Words by Mark Twain

Illustrations by the United States Government

The UN said today that it would launch an investigation after the Daily Telegraph reported allegations that UN personnel have abused children in southern Sudan.

It is a situation increasingly out of the Nigerian government’s hands, and one which the Obama Administration and the US Congress both appear more than eager to insinuate themselves into, arguing that oil-rich Nigeria’s problems are America’s problems, and that Boko Haram is forging ties with al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the region’s al-Qaeda auxiliary.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and its largest oil producer, is from all evidence being systematically thrown into chaos and a state of civil war. The recent surprise decision by the government of Goodluck Jonathan to abruptly lift subsidies on imported gasoline and other fuel has a far more sinister background than mere corruption and the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) is playing a key role. China appears to be the likely loser along with Nigeria’s population.

Citing recent ethnic violence and with the apparent certainty that every nation on the planet needs at least a few US boots on the ground, President Obama has announced his intention to send troops to the Republic of South Sudan to help the new government with “strategic planning.”

The deployment, which will only include five troops so far, comes after a report of a massacre was refuted by the United Nations, and also as South Sudan continues to accuse the Sudanese government of preventing it from shipping oil more efficiently.

With its coastline overlooking the key oil routes of the Gulf of Yemen and Red Sea, the US has been vexed by Somalia’s relentless instability – instability that has been largely engendered by Washington’s proxy warmongering in the region. The US-backed government in Mogadishu, which is accused of corruption and misrule, has proven incapable of decisively controlling the country. Even with generous aid from Washington and military support from neighbouring US-backed states, including the presence of US mercenaries, the government in Mogadishu can only but cling on to its central seat of power.

The entry of forces from Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti could be seen as Washington trying to ratchet up the military pressure on Al Shabab.

Mogadishu—Britain is apparently preparing its troops for the next oil war in Africa after Prime Minister considered Somalia as a “failed state” that has been threatening Britain’s interests and security.As the British government considered Libya’s regime change as a victory of the Nato forces, it is now looking for its next humanitarian intervention in oil-rich states in the Middle East and Africa.

Meanwhile analysts believe that as the western oil companies planning to start exploration in some of the regions, the politicians will use the pretext of fighting terrorism to impose war to secure more drillings all over the country.

Kenya's invasion of Somalia, hailed by the West and the UN Security Council, was meant to deliver a knockout blow to the militant Islamist group al-Shabaab. Instead it has pulled Somalia's regional rival Ethiopia back into the country, stirred up the warlords and rekindled popular support for fundamentalists whose willingness to let Somalis starve rather than receive foreign aid had left them widely hated.

My thought on hearing “armed humanitarian mission” was: Would this be the precedent for military deployments in the post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan world?

Most people are unaware that President Obama’s Oct. 14 announcement of the Special Forces deployment was done in accordance with a bill that Congress passed in 2009 and was signed into law in 2010. It required the administration to plan and coordinate “diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military elements of United States policy across the region regarding the Lord’s Resistance Army.”

Kenya’s cabinet reports today that they have agreed to a call from the African Union (AU) to deploy ground troops into Mogadishu to “fight al-Shabaab,” with the troops expected to begin deploying early next year.

The AU operation was initially carried out by Uganda and Burundi, but the alliance has sought ever more involvement from its other members, and the US has committed increasing amounts of support to the conflict.

Forces loyal to outgoing Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh shot dead a woman in a protest march in Taiz on Monday, witnesses and activists said, despite tanks withdrawing under a ceasefire pact.

The Seven Step Mainstream Media Country Destruction Guide

1. First, they start by targeting a country ripe for “Regime Change”, and brand it a “rogue state”; then...

2. They arm, train, finance local terrorist groups through CIA, MI6, Mossad, Al-Qaeda (a CIA operation), drug cartels (often CIA operations) and call them “freedom fighters”; then...

3. As mock UN Security Council Resolutions are staged that rain death and destruction upon millions of civilians, they call it “UN sanctions to protect civilians”; then...

4. They spread flagrant lies through their “newsrooms” and paid journalists, and call it "the international community’s concerns expressed by prestigious spokespeople and analysts…” then…

During CNN’s debate on foreign policy, Santorum said that “Africa was a country,” instead of a continent.

About 100 U.S. troops that President Obama ordered to Uganda last month to help crush the cult-like Lord’s Resistance Army will likely remain deployed until the group’s leader is captured or dead, according to the top U.S. commander for Africa.

The Pentagon’s shadow war in Africa could have a new front, if reports coming out of Nigeria are accurate. U.S. troops are headed to Nigeria to help local forces do battle with Boko Haram, an Islamic terror group that has killed up to 400 people this year in an escalating campaign of bombings and shootings. At least that’s what Nigerian military sources tell Scott Morgan, a journalist based in Washington, D.C. who writes under the pseudonym “Confused Eagle.” The Guardian also has the story.

U.S. officials have refused to confirm the deployment.

