U.S. navy to fight crime, terror along African coast

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

U.S. navy to fight crime, terror along African coast
Sat May 19, 2007 10:52AM EDT

By Daniel Flynn

DAKAR (Reuters) - The United States is boosting its naval presence
along the lawless West African coast to combat terrorism, illegal
migration and drug trafficking and to secure U.S. oil interests,
senior naval and coastguard officials said.

Amid concerns that weak government controls in some West African
states has made the region fertile for drug cartels, people smugglers
and Islamist groups, the U.S. navy command in Europe has focused
its activities southward.

"The clear majority of shipping coming into the United States is
coming off the coast of West Africa into the Gulf of Mexico," Vice-
Admiral John Stufflebeem, commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet based
in the Mediterranean, said on Saturday.

"So we are interested in this (region) from a security perspective
from our own homeland, and ... in commerce and quite frankly, oil
is one part of it," he told Reuters.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSL1915119420070519

[MADem]

1. AVAST, Matey...... PIRATES!!!!!!! No kidding...pirates!!!

AGGH...I know Stufflebeem!! I knew him before he was a VADM, too!

I'm gettin' old!

PIRACY A CONCERN

In a joint naval and coastguard initiative, the two vice-admirals were touring six West African countries -- Mauritania, Senegal, Benin, Togo, Sao Tome and Gabon -- to build maritime cooperation ahead of the year-long trial deployment of a U.S. navy vessel to the region in October.

The amphibious ship, capable of carrying training teams and smaller boats, will act as a mobile base along the coast, in a test of a global naval project dubbed Global Fleet Station to expand the U.S. maritime presence for a reasonably low cost....."When we talk to major corporations like oil companies or insurance companies ..., there is a growing concern about the safety and security of their enterprises," Stufflebeem said, singling out Nigeria, the world's third worst nation for piracy.

"There is a growing intersection of illegal activities that cross over into terrorism. Terrorists are using illegal activities to raise money," said Stufflebeem, citing diamond trading in Africa and drug trafficking from South America.

Stufflebeem said the AIS initiative should be complimented with a network of radar stations, such as the $18 million site being built by the U.S. government for Sao Tome. However, he played down speculation of a U.S. naval base on the archipelago: "We are not looking for a permanent presence."

With hundreds of illegal West African migrants arriving in Spain's Canary Islands in recent weeks, despite European Union patrols along the coast of Senegal and Mauritania, Stufflebeem said the United States was committed to stemming the tide.

[MikeNearMcChord]

2. Amazing that the military industrial complex

can fine new excuses for their existence. Pardon my cynicism.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Don't kid yourselves. This is being used for the same purposes as the murderous

U.S. "war on drugs" in South America--to kill union organizers, community organizers, leftists and the poor who revolt against global corporate predator oil and resource giants.

Think about who's in charge. Think about WHO'S IN CHARGE!

In Colombia, Bush has larded $4 billion of our taxpayer dollars in military aid on a regime with very close ties to rightwing paramilitaries who are slaughtering union organizers, community organizers, leftists and the poor, and leaving them in mass graves, and who are involved in major drug trafficking and plots against democratic governments--especially those who are RESISTING the U.S. militarization of South America under cover of the "war on drugs" (Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia). Top officials of the Uribe government--the chief of the military, the former chief of intelligence (very close to Uribe) and numerous Uribe politicians--have been accused and/or arrested, in the huge current scandal in Colombia, in an investigation led by extraordinarily courageous judges, prosecutors and opposition politicians, who have put their own lives at serious risk to break up the Uribe gang.

The U.S. military is being used to spy on and oppose--and to kill--grass roots organizers who are struggling to defeat fascist government and its lawless operatives in Colombia. There have also been grass roots protests and other community organizing in West Africa, specifically against the oil corporations who are extracting one of the region's chief resources with no benefit to the people who live there. The U.S., under the Bush Junta, OPPOSES democracy in West Africa and everywhere else. They are no doubt engaging in all sorts of covert operations to PREVENT any strong, representative government from developing there. THIS is why lawlessness and piracy may be occurring there. It is the same in Iraq. It is the same in Colombia. Wherever the Bush Junta goes, it creates chaos and death, in the interest of global corporate predators, and it has hijacked the U.S. military to that purpose. Their M.O. in Iraq is their M.O. everywhere, even here. Look at the chaos in New Orleans, to the benefit of Halliburton and Blackwater mercenaries. This M.O. is profoundly anti-democratic. And we need to distrust every word spoken about activities like these, by U.S. military officers whose careers and advancement are now dependent on their willingness to lie for the Bush Junta. They are no different from the toady U.S. Attorneys whom Karl Rove has installed to do his political hackery with our justice system.