December 28, 2002 - January 20, 2003
Israel, Zionism, and the Misuse of M.L.K.
Posted: Monday, January 20, 2003
By Tim Wise
Rarely am I considered insufficiently cynical. As someone who does anti-racism work for a living, and thus hears all manner of excuse-making by those who wish desperately to avoid being considered racist, not much surprises me. I expect people to lie about race; to tell me how many black friends they have; to swear they haven't a racist bone in their bodies. And every January, with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday just around the corner, I have come to expect someone to misuse the good doctor's words so as to push an agenda he would not likely have supported. As such, I long ago resigned myself to the annual gaggle of fools who deign to use King's "content of their character" line from the 1963 March on Washington so as to attack affirmative action, ostensibly because King preferred simple "color-blindness." That King actually supported the efforts that we now call affirmative action--and even billions in reparations for slavery and segregation--as I've documented in a previous column, matters not to these folks. They've never read King's work, and they've only paid attention to one news clip from one speech, so what more can we expect from such precious simpletons as these? And yet, even with my cynic's credentials established, the one thing I never expected anyone to do would be to just make up a quote from King; a quote that he simply never said, and claim that it came from a letter that he never wrote, and was published in a collection of his essays that never existed. Frankly, this level of deception is something special. The hoax of which I speak is one currently making the rounds on the Internet, which claims to prove King's steadfast support for Zionism. Indeed, it does more than that.
In the item, entitled "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend," King proclaims that criticism of Zionism is tantamount to anti-Semitism, and likens those who criticize Jewish nationalism as manifested in Israel, to those who would seek to trample the rights of blacks. Heady stuff indeed, and 100% bullshit, as any amateur fact checker could ascertain were they so inclined. But of course, the kinds of folks who push an ideology that required the expulsion of three-quarters-of-a-million Palestinians from their lands, and then lied about it, claiming there had been no such persons to begin with (as with Golda Meir's infamous quip), can't be expected to place a very high premium on truth. I learned this the hard way recently, when the Des Moines Jewish Federation succeeded in getting me yanked from the city's MLK day events: two speeches I had been scheduled to give on behalf of the National Conference of Community and Justice (NCCJ).
Because of my criticisms of Israel--and because I as a Jew am on record opposing Zionism philosophically--the Des Moines shtetl decided I was unfit to speak at an MLK event. After sending the supposed King quote around, and threatening to pull out all monies from the Jewish community for future NCCJ events, I was dropped. The attack of course was based on a distortion of my own beliefs as well. Federation principal Mark Finkelstein claimed I had shown a disregard for the well-being of Jews, despite the fact that my argument has long been that Zionism in practice has made world Jewry less safe than ever. But it was his duplicity on King's views that was most disturbing. Though Finkelstein only recited one line from King's supposed "letter" on Zionism, he lifted it from the larger letter, which appears to have originated with Rabbi Marc Schneier, who quotes from it in his 1999 book, "Shared Dreams: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Jewish Community." Therein, one finds such over-the-top rhetoric as this:
"I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--this is God's own truth." The letter also was filled with grammatical errors that any halfway literate reader of King's work should have known disqualified him from being its author, to wit: "Anti-Zionist is inherently anti Semitic, and ever will be so." The treatise, it is claimed, was published on page 76 of the August, 1967 edition of Saturday Review, and supposedly can also be read in the collection of King's work entitled, This I Believe: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That the claimants never mention the publisher of this collection should have been a clear tip-off that it might not be genuine, and indeed it isn't. The book doesn't exist. As for Saturday Review, there were four issues in August of 1967. Two of the four editions contained a page 76. One of the pages 76 contains classified ads and the other contained a review of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album. No King letter anywhere.
Yet its lack of authenticity hasn't prevented it from having a long shelf-life. Not only does it pop up in the Schneier book, but sections of it were read by the Anti-Defamation League's Michael Salberg in testimony before a House Subcommittee in July of 2001, and all manner of pro-Israel groups (from traditional Zionists to right-wing Likudites, to Christians who support ingathering Jews to Israel so as to prompt Jesus' return), have used the piece on their websites.
In truth, King appears never to have made any public comment about Zionism per se; and the only known statement he ever made on the topic, made privately to a handful of people, is a far cry from what he is purported to have said in the so-called "Letter to an Anti-Zionist friend." In 1968, according to Seymour Martin Lipset, King was in Boston and attended a dinner in Cambridge along with Lipset himself and a number of black students. After the dinner, a young man apparently made a fairly harsh remark attacking Zionists as people, to which King responded: "Don't talk like that. When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking Anti-Semitism." Assuming this quote to be genuine, it is still far from the ideological endorsement of Zionism as theory or practice that was evidenced in the phony letter.
After all, to respond to a harsh statement about individuals who are Zionists with the warning that such language is usually a cover for anti-Jewish bias is understandable. More than that, the comment was no doubt true for most, especially in 1968. It is a statement of opinion as to what people are thinking when they say a certain thing. It is not a statement as to the inherent validity or perfidy of a worldview or its effects.
Likewise, consider the following analogous dualism: first, that "opposition to welfare programs is forever racism," and secondly, that "when people criticize welfare recipients, they mean blacks. This is racism."
Whereas the latter statement may be true--and studies would tend to suggest that it is--the former is a matter of ideological conviction, largely untestable, and thus more tendentious than its counterpart. In any event, as with the King quotes--both fabricated and genuine--the truth of the latter says nothing about the truth or falsity of the former.
So yes, King was quick to admonish one person who expressed hostility to Zionists as people. But he did not claim that opposition to Zionism was inherently anti-Semitic. And for those who criticize Zionism today and who like me are Jewish, to believe that we mean to attack Jews, as Jews, when we speak out against Israel and Zionism is absurd.
As for King's public position on Israel, it was quite limited and hardly formed a cornerstone of his worldview. In a meeting with Jewish leaders a few weeks before his death, King noted that peace for Israelis and Arabs were both important concerns. According to King, "peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity."
But such a statement says nothing about how Israel should be constituted, nor addresses the Palestinians at all, whose lives and challenges were hardly on the world's radar screen in 1968.
At the time, Israel's concern was hostility from Egypt; and of course all would agree that any nation has the right not to be attacked by a neighbor. The U.S. had a right not to be attacked by the Soviet Union too--as King would have no doubt agreed, thereby affirming the United States' right to exist. But would anyone claim that such a sentiment would have implied the right of the U.S. to exist as it did, say in 1957 or 1961, under segregation? Of course not.
So too Israel. Its right to exist in the sense of not being violently destroyed by hostile forces does not mean the right to exist as a Jewish state per se, as opposed to the state of all its citizens. It does not mean the right to laws granting special privileges to Jews from around the world, over indigenous Arabs.
It should also be noted that in the same paragraph where King reiterated his support for Israel's right to exist, he also proclaimed the importance of massive public assistance to Middle Eastern Arabs, in the form of a Marshall Plan, so as to counter the poverty and desperation that often leads to hostility and violence towards Israeli Jews.
This part of King's position is typically ignored by the organized Jewish community, of course, even though it was just as important to King as Israel's territorial integrity.
As for what King would say today about Israel, Zionism, and the Palestinian struggle, one can only speculate.
After all, he died before the full tragedy of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza would be able to unfold.
He died before the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel; before the invasion of Lebanon and the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla; before the 1980's intifada; before Israel decided to serve as a proxy for U.S. foreign policy--funneling weapons to fascist governments in South Africa, Argentina and Guatemala, or helping to arm terrorist thugs in Mozambique and the contras in Nicaragua.
He died before the proliferation of illegal settlements throughout the territories; before the rash of suicide/homicide bombings; before the polls showing that nearly half of Israeli Jews support removing Palestinians via "transfer" to neighboring countries.
But one thing is for sure. While King would no doubt roundly condemn Palestinian violence against innocent civilians, he would also condemn the state violence of Israel.
He would condemn launching missile attacks against entire neighborhoods in order to flush out a handful of wanted terrorists.
He would oppose the handing out of machine guns to religious fanatics from Brooklyn who move to the territories and proclaim their God-given right to the land, and the right to run Arabs out of their neighborhoods, or fence them off, or discriminate against them in a multitude of ways.
He would oppose the unequal rationing of water resources between Jews and Arabs that is Israeli policy.
He would oppose the degrading checkpoints through which Palestinian workers must pass to get to their jobs, or back to their homes after a long day of work.
He would oppose the policy which allows IDF officers to shoot children throwing rocks, as young as age twelve.
In other words, he would likely criticize the working out of Zionism on the ground, as it has actually developed in the real world, as opposed to the world of theory and speculation.
