Africom: a prelude to the re-colonization of Africa
http://www.vanguardngr.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1755&Itemid=0
Africom: The invasion of Africa?
by Obi Nwakanma
Sunday, 18 November 2007
EARLIER in the week, the deputy secretary of state in the United States, Mr. Negroponte came to Abuja. His mission was clear: he had come to notify the Nigerian government that the United States will establish its Africa Command (Africom) and will site this in an African country. There was no negotiations, just diplomatic courtesy. Some say Africom is a done deal in spite of what seems to be but a feeble resistance by African countries about the presence of the American military command in Africa. In the same week, both President Sirleaf Jonhson suggested that Liberia was prepared to host Africom.
Nigeria’s chief of defence, Lt. General Andrew Azazi, nevertheless, answering reporters questions over the reaction of the ECOWAS states said that the matter was not merely a Liberian question, but would be determined by West African military chiefs. The prospects of America’s vast military presence in Africa has instigated a flurry of talk and fear by Africans, that finally, all the chips have fallen into place of a long planned re-colonization of Africa.
Many have begun to make associations with once disparate incidents, which are now fitting into complex theories of conspiracy (note that conspiracy theories are not necessarily untrue). There are those who feel that the grounds have been eminently watered for this invasion and recolonization of Africa.
Sometime in 2006, the countries of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, the G-8, met in Berlin to discuss Africa and its condition. The main issue was that no African country was invited and none was, therefore, present in this new Berlin conference. It was an ironic throwback to the other conference in Berlin in the 19th century which foregrounded the scramble for Africa and its laceration into various spheres of influence.
There are many who have noted that not long after the Berlin G-8 meeting on Africa, there followed the much-publicized exhibition of Africans and their habitat in so-called African villages in a German zoo. Perhaps we may make the connections once more, with the implications of the images, the representations, the symbolisms, the absences, the constructions of Africa as a primitive place. Add that with the images of Africa presented across the world as a dying continent, a place decimated by disease, violence and hunger, by the failure of humanity; a place that has variously been described as a “basket case”. A place of negation.
The other day, a friend of mine in along phone conversation asked me to think about the implication of the fact, that all the contemporary African writings awarded current prestigious international prizes are carefully selected by what they say aboutAfrica, which is why they are published in the first place by international publishers: the violence, the negation, the image of broken societies and broken humanity, which somehow appeals to the unconscious perception of Africa by a western audience conditioned by such images to imagine and possibly sympathize with Africa’s immortal plight.
That sympathy has also translated into charity of the sort that now suggest the failure of African sovereignty: state governors now seek “foreign donors” to come to help them carry out their responsibilities to their citizens. That is the failure of independence, of political authority, and economic autonomy. We can now in fact even begin to imagine, we of this generation, that all that huff-and puff by the leaders of the anti-colonial movement that fought for African independence in the 1940s and 50s was all vain. According to some of the western mindset, Africa has shown that in the last fifty years, it has been unable to manage the political independence so graciously granted it by the European power after the European war, also known as the World War II.
So what has happened to Africa? The collapse of states and the spawning of stateless actors, terrorists who have taken over the Gulf of Guinea, threatening the world with potential anarchy, and so in its role as the world’s most charitable nation, the United States, mindful of the danger this portends for the rest of the world, including poor Africa of course, has now decided to establish and donate it military technology and establish a command in Africa, to help check that menace and secure the vulnerable but strategic Gulf of Guinea.
That is the story. But the conspiracy theory is something different: many see a link between Dr. Watson’s recent slip of the tongue about African or lack intelligence as very connected to a larger program embarked upon by a racist Western agenda to take over Africa and become its “guardians” or “trustees” of its undeveloped humanity for their own good and the good of the world. Dr. Watson was quite poignant about his concerns: he was, he said, not hopeful about the future of Africa.
The trouble said the eminent geneticist and Nobel Laureate was that Western institutions and governments were formulating decisions based on presumptions of the equality of African intelligence, whereas, this was in fact unreal. The point to be made is that Dr. Watson may have been hushed down, some Africans have said, but his words reflect the deep thinking and actual positions of the elite in the west: Africa’s incapacity to formulate its own decisions; sub-Saharan Africa’s lack of ability to govern itself.
