Many Arabs should be relieved because there is now another face added to the face of terrorism, that is African people and all people of African descent.
And if your life has been like mine, people who are not African, or black, or have dark skin cannot tell the difference between an African and an African-American. Moreover, most people who are not African or black care not to know the difference.
With that said, black folk are once again on the terrorist watch and that sigh of relief that was made in 2001 is gone.
Of course when Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was arrested, I heard little whispers
of, "Those damn Nigerians."
And I could just imagine what Nigerians across the world have been saying, or thinking, especially those who have been dogged with the stereotypes of this West African country. The main descriptor used for Mutallab is that he is Nigerian, not Muslim, not insane, not confused young kid, but Nigerian.
More importantly, the botched airplane attack, that has so many holes in it, has generated much more than an American scare. This is no more than a bait-and-switch, meaning, we will use this incident to implement more control for things that have nothing to do with security, but everything to do with securing control over the people.
Mutallab incident has quickened the worldwide security measures that will eventually exclude those who are plugged into the matrix, to those who are removed from the global GPS tracking devices. And that means Nigeria.
Best believe when you travel there will be the high tech securities you used to see in the movies and thought were not real. There has already been an announcement that mandatory X-rays will be taken for international flights at airports. In Europe, I have seen it, you have thumb prints and eye scan data bases that are being collected.
Now of course, there are people who will buy the whole deal.
This argument is saying that they will agree to have public pap-smears and colonoscopies to have a safer flight, but several bombings and attempted attempted terrorist attacks later (that go on through the world), shit still is popping off.
And with the flight passengers whooping that ass, who needs security when folk is coming to the airplanes ready to rumble.
So lets talk about the coded shit that is happening, but most don't know about...
The United States will use this incident to push AFRICOM into Nigeria. Most people have not heard of AFRICOM, or are not clear of its purpose, but it is the US setting up military heaquarters in various locales throughout the continent of Africa. Ironically, in strategic positioning to China's strategic posts in Africa because China and Mid-East countries have profitted from a very lucrative (and pimpalicious) relationship with Africa.
AFRICOM's "purpose" was supposed to be provide a diplomatic presence to issues in Africa instead of military force.
Yeah right. Smack dab in the middle of some of the world's worse human rights issues, you can send guns, goons, condoms, dated medicine and old cans of Spam, but not remove American companies that are hiring henchmen to kill people from Sudan to South Africa for land, raw resources, and free labor.
(Click here to read excellent blog about AFRICOM)
Anyway, while countries like Ghana, Senegal, Kenya, and South Africa accepted AFRICOM without a fuss, Nigeria gave America the middle-finger and accepted with deal with continuous verbal complaints from officials and Nigerian citizens. This refusal was based on a plethora of reasons, but I would like to point out the most obvious,
OIL.
Nigeria has the the third largest oil reserves in the world. With the US losing the battle in the Middle-East, oil will the next biggest loss. Ultimately, damaged relations with the oil barrons of Saudi Arabi, Dubai, etc. and especially after the recent stock plummet in that region, of which the US turned their backs (and also helped fuel the damn thing with bad investments), the question of where to get oil becomes a glaring issue.
US-Nigerian oil relations have been extremely contentious since the 1950s. In fact, this oil issue is also linked to England and all of Europe.
In the mid-1900s Nigeria went through a huge petroleum-boom. A former colony of the British, it was seen as the jewel of Africa by the Brits, thus becoming the model of modernity for post-colonial Africa. The Brits thought that Nigeria would usher in a new Africa through a system that incorporated the West dipping heavily into Nigeria's financial coffers.
Nigerian opened up its doors to Europe and the US to build oil plants around the Delta region.
BP (British Petroleum), Royal Dutch Shell (Shell), and Chevron set up shop in areas that housed Nigerians who had been living there for generations. Towns and villages were displaced with the promises that money will flow back into the area as petroleum, the raw resource before being refined as oil, was flowing out.
At first, Nigeria began to enjoy the benefits of the petro-arrangement and began to build an infrastructure that bragged of modern government buildings, roads, houses, and cosmopolitan cities such as Lagos and Abuja.
At one point, the Naira, the national currency of Nigeria, was worth more than the American dollar.Nigeria began to place itself as a global economic heavyweight. Nigerian businessmen who were becoming wealthy from business deals involving petro started setting up manufacturing plants that would transfrom it into oil so they could sell it at a higher rate.