These things seem imminently clear from any honest reading of his work or examination of his life. He would be a broker for peace. And it is a tragedy that instead of King himself, we are burdened with charlatans like those at the ADL, or the Des Moines Jewish Federation, or Rabbis like Marc Schneier who think nothing of speaking for the genuine article, in a voice not his own.
Tim Wise is an antiracist essayist, activist and lecturer. He can be reached at (and footnotes procured from) timjwise@msn.com
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BBC scam exposed
Posted: Saturday, January 18, 2003
Herald Reporter
THE British Broadcasting Corporation is allegedly buying air tickets for opposition MDC activists in Zimbabwe to fly to the United Kingdom where they are later used on its programmes to demonise President Mugabe’s Government.
The BBC has taken these same people to other European countries and the United States where they have been given platforms to attack their country while at the same time garnering for British support to overthrow President Mugabe and the Zanu-PF Government.
The Herald has established that Adellah Chiminya nee Mutero, divorcee of the late MDC campaign manager-cum-driver for Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, was flown out of the country by the BBC.
She appeared on the BBC programme Hard Talk last Thursday where she insulted African Heads of State for what she called "sympathising" with Preside-nt Mugabe.
Adellah said the BBC had also bought tickets for her two children Faith and Blessing who are now resident in the UK.
The BBC Press Office yesterday said it was highly unlikely that the BBC paid Adellah’s airfares for its programmes and to take part in a court case in the US.
"We do however, pay for certain people to come to our studios for interviews on our programmes,’’ said a spokesperson for the BBC who identified herself as Helen Martin.
Earlier, another official of the BBC who identified himself as Douglas Spitz said his organisation could fly, from any part of the world, guests coming to any of its shows.
Asked if it was the norm for the station to fly sources and their dependants into the United Kingdom where they are eventually granted asylum, Spitz said: "I wouldn’t know really, maybe the Foreign Office would know."
However, Adellah said: "As we speak, (Mr) Elliot Pfebve and his family arrived here last week and I am sure they got their tickets from the BBC."
Mr Pfebve (MDC) lost the Bindura by-election held after the death of the former Minister of Gender, Youth and Employment Creation, Cde Border Gezi.
Adellah, it was learnt, parted ways with Mr Chiminya long before he died and she took advantage of his death to thrust herself into the limelight as a grieved widow of an MDC activist.
She told the BBC that she last saw her husband in September, which was in 1999 and the husband died eight months later in April 2000.
Investigations by The Herald established that at the time of his death, Mr Chiminya lived-in with someone in Highfield while Adellah lived by herself in Hatfield.
Adellah, who repeatedly asked the Herald reporter not to write what the two were discussing, also opened up her heart saying she was in the UK for her survival although she believed some people were using her for their political goals.
"If you write this, I will sue you. Are you aware that I am taping the whole conversation we are having . . . siyana nazvo iwe (leave it alone) that’s my wish," she said.
She said ever since she went to the US with Ms Maria Stevens, Ms Evelyn Masaiti and Mr Pfebve, to sue the President, she had not benefited anything.
But on the BBC TV programme Hard Talk, Adellah, who repeatedly called South African President Thabo Mbeki a liar, said she was living in a house that Amani Trust, a folded Zimbabwean Non-Governmental Organisation that is heavily involved in politics, had bought her.
"But of course we have travelled to many European countries and we have been to Switzerland, you can name any country," she said.
It is understood that in those European countries, Adellah and her Zimbabwean "exiled" colleagues were used to address people on television as the British tried to garner for international support to overthrow President Mugabe.
Adellah said after the BBC TV Hard Talk programme, scores of whites from the US, Europe and South Africa had phoned her to congratulate her.
"I received calls from all over the world. They said I had done well. Many whites phoned me," she said without saying how they got her number.
Asked whether she was not ashamed to capitalise on the death of a man, with whom her marriage had broken down, Adellah who comes from Nerupiri, Gutu, said she had to survive.
She also agreed that she had become a fully-fledged member of the opposition MDC but would not shed light on the alleged affair she was reported to have had with a top official before she left the country.
She was known to have told some of her close relations that a top MDC official was dating her and she was getting fed up of his insensitivity.
According to some well-placed sources and relatives of the late Mr Chiminya, Adellah fled their matrimonial home to settle alone following endless problems which dogged their marriage.
And when the former husband died, she immediately saw and seized her opportunity to get sympathy and deceived the world that everything had been going on well and she was still married to him.
"Those two were not living together as husband and wife, Mr Chiminya lived with another woman and his children Blessing and Faith in Highfield. Adellah had left," said a relative.
Adellah was employed as a secretary at a school in Harare and was seeing a banker then before flying to the UK.
She had all intentions of returning but did not when she learnt her salary had been frozen while she was in the UK.
"She left in October 2001 and when she heard that her salary had been frozen because she was away without leave, she resigned and sought political asylum," said the relative.
After that she advised the BBC to facilitate her children’s flight.
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Mugabe: 'I am not retiring yet'
Posted: Wednesday, January 15, 2003
By Innocent Gore who was in Lusaka, Zambia
President Mugabe yesterday said it would be foolhardy, counter-revolutionary and disrespectful of the people who re-elected him last March if he were to step down before the expiry of his term.
He said this in the wake of British media reports that some Zanu-PF and MDC officials were working out a plan for him to step down before the expiry of his term, to pave the way for a government of national unity.
Cde Mugabe told reporters on arrival at Lusaka International Airport in Zambia that he would never surrender to British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair.
"Well, I am not used to answering questions about nightmares that are dreamt in Britain at Number 10 Downing Street and I only heard about that in the papers. There is no truth in it at all," he said in response to a question by a Zambian journalist who had asked him to comment on the issue.
"Only a few months ago, the people elected me to serve them and it will be foolhardy and absolutely counter-revolutionary. In fact, it is disrespectful of the support that the people gave, the loyalty the people reposed in me if today I am seen to be surrendering to Mr Blair. Never ever, never!"
The President was in Zambia to witness the conferment of the Honour of the Eagle of Zambia to that country’s founding president Dr Kenneth Kaunda in recognition of his service to Zambia and the liberation of Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe. MORE...
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There Is No Sanity Left In British Journalism
Posted: Tuesday, January 14, 2003
By Dr. David Nyekorach - Matsanga in London
What a travesty of journalism! And what has become of this world of the Queen? Is the end of the world nearing? Where will it begin? Are there any more intelligent journalists left in Britain? Democracy, good governance, public accountability, redounds positively on good journalism. But when all papers turn yellow like the editors who allow these stories to appear in Britain then we know these are the signs of a desperate nation and their devilish shoe polisher son called Satan Tsvangirai. Whatever the merits and demerits of the faked story there is a looming danger in the MDC who have been begging and pleading for more money from Britain to oust Mugabe.
A senior official in the British foreign office told us that the MDC has been told to step up the propaganda in order to receive more funding from British organisations like WFD and ZDT. Last month saw many opposition MDC MPS coming to Britain in search for money for disruption and other activities in Zimbabwe. A very reliable source at the foreign office in London was quoted as saying that "yes Baroness Amos has had a series of meetings with those MDC members of Parliament who visited London in December 2002 and January 2003". Then this explains the plethora of information that the British system has waged on Zimbabwe of late. The British divide and rule tactic is now at the centre of the so-called foreign policy. The doctored story that appeared on BBC and in several British newspapers about President Mugabe being removed by Hon. E D Mnangagwa and the Army chief General Vitalis Zvinanashe of his own party is clear example of politics of zygotes and half dead journalism whose spirit has been rejected by God and wondering free in the Queens territory. I am beginning to see the bad side of politics since embarked on this voluntary job of defending Zimbabwe abroad.
There are those surrogates of imperialism in Zimbabwe and Britain, who is too anxious to find sermons in stones, books in the running books and has unleashed terror-using journalism as weapon to kill President Mugabe and Zimbabwe. The whole UK woke up on Monday 13th January 2003 to find headlines about President Mugabe leaving power. WHAT A HOAX OF THE NEW YEAR! These reports have not only caused a mockery of the so-called British liberal press underpinned with the so called good governance but only shines with ignorance that is embedded in the minds of most British journalists. It is not only Zimbabwe that has suffered the torrent of silly accusations and silly praises.
While they are killing pluralism in Zimbabwe they are busy praising Uganda as model of Africa by the same Newspapers like The Times. Uganda has not even given the people parties like President Mugabe has done in Zimbabwe but the same GAY journalists like Robert Thomson who travel to Uganda to infect our people with HIV/AIDS are busy praising the country. What a shame to such smelly and polluted journalism coming from the brains of men who have defied the Bible creed of WOMAN marrying MAN. They go to Africa to buy sex from men who have no principles like those well-known GAYS in MDC. I have been humble in my articles in defence of Mugabe but to my readers please spare me this time I have changed my approach towards a Labour government, which has a bunch of gays whose scandals will cause mayhem to the world. How can men who defy the Bible be able to make correct judgment?