Many see this as a throw back to the 19th century, of the fiction of the “civilizing mission” and of Stanley meeting Mutesa, or the subduing of the Congo by the vicious charity of Leopold. Anybody who has read Eric Hobswam’s book, The Scramble For Africa will get the point. There are many who have formulated the relation of a long programme begun, right even at the eve of independence to make sure that Africa does not work its way though the mesh of postcolonial transitions.
Who see clearly how the Great European powers mined the polity of the new nations and condemned eternally to conflict and violence. The first symptoms became clear in the Congo with the CIA’s complicity in the killing of the nationalist leader, Patrice Lumumba.
Nigeria was the next flashpoint: having undermined he nationalist movement and leadership of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Britons left a national time-bomb with the detonators in the hands of their proxies and lackeys whom they maneouvered into power, and the first indication of the crisis in this “last lighted torch of the century” as the poet Okigbo described Nigeria, was the violence that rocked it, the coups and counter coups of 1966, the genocide against the Igbo, and the devastating civil war, followed by a cycle of foreign-sponsored coups and counter coups that further whittled the meaning of the nation and its possibility.
While all that was going on, people like Chinweizu have shouted themselves hoarse about the international Western complicity to reduce Black population, a program of which Olusegun Obasanjo is fully associated and of which he is a prime advocate. Many have associated and indeed made connections with Obasanjo to very interesting relationships and very interesting characters and programs emanating from his western sponsors. Chinweizu has spoken very frequently and circulated his theories of a biological warfare against the Black population, which he has noted dates back to the concern of in key epicentres of Western power, about the implication of rising African population; a concern expressed with bitter clarity by the famous Robert McNamara to the US Congress in the 1960s.
There are those who see in the new move by the Americans to establish a military base in Africa, a parallel to Goldie’s United African Company, which began from the same Gulf of Guinea site. The next move would be the dissolution of formal Nigerian sovereignty and convocation of all the treaties of Protection against China. In other words the states in the Gulf of Guinea would soon become protectorates of the United States. Some say, come of it: this is the twenty-first century. Many others say, precisely: welcome to the new century and the invasion of Africa- and the lunch of the new world order.
Africom: The invasion of Africa?
by Obi Nwakanma
Sunday, 18 November 2007
EARLIER in the week, the deputy secretary of state in the United States, Mr. Negroponte came to Abuja. His mission was clear: he had come to notify the Nigerian government that the United States will establish its Africa Command (Africom) and will site this in an African country. There was no negotiations, just diplomatic courtesy. Some say Africom is a done deal in spite of what seems to be but a feeble resistance by African countries about the presence of the American military command in Africa. In the same week, both President Sirleaf Jonhson suggested that Liberia was prepared to host Africom.
Nigeria’s chief of defence, Lt. General Andrew Azazi, nevertheless, answering reporters questions over the reaction of the ECOWAS states said that the matter was not merely a Liberian question, but would be determined by West African military chiefs. The prospects of America’s vast military presence in Africa has instigated a flurry of talk and fear by Africans, that finally, all the chips have fallen into place of a long planned re-colonization of Africa.
Many have begun to make associations with once disparate incidents, which are now fitting into complex theories of conspiracy (note that conspiracy theories are not necessarily untrue). There are those who feel that the grounds have been eminently watered for this invasion and recolonization of Africa.
Sometime in 2006, the countries of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, the G-8, met in Berlin to discuss Africa and its condition. The main issue was that no African country was invited and none was, therefore, present in this new Berlin conference. It was an ironic throwback to the other conference in Berlin in the 19th century which foregrounded the scramble for Africa and its laceration into various spheres of influence.
There are many who have noted that not long after the Berlin G-8 meeting on Africa, there followed the much-publicized exhibition of Africans and their habitat in so-called African villages in a German zoo. Perhaps we may make the connections once more, with the implications of the images, the representations, the symbolisms, the absences, the constructions of Africa as a primitive place. Add that with the images of Africa presented across the world as a dying continent, a place decimated by disease, violence and hunger, by the failure of humanity; a place that has variously been described as a “basket case”. A place of negation.
The other day, a friend of mine in along phone conversation asked me to think about the implication of the fact, that all the contemporary African writings awarded current prestigious international prizes are carefully selected by what they say aboutAfrica, which is why they are published in the first place by international publishers: the violence, the negation, the image of broken societies and broken humanity, which somehow appeals to the unconscious perception of Africa by a western audience conditioned by such images to imagine and possibly sympathize with Africa’s immortal plight.
