This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Someone, whose cousin was friendly with White House (WH) correspondent, Helen Thomas,  related to me the anguish that the dean of WH correspondents suffered after being accused of anti-Semitism. Helen was born in Lebanon and consistently favored the Palestinian cause. Having been the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, and the first female member of the Gridiron Club, the pro-Israel contingent found it difficult to silence her. When she was at the advanced age of 90, they leaped to the jugular. In an impromptu question concerning Israel, her reply that “Jews should get the hell out of Palestine and go home to Poland, Germany, America, and everywhere else,” provoked the usual spurious charge of anti-Semitism against the American idol. Harassed and bothered, Helen Thomas quit her post with Hearst newspapers and died two years later.

Helen Thomas was decades ahead of her time. Today, her comment is prescient and is the best advice for the Jewish community that needs to shed the conditioned attachment to Zionism and the cruelty it has visited upon the peoples of the Middle East. Through clever manipulation of minds, the Zionists convinced Jews and many non-Jews that their victory in the 1967 six-day war established a nation of invincible and superior people. Jews, and only Jews, are welcome to join the unique assembly. After receiving a driver’s license, each new Israeli receives another license, a license to steal, kill, and plunder ─ whatever property a Palestinian owns is rightfully Israeli. Jews should recognize that their life in Israel depends upon the deaths of Palestinians. These Jews can find life without initiating deaths. These Jews should get out of Israel.

Part 1 of this two-part article delineated the reason Jews allied with a militarist, nationalist, xenophobic, racist, and apartheid nation ─ conditioning. The principle elements of the conditioning, repeatedly drilled into every Jewish person — Jews are a nation, they have a shared ancient history that claims biblical lands, they are subjected to harassment by an anti-Semitic world, and they are only safe in their own nation —were shown to be fabricated, hysterical, and not historical. No deep intellectual awareness is needed to prove the fallacies and historical nonsense perpetrated by the Zionists. Only those who are disoriented or gain something from subscribing to the distortions adhere to the Zionist philosophy. But many do, and not only Jews and the captured and raptured evangelists; government officials and every day streaming TV watchers eagerly swoon at the mention of Israel, as if their lives depended upon Israel’s success.

In dealing with Israel’s brutal invasion of Gaza, Joseph Biden, president of the United States of America (US), behaves as if the US is a partner in the invasion, coordinating its activities with those of Israel and obligingly supplying Israel with the necessities for accomplishing the horrifying task. Why is the US involved in Israel’s genocidal tactics? Of what benefit to the US people is aiding Israel in its destructive actions? Why did Joe Biden, the US president, read from script, and say that the October 7, 2023 attack “was the worst atrocity committed against the Jewish people in a single day since the Holocaust?”

The attack was only against Israelis, those who Hamas accuses of oppressing the Palestinians. It did not differentiate between Jews and others; Bedouins, Arabs, and many foreign workers were killed. Hearing Biden’s words showed the conditioned manner in which even the president of one of the world’s most significant nations follows the Zionist supremacist position, ignoring the deaths of others than Jews, making believe that this is one of continuous atrocities against Jews, and relating it to the Holocaust ─ when you can, mention the World War II Holocaust.

Texas Senator, Ted Cruz, is another Israel admirer, who goes ballistic, shouting and screaming at anyone who offends his beloved Israel. Why does a Texan, immersed in border politics, in immigration, and relations with the Mexican community get overly excited with a foreign nation that has no attachment to his duties for his constituents? Why do Americans care about Israel more than Armenia?

Does the Mossad have derogatory information on US representatives that sways congressional commitments to the American people and has them favor Israel? Could be. If so, then another good reason for Israeli Jews to leave the Levant and make Israel a democratic nation like other democratic nations. A nation built on White nationalism is not acceptable anywhere. Why is it acceptable in Israel?

Look at in another way. Many nations have committed atrocities against people in their midst but no citizens of these nations have seen the atrocities up close. Great Britain, in its days of glorious imperialism, ravaged the world, but the British, on their isolated island, did not observe the deadly occurrences. The Germans had their abhorrent ways but not at home, during a war that fogged the killings, and not yet in the era of the ubiquitous internet. Americans are aware of misbehavior of their armed forces, but the happenings are so far away they cannot emotionally connect with the oppressed. No Israeli is more than 20 miles from the repression, whether in Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza. They see it day after day after day. Maybe, they become inured to the oppression or just accept it as someone else’s problem. In either case, humanity has been lost, and when the environment degrades humanity and the environment cannot be changed, it’s time to leave the environment and regain humanity.

The inhumanity expressed by Israelis, who adore victimhood and challenging inhumane activities by others, is not a one-time thing of a small collection of the society, it is a continuous operation by almost  every functioning and living person in the Israel community. I knew a Jewish refugee who had a home he left in a town in the Czech Republic, east of Brno. I visited the town and saw the home standing vacant at the corner of the Main Square, still empty and, at that time, legally owned by the heirs who were involved in litigation with the authorities concerning unpaid taxes. During the 1948-1949 war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled from their homes and sought safety in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the West Bank. Some walked back after one week to find new locks on the doors and Iraqi and other Jews occupying their homes. Nobody let them in; none of the recent arrivals returned a stolen home to the legal towner. Two of thousands of heartbreaking stories.