An all-out offensive against the Al-Shabaab Islamic resistance movement based in Somalia is currently underway in the southern region of this Horn of Africa nation. A combined force of U.S. Predator drones and French naval vessels is targeting four towns in the southern region so that Kenyan military forces on the ground can seize Kismayo, a port city under the control of Al-Shabaab. The city is a major source of trade and serves as the economic lifeline for the resistance movement, which has been labeled by the U.S. as a terrorist organization allied with al-Qaida.

On Friday, October 14, President Barack Obama announced he would be sending 100 Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) forces to Uganda to "remove from the battlefield" (meaning capture or kill) the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Joseph Kony. "I believe that deploying these U.S. Armed Forces furthers U.S. national security interests and foreign policy and will be a significant contribution toward counter-LRA efforts in central Africa," wrote Obama in a letter to U.S. House Majority Leader, John Boehner, R-OH.

Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons.

While putting few U.S. troops at risk, the United States is playing a growing role in Africa's military battles, using special forces advisers, drones and tens of millions of dollars in military aid to combat a growing and multifaceted security threat.

Once again, the focus is Somalia, the lawless nation that was the site of America's last large-scale military intervention in Africa in the early 1990s.

US military sources have confirmed that the Obama administration is engaged in a new war in the famine-hit Horn of Africa region.

The U.S. Air Force has been secretly flying drones from a civilian airport in southern Ethiopia as part of an aggressive campaign against al Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

The paper said in its online edition that Washington has invested millions of dollars to upgrade a remote airfield in Arba Minch from where it was now flying a fleet of Reaper drones that can carry Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs.

It quoted the Pentagon as saying the drones had been unarmed and had been used for surveillance and collecting intelligence only but that it would not rule out using them to launch lethal strikes in the future.

It is a war rarely talked about in the US – even less so than the US military operation in the Philippines or the efforts to prop up Yemeni Dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh. It is the broad US war across Africa.

Sometimes it is drones, sometimes it is military advisers, sometimes it is just massive amounts of cash to whichever dubious dictator the US is pretty sure is the answer to militancy. But just four and a half years after AFRICOM’s creation, the US is in wars virtually across the continent, a war most Americans are totally unaware of.

44 people have been killed in separate US assassination drone strikes in Somalia, Pakistan's northwestern tribal region bordering Afghanistan and Yemen in a single day.

In the wake of NATO's "humanitarian" R2P intervention in Libya, which is by no means over, the Pentagon has chosen to launch two more "unnoticed" wars in the African continent: Somalia and Uganda.

Yemeni troops loyal to embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh opened fire Tuesday at thousands of protesters calling for his ouster in the capital Sanaa, killing two, a medical official said.

Tunisia’s moderate Islamist party appeared to win elections for an assembly to draft a constitution Monday, a sign of religion’s growing influence over politics in the country that inspired uprisings across the Arab world.

At least two people were killed and 40 others injured when Yemeni government security forces opened fire on thousands of anti-government protesters in the country's capital Tuesday, according to medical officials.

Boyce and Ndikumana, authors of 'Africa's Odious Debts', argue that under international law, debts incurred by dictators should not be enforceable.

The U.S. Embassy in Kenya warned American citizens Saturday of an "imminent threat of terrorist attacks" after Kenya sent troops across the border into Somalia to pursue suspected Islamic militants from Al-Shabaab.

Military intelligence officials in Israel say they were aware of an al-Qaeda threat in Kenya long before last Thursday's attacks which killed 13 people, but had no specific warning that Mombasa or Israeli tourists were being targeted.

Africa, under President Obama, is an expanding theater of war for the United States. There are few points on the African map where the U.S. military does not operate, independently, through proxies, or by agreement with local governments and militaries. AFRICOM has penetrated the armed forces of the continent to a degree no single European power could have ever aspired. Indeed, "the U.S. has so thoroughly infiltrated African armies, many, if not most, would be of no use for national defense against the Americans.

What is also emerging – but largely unreported – is that the US appears to be providing coordinated aerial firepower to help the advance of the Kenyan military against Al Shabab Islamic militants who have held power in the southern Somali territory.

The geostrategic importance of Somalia has long made it a prize for Washington. With its nearly 1,800-kilometre coastline overlooking the oil trading routes of the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the US has been vying for a foothold on the territory ever since its independence from Britain and Italy in 1960.

With rising hunger and incidence of diseases such as cholera, measles and typhoid, the military strength of Al Shabab has considerably weakened in recent weeks, according to the International Crisis Group.

Any student of realpolitik knows the US doesn't do "humanitarian" interventions per se. Africom's surge parallels the real name of the game; precious minerals - and mining. Uganda - and nearby eastern Congo - happens to hold fabulous quantities of, among others, diamonds, gold, platinum, copper, cobalt, tin, phosphates, tantalite, magnetite, uranium, iron ore, gypsum, beryllium, bismuth, chromium, lead, lithium, niobium and nickel. Many among these are ultra-precious rare earth - of which China exercises a virtual monopoly.