I have never witnessed such a goofed hoax and propaganda being peddled by journalists who call themselves white yet they don't know the colour of their skins. Britain has become a milling station of rumours and confusion. Indeed the poison of yellow journalism in Britain is worse than the Ricin powder that the Algerians had started manufacturing in the North of the City of London. Most of the men writing stories in British newspapers have narrow and shallow brains intellectually and these were former office messengers who were promoted to become editors of the current yellow newspapers. This explains the current onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe with stories that lack substance and are unbalanced.
The exposure of the "double standards" of Britain last week by the Herald Newspaper of Zimbabwe has forced the opposition MDC and the British MI6 to change their tactics on Zimbabwe. The source at the (I I S S) International Institute of Strategic Studies has told us that the comments on BBC by Prof. George Shire on 7th January 2003 and Africa Strategy's letter dated 6th January 2003 to the so called African affairs Minister Baroness Amos have sparked a series of a co-ordinated propaganda similar to that which was used in Yugoslavia before the fall of Melosvic from power. The enemies of Zimbabwe are attacking from two fronts. There is the official attack using the acrobatic style of British High Commission officials in Harare and organizations like ZDT and WFD, which have poured millions of British pounds to the opposition. This front is loaded with lethal weapons of propaganda machinery and a cocktail of doses of smelly substance called white man's arms twisting and creation of imaginary fever of panic in Zimbabwe. "THIS COCKTAIL IS CALLED "DIVIDE AND RULE" of the black ignorant masses.
The second flank is manned by the so-called "night dancers" who sneak into Zimbabwe under the pretext of playing golf and supported by the dirty malcontents of MDC. This so called visitors who fake their way into Zimbabwe visit the homes of the opposition supporters and interview those they claim are dying of hunger. Then these stories are beamed worldwide for the ignorant masses in Britain who believe everything their BBC or Channel 4 telecasts. The most worrying factor is that most of these so called undercover journalists are gays who hate President Mugabe. We have received evidence and information that those who appear on these so called documentary are paid huge amounts of money to appear on programmes like the ones that appeared on Channel 4 on Sunday night. It has also been revealed that most of the Opposition members are being sexually abused by these high flying undercover journalists like John Osborne who are paying up to £ 500 per night for sexual therapy that they cant have in Britain. Africa Strategy would like to join a long queue of those who will condemn the most recent reports on Zimbabwe.
These are some of the so-called distorted and imagined stories that have appeared Between December 26th 2002 and January 2003:
On Thursday 26th December 2002 a gay journalist by name Peta Thornycroft filed a story in The Daily Telegraph " Mugabe's wife selects her farm and orders the owners to leave" which was untrue.
On the same day another lesbian journalist called Alice Thomson filed a story entitled " Murderous Mugabe should be treated like bin Laden" also published by The Daily Telegraph.
On Thursday January 9th January 2003 another yellow gay journalist by name Peter Oborne files a story in the Daily Mirror the so called paper of the year 2002 "Africa's Nazis" it formed a basis of the documentary on Sunday.
Then comes the documentary that defied all intellectual rules on mass media and mass communication on Sunday 12th January 2003 by Channel 4 news that bought it for £100.000and beamed it across the European Continent. The Zimbabwean people who take part in this media sexual bonanza should know that their lives are being used as monetary conduits by the so called gay and lesbian journalists who flock Zimbabwe under Golf rituals in the best fields in the world.
On Monday 13th January 2003 the BBC reported as Breaking News "Mugabe's Party wants him to go" and this story was flashed on the front pages of the British newspapers. Those who like Zimbabwe condemn the faked story by the gay gangsters about the most loyal men in ZANU-PF and founders of the struggle against imperialism allegedly being against the founder father of the nation of Zimbabwe.
Many people who have telephoned Africa Strategy in London have wondered why only the known British gay journalists and lesbians have launched a campaign on Zimbabwe. There are concerns that President Mugabe's Public Relations PR machinery abroad has not done enough especially in Britain to change and reshape the image of the President and it appears that there is a "wait and see scenario" and a dirty syndrome of avoiding head on target with the foreign press that has not been hit so hard by the government abroad. The President's name has been damaged in Britain and yet his High Commission in London, which is near the media houses, like the BBC CNN, SKY NEWS, keeps a low profile and does not even issue or answer any of the accusations labelled on the same hand that feeds it. There is also the question of those turncoats who are feeding the yellow journalists in the Independent press of Zimbabwe to write stories about those who defend Mugabe in Europe and fill the gap. These are the most dangerous political toxins the President should get rid of quickly. There are worse than the MDC sellouts and could destroy the government of the SON of Africa.
Those whose culture is to use the media to kill the same plate that feeds them are conducting the political strangulation of the government of Zimbabwe in a coherent manner. A source very close to Africa Strategy's research team in London has revealed that the High Commission in London does not deny some of the stories appearing in the press. This goes to show how besieged the High Commission in London is or how confused the staff are or worse still one wonders whose side these sons and daughters of soil belong? One independent white PR officer in London who helped to return Libyan leader Gadaffi to the world order told Africa Strategy that it seems the staff are MDC followers because "he has never seen such an act of treachery and betrayal" he said. There are illegal demonstrators around the High Commission's premises near a British police Station and no charges or protest note has been sent out to the government of Britain about the behaviour of these narrow-minded zygotes of ZDT and MDC who want to sell their country to gay and lesbians. Our researchers went to the police near the premises to ask why they have allowed the illegal protests to take place every day near the building and to see whether those members of ZDT and MDC who gather near Zimbabwe House every evening in London have a permit to do so. Guess the answer: NO COMPLAINT LODGED by the time we went to press.
We discovered that not a single permit had been issued and the police told us that there was no complaint from the High Commission as regards that issue. How will President Mugabe defend himself when he can't travel to London to do so? Even those given the responsibility have no idea on what to do in UK? Many Observers on the Zimbabwe politics have expressed their surprise on the silence of the officials in London who are supposed to defend their President in this country of the Queen. The whole year has ended without Zimbabwe's officials in London openly defending their President in Britain like what other officials from African countries do in Britain.
Africa Strategy has decided to bring this matter to public because it seems we are entering a crucial stage of our defence of President Mugabe as such we shall be very intellectually brutal and factual in our attack on those who want to fail the President of Zimbabwe who has spearheaded an African dream. Let those who have hidden ambitions come out openly and fight some of us supporters of Mugabe in London morally or intellectually instead of strangulating the government of Zimbabwe and President Mugabe. Many people have feared to say this to the world and to the government but let Africa Strategy go on record for alerting the President and ZANU-PF that there is dubious silence in London. Africa Strategy is prepared for such a war to defend President Mugabe with the contribution of people like Mr.Mararaike, Prof George Shire and others who have filled the gap of the game of the "lost sheep". Africa Strategy has refused calls by Baroness Amos for a meeting and we are no interested in any future meetings until Zimbabwe is left alone. This the bottom line in politics and those who are armatures must quit. But in defence of President Mugabe against the bunch of gay gangsters in Britain we shall not surrender.
This brings us to the next phase of our struggle for the nation of Zimbabwe. The lesbian and Gay journalists have opened a Pandora box of death and skeletons, which we shall from now onwards, attack on the question of MORALITY and we have decided that until they stop meddling in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe we shall not rest. The whole strategy is to scare monger the cricket team from going to Zimbabwe next month as was used in Yugoslavia in the overthrow of President Melosvic. The so-called imaginary house coup in Zimbabwe is a design of the British MI6 that ZANU-PF should not listen to. BUT the party must find out those who are spreading these false reports to the Zimbabwe's so called yellow journalism? This reminds me of one Kenyan politician who kept on switching sides while President Moi was being strangled. This hand of death in Zimbabwe politics that goes on peddling malice and hatred against Hon. E D Mnangagwa and General Vitalis Zvinavashe has to be exposed soon to avoid costly remedies in future and for us who love our African Martin Luther King we are not going to hesitate to do so if the hand does not stop the Strangulation of the President of Zimbabwe. The direction of the onslaught on President Mugabe's enemies abroad must be decided now. We stand to lose an African statesman who has stopped madness in Congo, has given his people the pride by giving them back their land which the same criminals stole 200 years ago Where will you find a Castro of Africa like the one we have in Zimbabwe? The story of accusing the most honest and loyal men in ZANU-PF for plotting to remove their leader is not absurd but very idiotic in terms of those who imagine and produce such gutter journalism. Soon the people of Zimbabwe will see the true colours of the agents of British imperialism in Zimbabwe. The recent donation of £46.000 by Annabelle Hughes to the MDC boss and the payment made by Mr. Peter Oborne to the MDC officials for the fake story must be investigated by the government of Zimbabwe. Highly placed Sources have told us that ZDT official Annabele Hughes through an undercover journalist called Peter Oborne sent money to disrupt the cricket matches of next month from Account 42182002 0f Lloyds Bank of London. This is a clear testimony to the world that ZDT wants to fight the people of Zimbabwe and cause political infighting in ZANU-PF and create an imaginary power struggle.