Twenty years since I had seen Northern Galilee, I was finally given a permit by the Israeli military authorities to visit. I decided to take two of my daughters with me. It took less than three hours to reach Safed, renamed Tsvat by Israel after 1948. The van stopped in front of the white stone home that held childhood memories. I proceeded to the familiar metal door, where I knocked. A large eastern European woman opened the door. We argued. I returned to the van, my hardened face wet with tears. “She wouldn’t let me in! She still has the same curtains I made with my mother.”

We proceeded in silence, as I wept discretely, to lunch at a hotel on Lake Tiberias, where my youngest child grew hyper. Instead of imposing my usual military-style discipline on the child, I encouraged her “splatter water,” “make more noise” – a shock to the rest of the family. The Israeli waiter hurriedly came to the table demanding, in Hebrew, they stop the raucous behavior. It was then that my defiance exploded into cursing the waiter in Arabic. “We can do whatever we please! This is my father’s hotel!” Until that moment, my children had been sheltered from knowing anything about my dear loss.
Rasmiya Barghout

We finally settled in Ramle, in a big stone house that had belonged to an Arab family…In the back of the house was a lemon tree, which almost collapsed each year under its fruit… One morning, right after the Six-Day War, an Arab man turned up at the front door. He said: ‘My name is Bashir el-Kheiri. This house belonged to my family.’

One day – I shall never forget it – Bashir’s brother came to Ramle with his father. The old man was blind. After entering the gate, he caressed the rugged stones of the house. Then he asked if the lemon tree was still there. He was led to the backyard. When he put his hands on the trunk of the tree he had planted, he did not utter a word. Tears rolled down his cheeks. My father then gave him a lemon. He was clutching it in his hands when he left. Bashir’s mother told me, years later, that when her husband couldn’t sleep, he used to pace up and down their apartment holding in his hand an old, shriveled lemon.
— Dalia Landau, The Lemon Tree

A controlled media daily demonstrates the twists and callous insensitivity and inattention to the tragedies and rights of others and gives aggravated consideration to tragedies inflicted upon Jews.

Grayson Beare, son of Julian Beare, chairperson of the South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation, stabbed Halima Hoosen-Preston, her husband Shaun Preston, and her son in their Durban, South African home. The mother died and the others are fighting for their lives. Grayson Beare has been charged with murder and attempted murder.

The Mail & Guardian, a South African weekly newspaper and website, headlined the attack as “Estranged son of SA Holocaust and Genocide Foundation chairperson in court for alleged Islamophobic murder.”

…the assault allegedly occurred after an altercation Beare had with Hoosen-Preston during which she laughed upon hearing that his cousins had been killed in Israel. He said this in a video that went viral on social media, in which he identified himself as a former Zionist who has rejected the Jewish religion. The Beare family has distanced itself from Grayson, who has previously been treated for psychological problems and substance abuse, saying they stand with Hoosen-Preston’s family.

I cannot find any coverage of this horrendous incident of Islamophobia in the American media, which usually reports significant happenings in South Africa. If anyone knows of a report, please let me know. Another bother — what is the purpose of these Holocaust and Genocide Foundations and Museums (There are three in South Africa.) if they have not prevented genocide, have the parties in the foundations attached to those committing genocide, have not rallied the world against other genocides, and have the son of the Holocaust and Genocide Foundations chairperson, who has been raised in the Holocaust and Genocide Foundation environment, apparently not learning about genocide, and involved in a violent racial act?

A shocking rape of a young girl in Paris, France, and the use of the victim’s tragedy to highlight an alleged and unproven anti-Semitic act shows the discrepancy in American media reporting. The Washington Post headline read: “Reported rape of Jewish girl linked to rising antisemitism in France.”

The reported rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in a suburb of Paris has brought protesters into the streets and drawn condemnations from top politicians, who have linked the episode to rampant antisemitism. French authorities indicted two 13-year-old boys on charges of aggravated rape, making religious insults and death threats, and recording or sharing images of a sexual nature, among other crimes, prosecutors said in a Wednesday statement. A third boy, age 12, was charged with being an assisting witness to a rape, as well for making religious insults and death threats. According to the media, the girl’s ex-boyfriend was angry that the victim had not told him she was Jewish.

This gruesome act in a foreign nation received front-page attention from most American media while no American media reported the South African murder. The latter murder was due to hatred of Muslims while the former violation has a loose and unverified attachment to hatred of Jews.

No charge of anti-Semitism has been made by the victim or her family, and are only being made by the media, using a prosecutor statement of “religious insults” by juveniles as defining an anti-Semitic act. The Washington Post report completely ignores a description of the victim and her mental and physical state, identifying her only as a “Jewish girl,” and concentrates on the perpetration of an unproven and subordinate anti-Semitism. The perverted use of this vicious attack, which ignores the damage to the young girl and serves the anti-Semitic industry, whose purpose is to gain sympathy for the Zionist Jews, is an obscenity, as low as a human being can become.

As long as Israeli Jews control Palestinian life, there will be no meaningful life for anyone in the Middle East. They should either relinquish control or leave. Because the Israeli Jews cannot find existence without controlling the Palestinians, they must leave. What point is there in having endless strife that punishes everyone when all can live in peace and harmony by simply doing what is correct ─ Israeli Jews allowing Palestinians to live in peace and harmony by leaving Israel and finding peace and harmony with millions of other Jews in the Western world? With this remark, we can discern the reason for the contrived and false charges of anti-Semitism, which are mainly anti-Zionist demonstrations. The Zionists want everyone to believe that the Western world is a conspiracy of anti-Semites. They proclaim that only Israel, where Jews from one ethnicity despise Jews from other ethnicities, where all Jews are threatened daily, and where Jewish behavior manufactures antipathy toward Jews is the safest place for Jews to live.

