Obama's Africa Speech: Lies, Hypocrisy, & Prescription for Continued Dependence

[News]

Q. Is Obama better than Bush?

A. It depends how you like your imperialism – with a white face or a black one.

By Stephen Gowans
July 19, 2009

US president Barack Obama's speech at Accra, Ghana on July 11, 2009 was equal parts jaw dropping hypocrisy, outright fiction, sound advice for Africans if taken literally, and advocacy for institutions ideally suited to capital accumulation in Africa by Western investors. Africans should heed the US president's call to embrace the idea that Africa's future is up to Africans (and Africans alone) and to build their own nations, but the path Obama proposes, if followed, would condemn Africa to continued underdevelopment and perpetual dependence on the West.

It should come as a surprise to no one but the weakly naïve and politically untutored that the role of the US president in Africa is to promote and defend the interests of the United States, not Africans. This is so, even if the US president shares the skin color of Africa's majority. What may not be so apparent, but which is true nevertheless, is that Obama represents the interests of his country's hereditary capitalist families, banks, corporations and wealthy investors whose resources and backing have brought him to power, and in whose interests the logic of imperialism compels him to act. It is Obama's goal as representative of US capital to open, and keep open, Africa's vast resources to exploitation by Western, and particularly US, capital without impediments of corruption, war and pan-African, nationalist or socialist projects of independent development getting in the way. His color and African heritage give Obama a leg up on a white president, allowing him to immediately connect with an African audience. But his message is no less racist, imperialist and informed by the interests of Wall Street than that of his white predecessors.

Continue to: 'Obama's Africa Speech: Lies, Hypocrisy, and a Prescription for Continued African Dependence'

[lado]

OBAMA IS ON THE SEE - SAW PLAY GAME I GUESS  :  THE TACTIFUL  U.S  PROJECTION FOR CONTINUED AFRICAN DEPENDENCE ----


The West is that of Projection. The Western mind faces a problem. As most previous empires the Western world is convinced of its own benevolence and moral superiority. At the same time it is necessary to enforce its reign through extreme violence. It therefore becomes vital that some form of explanation, of ones actions, is formed that solves this contradiction.                     
                                                                                                                                       


Therefore the uncivilised mind begins to attribute its own actions to the peoples it is  oppressing. The Others become a violent and barbaric force which must for the sake of goodness and civilization be pacified.                                                                       



For example the common refrain repeated by the American and Western media is “Why do they hate us ?” America has since the 2nd world war invaded nations, instigated coups, fought proxy wars, assassinated leaders and installed dictators all over the non-western world. That will bring about animosity.



Instead, in order to maintain the self image of American goodness it becomes in the Uncivilized mind the rest of the world which hates America, is jealous of America and filled with a murderous rage towards America. For the good of peace on earth they ( these barbarians ) must be destroyed. For they aren’t logical, they are savages out to destroy the great and wonderful America, current champion of the Western civilisation.



This is a text book example of the practice of projection. The western mind attributes all its aggression and savagery to the victims of its excesses. Hereby justifying its actions as self defence. The fact, that the attacked cultures naturally do retaliate, only makes this insane logic seem more correct, in the mind of the Uncivilized.



It allows the Uncivilized Western mind to more easily forget that actually, they have initiated and have practiced a course of violence, and thereby in their own minds are able to uphold themselves as good and morally superior. In addition they can continue their violence, happy in the knowledge that it is a just and righteous application of force, in the defence of civilization against barbarism or as they have dubbed it today, terrorism. 



In the same way, the debate over poverty, raging all over the world clearly shows another example of projection rearing its ugly head. The “World bank, Imf, private banks and Multinationals are bleeding Africa dry. The continent of Africa is funding  the consumer party the Western world has been holding for itself the past 50 years. We have funded the rise of the West, over the past 500 years with great cost to ourselves.



Now the same societies who have practiced this rape and pillage tell us, the Africans that we are poor, due to our lack of everything from a willingness to work to an insistence on retaining our communal social structure.



Hereby the results of the actions of the Uncivilized West are now attributed to the  target of these assaults, we the Africans. The aggressor is now free from all responsibility and can now apply more of the same, claiming that it is for our own good they are applying these economic means. How could they impoverish us, the  Africans, for we are poor because we are intrinsically backward, is the thinking.     
                                                                                                                                     



This idea is the basis of Arrogance which is the fourth pillar of Uncivilization. The  differences in the living standards, economy, levels of education etc, between the West and Africa, start to be attributed to the basic character of the African individuals and societies. It is in our genes to be backward and poor, while it is believed to be inherent in the Western physical, mental and social make up to be wealthy, developed  and civilized.




This arrogance causes the Uncivilized mind to view itself as somewhat of a little God.                                                                                                                 




As it feels it is better and more enlightened than the barbarous Africans, any insane order or idea it conceives of, for how the Africans should organize themselves, must be blindly accepted. If the primitives are so impertinent as to refuse, then for their own good they must be forced to accept whatever the West has ordered them to do..



It is after all in their (the Africans) own interest (though they are too primitive to see it) and in the interest of the dissemination of civilisation. This arrogance is found in such various forms as “ the white mans burdens”- the idea of spreading Commerce, Christianity and Civilization to the darkest Africa - or “manifest destiny” in its most modern form, the Bush/Neocon doctrine of “spreading democracy”.



Built into arrogance and projection we have Denial as the third leg of this unholy trinity and 5th pillar of Uncivilization. Blatant denial, one could say is the overt result of the previous 2 pillars. Arrogance and projection work at a preconscious level. The Uncivilized mind will not even be aware of their practice of these 2 principles. Allowing the Uncivilized mind to live with the contradiction of feeling morally superior while behaving and thinking like a violent, prejudiced savage.                         



Whenever this is raised it is flatly and often crudely denied as whining over history,  playing the blame game or trying to change history to absolve the Africans from guilt. Whatever intellectual acrobatics the Uncivilized thinker utilizes, denial remains a primitive defence mechanism, designed to protect the inherent contradictions of a flawed understanding of the world.



If these contradictions fully see the light of day the thought system and the mind that dreamt it up can no longer function – a mind in open conflict rips it self apart – therefore denial is used to stop the Uncivilized mind, from seeing what is clear and evident.



In addition to that it also becomes necessary to deny any evidence that the Africans have in any way or form ever been a productive people. Our intrinsic backwardness is one of the chains of the link in the reasoning that justifies the actions of Uncivilization. Should that prove to be faulty the entire Uncivilized view of the world crumbles.



We must therefore understand, that when Uncivilized scholars attack the truths which Africanist scholars have unearthed about our past, it isn’t merely a case of them wanting to protect their intellectual and academic standing. They are defending their entire understanding of world, in fact the entire justification for the existence of their world.