Africa will continue to be for a while the experimental playground of the major powers for a little while more only. Don't give us Uranium at the price we want or Cocoa or Gold at our price and we will finance the next coup by paying an underpaid or discriminated general or Colonel from a different tribe to overthrow you. From Lumumba, Dag Hammerzkold to Idi Amin to Pik Boetha, to the current Ivory Coast, the countless Nigerian leaders from Gowan to Obasanjo, Chad to Ethiopia and the list goes on.
There is a new emerging breed who have Islam as their political mantra, their new economic, military, moral and political block ideology. They have travelled the seamless globe as refugees to test the wests ideological 'superiority' over their 'tribal backward' ways and have en route found the spartan lifestyles and compassion of Muslims, the first wave of outsiders to endure real European racial and ideological intolerance and bigotry. They have experienced the difference between the soft textures of silver screen and the hard realities of the bitumen and iron gates, the leather whips, the electric prods and the indifference and absence of compassion of Christianity at its scource.
George Bush's military machine can knock out the whole of Iraq then some. They have used Nuclear weapons to a limited extent in Iraq and have committed attrocities of an untold nature by burying the conscripts in thousands in trenches alive as well as te 'Turkey Shoot' of fleeing soldiers who were guaranteed a safe passage by Lt. gen . Peter De La Billere (British). Over 10,000 perished there courtesy of the depleted Uranium experiment.
Naom Chomsky spoke once and wrote of it. Manufacturing Consent. The Media of the west as Lee Kuan Yew wrote in his memoirs, serve the interests of their proprietors and governments of the day. They have no interest in any altruistic pursuits anymore. The extents to which they have gone include demonising leaders from Ho Chih Minh, Gandhi, Kissinger for a while, Nasser, Mandela and again the list goes on.
But as Arundhuiti Roy wrote after September 11, the lock picks of the anger of these marginalised mass of Muslims today are not the sleek F16,s or nuclear powered ships and aircraft carriers, they are mere box cutters and the ever so harmless Boeing 737's or whatever other means of transport available to all of us. Their motivation so strong that it even overrides the very human instinct for survival or self preservation. Suicide bombers.
Africa is on the move. The Chinese are in the wings waiting for the US to enter into the next phase of their hagemony. Iraq. Already the casualty count from Afghansitan is considered a national security and official secrets matter. Not to be published apart from the Pentagon.
Pakistan and India seldom agree on anything, even their disagreements are peppered with disagreements. But to support the game of cricket in Zimbabwe, they send a clear and unequivocal message of indifference to western concerns which are politically motivated and very biased.
