*Africa and Its Discontents* What Does It Have to Do With Us?

http://www.counterpunch.org/buchheit06012007.html

By PAUL BUCHHEIT

*June 1, 2007*

We hear about people dying in Africa because of civil wars, or because they
didn't have a few dollars for medicine or malaria nets. We regret that their
corrupt governments cause these problems and make our aid ineffective. On
the surface this is indeed the reason for their problems. But if we look
more deeply at the effects of our need for oil and minerals, we arrive at a
different conclusion. We find the existence of 'rentier' states such as the
Republic of Congo, Chad, and Nigeria, where once-healthy and self-sustaining
agricultural countries have effectively rented themselves out to a demanding
western world by focusing on the sale of one valuable commodity that doesn't
offer any benefits to the masses.

Nigeria, for example. Its once-dominant agricultural industry has collapsed
as the government's emphasis has turned to oil. People who used to grow food
for a living are ignored as their 'production state' becomes an 'allocation
state' in which only a few local people prosper, and most of the profits go
to foreign oil companies. Militants in the Niger Delta attack oil company
rigs and threaten workers to steal the 'black gold,' and if we hear anything
about it we label them 'terrorists' and wonder why anyone would oppose
development in their own country.

But these are people who cannot find jobs when billions of dollars in oil
revenue is being taken from their homeland. People who are living with
pipelines on their farms and in front of their houses, where 24- hour gas
flaring leaves toxic chemicals in the air and burns the forest that used to
cool their villages. There is no electricity, no medicine, no way to learn a
skill to make money. Angry young men with guns roam the areas where children
used to attend school. Acid rain and oil spills have killed the fishing
industry. Children drink polluted water, suffer from diarrhea, and die. The
western world knows this is happening, but we have little incentive to stop
it because we need the oil.

We hear about military factions fighting each other in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC). Chances are they're fighting over cassiterite
and coltan, mineral needed for our cell phones and computers. In the DRC
little children work in 100-foot pits 70 hours a week, digging out stones
and lifting sacks of dirt and breaking rocks in some of the most dangerous
conditions anywhere in the world, all for a few pennies a day. They get
lowered into water holes, they handle toxic chemicals with their bare hands.
Other children work as soldiers. Tiny boys patrol the mines with oversized
machine guns on their shoulders. Guns that may have come from the U.S., for
we are the source of half the world's small arms.

We hear in the news about our country's benevolence, as we seek to spread
our way of life around the world so that everyone can have the opportunity
to live like us. An 'ecological footprint' measures the amount of land and
water needed by a human to support his or her consumption and waste. The
average person in the world has an ecological footprint of 5.5 acres. The 4
billion people living in Asia and Africa have an ecological footprint of
about 3.3 acres. Each of 300 million people in the U.S. uses 25 acres. If
everyone in the world consumed at the U.S. rate we would need five planet
earths to sustain us.

We hear in the news about our country's efforts to boost economies around
the world with free trade agreements. A 2003 International Monetary Fund
review found no evidence that globalization encouraged growth in developing
countries. A World Bank study in December 2006 reported that 14 of the
world's 25 poorest countries experienced increases in poverty over the past
ten years. According to the United Nations Report on the World Social
Situation 2005, the OECD countries that have most vigorously implemented our
economic policies have experienced the greatest increases in inequality
within their countries. The money doesn't reach the people most in need. The
New Economics Foundation reports that only 60 cents out of every $100.00 of
world income goes to those in extreme poverty, much less than in the 1980s
before the growth of free trade agreements.

We remain in Iraq for the 'advancement of democracy' while 100% of the Shias
in Baghdad believe that the U.S. military presence is "provoking more
conflict than it is preventing." A World Public Opinion poll shows that
almost 3/4 of the world disapproves of our dealings with Iraq. Thousands of
Americans have died in a war started on illusions. We went to defend
ourselves against weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist, and because
of imaginary ties to Al Qaeda. And now there's a new surge, based on a sense
of approaching victory, even when all the evidence, now and since Vietnam,
works against it, and when most Americans and Congress want us to get out.

We are also in Iraq because we fear terrorist and communists and others who
are out to get us. This is where we spend our money. President Bush approved
a record U.S. defense budget for 2008 - an increase of 11% to $481 billion.
This will be augmented by an additional $200 billion for the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. Domestic programs will be increased by 1%.

How do some of our undemocratic 'enemies' spend their money? China's
military budget is increasing rapidly, but it's still only a small
percentage of ours. China spent 9% of its GDP on infrastructure in 2005, the
U.S. spent 1/10 of 1%. China is considered a potential adversary, and a
competitor for the world's resources. They are spending billions of dollars
building roads and power plants in Africa, and getting oil in return. China
is the world's leading coal producer, and will soon be polluting the earth
as much as the United States. But China is also creating a city that will
not pollute. Dongtan will be self-sufficient, powered by solar energy and
fuel cells, and enriched by wetlands and newly planted forests. In the
United States funding for alternative energy research is less than half of
what it was in the late 1970s. For every $1 spent on alternative energy
research in the United States, $200 is spent on the military.

Undemocratic Cuba runs the Latin American School of Medical Science, which
has 20,000 students from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and the
United States , all of whom are given free tuition to become doctors. Cuba
has a low-cost national health plan that puts a doctor and nurse in every
neighborhood. In addition, Cuba sends doctors to countries in South America,
to hurricane and earthquake sites, even as far as Pakistan.

Undemocratic Venezuela has developed local cooperatives, or collective
worker groups, a democratic process whereby communities work together and
regulate themselves on business decisions. Nearly 200,000 cooperatives have
registered in Venezuela in this successful program.

Our country exports guns. We sell twice as many arms as any other nation,
and nearly half of the arms deliveries to developing countries in 2005 came
from the United States. In 2003, we sold weapons to 18 countries involved in
active conflicts, and to 20 countries declared undemocratic or human rights
abusers by the U.S. State Department's own Human Rights Report.

We hear in the news that we're a great country and the world's leader, and
that makes us feel patriotic. But what exactly is a patriot? Socrates
angered people by challenging them in public and exposing their ignorance.
But he felt that "the unexamined life is not worth living," and that he was
acting as a patriot by encouraging thoughtfulness over blind acceptance and
celebration of government policies. Like Socrates, Henry David Thoreau and
Martin Luther King felt that a patriot aspires to the highest ideals for his
country and for his children, and in fact would perform a disservice through
an unexamined acceptance of anything less. The first step to improving our
country is to examine our lives and to see what we're doing to the world.

*Paul Buchheit* is a Professor, Harold Washington College in Chicago. He can
be reached at: [log in to unmask]

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