It’s in the news, the US is sending additional troops to Liberia (and Sierra Leone) hoping to ‘turn the tide’ of the Ebola virus.
Makes sense, armed people can shoot a virus off the face of Liberia, for sure they have now miniaturized intelligent weapons that will do what weapons have been designed for, save lives.
We could see this news as hopeful, if we tried really hard, in the sense that manufacturing consent for wars is becoming increasingly difficult for those at the top and so we now outright lie to get the required consent to invade a nation by claiming we go there to save them from a deadly virus.
Good news too that we are dropping the ‘bringing Freedom and Democracy’ rhetoric, some, up there, understand those lies are now too hard to sell and so opt for a ‘humanitarian intervention’ excuse – who would have the heart to say NO to saving lives? Now we just have to wait for the soldiers to come back and tell how it really was down there and to watch them return some more medals to those that hired them, called them gentlemen and sent them to fight the latest war for resources. We have a predictable future ahead of us.
Once we start to understand the deceptive nature of our world though, it is not hard to keep ourselves informed, you can check the Ebola spreading map and match it with the map of the resources up for grabbing, what a surprise, today I just had to Google ‘Liberia and Oil’ to find some interesting articles, I will report a piece of one from Modern Ghana
Liberian oil and the Looting of Africa
The looting of African oil has begun in Grand Style, this time not in Nigeria nor Ghana but right in Liberia, also located in the West African region. For a country which has remained one of Africa’s poorest for decades, many were those who heaved a deep sigh of relief when Liberia recently announced to have “discovered” oil in commercial quantities, joining her West African sisters: Ghana, Nigeria and some others.
Oil deposits in the West African coast has existed for decades
In my opinion, there is no “discovery” of oil anywhere in West Africa but the exploitation of the oil belt that runs along the coast of the entire region which the oil executives knew about for decades but did not care to build rigs till now as they tried to gain control over the unstable situations of the Middle East at that time.
According to a recent statement issued by the Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Ellen Johnson, the American Oil company, Exxon Mobil will own a whooping 80% of the oil shares discovered in Liberia, while their Canadian neighbours, the Canadian Oversea Petroleum Limited (COPL), will own 20%. Therefore many are wondering: where does this place the people of Liberia? What percentage share does the government of Liberia have in this oil deal? The African people would want to know.
Although President Ellen Johnson has not said what would happen to the Liberian share, the President and CEO of the National Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL), Dr. Randolph McClain, explained that the negotiating team of the Liberian government secured a 5% citizens participation share in LB-13 and a further 5% royalty on oil produced from wells drilled under water depths of 0–1500 meters.
Angered by the shocking news, Okechuku, a PhD student at Oxford University wondered:
“When Liberia was in crisis, did the US and Canada send any help? I’m shocked at how a country’s wealth is being giving away for peanuts. Is this the reason why the president was awarded the Nobel Prize some months ago? Ellen Johnson has always been the World Bank’s darling girl anyway. You don’t get a Nobel Peace Award without signing such deals.”
So we could be trying to get into Liberia for this reason or for Palm Oil landgrabbing as stated in this article
Communities protest that UK’s Equatorial Palm Oil is poised to seize land in Liberia
The UK-listed company, Equatorial Palm Oil (EPO), which is threatening to seize land owned by Liberians in defiance of commitments by Liberia’s President, will today receive a visit from affected communities. Members of the Jogbahn Clan, together with representatives from Liberian and international NGOs, will deliver a petition with over 90,000 signatures, reminding EPO that it does not have community consent to expand onto their lands, and that doing so could escalate violence. [1] EPO’s past operations in Liberia have triggered allegations of conflict and human rights abuses. The company has maintained that any expansion is legal. [2]
Residents from the Jogbahn Clan in Liberia’s Grand Bassa County say that EPO has begun demarcating blocks of land in preparation for clearing, and have accused its security officers of threatening community members. These actions defy the March commitment by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf that EPO could not expand onto the lands of the Joghban Clan without their permission. [4] The right of Liberian communities such as the Joghban Clan to give or withhold consent to projects that could have an impact on their land and resources is also provided under international human rights law, as well as the Principles and Criteria of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) of which EPO is a member. [5] The Joghban people have refused to give such consent.
EPO has a very poor track record in Grand Bassa County. In September of last year, officers from the EPO security team and the Liberian Police reportedly worked together to assault and beat Joghban community members who were peacefully protesting the company’s operations. Those arrested were soon released after it was determined by the government’s Grand Bassa attorney that there was no justification for continued detention. No government investigation report regarding this incident has been made public. [6]
EPO denied any involvement in the violence, saying that it had been “falsely accused”, and does not “condone or encourage such described behaviour,” and “never instructed or directed any of its staff or PSU officers to intimidate Jogbahn community members in September or at any time.” However, EPO admitted to Global Witness that it provided logistical support to the Liberian police who are accused of intimidating villagers on the plantation.
Whatever the reason you can be sure it’s not what we are told. History has a weird way to repeat itself, you can watch the documentary ‘Empire’ to see how we have already played all this out in the past.
We really need to work on a direct democratical system, without paying attention to the Government designed failed attempts at it, such as for the Movement 5 Star in Italy, which ended up proving exactly the opposite of what they claimed to want, a direct democratic system, while showing everyone how ludicrous the idea is when only 60000 of their 9 million voters at best engaged with it at any given time.
Direct democracy is not impossible, getting involved in politics is not useless, exposing the truth of what goes on in the world is not worthless because this is how we are growing into an educated force that is awake and alive and that claims a sovereignty that is not demanded but for which we are actively engaging the system, structuring ourselves into an undeniable force -against all odds.
We were the one letting our sovereignty go by -manufactured- consent, we can’t demand some to give it back, we have to become the sovereigns, the rulers, straight enough to decide what is worth supporting and what must cease in this world as a reflection of our own individual changes, we cease the wars, the lies, the victimization and then decide what must be done from here forward.
Then it will not be possible to have Trojan horses such as this one go unnoticed, you can’t fool those that participate actively in the system whether their participation is recognized or not yet, Real Democracy is Participation, a time is coming when we will be enough to rewrite the rules of engagement in accordance to who we have become, so the solution is in the becoming those that can’t be fooled, not by ourselves nor by others, about what goes on and why and what needs to be changed to align this world to principles that make life possible and worth living for all.
Check out a Living Income Guaranteed – that is one step in the direction of our sovereignty and the end of all the excuses about why it’s ok to do to others what we wouldn’t want done to us.
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