If United States President Barack Obama really wanted to get rid of the new bogeyman du jour, Uganda's Joseph Kony - a former altar boy turned mystical Christian prophet/politico, sporting at least 60 wives - he would order US Attorney General Eric “The Fast and the Furious" Holder to concoct a plot subcontracting the hit to a lunatic Iranian linked to a Mexican drug cartel.

Plan B would be to order the United Nations to tell the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to impose a no-fly zone over Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) "rebels", and then bomb them to oblivion.

Plan C would be to drone the LRA to death with a fleet of MQ-9 Reapers; yet the nearest US drone base is very far away, in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa.

Heritage Oil announced details of a large oil discovery in Uganda yesterday, which the company claimed could be the largest onshore discovery in sub-Saharan Africa.

Kenyan troops have crossed the border into war-torn Somalia to attack Islamist Shebab rebels they accuse of being behind several recent kidnappings of foreigners, Kenyan officials said on Sunday.

“We have crossed into Somalia in pursuit of the Shehab, who are responsible for the kidnappings and attacks on our country,” government spokesman Alfred Matua told AFP.

An AFP reporter close to the border witnessed large numbers of troops as well as military planes and helicopters overhead.

President Obama has now quietly, without much fanfare, sent 100 US troops to help Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni crush rebels threatening his 25 year dictatorship.

In what is essentially a "reverse-Libyan-style" intervention, the US is sending troops to crush, not assist rebels rising up against their despotic ruler. Ironically, just as with Libya's rebels, Uganda's rebels are also listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department. Instead of the corporate-financier contrived International Criminal Court issuing fictitious warrants for Uganda's head of state, as was done with Qaddafi in Libya, it is the Ugandan rebel leader, Joseph Kony, who is being targeted.

Embattled Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh has expressed gratitude to the US and Saudi Arabia for supporting his regime, as his troops killed 100 protesters in five days, Press TV reports.

United States drones have reportedly struck three districts in southern Somalia, killing dozens of civilians and wounding scores of others.

Eyewitnesses in the southern Somali port city of Kismayo have reported a number of missile strikes, apparently fired by US drones in and around the city. Terrified residents say that several loud explosions were heard in the area.

The militant faction al-Shabaab, which is in control of the area, says the drones hit on the outskirts of the town and killed at least nine civilians, including women and children. 30 others were reported wounded in the strikes.

What is stage 6?

The coup was underway. The “rebels,” a motley band of weekend thugs were no match for the Libyan army which legally was bound to defend itself against armed insurrection, so Nato [the new mailed fist of 21st century neo-imperialism] unleashed its aerial might, special forces [French Foreign Legion commandos, SAS and US SEALS] against the legitimate government of Libya. It was inevitable that sooner or later this lopsided military power would take its toll as Nato bombed Tripoli and other parts of Libya on a daily basis.

What happens in Libya is a harbinger of what the West has in store for Africa.

Don’t patronize us! We lived apartheid, we suffered apartheid, we know what apartheid is, we recognise apartheid when we see it. And when we see Israel, we see a regime that practices apartheid. Israel’s image needs no changing; its policies do! We urge Israeli students to instead join the growing and inspiring internal resistance to their regime, particularly the boycott from within movement, rather than waste time and money on these propaganda trips to deceive us Black students, South Africans have no need for these Muldergate-like trips.

The Obama administration is preparing a new military intervention in Somalia under the pretext of humanitarian concern for starving drought victims. The media has fallen into line with a campaign mixing crocodile tears and hand-wringing with denunciations of the Islamist movement al-Shabaab, which is blamed for the deepening crisis.

South Africa's ruling ANC put off discussions planned for Monday to bring its Youth League leader Julius Malema to heel after the populist politician angered the party by calling for nationalisation of mines and meddling in foreign affairs.

Malema's call to nationalize mines and seize white-owned land has unnerved investors but struck a chord with poor blacks who make up the majority of the population and who envision him as a future leader of Africa's biggest economy.

The Obama administration is preparing a new military intervention in Somalia under the pretext of humanitarian concern for starving drought victims. The media has fallen into line with a campaign mixing crocodile tears and hand-wringing with denunciations of the Islamist movement al-Shabaab, which is blamed for the deepening crisis.

"Have we as a nation gone mad, waging war in the Persian Gulf while society crumbles?" Seymour Melman asked rhetorically when I interviewed him for The Progressive 19 years ago.

Even though Melman, a professor emeritus at Columbia University's school of industrial engineering, departed this life in 2004, his question still haunts our society, as the American War Machine since then has only gained in momentum, immensity, universality and cruelty.

To answer Melman: "Yes, we have gone mad." That's because presidents and Pentagon chiefs start new wars even before they finish fighting the old ones! Who can recall a time in our history when the U.S. initiated aggressive wars against five nations(Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen)?

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said earlier this year he was offering to invest $97 billion in the continent to free it from Western influence...