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This transcript appears in the April 21, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

[Print version of this transcript]

Liam Murphy

Africa Without Colonialism

This is the edited transcript of the presentation by Liam Murphy to Panel 2, “The Scientific Mission of the One Mankind” of the March 11, 2023 Schiller Institute conference, “To End Colonialism: A Mission for All Youth.” Mr. Murphy is a member of the LaRouche Youth Movement. Subheads and embedded links have been added.

Watch the entire March 11 Schiller Institute conference here.

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Schiller Institute
Liam Murphy

The question I want to focus on today is the question of, if a post-colonial world is possible; and what are the possibilities that exist within a post-colonial world? Specifically, in the frame of what is possible in Africa.

I want to ask my audience here, first: Do you believe that a post-colonial world is actually possible today? OK—well, there are a lot of people who don’t think it’s possible. I want to say that not only do I think it’s possible, but in many ways, we are actually already here. But the problem is, and the question that we need to ask, is, if we are ready to accept a new paradigm, and if we are actually ready to advance mankind? It’s already here. It’s just a question of, if the United States is going to accept it.

I want to start off, actually, with a quote from President Franklin Roosevelt that I found particularly interesting. This is from a conversation that FDR’s son captured when FDR was speaking with UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Wealth! Imperialists don’t realize what they can do, what they can create! They’ve robbed this continent of billions, and all because they were too short-sighted to understand that their billions were pennies, compared to the possibilities! Possibilities that must include a better life for the people who inhabit this land.…

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Pipe segments for Libya’s Great Man-Made River project, 1987. For scale, note the man seated inside the middle segment.

And that is the possibility that exists today, and that is the possibility that the United States must wake up to: Is the new paradigm and the opportunities to turn the billions that we’ve stolen, into a far bigger thing that benefits us? And so, I want to compare and contrast the paradigm that is developing, and that I think is already largely here, versus the old paradigm and the so-called “rules-based order.” And by doing that, I want to very quickly look at what occurred in Libya around ten years ago.

Libya was one of the wealthiest countries in Africa, if not the wealthiest: It had free health care, free education, free electricity; and they were working on the Great Man-Made River Project, which is one of the most fascinating mega-projects in world history. It is one of the largest water projects in history, and they did a lot to green the desert coastal regions and bring fresh water to hundreds of thousands of people.

And what was the reaction of the Western forces to this paradigm, and to the fact that they were developing a new currency, and these new opportunities? Well, the disgusting thing, which many of us have seen, is, only days after Muammar Qaddafi was assassinated, Hillary Clinton went on the news saying, “We came, we saw, he died.” What a disgusting reflection on the resistance to development, coming out of the United States.

I want to quickly compare that and that attitude that you see from Hillary Rodham Clinton, to the views demonstrated by Xi Jinping in speeches he’s given on African-Chinese development. At the China-Africa Business Forum in Johannesburg, South Africa on Dec. 4, 2015, he said:

The achievement of inclusive and sustainable development in Africa hinges on industrialization which holds the key to creating jobs, eradicating poverty and improving people’s living standards.... China is ready to share, without any reservation, advanced applicable technology with Africa and combine Chinese competitive industries with African needs for development to deepen industrial cooperation.

So, I want to ask, when was the last time you heard of China invading an African country? When was the last time you heard of the United States sharing its advanced technology with an African nation? This is the paradox of the competing paradigms that we’re seeing today.

I think that it’s clear that the era of colonialization is over, with the projects that we’re seeing actually develop out of the Belt and Road. For instance, I recently wrote an article about the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), a huge mega-project being developed in Uganda and Tanzania. Dewey Donahue and I have also been working on some follow-ups to that article, but the gist of it is that it’s an oil pipeline that begins in Lake Albert in Uganda, and it will be among the world’s largest crude oil pipelines. It will go 1,445 km all the way from landlocked Uganda across Tanzania, and terminate at the Indian Ocean Port of Tanga, where the oil will be able to be exported.

Now, the crucial thing to realize about Uganda and Africa, is the situation of energy poverty that exists within these countries. I pulled up some statistics: In the United States, average household-only consumption of electricity is around 12,000 kilowatt hours per year per capita. In Chad, it’s a mere 8 kWh per capita. That disparity that exists today, is frightening, when you imagine that. These people are forced to go out and chop down trees to have wood to heat their homes, to cook their food, and that is a struggle that they go through every day.

East African Crude Oil Pipeline
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The East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline

Now you see the Chinese have worked out deals with Uganda, to work together with them on developing their oil and gas industry, in developing the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline, which also includes fiber optic cables, and other infrastructure in the pipeline project. The Chinese National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) has a 28% stake in this project. The Chinese University of Petroleum has also made a deal with Makerere University, where we have contacts, by the way, to have a scholarship program to send Ugandans to the University, as well as an exchange program, where the Chinese and the African citizens can intermix, and go to each other’s universities to learn; and they’re also funding a state-of-the-art laboratory, being made in Kampala, Uganda, so that there can be a furtherance of the scientific developments in geology and in the petroleum industry.

