(Translation from original article)
By Manlio Dinucci
Faced with the “unprecedented Ebola, which spreads exponentially epidemic in West Africa,” President Obama announced that “at the request of the Liberian government,” the United States will establish “a military command center in Liberia “. This is a “command headquarters of the joint force” specifies the Africa Command of the United States (including the “area of responsibility” covers the entire continent except Egypt). The headquarters, under General Darryl Williams (already on the ground in Liberia) will have at least 3,000 military Americans, an airlift and a sorting center in Senegal. It is this headquarters will perform the function of “command and control” of the international operation anti-Ebola, which aims to send medical personnel and hospitals. According to Obama, it is “an example of what happens when America takes leadership to confront the world’s greatest challenges.” He listed in his recent speech urbi et orbi, claiming that only the United States has “the capacity and will to mobilize the world against the terrorists of Isis” and “beat the worldwide recall against Russian aggression , “and” contain and destroy the Ebola “epidemic.
Although the possibility that Ebola spreads in the United States is extremely low, said Obama in his speech at the Center for Control and Prevention of Diseases [1] in Atlanta (Georgia), in West Africa it caused the deaths of “more than 2,400 men, women and children.” Event certainly tragic, but limited if it is related to the fact that West Africa has a population of about 350 million and the entire sub-Saharan region almost 950 million. If you think die every year in the region due to AIDS over a million adults and children; that causes malaria each year more than 600,000 deaths, mostly among African children; that in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia diarrhea annually kills about 600,000 children (over 1,600 per day) less than five years. These diseases and others, all “diseases of poverty”, which cause each year in sub-Saharan Africa millions of premature deaths and disability cases are due to undernourishment and malnutrition, lack of drinking water, poor hygiene and sanitary living conditions of the poor, who (according to data from the World Bank itself) constitutes 70% of the total population, 49% is in conditions of extreme poverty. Obama’s campaign against Ebola seems instrumental.
West Africa, where the Pentagon set up its own headquarters with the official motivation to fight against Ebola, is very rich in raw materials: oil in Nigeria and Benin, diamonds in Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, phosphates in Senegal and Togo, rubber, gold and diamonds in Liberia, gold and diamonds in Guinea and Ghana, bauxite in Guinea. The most fertile land is reserved for monocultures of cacao, pineapple, peanuts and cotton for export. Côte d’Ivoire is the world’s largest cocoa producer. Exploitation of these great resources virtually nothing happens to the people because the revenues are shared between multinational corporations and local elites, which is also rich from the export of precious wood with serious environmental consequences from deforestation .
The interests of multinational US and European however endangered by popular rebellions (like the Niger Delta caused by environmental and social consequences of oil exploration) and by competition from China, whose investments are for much more useful and beneficial African countries. To maintain its own influence in the continent Usa formed in 2007 that Africa Command, behind the screen of humanitarian operations, recruiting and training in African countries officers and local special forces through hundreds of military activities . An important basis for these operations is that of Sigonella (Sicily), which was deployed Task Force Corps Navy, with its hybrid aircraft Ospreys sends rotating squads in Africa, particularly West.
Where the Obama campaign begins “against the Ebola virus.”
