Freedom Rider: Andrew Young's Nobel War Prize
by BAR Editor and Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley
"Young is now using the Nobel Peace Prize as a public relations tool for his thieving client, Obasanjo."
Andrew Young broke down and cried at the ground breaking of the Martin Luther King memorial on the Washington mall. What should have been going through his mind as he wept in Jesse Jackson's arms? "Martin must be spinning in his grave to see how low I have sunk."
How does one begin to describe the perfidy of Andrew Young? There is plenty of material to work with as examples of his bottom feeding grow exponentially. The man who made a name for himself as a trusted aide to Martin Luther King is now nothing more than a whore for corporations and crooked kleptocrats.
His correct title may be lobbyist or consultant, but the world's oldest profession is Young's as well. Actually, calling him a whore is an insult to the street walkers, call girls and rent boys who are at least transparent about what they do and why they do it.
Young's client may be Jesse Jackson, or the Nigerian government, but the end result is always the same. He gets a big check and someone else gets the shaft. The shaftee may be a worker at Nike or Wal-Mart or millions of Nigerians suffering from environmental disasters and theft of their nation's resources.
"Calling Andrew Young a whore is an insult to the street walkers, call girls and rent boys."
Young's lobbying firm, the ironically named GoodWorks International, is his source of ill gotten gains. The latest outrage emanating from GoodWorks is a sordid attempt to refurbish the image of a client who has stolen millions of dollars and participated in the killing of millions of people.
Olusegun Obasanjo is the outgoing president of Nigeria who also ruled as a military dictator in the 1970s. When the Ibo people struggled for independence from 1966 to 1970, then Gen. Obasanjo participated in the slaughter of 3 million lives.
Young is now using the Nobel Peace Prize as a public relations tool for his thieving client, Obasanjo. A man who killed and robbed on a mass scale is now being promoted as a Nobel prize recipient by his lobbyist Andrew Young.
When Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize it was not just a great honor conferred upon a single individual. It was recognition from the world community of the terrible wrongs committed by American racism and recognition of the rightness of the American civil rights movement. Now Andrew Young, his hypocritical former follower, has sullied his past work and King's memory in order to make a dirty man appear clean.
In recent years Young expressed support for voter identification requirements proposed in state of Georgia. If he could betray the voting rights battle he fought for 40 years ago why not put lipstick on the Obasanjo pig as well.
Young is now in league with the worst in America and the rest of the world too. His praise of Iraq war planner Paul Wolfowitz as a man who wants to "spread peace" was a sign that we had not seen the worst that Andrew Young had to offer.
"Andrew Young has sullied his past work and King's memory in order to make a dirty man appear clean."
Nigeria is one of the world's leading oil producers. It is also one of the world's leaders in kleptocracy, a fancy word for theft and corruption. Nigeria's oil wealth has been a curse to that nation. Nigeria has earned over $400 billion in oil revenues during the last 35 years, but it is estimated that $50 to $100 billion has simply disappeared through fraud and corruption. That means the money was stolen and it also means that the men at the top, including Obasanjo, have taken their share of the spectacular five finger discount.
Nigeria's oil reserves are located in the Niger delta region. Not only has that region not profited from the wealth produced by the oil, but it is in fact worse off than any other part of the country. There are few schools or hospitals in the region and escaping natural gas is burned day and night, creating one of the worst ecological and health disasters in the world.
It was inevitable that these injustices would result in a violent response. A little known group, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), has attacked oil installations and kidnapped oil companies' employees. This group that works with little more than guns and speed boats has threatened Nigeria's ability to guarantee its oil production.
"Anyone wanting to do business in Nigeria is getting the shakedown."
If Obasanjo was at all interested in using oil to help his nation, MEND wouldn't even exist. Instead he is building a presidential library with the help of GoodWorks. Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, a legitimate Nobel prize laureate, called the library "executive extortion." Anyone wanting to do business in Nigeria is getting the shakedown so that Obasanjo can massage his ego and no doubt get an even bigger slice of the pie before he heads off into the sunset.
It isn't really necessary to know why Andrew Young was crying in his photograph with Jesse Jackson at the Washington Mall. It is important to know why Nigerians are weeping. Their lives are worsening because of the actions of greedy people inside and outside of their nation. Hopefully no one on the Nobel Peace Prize committee is susceptible to American style crass promotion. If Young were to succeed in honoring a thieving killer we all ought to cry too.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.Com. Ms. Kimberley' maintains an edifying and frequently updated blog at freedomrider.blogspot.com. More of her work is also available at her Black Agenda Report archive page.
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