It wasn't just petroleum that Nigeria was beginning to manufacture, but also cocoa because it was and still is in huge demand from the Western countries.
Nigeria's position was that they could make more profit taking their own raw material, refining it and selling it rather than sending it to the West for pennies, only to have to buy it back at a much higher percentage than they were selling it. So instead of buying Nestle, they would make their own.
As time went on, the Nigerian elite, who had access and political ties, as well as tribal clout to the oil-rich lands, took back door deals and gave their land to Royal Dutch Shell and BP to create Nigerian based companies such as Shell Nigeria.
These deals cut out the local folk. Now Europeans, Americans, Asians, and Austrailians were hired to abstract the oil instead of providing local jobs. What made it much worse, there were not any type of environmental laws these companies had to adhere to, thus creating an ecological wasteland on once fertile farming lands.
Simultaneously, the West constructed an economic plan that would cut Nigeria out from attempting to be world leader. In fact, these inequitable trade agreements undermined all of Africa, the Caribbean, the South Pacific and South America's attempts to be economic contenders by using Nigeria's model.
It was most critical that Africa was deleted from all-things that involved legitimate financial world supremacy because Africa then and now holds most of the world's natural resources that are used in every product the world's population uses.
An African-American international attorney who has been working throughout Africa since 1996 told me that every products that all of the planet consumes has some type of raw resource from Africa.
So Nigeria, who was teeming in riches by mid-1960s (just after it received its independence) was cut out of deals and its manufacturing plants were not supported by Western countries. With the back door deals of greedy countrymen who sold land for big oil companies, the Naira plummetted and Nigeria's hopes of being a world dominion was lost.
In order to keep Nigeria economically poor, you had to maintain a political environment that was even more impoverished.
The Biafra Wars, or the Nigerian Civil War between 1967-1970 divided regions, tribes/ethnicites, religion and power. This war was a result of colonization, when Europe carved countries in Africa that never existed. This resulted in dividing tribes and clumping others
together that never were considered comrades. As a result of the failing economy and bubbling political conflicts, this made Nigeria ripe for internal chaos.
On top of all that, the war became about who sided with British post-colonial order and who did not. Who used the military as a means of control, and who used the power of raw resources.
Resultantly, the war ended with four major ethnic groups vying for power to this day. The Fulani and Hausa (who are mostly Muslim) have military control. The Igbo or Ibo (mostly Christian and Catholic and some who carry the traditional system) have control over the oil lands. The Yoruba (most Christian, but with a visible traditional spiritual system) have the political power.
Puppets replaced legitimate politicians in Nigeria.
Military Thugs were hired by BP, Shell, and other manufacturers
to terrorize villagers who were living in petro-rich areas. Human rights activists in the country attempted to expose the US and British involvement with the massacres.
One activist-journalist-writer by the name of Ken Saro-Wiwa who was a Niger-Delta citizen and leader of the Ogoni people, photographed and videotaped one of these massacres of his people.
Plus Saro-Wiwa documented the gross oil spills that damaged village water and crops, a main subsistence of local people. Saro-Wiwa was subsequently executed/assassinated by Nigerian officials in Port Harcourt in 1995.
In June 2009, Shell finally settled with the Saro-Wiwa family, paying $15.1 million, but not admitting its culpability in the murder.
Now with the recent "terrorist scare" of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab who is allegedly being linked to Al Qaeda, and ultimately, Osama bin Laden, someone the
US still has not located, the world is being turned upside down.
This is very interesting because you've had oil tankers three times the size of an airplanes being hijacked by so-called "Somali pirates" on the daily, but you don't see any security measures being taken. Even after that incident a couple of months ago where the US stepped in and killed several Somalis, the next week it was back to jacking ships as usual.
Nigerian women protest Nigerian issues, one of them being the petro-corruption. Partial nudity is the ultimate sign of women saying, "Don't fuck with me today, you piece of shit."
Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, terrorist my ass. More like a crazy guy who was probably talking to someone he thought was Al Qaeda, but was some undercover Joe-Blow egging him on.
This reaks with bullshit all over again.
By the way, happy travels, dammit.
Sorry pops, gotta check your diaper.