That sympathy has also translated into charity of the sort that now suggest the failure of African sovereignty: state governors now seek “foreign donors” to come to help them carry out their responsibilities to their citizens. That is the failure of independence, of political authority, and economic autonomy. We can now in fact even begin to imagine, we of this generation, that all that huff-and puff by the leaders of the anti-colonial movement that fought for African independence in the 1940s and 50s was all vain. According to some of the western mindset, Africa has shown that in the last fifty years, it has been unable to manage the political independence so graciously granted it by the European power after the European war, also known as the World War II.
So what has happened to Africa? The collapse of states and the spawning of stateless actors, terrorists who have taken over the Gulf of Guinea, threatening the world with potential anarchy, and so in its role as the world’s most charitable nation, the United States, mindful of the danger this portends for the rest of the world, including poor Africa of course, has now decided to establish and donate it military technology and establish a command in Africa, to help check that menace and secure the vulnerable but strategic Gulf of Guinea.
That is the story. But the conspiracy theory is something different: many see a link between Dr. Watson’s recent slip of the tongue about African or lack intelligence as very connected to a larger program embarked upon by a racist Western agenda to take over Africa and become its “guardians” or “trustees” of its undeveloped humanity for their own good and the good of the world. Dr. Watson was quite poignant about his concerns: he was, he said, not hopeful about the future of Africa.
The trouble said the eminent geneticist and Nobel Laureate was that Western institutions and governments were formulating decisions based on presumptions of the equality of African intelligence, whereas, this was in fact unreal. The point to be made is that Dr. Watson may have been hushed down, some Africans have said, but his words reflect the deep thinking and actual positions of the elite in the west: Africa’s incapacity to formulate its own decisions; sub-Saharan Africa’s lack of ability to govern itself.
Many see this as a throw back to the 19th century, of the fiction of the “civilizing mission” and of Stanley meeting Mutesa, or the subduing of the Congo by the vicious charity of Leopold. Anybody who has read Eric Hobswam’s book, The Scramble For Africa will get the point. There are many who have formulated the relation of a long programme begun, right even at the eve of independence to make sure that Africa does not work its way though the mesh of postcolonial transitions.
Who see clearly how the Great European powers mined the polity of the new nations and condemned eternally to conflict and violence. The first symptoms became clear in the Congo with the CIA’s complicity in the killing of the nationalist leader, Patrice Lumumba.
Nigeria was the next flashpoint: having undermined he nationalist movement and leadership of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Britons left a national time-bomb with the detonators in the hands of their proxies and lackeys whom they maneouvered into power, and the first indication of the crisis in this “last lighted torch of the century” as the poet Okigbo described Nigeria, was the violence that rocked it, the coups and counter coups of 1966, the genocide against the Igbo, and the devastating civil war, followed by a cycle of foreign-sponsored coups and counter coups that further whittled the meaning of the nation and its possibility.
While all that was going on, people like Chinweizu have shouted themselves hoarse about the international Western complicity to reduce Black population, a program of which Olusegun Obasanjo is fully associated and of which he is a prime advocate. Many have associated and indeed made connections with Obasanjo to very interesting relationships and very interesting characters and programs emanating from his western sponsors. Chinweizu has spoken very frequently and circulated his theories of a biological warfare against the Black population, which he has noted dates back to the concern of in key epicentres of Western power, about the implication of rising African population; a concern expressed with bitter clarity by the famous Robert McNamara to the US Congress in the 1960s.
There are those who see in the new move by the Americans to establish a military base in Africa, a parallel to Goldie’s United African Company, which began from the same Gulf of Guinea site. The next move would be the dissolution of formal Nigerian sovereignty and convocation of all the treaties of Protection against China. In other words the states in the Gulf of Guinea would soon become protectorates of the United States. Some say, come of it: this is the twenty-first century. Many others say, precisely: welcome to the new century and the invasion of Africa- and the lunch of the new world order.
http://www.emergingminds.org/magazine/content/item/5186
U.S. Military Interventions Arouse African Suspicions
U.S. Military Interventions Arouse African Suspicions
By G. Dunkel
09/10/07
09/10/07
U.S. troops are currently engaged in military exercises in northern Mali in Africa. Called Operation Flintlock, the exercise involves troops from the former colonialist powers Britain, France and the Netherlands, as well as from Mali, Algeria, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Senegal, Tunisia and Nigeria. The U.S. military ran the first Operation Flintlock in 2005 in northern Mali.