President Mugabe and the Zimbabwean nation we thank you for your tenacity and steadfastness and assure you that the road to Jerusalem is full of temptations and trials but this is the time of UNITY of purpose for those who cherish peace. Africa Strategy will continue with its fight and we shall deal with these gangs of gays and lesbian idiots who have defied GOD'S Commandments and have brought the subject of JOURNALISM to disrepute.
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White Privilege Shapes The U.S.
Posted: Thursday, January 9, 2003
by Robert Jensen
Here's what white privilege sounds like:
I am sitting in my University of Texas office, talking to a very bright and very conservative white student about affirmative action in college admissions, which he opposes and I support.
The student says he wants a level playing field with no unearned advantages for anyone. I ask him whether he thinks that in the United States being white has advantages. Have either of us, I ask, ever benefited from being white in a world run mostly by white people? Yes, he concedes, there is something real and tangible we could call white privilege.
So, if we live in a world of white privilege--unearned white privilege--how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I ask.
He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter."
That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: the privilege to acknowledge you have unearned privilege but ignore what it means.
That exchange led me to rethink the way I talk about race and racism with students. It drove home to me the importance of confronting the dirty secret that we white people carry around with us everyday: In a world of white privilege, some of what we have is unearned. I think much of both the fear and anger that comes up around discussions of affirmative action has its roots in that secret. So these days, my goal is to talk openly and honestly about white supremacy and white privilege.
White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but such privilege plays out differently depending on context and other aspects of one's identity (in my case, being male gives me other kinds of privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has played out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me.
I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn't live near a reservation, I didn't even have exposure to the state's only numerically significant non-white population, American Indians.
I have struggled to resist that racist training and the ongoing racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I "fix" myself, one thing never changes--I walk through the world with white privilege.
What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don't look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things look like me--they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves, and in a racist world that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I'm white.
My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don't know very many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it's possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors. That isn't meant as an insult to anyone, but is a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.
Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know, because I am one of them.
I am not a genius--as I like to say, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have been teaching full-time for six years, and I've published a reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional stuff one churns out to get tenure, and some of it, I would argue, actually is worth reading. I work hard, and I like to think that I'm a fairly decent teacher. Every once in awhile, I leave my office at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my paycheck, I don't feel guilty.
But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I benefited from, among other things, white privilege. That doesn't mean that I don't deserve my job, or that if I weren't white I would never have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my life, I have soaked up benefits for being white. I grew up in fertile farm country taken by force from non-white indigenous people. I was educated in a well-funded, virtually all-white public school system in which I learned that white people like me made this country great. There I also was taught a variety of skills, including how to take standardized tests written by and for white people.
All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching position at the predominantly white University of Texas, which had a white president, in a college headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman that at the time had one non-white tenured professor.
There certainly is individual variation in experience. Some white people have had it easier than me, probably because they came from wealthy families that gave them even more privilege. Some white people have had it tougher than me because they came from poorer families. White women face discrimination I will never know. But, in the end, white people all have drawn on white privilege somewhere in their lives.
Like anyone, I have overcome certain hardships in my life. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I work hard to stay there. But to feel good about myself and my work, I do not have to believe that "merit," as defined by white people in a white country, alone got me here. I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a significant boost from white privilege, which continues to protect me every day of my life from certain hardships.
At one time in my life, I would not have been able to say that, because I needed to believe that my success in life was due solely to my individual talent and effort. I saw myself as the heroic American, the rugged individualist. I was so deeply seduced by the culture's mythology that I couldn't see the fear that was binding me to those myths. Like all white Americans, I was living with the fear that maybe I didn't really deserve my success, that maybe luck and privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard work. I was afraid I wasn't heroic or rugged, that I wasn't special.
I let go of some of that fear when I realized that, indeed, I wasn't special, but that I was still me. What I do well, I still can take pride in, even when I know that the rules under which I work in are stacked in my benefit. I believe that until we let go of the fiction that people have complete control over their fate--that we can will ourselves to be anything we choose--then we will live with that fear. Yes, we should all dream big and pursue our dreams and not let anyone or anything stop us. But we all are the product both of what we will ourselves to be and what the society in which we live lets us be.
White privilege is not something I get to decide whether or not I want to keep. Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man and the security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am benefiting from white privilege. There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased from this society.
Frankly, I don't think I will live to see that day; I am realistic about the scope of the task. However, I continue to have hope, to believe in the creative power of human beings to engage the world honestly and act morally. A first step for white people, I think, is to not be afraid to admit that we have benefited from white privilege. It doesn't mean we are frauds who have no claim to our success. It means we face a choice about what we do with our success.
Jensen is a professor in the Department of Journalism in the University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
copyright Robert William Jensen 1998
first appeared in the Baltimore Sun, July 19, 1998
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Big Oil and James Baker Target the Western Sahara
Posted: Thursday, January 9, 2003
By WAYNE MADSEN, January 8, 2003
In the midst of America's international campaign against terrorism, the Bush administration is permitting Big Oil to legitimize the illegal occupation of an invaded country--Western Sahara. Formerly known as Spanish Sahara and invaded by Morocco in 1975 (the same year Henry Kissinger acquiesced to Indonesia's invasion and annexation of East Timor and India's annexation of the Himalayan Kigdom of Sikkim)), Western Sahara's occupation by Morocco has neither been recognized by the United Nations nor the Organization of African Unity. The latter actually recognizes the independence of Western Sahara's exiled Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which is headquartered in remote and squalid desert refugee camps on the Algerian side of the Western Sahara-Algeria border.
In the New World Order of the Bush family, the Western Saharans have little future. That is because the lifeblood of what it means to be a Bush--oil--has been discovered off the coast of Western Sahara. Although Morocco is the illegal occupier of Western Sahara, that did not stop the Oklahoma City-based Kerr McGee Corporation (the company infamously portrayed in the movie "Silkwood") from signing an off-shore exploration deal with Morocco on September 25, 2001, just days after the terrorist attacks on the United States. The timing for Kerr McGee could not have been better.
The group fighting for Western Sahara independence, POLISARIO, once waged a bitter guerrilla war against Morocco. In 1991, POLISARIO signed a cease fire with Morocco but Moroccan troops remained in the disputed territory.
Meanwhile, Morocco continued to pour thousands of native Moroccans into the territory. The 1991 cease fire agreement with Morocco was to have resulted in a referendum on the territory's future. However, Morocco kept delaying the vote until it could salt the territory with enough of its own emigres until they constituted a majority, thus ensuring a final vote would result in voter approval for merger with Morocco.
In 1997, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who, ironically, was awarded the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, named former Secretary of State James Baker as his personal envoy to settle the Western Sahara problem. Baker, who would later serve as George W. Bush's fix-it man in Florida's disputed presidential election, began considering rather novel ideas to settle the Western Sahara problem.
Unfortunately, for the Sahrawis, Baker's ideas were all stamped with the imprimatur of Morocco.
Baker, who is as connected to the Houston oil big wigs as J.R. Ewing was to the oil czars in the TV show "Dallas," has his own close ties to Kerr McGee.
His James Baker Institute at Rice University funded a study Called "Strategic Energy Policy: Challenges for the 21st Century." The author of that report is Matt Simmons, President of Simmons and Company Investment Bankers and member of the Board of Directors of Kerr McGee.
It also helps the cause of Kerr McGee that Baker's former spokesperson at the Departments of State and Treasury and close personal friend, Margaret Tutwiler, serves as the U.S. ambassador to Morocco. One former associate of Tutwiler confided that it was no coincidence that landed Tutwiler in Morocco, "She was obviously placed there by Baker and his oil buddies to help cut oil deals." Tutwiler is not only in a commanding position to influence U.S. policy on Western Sahara but she can count upon one of her best friends, former White House Communications Director and close Bush confidant Karen Hughes, to ensure that Morocco's case receives the personal attention of President Bush.
The plan that Baker drew up for Western Sahara (while he was ensconced with his friends at his Jackson Hole, Wyoming ranch) will undoubtedly result in the territory's eventual merger with Morocco. Approved by the UN Security Council, with the strong support of France, whose TotalFinaElf conglomerate also just signed an offshore oil exploration, the plan calls for a five-year delay for a final referendum. In the meantime, Western Sahara will have a weak territorial assembly that will be packed with loyalists of Morocco's King Mohammed, a close U.S. ally. When the referendum is finally held, sometime around 2006 or 2007, all the Moroccan squatters and occupying troops will be allowed to vote.