Dual citizenship is a major stumbling block for Jews to permanently leave Israel. By allowing dual citizenship in Western nations, Israeli Jews maintain Israel citizenship and live in foreign nations. Through a network of contacts, Israelis gain employment and enjoy the more highly developed and interesting social and cultural life Europe and America. They reside in the West and have first allegiance to Israel, many serving in the Israel armed forces, few, if any, in their primary country. Their feet and body are in the West, their mind is in Israel. Although I have no documented proof, I suspect that many serve Israel as foreign agents.

Contemporary statistics on dual US/Israeli citizenship are not readily apparent. Some clues:

Israeli government ministries and the Los Angeles-based Israeli American Council, which represents Israelis nationwide, estimate  between 500,000 and 800,000 Israelis lived in the United States in the year 2014. Since 1948, 112,000 US-born citizens have arrived in Israel and by 2021, 50,000 – 300,000 Israelis held dual citizenship with the US.

From 2009 to 2023 the United States’ population grew from 308.5M to 340M or 10.2%. Jewish population grew from 6.5M to 7.5M or 15.3%. The 50 percent faster growth rate of the Jewish population indicates an influx of Jews into the American mainland from the only ports these immigrants could have departed, those in Israel.

As long as these Israelis benefit from retaining their Israeli citizenship — vote in Israeli elections, gain protection from foreign legal action by returning to Israel, and add to Israeli population statistics, they will retain the Israel passport and Israel citizenship. Denying dual citizenship and penalizing those who surreptitiously practice dual citizenship (Israel will still allow the dual citizenship) is a top priority for inviting Israeli Jews to permanently leave Israel.

Much is written about the Middle East crisis, its past, its present, its future. The falsifications, obfuscations, miscalculations, misinterpretations, and calculations are difficult to answer and the reality difficult to present. Two renditions give a clue to the verisimilitude.

The Zionist portray themselves as turning a destitute and neglected area into a thriving and productive region. Survey the differences in countries between the year 1900 and year 2024 and you find almost all the world has changed in the same manner. No miracle by Zionism. Go to Chile and other places where Palestinians have settled and see what Palestinians have done and how they have achieved the highest education in the world. The Zionists have turned a peaceful area into a battleground. Protecting Palestine against the arbitrary intrusions by the Zionists should be high on the agenda of the world’s governments.

“For us, it’s a ‘never again’ war,” said Avner Golov, the vice president of research and alliances at the Tel Aviv-based think tank MIND Israel. “My generation now faces a question that I never thought I [would] face, and this is whether a Jewish state can exist in the hostile Middle East,” he added. “We need to make sure the answer is yes.”

After 75 years of establishment of the Zionist state, we still hear “war, war, war,” and never learn why it is necessary to have a Jewish state in the Middle East. Oh, yes, there are people in the Western nations who do not like Jews (the wealthiest community), Catholics (plenty), Asians, Mormons, Evangelists (plenty), Hispanics, Muslims (plenty), and almost everyone who walks.

So, we have yesterday repeated today and ready to repeat tomorrow, Israel is ready for ‘all-out war’ in Lebanon. The Israeli military says its Northern Command has approved operational plans for war with Lebanon.

Zionism, let our people go.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

AFRICOM is the brainchild of Dick Cheney who, after his energy task force identified African oil as ripe for the picking, conspired with Donald Rumsfeld to create Africa Command. (1) However, African governments wanted nothing to do with AFRICOM. South African officials in particular criticized the US for attempting to impose AFRICOM to undermine China’s growing influence on the continent. (2) Mao Zedong deserves credit for masterminding China’s original “pivot to Africa” in the sixties, sending engineers and guerrilla warfare instructors to coach aspiring revolutionaries in Zambia, Rhodesia, and Zanzibar. (3) Following the Berlin Wall’s fall in 1989 and the USSR’s dissolution in 1991, China’s engagement with Africa focused strictly on trade. By 2006, Sino-African trade skyrocketed to $55.5 billion—a very worrying development for Washington policymakers anxious about China’s rapid  ascendency to superpower status. The US was getting “lapped” (to borrow athlete Samantha Power’s phrase) by the Asian Dragon in Africa and AFRICOM seemed like a solution. But American foreign policy was a public relations catastrophe due to the Iraqi and Afghan quagmires. Everyone knew why the US courted Africa and it had little to do with disaster relief. Material benefits tempted poorer African nations to welcome AFRICOM bases, but Colonel Muammar Ghaddafi quickly cajoled them back into line. (4)

Whether you admire or despise him, Ghaddafi was nothing if not consistent in his anti-imperialist foreign policy. Within a year of ousting the British-backed King Idris during the 1969 Libyan Revolution, Ghaddafi dismantled the US Wheelus Air Base and expelled all foreign military personnel. The US never forgave this defiance and endeavoured to destroy Libya via protracted proxy wars. In 1978, a nearly decade long conflict erupted between Libya and Chad’s rulers. One of whom, Hissène Habré, “the creation of the Americans in no small measure”, was convicted of war crimes in 2015 for murdering 40,000 people. (5) While Cuban troops inflicted humiliating defeats on US-backed South African apartheid armies in Namibia and Angola, the Libyans, after a string of victories in the early eighties, were eventually booted out of northern Chad by 1987, outmatched by combined US and French firepower. Yet Ghaddafi ‘s regime lived to fight another day, and he sprang into action once again as the spectre of American imperialism returned to haunt Africa in the form of AFRICOM.

