Pentagon burns bio-fuels to secure fossil fuels; more of both come from Africa

The Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet flew over Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. on Earth Day, April 22, 2010, powered by a blend of 50 percent biofuel and 50 percent kerosene-based jet propulsion fuel.  The FA-18F  is a new generation of the  FA-18s, which include the FA-18Es that fly over San Francisco each October, on Columbus Day, during the Blue Angels Air Show.   In 2010, San Francisco's Fleet Week and Blue Angels Air Show, which comes to the City every October at the City of San Francisco's invitation, showcased Boeing's new AH-64D biofuel-powered attack helicopter. 

Walnut Creek, California based Eco-Fuel Global is a world leader in the new biofuels industry. Opponents of its biofuels planting projects, in Africa and other parts of the Global South, argue that cropland should be used to grow food, to feed people, not to grow more combustible fuel, and that its jatropha biofuel crop is highly toxic.


On New Year's Eve, KPFA Radio News aired this report on the Pentagon's consumption of both fossil fuels and biofuels, and Africa as a source of both: 

KPFA Radio News, 10.31.2010:


KPFA News Anchor Anthony Fest:

The US military uses far more fuel than any branch of the American government, and the US Air Force uses far more fuel than its other branches. On December 20th, Defense Industry Daily, a trade publication reporting military purchasing news for defense procurement managers and contractors, reported that the Defense Logistics Agency had issued over 1.5 billion dollars worth of fuel contracts this month. Africa peace and social justice activists say that more and more of the fuel consumed by the U.S. military, and by other U.S. consumers, comes from Africa. KPFA's Ann Garrison has the story.

KPFA/Ann Garrison:
The Defense Logistics Agency typically issues large sets of fuel contracts over concentrated periods during the year, but continues to issue fuel contracts all year long. Defense fuel purchases are typically frenzied during the month of March. In March 2009, DLA fuel contracts totaled $5.5 billion. This month, as of December 20th, the agency had issued over $1.5 billion fuel contracts.

Africa activists have pointed out that more and more of the fuel consumed by the U.S. military and other American consumers comes from Africa, and that Africa has surpassed the Middle East as a source of U.S. oil imports. Liberian/American Emira Woods, of the Institute for Policy Studies, says that this is confirmed by Department of Energy statistics:

Emira Woods, Liberian American scholar, activist, and 
editor of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute 
for Policy Studies in Washington D.C.

Emira Woods, Institute for Policy Studies:
That's from the Department of Energy tables. They come out at the end of each year. So they're about to come out now for 2010. At the end of December they'll come out for 2010. It's basically looking at those Department of Energy oil imports. So for Africa, it's about 24%. From the Middle East, it's varied over the years, from 21 to 19, since 2008.

KPFA:
Organizations like the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the Brookings Institute have raised concerns about meeting the U.S. military's huge demand for fuel in the future, and both coal-to-liquid transportation fuel, and biofuels have been proposed as substitutes. The U.S. military is already the largest consumer of Coal to Liquid transportation fuel, mostly purchased from the South African SASOL corporation. And in March, 2009, Aviation Week announced, that U.S. Air Force officials would acquire more than 300,000 gallons of biofuels for use in a 50-50 mix with kerosene-based jet fuel by 2013.

In "Biofuels and Neocolonialism," a group of six scholars writing for the Pambazuka News said that biofuels had caused, quote, "a new and massive land-grabbing scramble in Africa, unprecedented since the fall of colonialism, claimed to be justified by fears of global climate change."

The San Francisco Green Party's Eric Brooks has long spoken out against such claims:

Eric Brooks, of Our City, a San Francisco community
activist organization, and the San Francisco Green Party. 

Eric Brooks, San Francisco Green Party:
We all know that the main reason the U.S. military exists in its massive state right now is to go around the world and grab places that have fossil fuel and guard that fossil fuel, so that we can get it and use it and corporations can sell it. And, it's just really twisted logic to burn crop-based bio-fuels to go grab fossil fuels like oil.

KPFA:
Mozambique, Burkina Faso, and many other African countries have rejected biofuels, and an American biofuels corporation, EcoFuel Global, has stirred anger with its biofuels project in Rwanda, where land is scarce, population is dense, and people are hungry.

For Pacifica-KPFA Radio, I'm Ann Garrison.

Why did the Commonwealth accept Rwanda?

Commonwealth leaders at the Commonwealth Heads of Government 

meeting in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, 11.28.2009.

The Commonwealth Heads of Government, meeting in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, on 11. 28.2009, admitted Rwanda to the Commonwealth, despite the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative's objections to Rwanda's miserable human rights record, compromised courts, compromised elections, and repeated invasions to loot the mineral wealth of neighboring D.R. Congo, objections reported in the London Guardian and many other sources.