On January 7, 2003, the UN announced that Baker would be visiting Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, and Western Sahara to revive his peace plan. But it now seems that with impending war with Iraq and the paralyzing Venezuelan oil strike, Baker is under pressure from his friends in the Bush administration to bring about the commencement of oil drilling off of Western Sahara. Thus the sudden new interest by Baker in a Western Sahara "peace" deal.
U.S. oil companies are chomping at the bit. In its Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Kerr McGee continues to list Western Sahara's Boujdour block (where it has been given permission to drill by Morocco) as being within Moroccan territory, a claim neither supported by the United Nations nor officially recognized by the United States.
Although Baker was to have been an honest broker, even he had to admit to the U.N. Security Council in 2001 that the plan had been heavily influenced by Morocco. Since Bush has enlisted the support of Algeria's President Abdelaziz Boutefllika in the worldwide war against terrorism, it is clear that he was pressured to limit Algeria's historic support for POLISARIO and the Sahrawis. Bouteflika even endorsed Baker's plan. French President Jacques Chirac has referred to Western Sahara as Morocco's "southern provinces," a clear indication of where the West sees the future of the territory.
For its part, the Western Saharans are claiming the deals between Morocco and TotalFinaElf and Kerr McGee are in violation of international law and previous UN resolutions. The Sahrawi President, Mohammed Abdelaziz, condemned the oil deals as an illegal "provocation." The Sahrawi cause is supported by a number of NGOs, former French First Lady Danielle Mitterand, and East Timor's leadership, which knows all too well about being held hostage by oil interests and brutal occupying dictatorships allied with the West. But the oil companies and the Baker-Bush team still holds the trump card. If the Sahrawis, out of desperation, break the cease fire and go to war with Morocco, the anti-terrorism measures undertaken by the United States may seal their fate.
All the State Department has to do is simply declare POLISARIO and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic terrorist organizations. Their international assets would be frozen, their leaders would be arrested and could be tried by secret U.S. military tribunals and executed, and Big Oil and Morocco would rule the day in Western Sahara. Even groups that support their cause could be targeted and their assets seized. Furthermore, the American public, conditioned to be suspicious of all things Arab, would have little sympathy for nomadic Arabs fighting against a U.S. "ally." It is a scenario that could be replayed in every part of the world where local secessionist groups are pitted against brutal regimes and greedy multinational corporations--the Aceh region of northern Sumatra, West Papua, and Nigeria's Delta Region, to name but a few.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth.
Reproduced from counterpunch with permission from Wayne Madsen
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The Cricket Saga and A Colonial Legacy
Posted: Tuesday, January 7, 2003
OPEN LETTER ON ZIMBABWE
6th January 2003
Baroness Amos
Minister for African and Commonwealth Affairs
Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
King Charles Street
London SWIA 2AH
Telephone: 0207-270-2893.
Facsimile:0207-270-2946.
Dear Baroness Amos,
REF: THE CRICKET SAGA AND A COLONIAL LEGACY
THAT HAUNTSBRITAIN AFTER 22 YEARS INDEPENDENCE.
Will the British Labour government compensate most of the British nationals and other people worldwide who have already bought air tickets and booked their accommodation using their credit cards for the Zimbabwe trip if the cancellation and change of venue of the cricket in March 2003 is effected by your pressure on ECB and ICC? If so can you give the nation the guidelines on how one can start a claim since the legal system in Britain takes five years for such a dispute to be resolved and payment is got?
Africa Strategy has read your contribution of 206 pages in the House of Lords on Zimbabwe starting from 2001 -2002 and as Lobby group on African affairs in UK we felt it was high time we replied you on behalf of the people of Zimbabwe whom you have demonised for the last two years. More so the recent comments on the cricket saga has forced us to stand up and be counted on behalf of the masses of Zimbabwe and Africa at large. The double standard strategy in your foreign policy on Uganda with a one party state and the hate campaign you have waged on President Mugabe of Zimbabwe has left us with no option but to pump some sense in your political career and neutralise your dirty toxins that you issue against Zimbabwe. We have therefore delivered this letter by hand to your office today 7th January 2003.
My fellow party member of the Labour Party we have just come back from Zimbabwe on 25th December 2002 having led a private delegation of business investors and cricket lovers to that country. We have seen for our selves the democracy that has been demonised by the BBC, CNN, and some section of Prime Minister Tony Blair's besieged government. The facts that we saw for ourselves on ground, the prevailing peace and the tranquillity witnessed during our three weeks in Zimbabwe made us conclude that your government has a hidden agenda on this nation. We have come to a conclusion that compared to the type of media reports about Zimbabwe there is a big difference between the BBC, your government's version and our experience on Zimbabwe. The equivalent in terms of distance to the truth is like the journey between Mars and the Earth.
This has prompted Africa Strategy as lobby group that privately and voluntarily led this delegation to write to you and to the whole world about the dangers of relying on reports of an immature opposition that collaborates with racists who worked with Ian Smith to murder many millions of whites and blacks in the 1960s and 1970s. The same struggle some of you in the present Labour government helped to succeed. The prolonged agony and anguish the people of Zimbabwe have gone through as a result of the short sighted and myopic policies of the Labour Government has brought a calamity to once a peaceful country united under the good leadership of President Mugabe. Despite the brutality of Ian Smith on the local blacks in 1960s and 1970s, President Mugabe has shown the spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation in Zimbabwe compared to other countries like Uganda where the war has been the order of the day due to the lack of good leadership and the word "reconciliation".
Allow us therefore, to write to you at this hour of need before your meeting with ECB to warn you on the dangers of fabricating lies and trumping up charges about President Mugabe and Zimbabwe so us to stop the cricket being played in that nation. Africa Strategy will also take this opportunity to alert the whole international community about the political malaise the Labour government has caused to the people of Zimbabwe in the last two years. Africa Strategy Independently observed and monitored the elections of Zimbabwe of March 2002.Our report, which was published worldwide, speaks volumes. We have also been following all your political manoeuvres of trying to destroy Zimbabwe. The world and the African people have watched with keen interest the way you have handled the situation in Zimbabwe. But before we go further, we would like through you to thank the Honourable Prime Minister for the reply on Zimbabwe and Uganda dated 4th April 2002, which speaks volumes.
Despite the bad reception given to most of us Independent Organizations that have spoken the truth about Zimbabwe and exposed the Uganda political saga, we shall not be shy to point out the shortcomings of your " double standard" and warped foreign policy that has caused political hardships in Zimbabwe and encouraged a one party state else where in Uganda under President Museveni. We are drawing examples of these two African Commonwealth countries as a test case of bad politics and decayed foreign policy that only breeds violence and anarchy in many parts of the world. When I read the poet laureate works of John Donne who wrote and extolled us " not to ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." I did discover and I now know what it means. I see Zimbabwe demonised and Uganda given the red carpet treatment even when it has a one party state status.
This is not the occasion to address you on the problems of Uganda but to let you know that soon the wind of change will blow over Uganda like what has happened in Kenya and some of us will be in power in that nation then it will be difficult for the brain washed conduits of imperialism like you to use your double standards on any African nation. One factor in Zimbabwean politics, which you Ministers of Tony Blair's cabinet should note is that the opposition in Zimbabwe, is immature, immoral, prudish, comic, melodramatic and ignorant on many historical issues that unite the people of Zimbabwe That is why most Zimbabweans have refused to be used by MDC to cause political chaos on their soil.
The same racists who used nerve gas to maim millions of the people of Zimbabwe during the struggle for political independence are the same ones using school drop outs in Zimbabwe to try to disrupt the peace and harmony President Mugabe has brought to this nation. Our research in Zimbabwe has revealed that most of the opposition MDC members in Parliament have never had experience of running a government leave alone debating in Parliament. They actually act like lost sheep without a Shepard. This is a nation with the highest number of intelligent and educated people than else where in Africa. This has made the opposition in Zimbabwe bankrupt and not able to survive on its own. Without the "hidden hands" of the likes of you Baroness Amos and the likes of Hon. Peter Haines, Zimbabwe's MDC would have been history like other opposition parties in Africa. This explains why the MDC as party is now moribund with no new ideas, no new policies and lacks political direction.
EMBARGOS AND SANCTIONS ON ZIMBABWE.
It is deplorable and shocking to hear that the same members of the cabinet of Tony Blair including yourself are asking the cricketers to reflect on the same basis of moral, humanitarian and political crisis that the Labour government has caused on Zimbabwe not go to play cricket in this nation that still has over 1000, 000 British linked nationals. The break down in moral behaviour in the Labour government has culminated into a political nightmare. Most of the whites and blacks in Zimbabwe we interviewed told us that "the cricket series will bring a hub of economic activities to Zimbabwe and will boost the economy" It would also help to expose the nation to more balanced world opinion than your "kitchen opinion" in the House of Lords.
