RT’s Lee Camp on What the US Military Is Doing in Niger

‘All the things we ever needed
I don’t need them now.
And all the things we did
Were confidential,
And hidden from me anyhow.’

– The Sisters of Mercy, Something Fast, early 1990s.

Remember those five US squaddies, who were killed in Niger the other week, but the American government couldn’t tell anyone what they were doing there in the first place? In this short piece from RT’s Redacted Tonight, comedian Lee Camp reveals what America is doing in this country in West Africa, and how the American military-industrial complex, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have worked to screw over yet another country.

He begins by stating that Africa possesses many of the vital mineral resources needed by the modern world – gold, diamonds, oil and so on. However, American investment and hegemony over the continent is being challenged by China, which has secured deals in recent years with African nations covering nearly ever sector of the continent’s economy. To maintain their military readiness for conflict in the region, in 2008 the Americans set up AFRICOM. From 2010 to 2017 the number of US troops in African increased by 2000 per cent. Most African countries don’t allow American drones to be armed. Niger was the one exception that was open to the Americans flying armed drones within its borders. The country has rich deposits of cobalt, manganese, chromium and platinum, metals that are used in modern weapons systems. It does not have any of the yellow cake uranium that Bush and co. claimed Niger was supplying to Saddam Hussein in preparation for Iraq making a nuclear bomb. This didn’t stop the claim being revived again in 2011, when it was alleged that Niger was sending the mineral to Iran.

Between 1990 and 1995 there was a Tuareg rebellion in Niger and Mali against poverty, corruption and exploitation. This came to end when the rebel leader was killed in a plane crash, which many of them blamed on the C.I.A. It looked suspicious, because an autonomous Tuareg region in the north of Niger threatened the plans of Exxon and other American oil and mining corporations to have a free hand in exploiting the region around Lake Chad.

This was followed by a famine, which was created not by a shortage of grain, but through the deregulation of the grain markets and the price of oil ordered by the I.M.F. and World Bank. The civilian government was then overthrown by a military coup in 2011, which suspended the constitution. The American government has a policy of not supporting governments that have come to power through military action. But Obama’s administration showed that they were as ready to embrace them, as they were to embrace the military regimes that had also seized power through C.I.A. sponsored coups in Honduras and Paraguay.

Then there was the NATO bombing of Libya and its assistance for the rebels, who overthrew and assassinated Colonel Gaddafi. As part of their policy of regime change, the American government also armed and gave aid to various Islamist groups connected to al-Qaeda. After the fall of Gaddafi’s government, these groups spread out across north Africa, and moved south across the Sahel down to Niger, to cause trouble to American corporations in the region in another example of the blowback that has come from terrorist groups armed as part of American imperialism.

Camp then goes to explain why Americans should care about the situation in Niger. It’s because this is where Americans’ tax dollars are going. He states that America now has a military government in charge. It is also another area in which America’s brave young men and women are fighting, and from where they’re coming back in coffins.

The clip concludes with comments from John Perkins, the author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, who states that after the Fall of the Soviet Union, America had the opportunity to practise good business practices around the world. They didn’t, and instead did exactly the opposite, promoting exploitation. As a result, the Chinese are stepping in to take advantage of the mistakes America has made.

The video’s entitled ‘What They Won’t Tell You About US Troops in NIGER’, and my guess is that they really aren’t going to be keen about the folks on this side of the Atlantic knowing about it either. Because whatever America is doing, we have to join in as part of the Special Relationship. Which means that we cling to our status as a world power by riding on the Americans’ coat-tails, acting as their poodle. Just as we did under Blair, and as we have done ever since World War II. And under Blair, we also sent ‘peace-keeping’ missions into West Africa – I think one of them was in Sierra Leone during their civil War in the late ’90s and early part of this century. So it really isn’t going to surprise me if it’s revealed that we’ve also got troops in there, or will have to send some in shortly if the situation escalates further.

As for the famine created by the demands of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, that scenario has been played out in just about every country across the globe which has been forced to go to them for help. Way back in the 1990s there was a short film on Channel 4 about the IMF had trashed the economy of one of the countries in Southern Africa. The country was in dire economic straits, but had a healthy industry cultivating and exporting peanuts under government control. So the I.M.F. insisted that the industry be privatised and deregulated, with the result that the industry fell apart, creating more poverty and economic stagnation.

