Don’t try to fight me baby or you’ll need first aid”
The Heptones sang in sweet sweet harmonies and rhythms that could easily deceive the listener into thinking this was a love song. Just listening makes you start to wind. But the lyrics were brutal, with the threat of violence and forced acquiesence. If you don’t go along you’ll get hurt. (The Heptones also sang it as I’ve got the handle on 20 Golden Hits or Nightfood, both still available, and sweet listening. There is no Heptones version on Youtube as yet.)
The AFRICOM logo implies the same message. AFRICOM holds the handle, Africa, the blade. The Pentagon tries to pour sweet deceiving syrup over its message:
According to the Pentagon, AFRICOM has been created in recognition of Africa’s global importance and is intended to allow the United States to bolster African security, enhance strategic cooperation, build partnerships, and support humanitarian missions.
History repeats itself, the true message is brutal:
. . . the military bias will, as in the past, contribute to human rights abuses and ongoing conflict rather than promoting security based on African needs.
In the 1980s Reagan and Brezhnev saw Africa as a place where they might play their cold war power games with little or no risk, resulting in arms races and proxy wars. Their rivalries displaced millions of Africans, resulting in burned homes, sadistic punishments, including dismemberment, and mass murder. The results of those policies continue to the present. Increased militarization is the problem, not the answer.
Whoever created the logo must have realized what it looks like. I’ve played around a bit with art and design, and I don’t think it is possible to do that and miss the connection. A casual observer might miss it, but I don’t think it is possible for the artist to miss the implications. Whether subliminal or conscious, like b real said – it speaks volumes about their intentions.
Crossed Crocodiles 
April 20, 2008 at 12:19 am
news on the navy’s east coast initiative that didn’t garner much coverage in the press
stars and stripes: Navy initiative teaches security
[blockquote]
The U.S. Navy has the waters surrounding the African continent covered.
Last week, the seafaring service wrapped up a tour by the Navy’s 6th Fleet Southeast Africa Task Force, a three-nation mission with visits to Madagascar, Mauritius and Reunion.
…
The task force, led this year by the landing ship dock USS Ashland, mirrors in scope to another U.S. Naval Forces Europe/6th Fleet-led initiative dubbed Africa Partnership Station.
…
The Southeast Africa Task Force is about two years behind APS in terms of planning, carrying out missions and providing a “persistent presence” in African coastal waters, Holman said.
Ships now spend a few weeks at a time sailing between ports of participating nations, as opposed to the seven-month deployment recently completed by APS ships USS Fort McHenry and High Speed Vessel 2 Swift.
Last year, the kickoff of the Southeast Africa Task Force, the USS Forrest Sherman and USS Normandy visited eight Southeast African nations. For many, it was the first time a U.S. Navy ship had visited in more than 40 years.
“[The mission] is very similar to APS as far as [experiencing some of the] same problems they’re having on the west side … piracy, drug trafficking, smuggling of people, illegal fishing — bad things people do,” Holman said.
Eventually, the task force aims to have a similar presence in the Indian Ocean as APS has in the Gulf of Guinea, Holman said.
[/blockquote]
April 21, 2008 at 11:37 am
It bothers me that there is all this talk of help and assistance, and yet most of the assistance is minimal and more photo op than actual help. Nothing new, but it continues to bother me. At this point, neglect might be far preferable to “help”.
The CareTaker at African Loft posted two articles about Guinea Bissau, and how it has been swamped by the drug lords.
Guinea-Bissau Battles Drug Barons with Little Hope
Guinea Bissau: The First African Narco-state?
This is a place that could really use some professional policing help and equipment, as well as a lot of backup. I haven’t heard a breath of a hint that the APS took any interest in Guinea Bissau, or any other mention. I just searched the Stars and Stripes and found nothing. I feel somewhat conflicted about saying this, because I do wonder if any “help” the US might bring at this point might just make matters worse. But this looks like an immediate serious problem which will spread and become exponentially worse. The faster and stronger the response, the more likely it is to have at least a bit of success.
April 21, 2008 at 12:18 pm
And – it looks like they have pretty well ringed the continent.
April 22, 2008 at 12:45 am
things appear to heating up quick in the delta
communique from jomo gbomo monday states
[blockquote]
Today’s attack was prompted by the continuous injustice in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria where the root issues have not been addressed by the illegal and insincere government of Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan. It also dispels the false impression that peace and security have been restored in order to gain the confidence of potential investors in the oil and gas sector; to protest the continuous detention and secret trial of Henry Okah who was taken hostage during a supposed truce and who must be a key participant in any on-going peace process to make it acceptable to us. Then finally, to show our way of saying “welcome” to the US Naval warship, USS Swift which is transiting the Gulf of Guinea.
In our first open letter to you dated February 17, 2008 which remains valid and another dated January 19, 2008 to Actor George Clooney, a UN Messenger for Peace, MEND expressed its willingness to embrace a genuine and transparent peace program without getting any response. The ripple effect of this attack will touch your economy and people one way or the other and hope we now have your attention.
Mr. President, your warships do not intimidate us.
[/blockquote]
—
not very familiar w/ guinea bissau – thanks for the links
April 22, 2008 at 4:31 pm
MEND certainly does not see the US Navy mission as humanitarian. The visits to Nigeria have not got much play in the press, probably due to a rather questionable welcome from Nigerians in general.
April 23, 2008 at 12:14 am
very short blurb from the u.s. army reserve’s lt. commander in an article in wednesday’s stars and stripes
[blockquote]
Since [11 Sept. 2001] more than 182,000 Army Reserve soldiers have been mobilized to serve in Iraq, Afghanistan and more than a dozen other countries, with 23,000 currently on active duty, Stultz said.
Of those troops, about 17,000 serve overseas, with 15,000 in Iraq or Afghanistan. Another 6,000 soldiers support homeland defense missions, he said.
And the Reserve, Stultz said, could be even busier in the Pentagon’s new theater: Africa.
“Indicators point to increased Army Reserve requirements in Africa, especially now that Africa Command has been established,” he said.
[/blockquote]
what were the pre-AFRICOM “army reserve requirements in africa” and/or deployment numbers?
[blockquote]
Operation Iraqi Freedom is “radically” redefining the role of the Reserves in the U.S. military force structure, [director of the Center for Research on Military Organization David] Segal said.
It is thanks to Iraq, Segal said, that “the role of the Reserve components has been changed from a force in reserve, to one of full participation in overseas operations.”
In January, the congressionally mandated Commission on National Guard and Reserves released a report recommending that the switch from a reserve to an operational force be permanent for the Army Reserve, as well as the National Guard.
[/blockquote]
a bloomberg reporter currently getting the PR workover at stuttgart parrots the AQ pretext for AFRICOM, no doubt an “indicator” for the eventual need for increased boots on the ground
Al-Qaeda Sahara Network Spurs U.S. to Train Chad, Mali Forces
[blockquote]
April 23 (Bloomberg) — Bands of Islamist fighters, terrorist trainers and arms suppliers roaming the mountainous southern Sahara Desert are new targets in the U.S. war against al-Qaeda.
…
The war against AQIM is being led from the new headquarters of the U.S. Army’s Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany, which is due to become fully operational this October with a staff of about 1,000. Africom will provide military aid and training to countries in the southern Sahara, an area known as the Sahel.
“The Sahel, with its vast empty spaces and highly permeable borders, could serve local and international terrorists both as a base for recruitment and training and as a conduit for the movement of personnel and material, much as Afghanistan had been for al-Qaeda in the late 1990s,” said J. Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
[/blockquote]
haha. notice how he had to omit the early 90’s since it was the u.s. and it’s autocratic friends in saudi arabia, pakistan, etc who facilitated AQ’s recruitment, transport, and training in afghanistan & elsewhere, including inside the u.s.
the rest of the article plies the GWOT propagenda line that we’ve seen coming from AFRICOM for awhile now. and maybe it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as resistance to all forms of colonialism, repression, and imperialism keeps pace w/ the degree applied.
the less-politically-motivated analyses i’ve seen of the GSPC and the many offshoots of GIA & other political islamists groups in north africa typically assert that these are resistance mvmts of local scope, almost always very small in scale — even the bloomberg article points out that the branded AQIM has perhaps only 150 members, of which even less are active — and objectives, which, at the end of the day, boil down to getting a seat at the table.
is there a AQIM counterpart to al-shabaab’s abu mansoor al-amriki, helping to stir things up locally, i wonder?
the bloomberg article also quotes a story from the “U.S.-funded Magharebia.com Web site,” though it fails to identify it as being explicitly an AFRICOM venture, which is probably something an honest editor would want to make clear when publishing a perception mgmt piece that attempts to lay out a purpose for the new combatant command.
April 24, 2008 at 10:49 pm
I read a post or comment somewhere in which the writer spoke of watching something on CSPAN in which National Guard people were talking about AFRICOM, and dividing up the African continent so that different Guard units were assigned/connected with a different country or region of Africa. I haven’t been able to track it down again, but it would certainly fit right in.
April 25, 2008 at 1:27 am
search under “state partnership program”
here’s one article from sept LY
The guard looks to Africa
the thing about the article on the us army reserves is that they are being pushed into semi-permanent operational capacity, which means engaging in, as they say, kinetics
April 25, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Not good news re the Guard. And it looks like the Navy is also ringing the Caribbean and Latin America, in addition to Africa. A friend sent this Fourth Fleet to sail again in Latin America. You may already know about it. One can’t help feeling Bush/Cheney should try having more than one idea. But it would probably just be worse than the one they got.
btw – the graphic here is my work. I was blundering around with the software using guesswork more than skill, but I thought I’d give it a try. Mostly I don’t have the time or software knowledge to do my own graphics, just minor editing.
April 25, 2008 at 11:09 pm
And this just in, at least to me: Afghanistan swaps heroin for wheat.
In parts of Helmand Afghan farmers are this year sowing wheat instead of poppy – not because they have suddenly been converted to the argument that producing heroin is not in the national interest.
Market forces have been the deciding factor – with wheat prices doubling in the past year, and the street price of heroin falling, it is now more cost effective to grow wheat.