It will help to show to the world that despite the bad publicity on Zimbabwe and Mugabe there are still over 100.000 British linked families living there peacefully. "May be this is the worry of the Labour government and that is why you want to stop the truth from being known"? Said one white farmer we met in Mazowe some 40 miles away from the capital Harare. The worst case of humanity is ignorance and being less informed or being fed on concocted lies by a childish and impulsive opposition like the MDC of Zimbabwe. The government of Britain allowed Zimbabwe Commonwealth team to come to UK. The officials and the team members were and are still under the same President and Ministers the British government has targeted with smart sanctions. Why didn't the British Government bar the team from coming to the Commonwealth Games in Manchester? Is this not a case of double standard?
There are over British 400 Companies that have business dealings with the British government and notably the British Airways whose staff we interviewed in Sheraton Hotel in Harare and whose response we have recorded for the government of Britain to listen to when it comes to exposure of the Tony Blair's double standards. Why doesn't the British Government stop flights to Harare if it feels that there is insecurity and lawlessness in Zimbabwe? We were able to collect all the data in the Hotels in Zimbabwe's main cities of Harare, Bulawayo and Victoria Falls, which indicate that 70% of the occupants in the last 4 weeks of December 2002 were British nationals. This number was confirmed with empirical data from the Visa section at the Zimbabwe High Commission near 10 Downing Street in London. This is not fiction. Ministers of Tony Blair are able to check these facts. Why do we want to change the venue of the cricket to South Africa yet on some of the streets of the South African cities it is impossible to use a Nokia 7650 and come back with all your limbs?
Baroness Amos, our survey indicates that almost 80% of the Fresh Produce that we buy in the big Super Markets is from Zimbabwe. We have interviewed the owners of the companies that export the vegetables who are white Zimbabwean businessmen and they told us "despite all the bad talk about Zimbabwe our business of fresh produce has not been affected". It therefore shows that if Zimbabwe government diversified their markets to the East Asia, as the case might be in the near future the Tesco, Sainsbury's and other stores will run dry. That is why we have always stated that sanctions and embargos work or affect a nation, which is divided and has no general consensus on political matters. The land in Zimbabwe acts as cushion to all your sanctions and both the government and opposition accept that it had to be redistributed.
DEMOCRACY AND SECURITY IN ZIMBABWE.
Most of your colleagues like Clare Short who have been misled on Zimbabwe and on the other hand have allowed Uganda to grow a British sponsored one party state have no shame to openly come out and condemn the democracy in Zimbabwe. In one of the letters that we obtained from the government of Zimbabwe written by Clare Short in 2001 when the land crisis was looming states "I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new Government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised not the colonisers" (emphasis added) Such strange ultra-nationalistic views have caused a mockery on the phrase of good governance in Zimbabwe and else where in the world. Out bursts like this one only add to a state of despondence in Zimbabwe and shows the naivety of the Labour government that is supposed to deal with the Zimbabwe issue in an impartial manner.
This letter is to let the world know how the British system has brought a catastrophe and political tragedy on Zimbabwe. The imaginary insecurity which the British Labour government is mentioning on BBC and in their so-called dossier on Zimbabwe is completely fake and if you visit Zimbabwe on a monthly basis like some of us have done you are left with no alternative but to call the actions of some of the Labour Party Ministers as racially biased and shameful to intellectual world.
During our last three weeks stay in Zimbabwe in December 2002 we managed to research on the so- called insecurity and we did not find any trace of the British version even when there were temporary shortages of fuel in the city of Harare. Zimbabweans could queue peacefully for fuel without any fight or any violence. Where do you ministers get your facts? We went out with the British Airways Crew to sample the so-called insecurity in several social places like nightclubs, sports clubs, shopping centres, markets, Bus stations around Harare and several other towns and we were very surprised that people danced with patriotism, drank and ate with joy in all their hearts and there was no cause for alarm or insecurity. Is there any other way of testing the peace of Zimbabwe apart from three black men walking back at 2.am to Hotel Sheraton with a group of nine British nationals? The South African scenario is even more complicated because even the police there tell you not to use a mobile phone on the streets, as it is dangerous.
What then is democracy to you people? Is it to allow every body to walk naked in the streets of London or is democracy not the freedom of press, media courts, and the freedom to allow people to associate, assemble and organise, which President Mugabe has done? President Mugabe of Zimbabwe has guaranteed all these tenets of freedom and they do appear in the polity of Zimbabwe. Why cant you Baroness Amos as black person ask the government of President Museveni to do the same way President Mugabe has done in Zimbabwe by allowing parties to compete? Why do you as a black person whose African roots are very strong in your blood fail to see the truth about African values in politics and advise the British government to "constructively engage" the Zimbabwean government to resolve matters that are very minor and considered by mature school of politics as family matters not of international material.
Democracy in Zimbabwe is in plenty BUT there is no constructive and intelligent opposition. There is an opposition full of violent men who stab their wives eight times in the hearts and kill them, an opposition which is full of sleaze and infighting, an opposition in Zimbabwe which is bordered on criminality and impulsive in nature. Whether you take it or leave it the story of Idi Amin in Uganda will repeat itself in Zimbabwe once Mugabe is forcefully removed as you are advocating for such a forceful change. We believe that the malcontents of the MDC will be worse than Amin's rule, which the British supported in 1970s. So watch out for your actions as they might backfire on Zimbabwe.
CRICKET SAGA.
The cricket saga that has again exposed your ignorance on what you call good governance is a straightforward issue that does not need to waste taxpayer's money in Britain to compensate to the ECB or to the ICC in case the British team does not go to Zimbabwe. This open letter will be published widely in the world and you will see how many people in Africa will support Zimbabwe. You can only confuse those in Europe who have not travelled to Zimbabwe but those who have spoken with your British Airways crew will want you or Clare Short to resign for misleading the whole nation on Zimbabwe. The comments of the Welsh Secretary Peter Haines on BBC Breakfast with David Frost on 5th January 2003 are an insult to those who have tried to moderate the actions against Zimbabwe. These are comments of a Minister with a dangerous "political hangover" which, if not treated quickly could degenerate into a terrible disaster for the Labour government. This same friend of yours was the same minister who caused the standoff between Zimbabwe and HM government and I think he will continue to cause political mayhem in the Labour Party until we lose majority in Parliament. Every department Hon. Peter Haines has worked in has been left in political doldrums. How long shall we as Labour Party voters in this country wait to see those entrusted with power erode the principles of humanity?
The findings of the security committee set up by the ICC are very clear and well written on the walls of 10 Downing Street. One does not an extra pair of glasses to read them. The security in Zimbabwe is the best compared to those other African countries where the other matches are going to be played. The worst shooting incident in Birmingham last week has reminded most of us who live in Britain that it better to live in Zimbabwe or Uganda than this part of the world where trans-Atlantic crime is being imported here by terrible off-springs of crime that have led to cold blooded murderous acts in UK cities. Would you compare that with a Zimbabwe where all guns are in the hands of those with a licence? No shooting like this can happen in the City of Harare and go uncontrolled as it is happening to most cities of UK. Is this not insecurity in the so-called older democracy? Who has told tourists not to come to UK because of the gang wars similar to those in Jamaica? Who is calling for sanctions or boycott of Britain as result of the two murdered black teenagers in Birmingham? I think all answers to these questions will deliver a good verdict on Zimbabwe when you meet the ECB and ICC this week to discuss this issue.
Many of your fellow cabinet Ministers have hidden themselves in a veil of the word "moral" which is being used to persuade the cricket team not go to Zimbabwe. One wonders where morality was when 80% of arable land was in the hands of only 2500 white commercial farmers? And where was morality when Ian Smith used nerve gas to kill Zimbabweans during the struggle for Independence in Zimbabwe? The ECB has asked one cardinal question which must be answered by you Baroness Amos. Why target the soft cricket sport when there are many companies still doing business with Zimbabwe? This is the question that you people must answer in clear terms to avoid the whole of Africa from boycotting the cricket.
We believe that with this independent facts which we have also sent copies to ECB and ICC whose report on the security of Zimbabwe was received by your office three weeks ago will form a basis of proper judgment. We have also sent a copy to the Sports and Heritage Secretary who will be in this meeting. There are more British nationals and other cricket lovers who have volunteered to go to Zimbabwe in the next few weeks to find out the truth. The cost of such a cancellation will be enormous to us taxpayers and to those cricket lovers who have bought their air tickets to Zimbabwe.