This isn’t the exception to the rule. This is the rule. Many of the countries in the Developing World, which have prospered, have done so precisely because they told the I.M.F. and World Bank where they could stick their recommendations. And these recommendations are always that industry should be privatised, deregulated and whatever there is of a welfare system should be cut back. Lobster has also described them as another important component of American imperialism, as they always recommend that the privatised industries should be sold to an American company.

Once again, American forces are being deployed in another part of the world to defend and expand American corporate interests against Chinese competition, and terrorist action by the same groups American armed against Colonel Gaddafi.
But the squaddies’ presence has been explained away as just being in an advisory role. Just like they were explained away in Vietnam.

American Comedian Lee Camp on the Real Reason Iran’s Been Put ‘On Notice’

This week Trump’s administration officially put Iran ‘on notice’ for the crime of testing a ballistic missile in their own country. The missile wasn’t capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, but nevertheless Trump and his Nazis accused it of preparing to acquire them.

In this edition of RT’s Redacted Tonight, the host, comedian Lee Camp, suggests the real reason Trump has warned Iran of a possible invasion should they not comply with America’s wishes, has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. No, it’s for the simple reason that Iran is planning to ditch the dollar as the currency for trade in oil. He cites newspaper reports and Perkins’ Confession of an Economic Hitman to show that one of the reasons for the Iraq invasion was that Saddam Hussein was also considering abandoning the dollar. As was Colonel Gaddafi. Gaddafi wanted to set up the gold dinar as Africa’s and the Middle East’s rival to the dollar and euro.

As for Iran being put ‘on notice’, Camp remarks that they just might have worked out that America was threatening to invade them through the number of US bases encircling the country.

Camp then contrasts the ire of America’s corporate elite to this financial outrage, with the way Trump tolerates and encourage the destruction of the environment. BP has just been allowed to resume drilling again in the Gulf of Mexico, despite the oil spill that devastated the region’s ecosystem the other year. And what are they calling their new rig? Mad Dog II.

He also discusses Nancy Pelosi’s terrified reaction when a young member of a TV audience put her on the spot by telling her that Millennials don’t support capitalism. This is true. A recent poll showed that American young people don’t. Cue nervous laughter from Pelosi and the hurried response that ‘We’re capitalists’. She then went on to burble bilge about ‘stakeholder capitalism’, and so, as Camp remarked, try to position herself as supporting capitalism and working people simultaneously. He also jokes about the Democrats’ extremely weak response to opposing the Republicans.

He also talks to Naomi Karavani about the Republican’s criminalisation of the DAPL protestors. North Dakota is considering passing legislation to allow drivers to run down protestors. They also have footage of some politico claiming that the protestors were all paid and bussed in specially, and that after leaving the DAPL protests they will simply go on to the next one. He also reports how the DAPL protestors, including elderly ladies, who have done nothing except peacefully block the way and pray, are now ‘terrorists’. They also want to amend the laws on rioting so it includes simply standing there when told to go away.

Finally on the show he talks to John F. O’Donnell about Trump’s intention to repeal the Dodd Frank Act. This is the act that obliges the big financial firms to put away hundreds of millions of dollars to provide against another financial crash. This would allow the banks to pay out millions to shareholders, but it would mean that they would once more become that bit more vulnerable to financial collapse. O’Donnell also discusses Trump’s abolition of the financial regulator, that has forced pay day loan companies and other companies to pay money back to victims of financial wrongdoing.

He reports Bernie Sanders’ response to this, in which the veteran left-wing Democrat called Trump what he is: a fraud. Trump had promised during his election campaign that he was going to reign in Wall Street. Now he’s doing his best to strengthen it and expand its power.

Warning: Camp is one of the young, edgy comedians, so there is language and some might find some jokes offensive. Like when compares the tired excuses of the American military for their warmongering, that they’re attacking to prevent the other side from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, to a couple with Alzheimer’s in a retirement home.

Camp is, however, exactly right in his criticisms and the report about Iran and its intention to move to an alternative currency instead of the dollar has more than the ring of truth. Greg Palast in his discussion of the Iraq invasion in his book, Armed Madhouse, states that the American economy is to a very large extent insulated from many of the financial crises that hit the rest of the world’s countries because the dollar is the world currency for the oil industry. The moment an alternative currency is set up – such as Gaddafi’s Gold Dinar – much of America’s economic strength is wiped out. Hence the aggressive response to any oil producing state that dares to do so.

We’re being threatened with being taken into another war, simply to keep American oil billionaires rolling in it. More of our brave squaddies may die, and the innocent people of another country massacred and its oil and other industries looted.