Mali, which is among the 10 poorest countries in the world, is Africa’s third largest gold producer, afterSouth Africa and Ghana. Mali’s gold mining is dominated by Canadian, European and South African firms. Northern Mali, which shares a long border with southern Algeria, may contain vast pools of oil.
Operation Flintlock, scheduled to end Sept. 8, reinforces the U.S. goal of setting up a new African Command (AFRICOM) somewhere inside Africa. This goal defies the position taken by many African countries, including South Africa.After the meeting of the defense and security ministers of the Southern African Defense Community (SADC) at the end of August, South African Defense Minister Mosiuoa Lekota briefed the press.
Questioned regarding AFRICOM, Lekota said: “The SADC Summit did adopt the position that it is better if the United States were involved with Africa from a distance rather than be present on the continent. That creates a sense of uncertainty. ... The SADC defense and security ministers took a decision that sister countries of the region should not agree to host AFRICOM and in particular, armed forces, since this would have a negative effect. That recommendation was presented to the Heads of State and this is a SADC position.”
Regarding AFRICOM and the African Union, Lekota said: “My understanding is that this is a continental position. We have no quarrel with AFRICOM as such, but the issue of its location in Africa is of concern. The continent has said that it would not like to see new forces in Africa.” The SADC’s members include Angola, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and nine other smaller countries in the region.
Africa’s vast resources and labor have enriched and developed capitalism in Europe and North America for centuries, while leaving most Africans impoverished. also expressing suspicions about the U.S. goals with AFRICOM. In the Kenyan newspaper The Standard, a July 8 article analyzed U.S. motives: “Last week, Tanzania announced that it had hit commercially viable oil deposits along its coast. This comes just over one year after Uganda struck its own black gold in the west. And suddenly rumors of Americans calling on the region are rife.”
The article notes that the U.S.’s traditional sources of oil in Latin America and the Middle East are “tightening grip on their resources. Which is why East Africa is believed to be the next oil frontier theWest appears determined to hold onto.” The article emphasizes not only that Africa can supply the U.S. with oil but that its economy is growing so fast, with the increasing price of oil, that Africa will become an important market.
In the midst of Operation Flintlock, a revolt among the Tuareg, a nomadic ethnic group living in northern Mali and Niger, and southern Algeria, suddenly flared up after a peace agreement had been reached in July. La Tribune, an Algerian newspaper published in Algiers, asked in an editorial published on itswebsite Aug. 29 if this revolt was going to be an“alibi for the U.S. to militarily install itself in the region.”
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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/08/1450204
Actor and Activist Danny Glover & TransAfrica Forum's Nicole Lee on the U.S. Militarization of Africa and Africom
Actor and Activist Danny Glover & TransAfrica Forum's Nicole Lee on the U.S. Militarization of Africa and Africom
Thursday, November 8th, 2007
West African military chiefs added their voices Tuesday to a growing number of critics of a new US military command called Africom. Africom was established by the Department of Defense in October and covers every country in Africa except for Egypt. It is expected to be fully operational within a year. But it's already generating controversy and kepticism. Several African countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, and Libya, are opposed to Africom, and late Tuesday, West African military chiefs denounced the US approach to the project. Africom officials claim the project will strengthen humanitarian and peacekeeping operations and is not about building more US bases. But critics allege that it's a move to secure US access to natural resources and counter the growing Chinese presence across the continent. African nations supply the United States with more than 24 percent of its oil, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Actor, activist and TransAfrica Forum board chair Danny Glover and TransAfrica Forum executive director Nicole Lee wrote about Africom in the latest issue of The Nation magazine. Their article is called "Say No to Africom."
Nicole Lee, Executive Director, TransAfrica Forum
Danny Glover, actor and activist, board chair, TransAfrica Forum
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AMY GOODMAN: West African military chiefs added their voices Tuesday to a growing number of critics of a new US military command called Africom. Africom was established by the Pentagon in October and covers every country in Africa, except Egypt. It’s expected to be fully operational within a year. But it’s already generating controversy and skepticism. Several African countries, including South Africa, Nigeria and Libya, are opposed to Africom. And late Tuesday, West African military chiefs denounced the US approach to the project. Africom officials claim the project will strengthen humanitarian and peacekeeping operations and is not about building more US bases. But critics say it’s a move to secure US access to natural resources and counter the growing Chinese presence across Africa. African nations supply the US with more than 24% of its oil, this according to the US Energy Information Administration.