By 2008, the US offered massive sums of money to African governments in return for hosting US military bases. In response, Ghaddafi doubled the money so that African nations withdrew from the bargain —a tactic which paid-off handsomely when the African Union rejected AFRICOM. Moreover, Ghaddafi was a staunch pan-Africanist who aimed to terminate Africa’s reliance on Western finance. The African Investment Bank based in Libya, whose goal was to fund African development at no interest, could have posed a serious challenge to the IMF’s domination if the regime had survived. In short, as Dan Glazebrook argues, Ghaddafi’s Libya, for all its faults, represented the last line of defence for Africa’s political and economic independence. Libya’s descent into anarchy, piracy, terrorism, and modern-day slavery in the wake of Ghaddafi’s execution cleared the way for AFRICOM’s stealth invasion of Africa. (6)

Shortly after NATO’s destruction of Libya left the continent exposed to unprecedented levels of US meddling, the Obama administration ignored African hostility to AFRICOM and imposed a US military hardware “superhighway” in the Horn of Africa. As Nick Turse observed, “operations in Africa have accelerated far beyond the limited interventions of the Bush years”. (7) From Chabelley base in Djibouti to Camp Gilbert in Ethiopia, the latter replete with modern gyms and video game parlours, AFRICOM’s tentacles slithered deeper into the continent by 2012. The US hired mercenaries or contractors to man surveillance-aircraft jetting out of Entebbe in Uganda as hundreds of US commandos shared bases with Kenyan soldiers in Manda Bay. US marines trained recruits in the Burundi National Defence Force, while AFRICOM oversaw fourteen major joint-training exercises with armed forces in Morocco, Botswana, Lesotho, Senegal, and South Africa in a single year. Before drones took headlines by storm, cumbersome reconnaissance planes flying out of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso dotted the skies above Mali and Mauritania like parched vultures scouring for prey. A new era of colonial misadventure and exploitation was well and truly underway in Africa. (8)

Less than a year before she purportedly saved the world from Ebola, Samantha Power set her sights lower and saved the civil-war ridden Central African Republic in December 2013. Dreading that another Rwandan genocide was in the offing as Muslim Seleka insurgents and Christian militias threatened to hack each other to pieces, Power begged the international community and the US in particular to intervene before it was too late. (9) By April 2014, Power got her wish. The UN Security Council authorized the deployment of thousands of US-backed African Union peacekeeping troops into the CAR. (10) Within three years, the US “provided more than $800 million to fund humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping operations, peacebuilding and reconciliation programs”. (11)

AFRICOM already established a foothold in the CAR before Power’s intervention, nominally hot on the heels of the deranged Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony lurking in the thick jungles straddling the border between Uganda and the CAR. (12) Curiously, according to the Washington Post, US advisors tasked with bringing Kony to the ICC (International Criminal Court) weren’t keen on completing their mission. Locals in the southern CAR region of Obo grew fearful of their new American visitors, while Ugandan and Congolese officers wondered why US Special forces soldiers, equipped with the latest high-tech gadgets and satellite imagery, never bothered to pursue Kony into the forests. (13) In fact, Kony, the Osama Bin Laden of sub-Saharan Africa, is still on the run today.

This is pure speculation, but it is doubtful capturing Kony was the real reason why AFRICOM ventured into the CAR. It’s even harder to believe US officials claiming they were driven by the goodness of their hearts to prevent ethnic cleansing:  “I mean [CAR] is not a strategic target. Outside of “never again”, why else would we have gotten involved?” (14) Aside from the fact the CAR is renowned for harbouring vast diamond, gold, copper, uranium, and timber reserves, virtually all neighbouring states like Chad, Sudan, the DRC, and even South Africa took turns vying for control of the CAR’s resources for forty years by sponsoring violent coups and rebellions. (15) Was the US any nobler in its intentions? Evidence is scant at this time, but history and common sense suggest otherwise.

Samantha’s soft power posturing in the CAR, wittingly or not, was part and parcel of the Obama administration’s scramble for Africa. The old-fashioned, fire-and-fury, full-spectrum dominance-styled interventionism of the Bush/Cheney era was inconceivable and unpopular both at home and abroad. Therefore, Obama and Power looked elsewhere to legitimize US imperialism in Africa. They settled on a new doctrine centred around “human security”, a term borrowed from Global Health Governance lingo.

Maryam Deloffre defines this relatively novel doctrine thusly: “human security broadens the notion of security to focus on the individual and then considers things such as poverty, pandemics, and climate-change disasters…as security threats”. (16) This doctrine sounds reasonable in theory. Who can deny that deadly viruses like Ebola or Covid are a danger to our collective human security? But the practical application of this doctrine is problematic. As Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh argues, the developing world sees no noticeable difference between “human security” and traditional interventionist agendas like R2P (Responsibility to Protect- the thesis of Samantha Power’s book A Problem From Hell). For the Global South, “human security” policies are code for brutal interventions. (17) Nefarious actors like the US military are much too likely to instrumentalize “human security” to further the interests of corporations on the lookout for resources to plunder.