On 11.26.2009, on the BBC's Have Your Say, Interim Rwandan Democratic Green Party President Frank Habineza and Sam Okudetsu of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)  argued that the Commonwealth should not consider Rwanda's application unless and until Rwanda's upcoming election, in August 2010, is free and fair.

Professor Yash Pai Ghai, a Kenyan legal expert, wrote, in a report for the CHRI:

"We believe that overwhelming evidence, conveniently ignored by leading Commonwealth states, demonstrates that the government of Rwanda is not sufficiently committed to the protection of human rights and to democracy." 

But, that wasn't enough to block acceptance of Rwanda's application this year. 

Nor did Commonwealth leaders question Rwanda's pending gay imprisonment legislation, which makes the sincerity of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and British Prime Minister Gordon' Brown's reported "fury" over neighboring Uganda's pending gay death penalty highly doubtful.

This makes it even less likely that Uganda will be expelled from the Commonwealth, despite international outcry, if its gay death penalty bill passes, as expected.

Indeed, as reported on Slap Upside the Head, a gay blog in the U.S., Prime Ministers Harper and Brown expressed their "fury" over Uganda's gay death penalty by reproducing a U.S. government press release, much of it word for word:

Slap Upside the Head

So why did the Commonwealth, and, most of all, Britain and Canada, ignore everything they claim to stand for---human rights, democracy, secure borders, and the rule of law---to champion Rwanda, the African darling of English speaking politicians and CEOS?

Because Rwanda has served the interests of the U.S., Britain, and Canada, and their allies, since the mass slaughter known as the Rwanda Genocide of 1994, during which Rwandan exile Paul Kagame led the Rwandan Patriotic Front into Rwanda, from neighboring, English-speaking, Uganda, to seize power.   Rwanda is now re-establishing diplomatic ties with France, and the Commonwealth's French equivalent, La Francophonie, but English is now the official language of Rwanda, even though most Rwandans speak only Kinyarwanda and French.  The U.S. and its allies use Rwanda and its proxy army to secure their interests in the region, which include:

--Rwanda's rich agricultural land, planted in coffee, tea, and biofuels for export, while Rwandans go hungry,

--natural gas reserves,  an estimated $20 billion worth, in Lake Kivu, on the border of Rwanda and D.R. Congo,

--the unparalleled mineral wealth of Eastern D.R. Congo, including fossil fuels, uranium, coltan, cassiterite, diamonds, and, the world's cobalt reserves, in the Katanga Copper Belt.

The U.S. has long been committed to controlling the cobalt reserves in the Katanga Copper Belt to ensure U.S. military industries ongoing ability to manufacture for war.

Peace activism = climate activism

"Militarism is the way corporations maintain their access to their food supply — the planet."     --Steve Martinot, Militarism and Global Warming

The best thing Copenhagen climate talks could produce would be protest.  Not more ineffective international standards and protocols.  Protest.

So it's no wonder that UK border police, on October 14th, invoked anti-terrorist law to arrest Chris Ktichen, a British climate change activist attempting to cross into mainland Europe for events leading up to the talks.

The Danish government is also preparing new "turmoil and riot" law to control expected protest.

Two days before Kitchen's arrest, Denmark's top climate negotiator, Thomas Becker, resigned and "could not be reached for comment."  Some speculated that Becker was too determined to fight for agreements with real consequence, but the Danish government called it "purely an administrative matter," then claimed that Becker had put too many bottles of red wine on his state funded restaurant tab.

Reuters and most other outlets all published the same unattributed report, including this conclusion:

Although the host's chief negotiator can wield influence as a broker behind the scenes, Denmark's own position is tightly tied to European Union policy, and Becker's absence was seen as unlikely to change an outcome which will be decided primarily by the big powers.  - --Reuters, 10.12.2009

But, no matter how much control, including police control, Denmark and the big powers organize between now and December's climate talks, there will no doubt be considerable angry protest.   I hope that it will include anti-war protest, because, broadly understood, the wars for fossil fuels and other resources, are the greatest cause of global warming.  Steve Martinot makes this argument with irrefutable logic in "Militarism and global warming," where he argues that "militarism is the way corporations maintain their access to their food supply --- the planet."

The U.S. military is the world's largest single consumer of fossil fuels---and uranium, to generate nuclear power and maintain the nation's nuclear weapons stock.  We fight in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa, to secure the fossil fuels, fossil fuel transport corridors, uranium, and other military industrial minerals that we must have to keep fighting for more of the same, and, that U.S. military industries must have to continue to manufacture for war.

So, although there were rallies against global warming all over the world, yesterday, the most powerful, in effect, was the London protest against the Afghanistan War led by Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, who now faces court martial for refusing to return to fight in Afghanistan: