New York [RR] On Saturday, June 11, 2011 Major-General Ishola Williams (Rtd) came under heavy attack for coming out openly to remark on United States Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton rhetoric and warning that investors and industrialized nations should invest first in host countries in any form of business DEALS with African people and her leaders.

RepublicReport investigation shows that Mrs. Clinton warning to Africa leaders about bad investments was hypocritical, pretentious and dishonest.

[PHOTO: Maj-Gen. Ishola Williams and United States, Secretary of States, Hillary Rodham Clinton, on "Neo-Colonialism" in Africa, US blaming China, their new competitor as the part of the problem]

Several sources reported that Clinton did warn African leaders to ensure that foreign projects are sustainable and benefit all their citizens, not only elites. A day earlier, she cautioned that China’s massive investments and business interests in Africa need to be closely watched so that the African people are not taken advantage of”, that gives the impression that Communist China is competitive with capitalist United States and EU governments in Continental scramble for African sources.

“It is easy, and we saw that during colonial times, it is easy to come in, take out natural resources, pay off leaders and leave,” Clinton said. “And when you leave, you don’t leave much behind for the people who are there. We don’t want to see a new colonialism in Africa.”

Adding reports say, Clinton said the United States didn’t want foreign governments and investors to fail in Africa, but they should also give back to the local communities. Commentators and pundits countered: what is US-led-NATO doing in Libya if not to takeover Libya oil wealth as US did in Iraq?

“We want them to do well, but also we want them to do good,” she said.

“We don’t want them to undermine good governance, we don’t want them to basically deal with just the top elites, and frankly too often pay for their concessions or their opportunities to invest.”

There and then, Nigerian-Major General (Rtd) Ishola Williams came from nowhere to react to US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton remarks:

“It is a story of bottle calling the Gourd names when they both perform the same function. Her warning is certainly not in the interest of Africa.

Major-General Williams added: “We need to look at the differences between the Western (US and EU) approach and methods and the Eastern (China, India etc).The difference is very clear like between Coca-Cola and Seven-Up. The African Leaders know that and that is why the USA is worried over declining influence while Asian is rising. It cannot be stopped.

“The alternative is force like in Cote D’Ivoire and Libya. Has any Asian country got Africa Command? And to do what?

“The AFDB is no longer our Bank, so is NEPAD while The USA and Allies disregarded AU’s Brokered peace in Libya.

“We need a policy of take from the west what is good for us and take same from the east. We do not need a lecture on Colonialism from Hilary Clinton.

“Above all, we need intra-Africa solidarity and Trade within ourselves like that of Asians and the Europeans are doing. Iw Search, Seek,Learn, Serve, Impact”, added, Ishola Williams

General Williams would not be allowed to go away without questioning. Commentators and pundits like Stevek who is based in Washington, DC, and another commentator Ola who works hard everyday on Nigeria politics have one or two things to say to the General.

The tough one came from Stevek writing in from Washington DC, who remarked. He thanked him first then attacked the credibility of the retired Nigerian Major-General Williams. Obasanjo, Babangida and other generals are known for looting while in office. Curiously these generals always show up when they retire to speak truth.

“General, First of all, I thank you for your candour.

“This is not to cast any aspersion on you, but how come Nigerian leaders become very reasonable and honest as soon as they no longer have power? Stevek fumed.

Ola Kassim fired back at Stevek calling on his to stop casting aspersions at individuals who do have integrity living amongst what he called “sinners” (satans).

“This is not to cast any aspersion on you, but how come Nigerian leaders become very reasonable and honest as soon as they no longer have power?

Mr. Ola Kassim called him by his name SteveK, and said: “Regardless, of whether you know it or not–you just did!

“General Williams probably already know this already–i.e. that such aspersion

on one’s character whether intended or not is one of the prices a leader pays to serve Nigerians

in any capacity.

It ain’t easy being a saint in the land of sinners (satans).

“It requires a man/woman of extraordinary character and resolve to hold on

to his/ her principles in a land where corruption is already too widely and deeply ingrained

in the psyche of the leaders and ordinary citizens alike”, Ola added.

Steve K fired back at Ola Kassim. He said:

“At least, my dear Kassim, I didn’t throw the good general under the bus!”, Stevek who lives in

Washington, DC, USA added.

Musta Isa added:

“What benefit has Nigeria derived from the Chinese? They were given contracts to modernise our rail system. What happened? Nothing. China is despotic, that is why it encourages dictatorship in Africa. Are you aware that Chinese and Indian companies in Nigeria dehumanise their Nigerian workers? They don’t obey our labour laws. Africa should look inward to solve its problems.

He concluded by saying that “our solution is not in leaning towards the US or China. Both countries are driven by one thing: personal interest. Africa’s interest is secondary to them. African leaders should realise this”, he added.

General (Rtd) William reacted to communication by Musta Isa but ignored the tomahawk missiles from Steve K. Hear him.

“Mustaisa, you did echo my last sentence in my last mail. Thank you.

If the Chinese and other Asians are doing that in Nigeria, they cannot do that in South Africa Please do your search on that. Are the Lebanese, Egyptians and Syrians not been doing that in Nigeria for over 50 years?

“Do our Generals, top Civil Servants, Businessmen and PEPS not use the Indians as fronts for Money Laundering? Do western coys not pay bribes to these same?

“It is the greed of our Civil Servants with PEPS who negotiate with the Asians and those brothers and sisters on the boards of these Asian Entities who should carry the blame and be cursed by all of us.

Finally he added: “I have been told in Thailand and China that Nigerians bring products and ask them to make the fake ones.

“Do you know the Nigerian Specifications for imported cars? How efficient and effective are your Quality Control and Consumer Protection Agencies? Maj-General (Rtd) Ishola Williams fumed.

In that conversation Mazi Joe Udeaja pitched in on front thinking that US have a human side without realizing that US is attempting to improve her belligerent posturing even though US-led-NATO allies of France and British are killing civilians, destroying infrastructural capacities in Libya but want the world to assume they are protecting civilians in their attempt to steal Libyan Oil-wealth. He said:  

“I am not surprised that such a human concern for others would come from a US leader. If however, Africans did not know this by now, then we really have bigger problems than most of us thought. Thus my questions are: Are African leaders listening?  What strategies are being put in place to prevent this New Colonialism and potentially more destructive from happening?  What are African Diaspora Associations doing to help our leaders understand the implications of what Clinton is talking about? Joe Udeaja added.

RepublicReport investigations demonstrate that the Obama led US government is attempting to distance itself from the war in Libya by claiming it handed over to NATO.

Human Rights activist who spoke to RepublicReport in New York said that “we should stop kidding ourselves. He asked who formed NATO. “America said it handed over NATO… US is only being hypocritical. “United States handed NATO to itself”, he fumed.

“So that make the mistake of thinking that America love Africans, US is only after protecting her privileged strategic interests”. At the end of the day, the United States is at competition with Communist China and other EU countries for African mineral resources while depriving and impoverishing continental peoples with fraudulent economic PACTS that benefits them and so called African-Elites more than they benefit the average locals.  

Still yet through WikiLeaks we Diplomatic Cables communications that revealed that US had poor Oil-investment issues to deal with since 2004 DEAL with then Bush administration but yet Gaddafi wanted according to reports to Libyanized its Oil-wealth.

According to WiKiLeaks: “When Gaddafi made his deal with Bush in 2004, he had hoped that returning foreign oil companies would help boost Libya’s output . . . The U.S. government also encouraged American oil companies to go back to Libya. . . .

“The companies needed little encouragement. Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves — 43.6 billion barrels — outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects. . . . Throughout this time, oil prices kept rising, whetting the appetite for greater supplies of Libya’s unusually “sweet” and “light,” or high-quality, crude oil.

“By the time Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited in 2008, U.S. joint ventures accounted for 510,000 of Libya’s 1.7 million barrels a day of production, a State Department cable said. . . .

“But all was not well. By November 2007, a State Department cable noted “growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism.” It noted that in his 2006 speech marking the founding of his regime, Gaddafi said: “Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them. Now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money.” His son made similar remarks in 2007.

“Oil companies had been forced to give their local subsidiaries Libyan names, the cable said. . . .

“The entire article is worth reading, as it details how Gaddafi has progressively impeded the interests of U.S. and Western oil companies by demanding a greater share of profits and other concessions, to the point where some of those corporations were deciding that it may no longer be profitable or worthwhile to drill for oil there. But now, in a pure coincidence, there is hope on the horizon for these Western oil companies, thanks to the war profoundly humanitarian action being waged by the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner and his nation’s closest Western allies:

“But Libya’s oil production has foundered, sagging to about 1.5 million barrels a day by early this year before unrest broke out. The big oil companies, several of which had drilled dry holes, felt that Libya was not making the best exploration prospects available. One major company privately said that it was on the verge of a discovery but that unrest cut short the project.

Read more on US interest purported impeded by Gaddafi regime….beneath….

In a pure coincidence, Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war

WikiLeaks cables reveal the dictator was increasingly devoted to the “Libyanization” of the country’s resources

BY GLENN GREENWALD

BLOG:Glenn Greenwald
TOPICS:Libya

When the war in Libya began, the U.S. government convinced a large number of war supporters that we were there to achieve the very limited goal of creating a no-fly zone in Benghazi to protect civilians from air attacks, while President Obama specifically vowed that “broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” This no-fly zone was created in the first week, yet now, almost three months later, the war drags on without any end in sight, and NATO is no longer even hiding what has long been obvious: that its real goal is exactly the one Obama vowed would not be pursued — regime change through the use of military force. We’re in Libya to forcibly remove Gaddafi from power and replace him with a regime that we like better, i.e., one that is more accommodating to the interests of the West. That’s not even a debatable proposition at this point.

What I suppose is debatable, in the most generous sense of that term, is our motive in doing this. Why — at a time when American political leaders feel compelled to advocate politically radioactive budget cuts to reduce the deficit and when polls show Americans solidly and increasingly opposed to the war — would the U.S. Government continue to spend huge sums of money to fight this war? Why is President Obama willing to endure self-evidently valid accusations — even from his own Party — that he’s fighting an illegal war by brazenly flouting the requirements for Congressional approval? Why would Defense Secretary Gates risk fissures by so angrily and publicly chiding NATO allies for failing to build more Freedom Bombs to devote to the war? And why would we, to use the President’s phrase, “stand idly by” while numerous other regimes — including our close allies in Bahrain and Yemen and the one in Syria — engage in attacks on their own people at
least as heinous as those threatened by Gaddafi, yet be so devoted to targeting the Libyan leader?

Whatever the answers to those mysteries, no responsible or Serious person, by definition, would suggest that any of this — from today’s Washington Post — has anything to do with it:

The relationship between Gaddafi and the U.S. oil industry as a whole was odd. In 2004, President George W. Bush unexpectedly lifted economic sanctions on Libya in return for its renunciation of nuclear weapons and terrorism. There was a burst of optimism among American oil executives eager to return to the Libyan oil fields they had been forced to abandon two decades earlier. . . .

Yet even before armed conflict drove the U.S. companies out of Libya this year, their relations with Gaddafi had soured. The Libyan leader demanded tough contract terms. He sought big bonus payments up front. Moreover, upset that he was not getting more U.S. government respect and recognition for his earlier concessions, he pressured the oil companies to influence U.S. policies. . . .

When Gaddafi made his deal with Bush in 2004, he had hoped that returning foreign oil companies would help boost Libya’s output . . . The U.S. government also encouraged American oil companies to go back to Libya. . . .

The companies needed little encouragement. Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves — 43.6 billion barrels — outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects. . . . Throughout this time, oil prices kept rising, whetting the appetite for greater supplies of Libya’s unusually “sweet” and “light,” or high-quality, crude oil.

By the time Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited in 2008, U.S. joint ventures accounted for 510,000 of Libya’s 1.7 million barrels a day of production, a State Department cable said. . . .

But all was not well. By November 2007, a State Department cable noted “growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism.” It noted that in his 2006 speech marking the founding of his regime, Gaddafi said: “Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them. Now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money.” His son made similar remarks in 2007.

Oil companies had been forced to give their local subsidiaries Libyan names, the cable said. . . .

The entire article is worth reading, as it details how Gaddafi has progressively impeded the interests of U.S. and Western oil companies by demanding a greater share of profits and other concessions, to the point where some of those corporations were deciding that it may no longer be profitable or worthwhile to drill for oil there. But now, in a pure coincidence, there is hope on the horizon for these Western oil companies, thanks to the war profoundly humanitarian action being waged by the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner and his nation’s closest Western allies:

But Libya’s oil production has foundered, sagging to about 1.5 million barrels a day by early this year before unrest broke out. The big oil companies, several of which had drilled dry holes, felt that Libya was not making the best exploration prospects available. One major company privately said that it was on the verge of a discovery but that unrest cut short the project.

