Britannia Radio

BY ALEXANDER COCKBURN

FIRST POSTED JULY 16, 2009

Let me be clear," says Barack Obama, and, as with George Bush's rapid eye movements when he was telling a lie, you know the 44th president is on the brink of some absurdity.

"Now let me be clear," he told the Russians on his recent trip. "America will not seek to impose any system of government on any other country, nor would we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country... America will never impose a security arrangement on another country." And they sneer at Sarah Palin for her rhetorical absurdities?

More from Obama in Moscow, as he presses forward with the Clinton/Bush policy of Nato expansion, ringing Russia with missile bases: "And let me be clear: Nato seeks collaboration with Russia, not confrontation." The last guy in the White House to be that clear was Richard Nixon, who tossed in "perfectly" as a bonus.

In Ghana, Obama lectured all of Africa on the correct moral path to a better future

It was even worse in Ghana, where Obama (pictured above after speaking to their parliament) used his podium to lecture the whole of Africa on the correct moral and political path to a better future. Of course, this was really aimed at those same folks back home who thrilled to Obama’s strictures on the campaign trail, using Father's Day a year ago to tell black dads - only black dads - to shape up.

"Africa's future is up to Africans," he said in Accra. For an educated man in the 21st century, not to mention one with some knowledge of Africa's history, that's easily as ludicrous as Palin's supposed ignorance of Africa's status as a continent. (I say "suppposed" because that Palin blooper turned out to be a hoax.)

Africa's future is to a pervasive extent up to the World Bank, the IMF, international mining and oil companies and the US Congress (which, for example, votes cotton subsidies to domestic corporate farmers, thus undercutting and laying waste the cotton economies of Burkina Faso, Benin, Mali and Chad).

Obama flees clarity whenever it involves unpleasant shouldering of responsibility

Was it Africans who forced privatisations in Zambia beginning in the late 1990s, in which 257 of 280 businesses left the public sector? A fine piece in Le Monde diplomatique by Jean-Christophe Servant describes how nearly 100,000 lost their jobs. Servant cites a detailed report on the privatisation by John Lungu and Alastair Frazer, which establishes that the sale "was orchestrated by the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) — including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund".

The report went on: "ZCCM's privatisation was carried out with a complete lack of transparency, no debate in parliament, and with one-sided contracts which few of us have ever seen. It has never profited the inhabitants of the Copperbelt. Nor its environment."

Servant also cites Edith Nawakwi, Zambia's former finance minister, who oversaw the privatisations. She recalls: "We were told by advisers,