You see that development happening today that China’s involved in. From the West, however, there’s been a dramatic push against this pipeline project. All these Western NGOs—Fridays4Future, Friends of the Earth, all these different environmentalist groups—pushing back against this project, because they say that it’s a “climate bomb.” Now, of course, they didn’t call the Nord Stream attack a “climate bomb,” even though it was the largest release of methane gas in all of history, but you see that they want to go into Africa and tell them, “Hey! You can’t build this pipeline, because it’s so bad for the climate. But, by the way, go cut down those trees over there, so you can heat your home.”

Western Hypocrisy or Development?

So we see this kind of ridiculous hypocrisy. By the way, those NGOs, when you look into it, where do they get their money from? Where do they get their funding from? Oh well, only the Open Society Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, all of these foundations, some of them which actually got their start and their money in their family from the oil industry, and now they want to say, “No one else is allowed to actually develop these resources! You have to wait for a just transition for us to give you the money to build solar panels and windmills.”

You see that kind of hypocrisy, and then you see other projects that are developing along the Belt and Road. One that is particularly interesting, because it has a past that extends back into the 1970s, very early in the Chinese-African cooperative history: China worked together with Tanzania and Zambia to build a railway that extended from the port, along the Tanzanian coastline, all the way into Zambia, which is landlocked, so that there could be an economic development corridor there, where goods are actually exchanged, and traded, and moved from place to place, to be manufactured into finished products. So you see these developments occurring, where now, that railway which was built in the ’70s is now being transformed into a more modern, standard gauge, higher-speed railway system.

There are examples across the continent, over and over again, of the Chinese working together with these different African nations, to build the type of infrastructure that lifts people out of poverty. Whereas we might give a little bit of what we call “aid money” to give people mosquito nets, to stop mosquitoes from biting people, but what about actually building the infrastructure so that people aren’t exposed to mosquitoes, in the first place? What about building the type of infrastructure that leads these people out of a life of poverty, so that they can maybe make mosquito nets there, in their country? I mean, we’re treating these people like second-class citizens, like dogs, and then we’re supposed to be so good, because we give them a little bit of aid.

It’s disgusting, the kind of thing that we see.

The potential now, because of the Belt and Road Initiative for future developments and future projects, is absolutely astounding. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is the largest dam in the world, was built by PowerChina. PowerChina recently signed a memorandum of understanding by which they’re going to consider what will be necessary to build the Transaqua project, a water conveyance corridor project that the LaRouche organization has had a very large influence on discussing as a possibility, since it was first designed in the 1970s. Lake Chad is almost completely dry today.

We have many such cases in the United States, of lakes drying up. The Transaqua project is a project to refill Lake Chad and create new opportunities for different river routes to extend trade and extend commercial cooperation between different nations in Africa. That is a project that right now has a chance of being created. And you see the company that built the Three Gorges Dam is actually looking into how to build this great project.

With energy, you see the oil and gas industry is being developed in many of these nations; but what’s more exciting is the potential for nuclear power. You have these agreements to study and begin training young African students on nuclear energy science and development.

The basis for a complete shift in the paradigm, for a complete shift in the way humankind interacts with each other, the way we work with each other, is there, and it’s happening right now. The only thing stopping it, is that we are resisting it. It’s time that that stops. I want to say that Africa has a unique role, not only to play in the future, but also to create this paradigm. President Lula da Silva of Brazil has called for Non-Aligned nations to form a Peace Club to act as a mediator between the warring parties in Ukraine.

Showing the World a New Paradigm

But I think these countries should demand an investigation into the Nord Stream pipeline attack that Sy Hersh exposed. Because, for instance, with the EACOP pipeline, how can the West work together on actually building new projects with these other countries, if these countries don’t even think they can trust us? Helga Zepp-LaRouche, a few weeks ago, was on the Solovyov Live TV show with Vladimir Solovyov, and it’s crazy to see how, outside of the United States, most of the world thinks that every single person in the United States, [that] no one [here] sees that we’re falling into a nuclear war, no one sees that there’s an opportunity for a new paradigm. They think that everyone in the U.S. hates Russia, hates China, and is just completely stupid.

And that’s the exciting thing about us, about The LaRouche Organization, the interventions that we’ve been doing; that we’re showing the world: “Look, there actually is a voice in the West, there actually are people in the West, who understand what is necessary for humanity to continue to survive, and we’re interested in working together on building these projects.” I’ve just got to say, there’s this America First movement, which asks, why are we going to work around the world? We need to retreat back to the United States.”

There’s nothing here anymore folks! I mean, we’re not going to be able to rebuild America if we don’t work together with other countries. It’s not going to happen! The only industry we have left, practically, is the military-industrial complex.

So how are we going to get ourselves out of this mess?

We have to be the voice of reason, to say that we need to work with other countries. If we don’t work with other countries, the worst possible scenario is obviously nuclear war. The best possible scenario is that, without joining this new paradigm, we’re just going have a hyperinflationary blowout and we’re going to be the laughingstock of the entire planet. As a patriot, I don’t want that to happen. So it’s time that we join the new paradigm, we join the new, post-colonial world that is emerging today. Without that, we’re done.

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