rule both it and Ethiopia in order to create the conditions for exerting Egyptian hegemony over the wider region at both of their expense. Patriotic Sudanese probably already suspected that something foul was afoot but might not yet have realized that Egypt is literally plotting to stab them in the back.
Some of its military leadership has been generously bribed and/or brainwashed with false “nationalist narratives” into thinking that Egypt’s two-front war against Ethiopia will be a walk in the park, but the reality is that Cairo is literally conspiring to destroy both of them by their own hand and that of the TPLF. It’s therefore imperative that patriotic members of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) realize this existential danger to their state and urgently convey these concerns those of their superiors who also share a sincere and uncorrupted love for their country. If this two-front war goes ahead like Egypt is plotting, then Ethiopia won’t be the one that ends up “Balkanized”, but Sudan.

It’s for this reason why patriotic members of the Sudanese military and civil society are the only chance for averting the further dismemberment of their country as the inevitable outcome of their faux Egyptian “ally’s” Hybrid War plot against Ethiopia. The TPLF wouldn’t mind this “Balkanization” outcome of that neighbouring state either since it could simply seek refuge in one of its newly carved statelets upon being finally driven out in full from their eponymous region if this foreign-provoked two-front war prompts the ENDF to launch an all-out liberation mission there. In fact, the TPLF might even turn on their partial Sudanese patrons sooner than later for this very same self-interested reason.

A tragedy of epic proportions is therefore unfolding in this part of Africa, one which can only be stopped by sincere Sudanese patriots in the armed forces and civil society. They must leverage all means at their disposal to raise maximum awareness of the existential threat to their state posed by its Egyptian-controlled leadership being sent on a suicide mission at the behest of their overlords. Cairo’s ready to discard them as casually as if they were tissue paper the moment that their strategic utility has inevitably been expended in a Machiavellian attempt to exert Egyptian hegemony over the wider region, though it’s still not too late to avert this scenario if patriotic Sudanese put a stop to it first.

Link: Egypt And Its TPLF Proxies Are Plotting To Divide And Rule Ethiopia And Sudan

 

[loyola llothta]

 

[loyola llothta]

 

[The D-List Vet]

God damn it Africa has all these resources and should be one of the top world powers.

 

[Nkrumah Was Right]

 

[Red Shield]

God damn it Africa has all these resources and should be one of the top world powers.

resources don't matter if you don't got visionary leadership that can actually get from point a to b to c.

sucks to say.. but I'm increasingly becoming pessimistic about black folks chances globally


still think we will get out of this.. but not before a whole lot more pain

 

[loyola llothta]

 

[loyola llothta]

A Quarter Century of a Western-backed War of Aggression Against the Congolese People


Uganda president Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda president Paul Kagame (Photo: REUTERS/Noor Khamis)

Rwanda and Uganda have carried out attacks against the Democratic Republic of Congo for the past 25 years. Their aggressions are carried out with the backing of the U.S. and European nations who aid their theft of Congo's resources.

The recent outbreak of military confrontation on May 22nd between the Congolese military and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group represents the latest episode in Paul Kagame's 25-year war of aggression and pillage against the Congolese people. The Congolese military in coordination with a United Nations authorized international force made up of South African, Malawian and Tanzanian soldiers defeated the Rwanda-backed M23 in 2013. A lot of the leadership fled back into Rwanda and Uganda where they evidently have been incubated and reconstituted to launch yet another attack on the Congolese people. The stark reality is that there is no M23 without Rwanda. The Congolese military captured two Rwandan soldiers among the M23 rebels in the latest incursions. Tensions have risen between the two nations and is escalating. According to the Congolese military, Rwanda has recently dispatched 500 soldiers in the east of Congo alongside the M23 rebels.
Paul Kagame's Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni's Uganda have both invaded the Congo (1996 & 1998), occupied large swaths of the country, and backed and sponsored militia groups such as the M23 in order to sew mayhem and destruction as both nations profit from Congo's riches. In a 2001 report , the United Nations noted “Presidents Kagame and Museveni are on the verge of becoming the godfathers of the illegal exploitation of natural resources and the continuation of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

Both leaders are able to have their way in the Congo in large part due to the backing they receive from the United States, Great Britain and a number of other Western states. They are authoritarian figures who have been in power for decades - over two decades for Kagame and over three decades for Museveni. They have benefited from U.S. tax payer dollars to the tune of billions in donor aid, military equipment, intelligence, training, etc. In addition, they take full advantage of the diplomatic and political cover provided by the United States in particular, in order to skirt international justice for the mass crimes they have committed in the Great Lakes region of Africa.

They are part of a collective of African neo-colonial agents that date back to Bill Clinton’s administration of the 1990s. Madeleine Albright then Secretary of State, Susan Rice then Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and Bill Clinton dubbed this new group of proxies “Renaissance Leaders” or the “New Breed” of African leaders. The Clinton Administration put its stamp of approval on these leaders which provided them cover for the crimes that they have committed against their fellow Africans. Some of these leaders included Meles Zenawi of Ethiopian and Kagame and Museveni of Rwanda and Uganda respectively. The policy was enshrined in the so-called Entebbe principles , which enrolled these leaders in advancing U.S. security, strategic interests and neoliberal economic policies in Africa.
Paul Kagame has apparently risen to be the chief beneficiary of Washington’s protection. The cover and protection that Rwanda has experienced has its origins in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda where the United States shielded Paul Kagame and his military from prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity that they committed during the Rwandan genocide.