Actor, activist and TransAfrica Forum board chair, Danny Glover, and TransAfrica Forum executive director Nicole Lee wrote about Africom in the latest issue of The Nation magazine. Their article is called "Say No to Africom." Danny Glover and Nicole Lee join us now here in Washington, D.C.
DANNY GLOVER: Good morning, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Welcome, both, to Democracy Now! I want to also congratulate --
NICOLE LEE: Good morning.
AMY GOODMAN: -- you for thirty years of TransAfrica, what you were celebrating last night here in Washington.
DANNY GLOVER: Well, certainly, TransAfrica has been on the cutting edge of a number of issues. As we look back on TransAfrica’s issues, the issues that TransAfrica has put forth, whether it’s the fight against apartheid, the fight to restore democracy to Haiti, and also the battle that TransAfrica waged around the AGOA, Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, which we understand and feel were some of the right decisions to oppose that act. Certainly, we oppose the strategic military presence of the US government in Africa. We see what is happening in Somalia right now, where a US surrogate, Ethiopia, has played a large role in disrupting and certainly destabilizing that country, and further, rather, you know. And so, we're very concerned about that. It’s very telling that a number of countries have voiced on the continent -- at least more than eleven countries on the content have voiced their concern and their opposition to this military presence and US presence in the region. There are issues, certainly, in the Horn of Africa. There’s issues in the Gulf of Guinea, as well. And certainly Africom is not a new brainchild; it’s something that’s been in the works for some time
.
AMY GOODMAN: Nicole Lee, can you explain exactly what Africom is?
NICOLE LEE: Well, it’s difficult to give the exact definition of Africom, mostly because the State Department and the Defense Department have made Africom a moving target. When the Bush administration first announced Africom, they suggested that there would be a military presence, military bases, and that it would cover all countries, except Egypt, and it would be in addition to our presence in Djibouti. As criticism mounted, the Pentagon then said, no, actually this will be floating bases. But what is very clear about Africom is there is certainly a move to find a home for the base and that there will be both technical advisers and the ability to bring US troops on the ground to Africa. This is something that concerns many, many African nations, and overwhelmingly they have spoken up and said even the creation of such a mechanism is extremely dangerous, given the historical realities Africa still deals with, in terms of US militarism in the past on the continent of Africa.
AMY GOODMAN: What are the countries being promised?
NICOLE LEE: Well, the countries that have been interested in hosting -- and there’s been very, very few -- certainly aid is involved. The State Department is very much involved in the creation of Africom. Interestingly, this is one of the first times that the State and the Defense Department have worked so closely together, and it’s sort of a hybrid departmental initiative, where you have General Kip Ward, who is the head of Africom, but the associate head of Africom, if you will, is a State Department official. And so, you have a situation where aid to Africa is being uniquely tied to militarization, and this is extremely dangerous. We know that many countries in Africa need aid for HIV/AIDS medication, for debt relief -- I mean, this is a reality. Yet, having the State Department tied so closely to Africom is concerning many countries who truly believe that self-determination must be a priority for US policy towards the continent.
AMY GOODMAN: Danny Glover, what kind of response do you get from the Bush administration, from the State Department, when you raise these issues, and also when you work with African leaders?
DANNY GLOVER: Well, certainly the response from the Bush administration has been virtually none at all, you know? I think that the Bush administration, particularly, has not paid a great deal of attention to exactly those particular responses from all of us in civil society. We know that it is necessary to keep waging and drawing attention to those issues around Africa and the continent, but certainly the response from the Bush administration particularly has been one in which they’ve set their own course, without responding to the specific needs of those of us who have specific concerns.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Nicole Lee, as head of a grassroots activist group, TransAfrica Forum, how are you mobilizing people in this country to deal with the issue of US troops on African soil?