With the country torn by fighting, the big international oil companies are treading carefully, unwilling to throw their lot behind Gaddafi or the rebel coalition.

Yet when representatives of the rebel coalition in Benghazi spoke to the U.S.-Libya Business Council in Washington four weeks ago, representatives from ConocoPhillips and other oil firms attended, according to Richard Mintz, a public relations expert at the Harbour Group, which represents the Benghazi coalition. In another meeting in Washington, Ali Tarhouni, the lead economic policymaker in Benghazi, said oil contracts would be honored, Mintz said.

“Now you can figure out who’s going to win, and the name is not Gaddafi,” Saleri said. “Certain things about the mosaic are taking shape. The Western companies are positioning themselves.”

“Five years from now,” he added, “Libyan production is going to be higher than right now and investments are going to come in.”

I have two points to make about all this:

(1) The reason — the only reason — we know about any of this is because WikiLeaks (and, allegedly, Bradley Manning) disclosed to the world the diplomatic cables which detail these conflicts. Virtually the entirety of the Post article — like most significant revelations over the last 12 months, especially in the Middle East and North Africa — are based exclusively on WikiLeaks disclosures. That’s why we know about Gaddafi’s increasingly strident demands for the “Libyanization” of his country’s resource exploitation. That’s how we know about most of the things we’ve learned about the world’s most powerful political and corporate factions over the last 12 months. Is there anything easier to understand than why U.S. Government officials are so eager to punish WikiLeaks and deter future transparency projects of this sort?

(2) Is there anyone — anywhere — who actually believes that these aren’t the driving considerations in why we’re waging this war in Libya? After almost three months of fighting and bombing — when we’re so far from the original justifications and commitments that they’re barely a distant memory — is there anyone who still believes that humanitarian concerns are what brought us and other Western powers to the war in Libya? Is there anything more obvious — as the world’s oil supplies rapidly diminish — than the fact that our prime objective is to remove Gaddafi and install a regime that is a far more reliable servant to Western oil interests, and that protecting civilians was the justifying pretext for this war, not the purpose? If (as is quite possible) the new regime turns out to be as oppressive as Gaddafi but far more subservient to Western corporations (like, say, our good Saudi friends), does anyone think we’re going to care in the slightest or (at most) do anything other than pay occasional lip service to protesting it? Does anyone think we’re going to care about The Libyan People if they’re being oppressed or brutalized by a reliably pro-Western successor to Gaddafi?

In 2006, George Bush instructed us that there was a “responsible” and an “irresponsible” way for citizens to debate the Iraq War: the “responsible” way was to suggest that there may be better tactics for waging the war more effectively, while the “irresponsible” way was to outrageously insinuate that perhaps oil or Israel or deceit played a role in the invasion:

Yet we must remember there is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate — and it’s even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas.

The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.

Earlier this month, Hillary Clinton hosted a meeting of top executives from a wide array of corporations — Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Halliburton, GE, Chevron, Lockheed Martin, Citigroup, Occidental Petroleum, etc. etc. — to plot how to exploit “economic opportunities in the new Iraq.” And one WikiLeaks “diplomatic” cable after the next reveals constant government efforts to promote the interests of Western corporations in the developing world. Nonetheless, the very notion that the U.S. wages wars not for humanitarian or freedom-spreading purposes, but rather to exploit the resources of other nations for its own large corporations, is deeply “irresponsible” and unSerious. As usual, the ideas stigmatized with the most potent taboos are the ones that are the most obviously true.

It’s certainly possible to contend reasonably that (as was true for Iraq) removing a heinous dictator and other humanitarian outcomes will be the incidental by-product of our war in Libya even if not its purpose (although, as was also true in Iraq, one would need to see the regime that replaces Gaddafi to know if that’s true). And it’s fine — or at least candid — to argue, as Ann Coulter often does, that “of course we should go to war for oil. . . .We need oil. That’s a good reason to go to war.” But to believe that humanitarianism (protection of Libya civilians) was why we went to war in Libya requires a blindness so willful and complete that it’s genuinely difficult to describe.

http://mobile.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/06/11/libya/index.html

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REPUBLICREPORT….standing between civilization and anarchy….