The weaponization of global health has been the bedrock of AFRICOM’s “human security” doctrine since the organisation’s inception. Stephen Harrow, former director of the Africa program at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, stated in 2008 that AFRICOM would strive to gain a foothold on the continent via “rising commitments with respect to global health in Africa”. Dr Dan Henk at the US Air War College stressed that military planners in AFRICOM focused on health, infrastructural rehabilitation, environmental renewal, and human security to interfere in Africa nations. (18) In 2009, reports at the Department of Defence’s Global Health Engagement programme recommended the creation of “an overall global health security plan that combines civilian and military disease surveillance capabilities”. In February 2014, Assistant Secretary of Defence Jonathan Woodson emphasised once again that the US military had to expand its global health engagement strategy. (19) Clearly, AFRICOM planned to use “human security” crises as justifications to intervene in whatever natural disaster African nations will suffer next. The Ebola epidemic happened to be that opportunity.

By September 2014, both President Obama and Samantha Power spoke fluent “human security” parlance in speeches warning of the existential threat that Ebola posed to the world. Obama likened Ebola to ISIS terrorists and declared “ This is an epidemic that is not just a threat to regional security…it’s a potential threat to global security if these countries break down…” (20) At the UN Security Council Power echoed her boss and announced “…we have declared the current outbreak a threat to international peace and security”. (21) The rhetoric worked like a charm. Swept up by fear, confusion, and panic, 130 nations co-sponsored UN Resolution 2177 on Ebola Relief, guaranteeing the militarization of medical and humanitarian responses to the pandemic—much to the delight of AFRICOM. Power’s behind-the-scenes schmoozing at the UN, to get member states to back the bill, certainly was a “significant achievement”— it gave the West and the US military carte blanche to “intervene anywhere in the developing world”. (22) Power didn’t save the world from Ebola, but she definitely made it easier for the US to conquer it.

As Jacob Levich noted, “the Ebola crisis offered a useful cover for a substantial escalation in US military presence” in West Africa. The White House authorized the transfer of 3,000 troops to Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Senegal under AFRICOM command by September 2014. Another US military base was constructed in Monrovia during this deployment as well. (23) If the Bush administration spent years courting, flattering, and hosting dictators like Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea in return for oil, Obama jettisoned the pleasantries and let the military swoop right into West Africa. (24) Lest there be any lingering doubt about Washington’s true objectives in the region, consider this: war game simulations at the Pentagon imagined a terrorist attack in New York would be the perfect excuse to invade Mauritania. (25)

For West Africans on the ground, US military aid was no different to an occupation. Cartoon sketches in Monrovian newspapers joked that Liberians should prepare themselves for the day US soldiers come barging into homes with guns akimbo shouting “ KNOCK KNOCK !! HUMANITARIAN AID!! Alongside the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, France, and African Union states all sent troops to pacify the virus. China was the only nation to deploy mostly medical personnel. (26) Marouf Hasain Jr contends that the overwhelming militarization and securitization of social life in West Africa during the epidemic remains one of the most defining memories for survivors and witnesses today. (27) Medical anthropologist Adia Benton concedes that local armies and police were guilty of repressing certain segments of their own people, while foreign troops were generally well-behaved but indifferent to local populations. (28) As Mark Honigsbaum observed in his analysis of the WHO’s initial mismanagement of the Ebola pandemic, many Liberians, Guineans, and Sierra Leonians did not think highly of foreign medical or military staff, who often only treated Westerners airlifted to Europe or the US, while Africans were left to die in abysmal hospitals. (29)

This blatantly colonial conduct and rhetoric (Airforce Colonel Clint Hinote compared Ebola to ideological contamination and encouraged public health workers to employ counter-insurgency measures) is jarring, given that the CIA is largely responsible for ruining Liberia as a functioning democracy. (30) Three decades worth of CIA destabilization campaigns doomed Liberia’s healthcare system long before Ebola struck—an inconvenient truth everyone in mainstream media avoided like the plague.

Historian Jeremy Kuzmarov argues that, had the CIA never conspired to topple President William Tolbert in 1980, Liberia may have avoided the disastrous fate so many African nations now endure. Despite immense pressure from Jimmy Carter to relinquish Liberia’s sovereignty, Tolbert refused to allow another US base to deface his country. He liberalized Liberia’s political system, advocated for African economic independence, and introduced universal healthcare and free education. Much like Ghaddafi, Tolbert paid the ultimate price for his heresy. He was killed by US-backed rebels led by Samuel Doe, who allowed US embassy staff to dictate policy in every Liberian ministry. Doe embraced neoliberalism, worked closely with the IMF to privatize industries, and granted US military personnel unlimited access to local airports to funnel weapons to anti-communist “contras”.

The CIA tired of Doe as well and schemed to replace him with Charles Taylor, who plunged Liberia into a devastating civil war throughout the nineties. The US, hedging its bets, backed Taylor’s rebels who were “advised…on how to carry out the conflict in Liberia”, while President Bill Clinton helped fund the West-African peacekeeping force allied with Doe’s loyalists. Following years of atrocities, Taylor emerged victorious after winning elections in 1997. Clinton and, bizarrely, Jesse Jackson warmed up to Taylor until George Bush ruined the party. Taylor resigned as president of Liberia in 2003 after the ICC convicted him of war crimes, only to be succeeded by another US embassy favourite, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. (31) The Harvard-educated and Nobel Peace Prize-winning Sirleaf presided over a capital where none of its citizens could access running water for six years during her tenure as president. She surrendered the countryside to bands of rampaging warlords and paramilitaries, proved powerless to prevent Liberian death squads from collaborating with a French army that killed thousands in the Ivory Coast, and is the only leader on the continent to offer AFRICOM Liberian territory to build a base. (32)

With such a long record of unspeakable poverty, criminal leadership, and CIA wrongdoing, is it any wonder Liberia was ill-equipped to face Ebola? Western media hardly mentioned this history when lamenting woefully understaffed and ramshackle West African hospitals. Not a hint of sympathy for these public health systems can be found in the US press. Journalists from Medical Daily heaped praise on authoritarian corporate entities instead, like the Firestone Rubber company , whose innovative managers took it upon themselves to do the job governments and socialised healthcare proved incapable of doing. (33) We are told Firestone spared no expense to protect its approximately 80,000 strong workforce. Accomplishments included training medical personnel, using bribes and bullying to acquire resources, and the construction of makeshift quarantine shelters. Yet not a word about Firestone’s appalling human rights record and working conditions tantamount to “the modern equivalent of slavery”. (34)

None of this bothered the head honchos at AFRICOM. It didn’t matter that most Ebola Treatment Units (mainly large tents filled with cheap plastic mattresses) the US military erected in West Africa remained empty for the duration of the epidemic. It didn’t matter that even the Washington Post admitted Obama’s militarized aid intervention made little discernible impact on halting the spread of Ebola. The disease had already subsided before the ETUs were set-up. (35) What did matter was that the “human security” doctrine Obama trumpeted and Samantha Power legitimized at the UN had become reality. The White House kicked one nasty intervention habit, only to pick up a “healthier” one. AFRICOM solidified its stranglehold further via partnerships like APORA (African Partner Outbreak Response Alliance), which sees the US Armed Forces Health Surveillance Centre “help improve African militaries’ ability to effectively support civilian authorities to identify and respond to a disease outbreak”. (36) African nations like Rwanda are now cooperating with APORA in some capacity. (37) Mission accomplished.

Here is a summary of the numerous AFRICOM military installations and operations which proliferated throughout Africa since the Ebola epidemic:

• In 2014 the US built a gargantuan drone base in Agadez, Niger, to spy on or eliminate various Islamic groups, born out of the chaos of NATO’s disastrous regime change war in Libya, scattered across the Sahel region in Mauritania, Chad, and Sudan. (38)
• One of AFRICOM’s permanent bases at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti has exponentially grown in size as more drones and military hardware flood the Horn of Africa.
• Airports in Entebbe, Uganda, have been especially active since 2014, as the US military helps ship “equipment and soldiers to the Central African Republic in support of the African Union’s effort to confront destabilizing forces and violence”. (39) (referring to the ongoing civil war between Christians and Muslims in the CAR—a quagmire which Russia is now embroiled in)
• The US now frequently leads joint military exercises with the island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea—to keep a sharp eye on the safe passage of Nigerian oil tankers to the US. The “official” justification for this military presence is, according to Ghanaian socialist groups, to suppress the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria. (40)
• For over a decade, the US has trained the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo)’s army—a relationship which deepens with each passing year. A separatist Ugandan rebel group called the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) is keeping US military advisors, along with their Congolese and Ugandan counterparts, extremely busy in the oil-rich Lake Albert region. (41)
• AFRICOM even acts as the European Union’s informal customs officer. Since EU nations have quietly moved their borders from the Mediterranean sea all the way down to the southern reaches of the Sahara Desert, US and French bases in Mauritania and Chad keep watch on masses of refugees desperately trying to escape uninhabitable weather conditions and incessant warfare. (42)
• In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s State Department was caught granting waivers for military aid to the South Sudanese military, despite its employ of child soldiers. (43)
• In 2018, geographer Adam Moore noted Air Forces Africa intended to construct 30 permanent or temporary bases in four African nations. Vice News alleged the US military set-up six new facilities in Somalia alone, while smaller “contingency” bases were present in Cameroon and Mali. A contingency outpost in Gabon was soon converted into a forward command centre. (44)
• In 2018, the US roped Ghana into its sphere of influence by persuading Plagiariser-in-chief Nana Akufo-Addo to sign a 20 million dollar “Status of Forces” agreement, which allows US military personnel to carry arms, grants them immunity if accused of crimes, and heavily implies a base will eventually be built on Ghanaian soil. The President lied to protesters opposing this capitulation, promising US bases would stay away from Ghana.
• In 2021, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari pleaded with the US to relocate AFRICOM from Stuttgart, Germany, to somewhere in Africa so as to coordinate attacks against Islamic militants. Once upon a time, Nigeria was one of AFRICOM’s most vociferous critics.
• Finally, AFRICOM is sending attachés and consultants to the African Union’s meetings, arousing fears that the AU’s security and response framework is being slowly co-opted to benefit American corporate and military interests at the expense of member states. (45)

Samantha Power served her purpose, intentionally or not, as an agent of US empire. One might file her actions under the heading ‘benevolent imperialism’. The US’ militarized response to the Ebola epidemic precipitated AFRICOM’s far from benign incursions into West Africa—and Power was there to see it through.

END NOTES

(1) Horace G. Campbell, “Obama in Africa”, (26/6/2013),

(2) Abel Esterhuyse, “The Iraqization of Africa? Looking at AFRICOM from a South African Perspective”, Strategic Studies Quarterly, (2008), pp. 111-115.

(3) Julia Lovell, Maoism: A Global History (London,2019), pp. 185-223.

(4) A. Carl LeVan, “The Political Economy of African responses to the US Africa Command”, Africa Today (2010), p. 2.

