[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Think Twice Before Donating to Kony 2012, the Charitable Meme du Jour

[C. G. Estabrook]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com>
> Date: March 7, 2012 4:42:26 PM CST

>
> I first found out about Joseph Kony this morning from a PEN-L  
> comrade who has been following the story behind the liberal  
> interventionist campaign based on the online movie "The Invisible  
> Children". I sent his note to a good friend from Uganda who had this  
> to say:
>
> ---
>
> Thank you for your mail, and your good work on this subject.  
> Certainly the intervention of the US in the war against Kony and the  
> LRA has an odour, or rather stench, of a 19th century civilising  
> mission to it. As to the reasons behind the intervention, it has  
> seemed for a long time that US has been working towards increasing  
> its influence in Southern Sudan and central Africa. The breakup of  
> the Sudan into two states, with the aid of its Ugandan proxy, was  
> done with this objective in mind. Now the war against Kony allows  
> the US to integrate the armed forces of the client regime in Uganda  
> even more tightly with the US military. At the same time, Kony and  
> the LRA, themselves in part a by-product of the war to break up  
> Sudan, now provide a pretext for the US to treat Southern Sudan as a  
> failed state that is unable to police its own territory, and  
> therefore further entrench itself there.
>
> I would guess the US perceives that intervention in countries like  
> Uganda and the Sudan, both neighbouring countries of the resource  
> rich DRC, gives it a strategic advantage in the new scramble for  
> Africa, particularly as Chinese oil, mining, and construction  
> companies have been moving into the continent that was formerly a  
> back yard of the Europeans and North Americans. The conflict in the  
> 1990s in the DRC and Great Lakes involved the replacement of French  
> with US clients in Rwanda and DRC, and undoubtedly US/European  
> rivalry played a part in those years of pointless bloodshed.  
> However, I feel the US is most concerned now to make sure that US  
> power is not marginalised in Africa by Chinese economic investment  
> and Chinese patronage of the African states and elites. Chinese  
> corporations have invested in Sudanese oil fields, and recently   
> there was some talk of the Chinese state paying for the extension of  
> the railway line from Northern Uganda to Juba, capital of Southern  
> Sudan.
>
> Such investments by Chinese corporations in peripheral places like  
> Uganda and Sudan may be relatively small in world terms but, given  
> the marginalisation of these places, even these small sums do  
> nonetheless threaten the thousands of threads of patronage,  
> corruption and client-ism that have thus far bound the post  
> independence African states to Europe and North America.
>
> Besides that, don't empire, wars and humanitarian interventions  
> become a self justifying way of life for those who embark on them?
>
> Talking of civilising missions, did you hear of this?
> http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/dr-livingstone-s-lost-1871-massacre-218211.aspx
>
[...]

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20120307/79e7d3b6/attachment.html>