Hoping that this letter will give an insight and alert you that in this country there are people who see President Mugabe's approach on land redistribution as the only right solution that he was left with. By the way even if your so called MDC forcefully gained power in Zimbabwe they will not reverse the land programme which is now concluded without the help of the British government. In short the Labour government lost chance to engage peacefully the Zimbabwe authorities and there are no slim chances that you will ever win that diplomatic front. The Labour government lost the moral ground and failed to assist in the process.
Thanks
Dr. David Nyekarach-Matsanga.
africastrategy@hotmail.com.
00-44-7930-901-252
For and on behalf of Africa Strategy.
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A Whole Lott Missing
Posted: Thursday, January 2, 2003
Rituals Of Purification And Racism Denial
by Paul Street, www.cul-chicago.org
The most disturbing aspect of the recent national melodrama over Senate Majority Leaders Trent Lott's offensive declaration of retrospective support for the race-segregationist 1948 Presidential campaign of Strom Thurmond is not the content of Lott's remarks. The really depressing thing is what the entire episode says about the superficial level at which racism is discussed in the United States. A related downer is how it is working to stick America's head yet further in the sand on the question of race.
The Deeper Racism
The main problem here is a failure to distinguish between two different levels of racism – overt and covert. The first variety has a long and sordid history in the US. It includes the burning of black homes and churches, the open public use of racial slurs and epithets, occupational bans, lynching, disenfranchisement, denial of prominent public roles to black individuals, restrictive real estate covenants, rock-throwing and "nigger"- screaming mobs, and open legal segregation of public facilities. Concentrated especially though but not exclusively in the South, level-one's racism's archived images and sound bites serve as background for ritual mainstream expressions of support for the ideals of the civil rights movement like the national holiday honoring Martin Luther King. Consistent with his long record of racist comments and affiliations, Lott's popularity among southern whites and his latest segregationist slip are certainly proof that there is still some life in this old racist dog, especially down in Dixie.
Still, this type or level of racism is largely defeated in the US. In post-Civil Rights America, the Republican Party makes sure to pack their convention stage with an abundance of black speakers and nearly every corporate and college brochure is loaded with images of racial "diversity." No aspirant to public office dares question the nation's official commitment to racial equality and equal opportunity. Prominent public media business and political figures play with fire when they are perceived as embracing the explicit racial bigotry and legal segregation of the past. Witness the case of Lott, held up for massive public ridicule because he indirectly embraced segregation in terms that are mild compared to the public rhetoric common among southern white politicians twenty years after Thurmond's Dixiecrat campaign. Nowadays even David Duke has to claim that he is not anti-black and George W. Bush's White House contains two blacks in prominent foreign policymaking positions – something that would never have occurred in pre-Civil Rights America.
The second level of racism is deeper and more intractable – as King and the Civil Rights Movement learned when they came north in 1966. It involves societal, structural and institutional forces and processes in ways that "just happen" to produce and perpetuate deep black disadvantage in multiple related areas of American life. It includes widespread persistent de facto residential and school segregation by race, rampant racial discrimination in hiring and promotion, the systematic under-funding and under-equipping of black schools, disproportionate surveillance, arrest and incarceration of blacks and much more. It is enabled, encouraged and even conducted by institutional and political actors, including some African-Americans, who would never publicly utter racially prejudiced comments and who not uncommonly declare allegiance to the ideals of the civil rights movement.
This second variety of racism has more than simply survived or outlasted the explicit, public racism of the past. It is ironically and perversely deepened by civil rights victories and the discrediting of open bigotry insofar as these elementary triumphs encourage the illusion of racism's disappearance and the related notion that the only barriers left to African-American success and equality are internal to the black community.
New Age Racism: "We Made the Corrections, Now Get On With It"
Why are African-Americans twice as likely to be unemployed as whites? Why is the poverty rate for blacks more than twice the rate for whites? Why do nearly one out of every two blacks earn less than $25,000 while only one in three whites makes that little? Why is median black household income ($27,000) less than two thirds of median white household income ($42,000)? Why is Black families' median household net worth is less than 10 percent that of white? Why are blacks much less likely to own their own homes than whites? Why do African-Americans make up roughly half of the United States' massive population of prisoners (2 million) and why are one in three young black male adults in prison or on parole or otherwise under the supervision of the American criminal justice system? Why do African-Americans continue in severe geographic separation from mainstream society, still largely cordoned off into the nation's most disadvantaged communities thirty years after the passage of civil rights fair housing legislation? Why do blacks suffer disproportionately from irregularities in the American electoral process, from problems with voter registration to the functioning of voting machinery? Why does black America effectively constitute a Third World enclave of sub-citizens within the world's richest and most powerful state?
Convinced that racism is no longer a significant barrier for blacks because there are African-Americans in high policy positions and serving as anchors on the Six O-Clock News, most whites find answers to these questions inside the African-American community itself. If serious racial disparities persist, if black continue to live both separately and unequally, white America and even some privileged blacks (e.g. John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute) think, its because of their own choices and because too many blacks engage in "self-sabotaging" and related "separatist" behaviors. "As white America sees it, " note Leonard Steinhorn and Barbara Diggs-Brown in their excellent study By The Color of Their Skin: the Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race, (2000), "every effort has been to welcome blacks into the American mainstream and now they're on their own."
Predominant white attitudes at the turn of the millennium are well summarized by the comments of a white respondent to a survey conducted by Essence magazine. "No place that I'm aware of," wrote the respondent, "makes [black] people ride on the back of the bus or use a different restroom in this day and age. We got the message; we made the corrections – get on with it."
Tell it to Lakisha Washington America has made the necessary racial "corrections" and now its time for blacks "to get on with it?" Tell it to the black job applicants of Boston and Chicago.
In a field experiment whose results were released last week, researchers Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and Sendhill Mullainathan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sent out 5,000 resumes in response to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. Each resume was randomly assigned either a very black-sounding name (such as "Lakisha Washington" or "Jamal Jones") or a very white-sounding name (such as "Emily Walsh" or "Brendan Baker"). This racial "manipulation," the researchers found, "produced a significant gap in the rate of callbacks for interviews." White names received roughly 50 percent more callbacks than black names. For white applicants, moreover, sending higher quality resumes increased the number of callbacks by 30 percent. For black names, higher-quality resumes elicited no significant callback premium.
Just "get on with it?" Tell it to black families trying to buy a home or rent an apartment in the Denver area. According to a report released last month by the U.S. Department of Housing, nearly 1 in 5 blacks trying to buy a home or rent an apartment there faces some kind of technically illegal discrimination, being diverted from white majority areas to communities predominantly populated by minorities. This was actually below with the national average (21.6 percent for blacks), determined through hundreds of matched-pair testing exercises conducted across the country.
Tell it to the roughly astounding one in three black men in the US now carry the lifelong mark of a felony criminal record thanks to the nation's 30 -year binge of incredibly racially disparate surveillance, arrest and mass imprisonment ("corrections" indeed!) conducted under the auspices of the drug war. They generally experience no real wage increases in their twenties and thirties, when American men without felony records typically experience rapid earnings growth. In a recent academic study conducted by Northwestern University sociologist Devah Pager in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the possession of a prison record reduced the likelihood of white testers being called back by a prospective employer by a ratio of 2 to 1. Among black testers, the mark of a prison record reduced that likelihood by nearly 3 to 1.
"We've made the corrections?" Tell it to the very disproportionately black students of the nation's highly and increasingly segregated urban public schools. They receive educational resources vastly inferior to those enjoyed by children in affluent white suburbs, thanks to the nation's racist and regressive reliance on local property taxes to fund "public schools" whose operation and outcomes resonate with the long reach of private privilege and related racial inequality.
The products of these inferior schools become all-too easy fodder – human raw material for the nation's prison industrial complex and racist mass incarceration lobby, which works to divert public dollars from education to pay for the construction and maintenance of yet more not-so "correctional" facilities. Those prisons create jobs and economic development for predominantly white rural prison towns even while the experience of incarceration pushes most black-ex-offenders yet further into the margins of the disastrous inner-city market for poorly educated workers.
The list of these sorts of disparate and not-so "color blind" policies is long and depressing. The problems experienced by the people and communities on their receiving end have little to do with explicit racial bigotry (public or private). It has much to do with what sociologist Joe Feagin calls "a system of racialized structural and institutional subordination that excludes blacks from full participation in the rights, privileges, and benefits of society." What he refers to as "state–of–mind racism" and open racial bigotry has declined appreciably in the last four decades. But "state-of-being," that is institutional, structural and systemic racism have not declined and may actually have become more deeply entrenched, despite and perhaps even, ironically enough, in part because of civil rights victories.