(5) Jeremy Kuzmarov, “How the CIA Helped Ruin Liberia”, (30/7/2021).

(6) Dan Glazebrook, “NATO’s War on Libya is an Attack on African Development”, (6/9/2011).

(7) Nick Turse, “Obama’s Scramble for Africa”, (12/7/2012),

(8) Ibid.

(9) Bate Felix and Pascal Fletcher, “Ghost of Rwanda” haunts as US envoy visits Central African Republic”, (19/12/2013).

(10) Andrew Katz, “UN Authorizes Peacekeeping Mission to Central African Republic”, (9/4/2014).

(11) Charles J. Brown, “The Obama Administration and the struggle to prevent atrocities in the Central Republic December 2012-September 2014”, (November 2016), p. 7.

(12) Nick Turse, “Obama’s Scramble for Africa”, (12/7/2012).

(13) Sudarsan Raghavan, “In Africa, US troops moving slowly against Joseph Kony and his militia”, (16/4/2012).

(14) Brown, “The Obama Administration…”, p. 8.

(15) Henry Kam Kah, “History, External Influence, and Political Volatility in Central African Republic (CAR)”, (2014), pp. 18-20.

(16) Jacob Levich, “The Gates Foundation, Ebola, and Global Health Imperialism”, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology (September 2015), p. 726.

(17) Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, “Human Security twenty years on”, (June 2014).

(18) Esterhuyse, “The Iraqization of Africa?…”, pp. 115-116.

(19) Thomas Cullison, Charles Beadling, Elizabeth Erickson, “Global Health Engagement: A Military Medicine Core Competency”, (1/1/2016).

(20) Cheryl Pellerin, “Obama: UN will Mobilize Countries to fight Ebola Outbreak”, (25/9/2014).

(21) Samantha Power, “Remarks by Ambassador Samantha Power at an Emergency Security Council Meeting on Ebola”, (18/9/2014).

(22)  Levich, Ibid, pp. 726-727.

(23) Ibid, pp. 724-725.  

(24) Vijay Prashad, “A New Cold War Over Oil”, (11/8/2007).

(25) Nick Turse, “The US will Invade West Africa in 2023 After an attack in New York—According to Pentagon War Game”, (22/10/2017).

(26) Adia Benton, “Whose Security?: Militarisation and Securitisation During West Africa’s Ebola Outbreak”, in The Politics of Fear: Médecins sans Frontières and the West African Ebola Epidemic, edited by Michiel Hofman and Sokhieng, (2017), pp. 28-30.

(27) Marouf Hasain Jr, Decolonizing Ebola Rhetorics Following the 2013-2016 West African Ebola Outbreak (2019).

(28) Benton, Ibid, pp. 26-27.

(29) Mark Honigsbaum, “Between Securitisation and Neglect: Managing Ebola at the Borders of Global Health”, Medical History Journal, (2017), p. 286.

(30) Levich, “The Gates Foundation…”, pp. 722-723.

(31) Kuzmarov, “How the CIA Helped Ruin Liberia”.

(32) Thomas Mountain, “Nobel for President, No Water for Citizens”, (12/10/2011).

(33) Levich, “The Gates Foundation..”, p. 723. See Susan Scutti, “Firestone keeping Ebola Away From Employers In Liberia through Low-tech Intervention program”, (13/10/2014).

(34) Levich, “The Gates Foundation…”, pp. 722-723.

(35) Ibid, p. 725.

(36) Thomas Cullison et al.

(37) MOD Updates, “RDF Hosts Seventh African Partner Outbreak Response Alliance (APORA 2019)”, (20/5/2019).

(38) Socialist Movement of Ghana’s Research Group, “Defending Our Sovereignty: US military Bases in Africa and the Future of the African Union”, (8/7/2021).

(39) Captain Christine Guthrie, “Uganda troops support US airlift missions”, (22/1/2014).

(40) Socialist Movement of Ghana, Ibid.

(41) Ibid.

(42) Ibid.

(43) Nick Turse, “Hillary Clinton’s State Department Gave South Sudan’s Military a Pass for its Child Soldiers”, (9/6/2016).

(44) Nick Turse, “US military says it has a “light footprint in Africa. These documents show a vast network of bases”, (1/12/2018).

(45) Socialist Movement of Ghana, Ibid.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jean-Philippe Stone.

In light of such incidents, “journalists have to be a lot more careful going into this election,” Janefrances Onyinye Nweze, a reporter who covered the 2015 and 2019 national elections in Enugu, told CPJ, emphasizing that the situation there had become “guerilla warfare.” She advised journalists to “disguise as much as possible” by reducing the visibility of press tags and branding on vehicles. “Somebody has to cover the election at the end of the day, but do your best not to put yourself in harm’s way.”

Safety concerns were paramount when CPJ recently spoke to over 50 other journalists and civil society members about the upcoming elections. Interviewees noted that local knowledge was essential for planning how to cover a wide range of potential security threats. Some editors said they would rely on local freelancers to cover difficult areas. Others raised concerns that authorities might disrupt access to communication services or online platforms, as they did previously with Twitter. In recent years, CPJ has documented how security forces, political supporters, and unidentified armed men have attacked, harassed, and denied access to journalists covering Nigerian elections.

As of early February, an election violence tracker compiled by the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and Nigeria-based Centre for Democracy and Development had identified over 4,000 violent incidents and over 11,000 fatalities across the country since January 2022. Alleged perpetrators included supporters of major political parties, local militias, separatist organizations, and militant extremist groups.

