If history, as the saying goes, is best qualified to reward all research then the past and present history of U.S. and European global imperialism against so-called third world nations can never produce in its latest “strategy for Africa,” anything of parity, equity, or freedom to independently determine the continent’s best interest.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam (NOI), once said, the “standard by which we measure ‘good’ has to be off.”
Min. Farrakhan, a spiritual man, emphasized “good” as having to be “qualified by God who is good.” “So, what you take as good, and I take as good from the definition of a man that’s no good, well, we would have to check what standard are we using to measure goodness,” he explained.
When reflecting on this point, check out U.S. and European history of imperialism, particularly in Africa.
Add to the above, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s prophetic remarks which appeared weekly in the pages of Muhammad Speaks newspaper. One of the NOI’s popular weekly news organs most distinctive attributes according to the scholarly digital library, JSTOR, was its “juxtaposition of religious and secular content.”
This was reflected in 1968 in Mr. Muhammad’s prophetic warning to Western powers and their antagonistic history of war mongering behavior. Published in his weekly centerfold column, Mr. Muhammad wrote: “The majority of the citizens of America (and the world) want some kind of peace and that peace is not foreseen in the movements of the government in Washington, unless the newly elected government takes steps to assure the powers of Asia, who have been attacked and their peace upset to the degree of anger, that a continuation of this antagonistic anger will bring an early total fall and destruction of the powers of England and America over the Black and colored races of the earth.”
He added, “The old world (Asia) will not bow to the West for peace. If peace is to be had, it will have to come from the West, who started the trouble that has put the nations of the earth in the present condition (without peace).”
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace mis-defines U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his recent three country “strategy for Africa” tour as “a vision for a twenty-first century U.S.-African partnership motivated by discernible global shifts.”
Photo: MGN Online
To write as senior fellow and director for the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Zainab Usman, that the U.S. is “positioning (itself) for the great power competition with China and Russia for influence in Africa,” displays America and NATO’s cold war redux, not some kind of favorable Western accord of African policy.
The U.S. and Russia cold war escalation can be seen in America sending UN ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, followed by Secretary Blinken to Africa ahead of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, scheduled for December in Washington, D.C.
After Amb. Thomas-Greenfield’s visit, and threats made to African leaders to not violate U.S. sanctions, Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan president, responded on Twitter.
“If they really want to help Africa, they should consider separating us from the sanctions in a war where we are not participating,” he tweeted.
The Christian Science Monitor noted that Africa’s “weak bureaucracies” with the continent’s lack of transparency and accountability have opened the floodgates for state officials and the mismanagement of resource wealth.
This latest iteration of U.S. and European imperialism is referred to as “Afro-liberalism” Dr. Ndongo Sylla, a Senegalese author, development economist and co-editor of “Economic and Monetary Sovereignty in 21st Century Africa.” Dr. Sylla “implies” giving substance to African neoliberal managers as trade negotiator as being at the root of African state-sponsored mismanagement.
“People don’t realize that whenever there is talk about African unity or Pan-Africanism it’s not (necessarily) about unity, it’s (about) how we can unite Africa in a way that the domination by the West or countries like China (can easily exploit the continent and its resources),” he told Africa Watch during an interview from Senegal.
The Pan-Africanist told The New Internationalist in a recent interview that, “The guys in APIX (Agency for the Promotion of Investment and Major works) are people who want to please the World Bank, the French or European development agencies … who want to be perceived as good managers.” He told the publication he sees this as a conflict of interest.
“Most of the people who serve as prime ministers or ministers of finance come from global financial circles—and they will never go against the interests of global finance.”
As Min. Farrakhan has repeatedly said, “Consider the source.”
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