Letter to President G. W Bush/Africacom

January 1, 2007

Honorable George W. Bush
President
United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D. C.

Dear Mr. President:

I am intrigued by the report that our nation is establishing the US Africa Command. I am retired from the USAF serving from 1956 to 1978. Since that time I have traveled extensively across the world and am dismayed to observe that African people are for the most part, on the margins of society. Much progress has been made in the United States in terms of advancement for African descendents but much remain to be done.

African descendents in our Country have a unique responsibility, in my view, to help champion the advancement of our race throughout the world. African Americans, as a group, are the best educated with access to considerable capital living in the most powerful Country in the history of the world.

Our strong democracy coupled with our system of capitalism undergurded with our military are indeed in the position to provide a better quality of life for the people of Africa. It is my understanding that this new command would oversee strategic development and military operations across the continent.

Africa is plagued with a multitude of problems, many has been thrust upon them for many centuries. The first globization lasted for almost 500 years where tens of millions of our ancestors were taken from Africa to the western world as slaves. It is manifest that the labor of Africans played a major role in building nations such as the United States, Brazil, Columbia, etc. Concurrently, Europe benefited, and continues to benefit, enormously, from this first globization.

As soon as the slave trade ended Africa experienced over a century of colonization ending less than 50 years ago. Africa today is being ruled by outside forces! How else can we account for the abject poverty of the people on the richest continent in the world? Mr. President cows in Europe enjoy the equivalent of $2.00 per day in feed, while African families are starving with less than $1.00 per day in subsistence.

I established African Ascension, a non-profit organization designed to uplift the conditions of Africans across the world. More information may be obtained at www.africanascension.org . This organization is working on a project in Cameroon where the largest deposit of nickel and cobalt was discovered over 10 years ago.

I am greatly concerned that American taxpayers paid half of the cost of the feasibility study which gives Americans 69.5% ownership of these precious resources that could lift the entire nation out of poverty. I have met with members of the Department of State and with members of USTDA with unsatisfactory results. I have also been in communication with the US Ambassador in Cameroon as well as members of the US Congress. Copies of letters from these entities are attached.

I believe a strong military presence in Africa, coupled with a foreign policy commitment to use the natural resources of the continent to uplift the quality of life of the people will be noble indeed, and will secure for you a great legacy of leadership at this critical juncture in the history of the world. More oil was imported to the United States from Africa last year than from the Middle Eastern nations. Cobalt and nickel will be critical in the years to come to fuel our technological world as fossil fuels, of necessity are being phased back.

I wish you and your family a happy and productive New Year. I trust you will ask a member of your staff to assist as we seek to communicate with the Department of State and with USTADA.

Respectfully,



Joe Beasley, Founder
African Ascension