Sunday, December 02, 2012

the clinton plan for africa redux

A few years ago, my man T3 threw himself at the Herculean task of trying to wrap his mind around the long-term American imperial plan for Africa. In context of the currently percolating Susan Rice controversy, it's imperative that we peep game on this negroe 1% who has been providing racial mimetic cover for the long term imperial plan for Africa for a very long time.

Chinese demands for energy are driving the US to pursue new relationships in Africa. The guise of humanitarian aid must be viewed within the context of the Defense Department’s critical role in the advance of US-Africa relations. And, perhaps most disastrously, it must be borne in mind that at precisely the point when Gilead Sciences (a leader in HIV vaccination research) was making its most headway, the chairman of its board was none other than Donald Rumsfeld (more in Part V).
From Reuters (February 28, 2008):
LOS ANGELES, Feb 28 (Reuters) – A safety board has recommended that certain AIDS patients taking part in a study of GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s (GSK.L: Quote, Profile, Research) Epzicom consider switching to Gilead Sciences Inc’s (GILD.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Truvada, sending Gilead’s shares up about 4 percent on Thursday.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease’s AIDS Clinical Trials Group, a unit of the National Institutes of Health, is comparing the two drugs in a head-to-head trial involving 1,858 patients.

The unit said on Thursday that an independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board recently found that for patients with high levels of HIV virus, treatment regimens containing Epzicom were less effective at controlling the virus than regimens containing Truvada.

The board also found that patients with high levels of HIV virus treated with Epzicom developed side effects such as body aches and high cholesterol more quickly.

Glaxo said in a statement that the NIH study did not routinely exclude patients at risk for a known reaction with Epzicom, which might have accounted for some adverse events.

The trial recommendation applies to about half the patients being treated with the Glaxo drug and, if translated to real world usage, could mean a 20 percent market share gain for Gilead’s Truvada and Atripla, Morgan Stanley analyst Sapna Srivastava said in a research note on Thursday.
Remember Tamiflu and the avian flu virus? That was also Gilead Sciences.

The stakes in the energy game are very high. In 2006, China’s president visited Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Nigeria and Kenya. Today, the United States of America imports more oil from Africa than from Saudi Arabia. The US has protected the House of Saud from all comers and precluded other nations from breaking up the dollar-oil peg which prevails in Saudi Arabia. No such arrangements exist on the ground in Africa…and yet – the US is proposing to establish its first military command. China’s strategy for African partnership centers on infrastructure.
Beijing plans to invest $4 billion in Nigeria’s infrastructure, including a Nigerian state-run oil refinery, a railway line and power plants. Two Chinese telecommunication companies will install rural telephone services financed by $200 million in loans from Beijing.

On the eve of Hu’s visit, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) paid $2.7 billion for a 45 percent stake in a Nigerian oil field due to start production in 2008. Last year, Nigeria agreed to provide 30,000 barrels of oil per day for five years to China’s largest state-owned oil company, PetroChina, in a deal worth $800 million.

Oil was also top of the agenda in Kenya on April 27-30. In Nairobi, the Chinese president signed an agreement for licenses to allow CNOOC to explore six possible oil blocks off the coast of Kenya. Last year, China provided $36.5 million in aid to Kenya, mainly to upgrade its power stations.

China’s deals with Nigeria and Kenya, as well as other African countries, are direct challenges to the traditional domination of the continent’s oil by American and European companies. (See Western concern at China’s growing involvement in Africa)

China’s energy diplomacy was spelled out by Yang Peidong, a foreign ministry consultant, in a recent edition of China Economic Weekly. Beijing is now focusing on “the extension of trade and the promotion of energy, resources and technology cooperation” as the heart of China’s foreign policy, he wrote.

China’s strategy is to offer infrastructure projects to the resource-rich countries in Middle East, Africa and Latin America to facilitate, and in exchange for, the export of minerals to China. China is now the world’s sixth largest engineering contractor, with its new contracts up 24 percent to $39 billion last year. In some cases, China has also financed and even armed regimes, such as in Sudan and Zimbabwe, in order to protect its resource interests.

In comments to Reuters during Hu’s visit, former Nigerian foreign minister Bolaji Akinyemi attempted to play down possible tensions with Washington. “In the Middle East, the US regards China’s incursion with alarm, but Nigeria is more virgin territory for suitors and Washington should not be too worried,” he said.

The Bush administration, however, regards China’s moves in Africa as far from benign. Its recently published National Security Strategy openly states US concerns over China as “expanding trade, but acting as if they can somehow ‘lock up’ energy supplies around the world or seek to direct markets rather than opening them up—as if they can follow a mercantilism borrowed from a discredited era; and … supporting resource-rich countries without regard to their misrule at home or misbehaviour abroad of those regimes.”
The West has not directed itself to resolving the infrastructure crisis across the continent precisely because they are architects of that crisis.

8 comments:

Ed Dunn said...

So who you think will preval? China infrastructure building with little inclusiveness from the African people or American military complex with drunk US soldiers chasing after the local women?

CNu said...

Surplus chinese men and available african women been spawning quite a few gorgeous blasians on the continent, while african entrepreneurs been sewing african seed across the chinese countryside. I'm thinking that blood is thicker than fire water...,

Big Don said...

..Whoa....that's indeed true desperation....
The risks are substantial (image below)

John Kurman said...

What in any or all of the above gave you any hint that there was a concern about the people in Africa? Seems to me, if you go with the standard American Empire plan, you don't care much about the aboriginals. The plan is move them out of the way or exterminate them. Instead, you worry more about tropical diseases and parasites - things that keep your own personnel out, which is what kept the empire building to a minimum in the first half of the 20th century. (Remember, the Mason-Dixon Line was the malaria line. Now it's moving north). Let China build all the dams, railroads and bridges it wants. When there is little or no populace to utilize it, it's pretty much of an empty investment.

Ed Dunn said...

John K, did you read the memo that Africa is becoming a hotbed for all of the youth talent leaving the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) to get a new start since their economies have collapse with a 25% jobless rate? Also, don't forget that both China and US established free trade zones with the local population and they are creating technology hubs over there - this ain't the same Africa I think you have in mind. Also, mobile money ventures is the hot commodity to chase in Africa right now.

Ed Dunn said...

CIA in Africa - are you referring to something other than the drone base in a little East African country? If you look at Africa as a whole, the overwhelming majority of conflict has zero to do with Cold War frameworks and more to do with corruption, dictators and warlords and no infrastructure. Sorry, but maybe i need education on what Susan Rice has done in Africa because I don't see it...

CNu said...

http://blackagendareport.com/content/second-wave-genocide-looms-congo-susan-rice-point there you go! Paul Kagame has managed to slide Mme. Rice many millions of dollars over the course of their 18 year collaboration.

John Kurman said...

Oh, there's no doubt that the leveraged boom is going to happen there, South Asia, basically anywhere not yet First World, but there's a part of me (probably the German part) that figures a strategic depopulation could be more of a money maker. And if my dark side can think of it...

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