CPJ sent questions to Nigeria’s Ministry of Defence and national police about their plans to ensure journalists’ safety during the elections but received no response. At an event last month, Peter Afunanya, a spokesperson for Nigeria’s Department of State Services, a federal security agency, said that their efforts during the elections were geared toward protecting citizens and that journalists should inform security forces of their needs. He also called for journalism that promoted “national unity.”

Here are the views of nine journalists in Nigeria, reflecting some of their security concerns and how reporters can try to address them. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Yusuf Anka, a freelance journalist who has reported extensively on pervasive banditry in Nigeria’s northwestern Zamfara state, emphasized the distinct security dynamics in different northern areas.

We have this serious infiltration of armed groups. We have smaller groups, ideological, Islamic, not under the umbrella of Boko Haram [an Islamic militant group based in the northeast]. Some think the problems in [a northeastern city like] Maiduguri and Zamfara are the same. Some think [other northern states like] Sokoto state and Yobe state are the same. In case you’re deploying, you need to understand the differences.

The best way to get proper reportage is the use of stringers or community members because in some areas, although elections will be held, non-indigenous members may not be able to [get] access. There is no airport in Zamfara. The best way to get there is from [neighboring Sokoto state].

Journalists trying to understand the situation could [listen to] private radio [broadcasters] in these hostile areas. Areas close to Zamfara’s south with [a] military presence would be safer. But we’ve seen attacks very close to the police and military. Make careful choices of hotels and drivers. Have one person who is only a call away if you have an emergency. There are more abductions at night than day.

Bunmi Yekini, a producer with the privately owned Radio Now 95.3 FM in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, in the southwest, has covered five elections, including the 2015 and 2019 presidential polls. For this year’s elections, Radio Now will have correspondents in nearly every state.

For the presidency, it will be a bit dicey [in Lagos] because it’s going to be shared [in terms of voter support] basically between the Labour Party, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and APC [the ruling All Progressives Congress party]. There is a possibility of violence between supporters.

Radio Now management has already started providing safety kits. We have pepper spray and the press jacket. There is no news that is greater than your life. Do not be the news. Get emergency numbers of security agencies in the vicinity. Make sure your phone is constantly charged, have a power bank and enough [mobile phone] airtime. A designated car is very important; there will be no commercial vehicles. Get to know the area boys [people who live in the area and know the streets intimately]. They can save the day for you.

Hamza Idris and Suleiman Suleiman, respectively general editor and deputy editor-in-chief of the privately owned Daily Trust newspaper based in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, as well as Abdulaziz Abdulaziz, who previously worked as the paper’s deputy general editor and left to join the APC campaign, said Daily Trust will have over 100 journalists working to cover the elections across the country.

Idris: The company is holding a series of training [sessions] both online and offline for our reporters on how to cover.

Abdulaziz: Local knowledge helps in terms of safety, but it does not mean that everyone deployed will work in [familiar] places. That is why the training is very important, [as is] collaboration with local partners. Do not be ostentatious, dress in a flashy way, or wear something that is easily identifiable with a group of people, or would mark you as being a stranger.

Suleiman: We have people on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube who are going to be engaging with audiences. Digital safety will be very relevant.

Nuruddeen Abdallah, editor of the privately owned 21st Century Chronicle newspaper based in Abuja, said they will have reporters covering almost all the northern states, as well as major cities in the south. But there are places that he thinks are too dangerous.

I will not be telling [a reporter] to go to Isa town, in [northwestern] Sokoto state; it’s the operational headquarters of [bandit leader] Turji. In [northwestern] Kebbi state, I will not ask [a reporter] to go to the Birnin Yauri area where girls were abducted. Take [north-central] Kaduna state, for example, I will not be sending my reporter to Birnin Gwari town area. In [north-central] Niger state, I will not be sending [them] to Kagara, Mashegu, or Shiroro areas; but they can operate in Minna, Suleja, Lavun, Bida. Another bad place is Maru in Zamfara state. That is where [bandit leader] Ali Kachala [operates].

Agba Jalingo is the publisher of the privately owned CrossRiverWatch news website based in Calabar, the capital of Nigeria’s southern Cross River state.

It’s risky to carry a visible camera. Rely on small gadgets that you can put on your body.

[Remember] there is no public transport on election day.

The level of violence in Calabar South is very high. Don’t identify yourself as a journalist [there]. If you’re [slightly more north] in Calabar Municipality, you can brandish yourself as a journalist and still be safe.

Rukaiya Ahmed is deputy head of news with the privately owned Radio Ndarason Internationale broadcaster, which in Nigeria covers the eastern states of Adamawa, Yobe, Taraba, and Borno. She is based in the northeastern city of Maiduguri.

We have contact with the INEC [electoral commission] office, with the hope of them giving us kits [including press identification] that will help us conduct [reporting] without hindrance from security operatives. The top officials should make them [officers] know that journalists are part of the society and have to report the happenings. Military and security operatives should not stop journalists.

Musikilu Mojeed, editor-in-chief and chief operating officer with the Abuja-based privately owned Premium Times news site, which covers elections across the country. In addition to armed groups and criminals in various areas, he expressed concern about the conduct of the authorities toward the press.

We hope that the police and military will be fair and neutral, and will allow journalists to move around and do their job as necessary.

We make use of [security] analysis done by CLEEN Foundation, [a Nigeria-based NGO promoting public safety and accessible justice]. Covering an election in this country can be like going to the war front.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jonathan Rozen.