The crimes that both Kagame and Museveni have committed in the region have resulted in what the United Nations has called the deadliest conflict in the world since WWII and the greatest humanitarian crisis at the dawn of the 21st Century. An estimated six million Congolese perished between 1996 – 2007 due to the conflict and conflict related causes. The United Nations stated in its 2010 Mapping Exercise Report that if the acts committed by Kagame's military in the Congo were to be "proven before a competent court, could be characterized as crimes of genocide."

The Congolese have had minimal success in holding Museveni to account. The International Court of Justice found the Ugandan government culpable for war crimes and plunder in the Congo and order it to pay $325 million in reparations to the Congo. Rwanda would have likely befallen the same fate if not worse but it is not party to the International Court of Justice and hence outside of its jurisdiction .

Because of the impunity, lack of accountability, and lack of justice combined with the tacit endorsement of Western powers of the criminal actions by Paul Kagame, he has been able to sew murder and mayhem not only in the Congo but in different parts of Africa. He has dispatched assassins in several countries (Kenya, South Africa, Belgium, Netherlands, and England to name a few) in order to silence or assassinate dissidents. South Africa responded forcefully in 2014 by expelling three Rwandan diplomats as a result of Kagame sending his henchmen to assassinate former Rwandan colonel and dissident, Patrick Karegeya. Even today, Kagame recently kidnapped a Belgian Citizen and US resident, Paul Rusesabagina, the real-life hero of the movie Hotel Rwanda. Don Cheadle who played Rusesabagina is a part of a campaign to free the hero who courageously saved lives during the Rwandan genocide. Rusesabagina's family has filed a law suit against the Rwandan government for Kidnapping their patriarch.

In spite of Paul Kagame's well documented crimes, he and his government have been rewarded with leadership in institutions like the British Commonwealth and the Francophonie. The red carpet is rolled out for him in Ivy League universities in the United States. Sports associations like the National Basketball Association (NBA) and teams like the Arsenal Football Club of London fully embrace him and he is often found at the World Economic Forum in Davos as a feted guest . The cover that the Western governments and institutions have provided to Kagame has enabled him to fight while denying is military’s presence in the East of the Congo and his government’s sponsorship of militia groups like the M23. In a tweet that he later had to walk back, rationalizing the latest incursion by the Rwanda-backed M23 in eastern Congo, former U.S. Ambassador/Special Envoy for the Sahel & Great Lakes Regions of Africa, Dr Peter Pham is yet another example of how Kagame has been given cover.

The DR Congo’s president, Felix Tshisekedi stated emphatically “The resurgence of this armed movement, which was defeated in 2013 with the confiscation of its military arsenal, can only be due to Rwanda. This is no longer a secret.”

Tshisekedi goes further by calling for justice for the victims of the Rwandan government’s crimes in the Congo through the implementation of the UN Mapping Exercise Report and the installation of an international criminal tribunal on the crimes in the Congo. This is a cause that the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Dr. Denis Mukwege has long championed . However, they are no match for Kagame’s connections in the West, particularly the United States.

The recent visit by AFRICOM head, General Stephen Townsend in the midst of Kagame’s latest aggression against the Congo is case in point. As long as Paul Kagame continues to carry out his duties as a key agent of Western interests in Africa , neither he nor his partners in crime will likely face justice. A case in point, the Spanish Courts had an international arrest warrant out for 40 of Rwanda’s top officials under the principle of Universal Jurisdiction (the same principle that ensnared former Chilean agent of U.S. Imperialism, Augusto Pinochet). One of Rwanda’s top official, General Karenzi Karake was apprehended on the Spanish courts warrant for “war crimes against civilians.” In order to resist extradition to Spain Karenzi hired Tony Blair’s wife, Cherie Blair to defend him. Karenzi was later released on a technicality and was able to return to Rwanda.
The Chair of the African Union, Senegalese president Maky Sall said he has spoken to both Paul Kagame and Felix Tshisekedi. He has called for a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Regional efforts to deescalate the conflict are also being led by Angolan President João Lourenço as head of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR).

The U.S. government’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken has called for dialogue , which is for all intents and purposes reasserting the status quo of the past quarter century whereby Paul Kagame backs militia groups in the Congo while skirting accountability. As the U.S. government calls for dialogue, the Congolese people are demanding justice and an end to the carte-blanche given to Paul Kagame by the U.S. government while he sponsors atrocities in the Congo. It is this deep contradiction that leads many Congolese at the grassroots level to question U.S. attempts to pressure African governments to fall in line and support its stance against Russia in Ukraine. Congolese have been the victims of a U.S.-backed regime that has waged war against them for a quarter century. Yet, the Western media barely makes note of it and when they do the conflict is often cast in tribal, atavistic terms devoid of the geo-political underpinning that keeps the hart of the African continent in perpetual conflict and instability.

U.S., UK and EU citizens can play a key role in demanding that their governments cease the military and financial support they lavish on Paul Kagame. Citizens can help put an end to the diplomatic and political cover their governments have provided the Rwandan strongman for past quarter century of criminal wars of aggression Kagame has waged against the people of the DR Congo.

For its part, the Congolese government may have to consider following the path of former President Laurent Desire Kabila when he came under a withering attack from U.S. backed Rwandan and Uganda forces in 1998. He reached out to the Southern African Development Community (SADC), of which Congo is a member state, for Pan African military support. Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia in particular responded and beat back the Rwandan and Ugandan militaries preventing a regime change in Kinshasa.

Link:A Quarter Century of a Western-backed War of Aggression Against the Congolese People | Black Agenda Report