Free Republic

The United States is seeking to prevent Russia from scoring a major new win with coup-hit Niger, wagering despite initial disappointment that long-standing military ties will keep the country in the Western orbit. Niger has been the linchpin of US and French anti-jihadist operations in the Sahel, especially since the military takeover of neighboring Mali, which has shown the door to Western forces and welcomed Russia's ruthless Wagner mercenary force. Victoria Nuland, the acting deputy secretary of state, on an unannounced visit to Niamey on Monday acknowledged little progress on reversing the July 26 coup but said that the military...

On 19 and 20 March, some 40 African delegations travelled to Moscow ahead of the Russia-Africa summit scheduled for July in St Petersburg, to discuss cooperation and the fight against the influence of “former colonial powers”. There is but one step between Vladimir Putin’s office and the Duma in central Moscow. It was at the Russian parliament’s headquarters, just a few metres from the Kremlin, that the conference “Russia-Africa in a multipolar world” was held from 19-20 March, the second of its kind devoted to strengthening cooperation between African and Russian parliamentarians. The meeting came ahead of the next Africa-Russia...

– Since 1991, Moscow has sought to retain its influence and control in the post-Soviet space at a lower cost than it paid in Soviet times, thus leaving the non-Russian countries around it in worse shape than they would otherwise be and rapidly leading ever more of them to seek ties with other centers of power, Anton Yevstratov says. That approach which relies on the continuation of past ties, the use of frozen conflicts, and the absence of outside influence has worked well in some places; but it is failing in many and will fail in more, not because these...

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., wrote in 2017 that America was founded by genocide and our foreign policy smacks of “neocolonialism.” “We must confront that our nation was founded by genocide and we maintain global power through neocolonialism,” Omar said in a tweet linking a Time article titled “ Unity Will Take Generations” she wrote about the August 2017 white supremacist rally Charlottesville, Va.

How Little They've Learned: FPIC and Neo-Colonialism By Benjamin Wolinski There was a time when Western Europeans, armed with the technology and flush with the wealth of the Industrial Revolution, went to the nations of Asia, conquered them, and harnessed the resources of foreign lands for whatever purposes they chose. By the mid-20th Century, the nations of Asia had finally had enough of these imperialists and, one by one, sent the Europeans home. Now it's the 21st Century and Western Europeans, this time armed with the technology and flush with the wealth of the Information Technology Revolution, have returned to...

Obama believes in a sort of moral equivalency; that is, morality cynically is to be adjudicated only by those who have power. And just as there’s sort of a Mason-Dixon Line economically in the United States between those of, say, 200,000 in income and above and those below (and above at that divide, you become “them”), so too that applies to the world at large. The United States is the $200,000 income winner, and all the other countries are, as is true in the U.S., in need of Obama’s sympathy and redistributive attention. So we have an obligation to help...

Africa Becoming a Biofuel Battleground By Horand Knaup Western companies are pushing to acquire vast stretches of African land to meet the world's biofuel needs. Local farmers and governments are being showered with promises. But is this just another form of economic colonialism? Everything will turn out alright. Correction: everything is going to get better. There will be new roads, a new school, a pharmacy, even a proper water supply. Most of all, there will be jobs -- 5,000, at the very least. "If there are jobs for us, then it's a good thing," says Juma Njagu, 26, who hopes...

The original architects of the U.S. empire—long before its celebration by today’s neoconservatives—understood the importance of legitimacy in the neo-colonialist enterprise. In order to achieve some degree of legitimacy, it was important to create a native stooge—what some call a “comprador”—heavily dependent upon American power to govern in the interests of the U.S. government. In Iraq we have had the proverbial “Three Stooges,” as in the movies, often beating up on each other. The first of these was Saddam Hussein, who was essential in helping evict the British from control in Iraq and then in attacking Iran, but who became...

ABIDJAN (AFP) - Armed men wearing army uniforms interrupted Ivory's Coast national TV to demand the resignation of the army chief and that French peacekeepers leave the troubled country within 48 hours. The men, who said they were soldiers speaking on behalf of the west African state's entire armed forces, insisted that "this is not a coup d'etat." They said they were responding to events in which scores of pro-government protestors and soldiers skirmished Saturday with French troops policing a demilitarized zone separating the south from the rebel-held north. The announcement on national TV -- and a similar attempt reportedly...