NICOLE LEE: Well, the first thing we must do, Amy, and that we are working very hard with our allies to do is to educate both other grassroots organizations and the American people about the reality of Africom. Many, many people are working hard to stop the war in Iraq, and those same constituents must also be concerned with Africom. Africom is just another manifestation of the US imperialistic moves in that region. Clearly, a base and a military presence in Africa, either in the Horn or in West Africa, threatens the sovereignty, threatens war in that entire region, in that entire hemisphere. And so, antiwar activists and Africa advocates must be very, very concerned with this new initiative. Many people are saying, “Well, the train has left the station. Africom is going to be established.” We still must fight. We still must fight to ensure that the Bush administration and Congress knows that this is not the priority of the American people. Any interest, any attention given to Africa is not necessarily good attention. And this is a perfect example of attention that is not good for Africa. Africa needs its sovereignty. Each country needs its sovereignty respected. Aid is necessary. Debt relief is necessary. But this is not a way in which we can ensure that democracy will continue in countries on the continent of Africa. So certainly education, and then also, making this a part of our call to stop the war in Iraq, to stop the wars in Afghanistan and ensure that our country stands down from this militaristic policy.
DANNY GLOVER: One of the things that I think that has to be very clear, that this initiative has received broad support from both parties. You know, it’s not just the Republican administration. What our further concern is that even though it may be placed into existence within the next year and fully operational in the next year, what are the implications after that, when we have perhaps maybe another administration? And where does this go? So I think sometimes we draw these distinctions between what the Republicans do and what the Democrats do, but there’s a clear pattern, in terms of policy and foreign policy and military policy, that goes across both party lines. So I think it’s important for us to stand up, as we talk about this now, and the Bush administration being the initiators of this, but this idea is an idea that’s been -- as I said before, been in the making for some time, and its actualization comes at this particular point, but it has a life after that. What do we do now at this particular point, knowing that we have been on the other side of this decision long before its action?
AMY GOODMAN: What role, Danny Glover, does oil play in this story?
DANNY GLOVER: Well, obviously, oil plays a major -- if we say that 24% of the oil from the US comes from Africa, then it plays a major role in this. But other raw materials, other extracted materials play a role, as well. We see, on the other hand, China, which is the largest producer of commodities in the world and in need of oil and resources for their own expansionism, there is a [inaudible] conflict. What the US brings to the table is its military prowess. It has the most powerful army in the world. It can exercise its own specific policy through military action. And that military action, as we’ve seen in the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq and other proposed war, has been a threat, is used as a threat, being a technique, a mechanism to keep people in line, to keep nations in line. So the very presence of that is a threat to democracy, sovereignty and independence on the continent itself.
NICOLE LEE: And the military contractors, of course, that we're seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan are also already playing a role in this. Certainly, the same corporations we're dealing with, such as DynCorp that is working in working in Iraq, is also working on the continent of Africa. So the corporate interests, corporate interest in oil, corporate interest in generally just military contracts on the continent of Africa, it’s there. It is already there. And so, it’s another way in which the Bush administration is pushing forth its corporatist agenda to ensure that it’s not just the Middle East, but it is also the continent of Africa and the world.
AMY GOODMAN: And the level of activism on the ground in Africa?
NICOLE LEE: People are speaking out. What is amazing is it’s the grassroots, it’s the civil society, it’s the scholars on the continent of Africa that are speaking out. And it is also the governments. And it is not just governments that can afford to speak out, but it is governments that cannot afford to speak out, because they rely on debt relief, they rely on aid. Yet this is so egregious, and there are so many concerns that the people of Africa have that have voiced to their governments, that the governments have had to speak out.
We have SADC, the Southern African Development Community, came together, and the defense minister said that no country in SADC will allow an Africa Command to be built on its soil. We have a country like Nigeria, that is holding up much of the peacekeeping in Darfur, that has been asking for assistance with more troops and aid. They are saying no to Africom, because they realize that attention then will shift from the peacekeeping force and from a multilateral peacekeeping force to one of unilateralism. And so, countries who truly, truly have a lot to lose know that they have much more to lose with an Africa Command and are speaking out.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for joining us on this thirtieth anniversary of TransAfrica. And on another note, Danny Glover, you're now playing a sort of crooked Republican consultant on the TV dramatic series Brothers and Sisters?
DANNY GLOVER: It’s only a role. I am. In fact, I’m going to do specifically eight episodes of Brothers and Sisters for ABC. And it seems to be a very popular show. It certainly is a wonderful cast that’s there, which I’m enjoying. And just don’t have my audience believe that the real Danny Glover is coming out through this character. I mean, I’ve had that problem once before in some of my films.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I thank you very much, both, for joining us, Danny Glover, actor, activist and chair of TransAfrica Forum; and Nicole Lee, the new executive director of TransAfrica. .
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