Pardoning Presidential Racism The deeper level racism's army of practitioners and apologists is large and bipartisan, far bigger than the likes of Trent Lott. Leading soldiers include people not normally associated with racism under the terms of the dominant public discourse in the US, which focuses on the level one variety. Take, for example, former President Bill Clinton, sometimes referred to as "America's First Black President." Clinton, who spoke with reverence about King, counted former National Urban League President Vernon Jordan as a close friend and placed five African-Americans in his cabinet, was no bigot. Not surprisingly, he Clinton called for Lott to step down because of his insensitive remarks.
As President, however, America's most racially sensitive President never worked seriously to address the dismantling of affirmative action in the United States. He betrayed his election promise to address the health care needs of impoverished African-Americans, failing to seriously push for a national health care program that would have provided crucial support the nation's most truly disadvantaged. He led the charge for "free trade" legislation that furthered the replacement of black workers by cheaper overseas labor. He gave lip service to black education but did nothing to improve funding for disproportionately poor black schools or to advance school desegregation so that black kids could attend more privileged schools. He signed a vicious, victim-blaming welfare "reform" bill that played on the racist myth of inner-city Black women as morally bankrupt Welfare Queens to force hundreds of thousands of African-American single mothers into the super-exploited margins of the American labor market. This bill removed millions of black children from medical coverage, making them pay for their mothers' alleged insufficient appreciation of the capitalist work ethic. Clinton passed repressive crime legislation that significantly expanded the remarkable over-surveillance, arrest and incarceration of African-Americans for nonviolent crimes in the name of a War on Drugs that is really a war on young black males.
During all this, in a classic expression of what the brilliant author and activist Elaine Brown calls "New Age Racism," Clinton lectured blacks on the need to heal themselves and take personal and collective responsibility for overcoming the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. It was and is a sentiment shared among many whites across the partisan board.
Or take George W. Bush, who boasts a number of black cabinet members, leads all Presidents except Clinton in naming women and minorities to political appointments, counts African-Americans among his intimate associates and has denounced Lott's comments as "contrary to the spirit of this country." Like Clinton, Bush rejects the notion that the US government owes black Americans even an apology for the crimes and legacy of slavery. He appointed as US Attorney General John Ashcroft, who opposes affirmative action and shares Bush's enthusiasm for the racially disparate death penalty and racist mass incarceration fueled by the War on Drugs. He pushed through an education "reform" that punished minority schools that fail to raise student test scores but does nothing to reform the nation's regressive, racist school funding system or address the savage re-segregation of American schools documented by the Harvard Civil Rights Project. At the same time, Bush embraces private school voucher plans that will only worsen the under-funding and segregation of the nation's schools – problems that particularly affect black kids.
He is strictly opposed to national health care, of course. His version is of welfare "reform" is harsher than Clinton's, expanding work requirements but denying significant job assistance in a time of recession and insidiously suggesting that moral laxity in the form of single-parenthood are the real cause of black poverty. Bush has spearheaded monumentally regressive tax cuts and launched an historic expansion of imperial "defense" expenditures that combined to limit desperately needed (especially by poor blacks) social programs while making the disproportionately white rich richer and the disproportionately black poor poorer. He as refused to extend unemployment benefits for the nations' disproportionately black jobless; 800,000 Americans without work are scheduled to lose their benefits on December 28th (Happy Holidays). He spearheaded a "faith-based" initiative that gives federal funding to religious groups that provide social services without requiring compliance with anti-discrimination laws. He shares Clinton's tendency to lecture blacks on the need to take responsibility for their own plight while embracing "free trade" and prison-filling "get-tough on crime" policies that make it yet more difficult for disadvantaged blacks to make it in America. Owing his Presidency in part to racist felony disenfranchisement laws and other race-based voting rights problems in Florida, Bush used 9-11 as a pretext to assault civil liberties (always a special concern for the black community) at home and to divide Americans yet further along lines of class and race.
"Changing One Horse for Another"
Or look at the records of those who were considered most likely to replace Lott as Majority Leader – Bill Frist (T-Tenn), a close Bush ally, Don Nickles (R-Oklahoma), Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania). Each of these Senators receive an ‘F' from the NAACP for their recent voting history. In the last Congress, they voted for school vouchers, against raising school spending, for Bush's $1.3 trillion tax cut, against strengthening the federal response to hate crimes, against managed care health reform, for the nomination of Ashcroft and against funding for bilingual education and (surprise) restoring ex-felons' voting rights. No wonder that civil rights movement veteran and US Representative John Lewis (D-Georgia) remarked that the Senate Republican Party would respond to the Lott fiasco by "just … changing one [racist] horse for another [racist] horse."
Lott's successor, Frist, has voted against community technology centers for minority neighborhoods, sanctions for predatory lending, the expansion of minority higher education credits, increasing global funding to address the AIDS crisis in Africa, alternative voting verification methods and strong community investment requirements for banks. He has voted for decreasing voter registration through the purging of voting rolls and harsher juvenile criminal justice measures. A former surgeon with $25 million of stock in his family's for-profit hospital chain and a recipient of massive campaign largesse from the pharmaceutical industry, Frist has led the effort to deny serious health care reform to the nation's poorest citizens. He sponsored pharmaceutical giant Eli-Lily's campaign to win federal protection (strangely included in the recent Homeland Security bill) from lawsuits by parents of children who developed autism as a result of faulty child vaccines.
How offensive, then, it was to see the Chicago Tribune's editorial writers recently laud Frist as a "southerner who has no unsavory history on racial issues" and has "distinguished himself for his work on health care issues" (CT, 21 December, 2002). The Tribune applauded Frist's "longstanding practice of traveling to Africa every year to work as a medical missionary" – ministering perhaps to some of the millions of Africans who are effectively denied access to life-prolonging AIDS drugs by American drug companies protecting their patent monopolies in the name of "free trade." Such are the perverse racial sensibilities of New Age Racism, whereby the defeat of level-one racism obscures and provides cover for the disease's deeper variant, which is most efficiently spread by policymakers who know enough to sell their policies and values as "color-blind" and consistent with the principles of King.
Another Dangerous Opportunity for White Racial Self Congratulation
For those who like to think that racism has been swept into the dustbin of American history, it is comforting to see the heavily white-led and white-supported Republican Party drum their own Senate Majority Leader out of office because of his "intemperate remarks." The harsh reality missing from "mainstream" (really corporate) media accounts is that the party's post-Lott downfall agenda is the same and as fundamentally racist as the one before his "gaffe." Lott was removed from Republican leadership because his breach of good taste threatened to take the color-blind veneer off the deep racism at the heart of the party's assault on affirmative action, civil rights legislation, and social democratic public policy in general. As an article recently posted on The Black Commentator (www.blackcommentator.com) noted, "Lott had to go in order to maintain the momentum of the GOP's assault on affirmative action and civil rights leadership."
In this regard, it is interesting to note how much more forceful top Republicans were than leading national Democrats in calling for Lott's demotion. The latter undoubtedly hoped to run against a party stuck with a publicly exposed racist in a leadership position. Such a target promised to help them continue to garner the lion's share of the black vote. It also promised to divert attention from their own heavy involvement in the deeper covert and systemic racism that envelopes this nation from top to bottom. Such is the persistent and tragic reality of race in an age when white America loves to congratulate itself for dropping racial slurs from acceptable public discourse, outlawing lynch-mobs, letting blacks sit in the front of the bus, and claiming to honor the legacy of King.
The most depressing and distressing thing about the Lott fiasco is the way it is providing white America yet another dangerous opportunity to pat itself on the back for advancing beyond the primitive state of level-one racism while digging the hole of the deeper racism yet deeper.
Paul Street is Vice President for Research and Planning at the Chicago Urban League. His articles and essays have appeared in Z Magazine, Monthly Review, the Journal of American Ethnic History and Dissent. He is the author of The Vicious Circle: Race, Prison, Jobs, and Community in Chicago, Illinois, and the Nation (Chicago, IL: Chicago Urban League, 2002), which can be viewed at www.cul-chicago.org.
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World Cup cricket: SA rallies behind Harare
Posted: Wednesday, January 1, 2003
JOHANNESBURG.
THE South African government has rallied behind Zimbabwe and will not support any move to switch some of this year’s World Cup cricket matches from either Zimbabwe or Kenya.
South Africa, the main hosts of the tournament, also said it was concerned that English and Australian cricketers were being placed under "undue pressure" not to play their matches in Zimbabwe.
"We will not support any move to shift matches from either Zimbabwe or Kenya and believe that the ICC should be supported by all 14 participating countries in its decision to go ahead with its World Cup programme," South African Sports Minister, Ngconde Balfour, said in a statement on Monday.
His statement came in the wake of a recent campaign being waged by the British and Australian governments who are urging their cricket teams not to play their World Cup matches in Zimbabwe.
Balfour said the decision taken by the ICC (International Cricket Council) was based on a first-hand assessment of the conditions in Zimbabwe.
"As the continent is hosting this prestigious event for the first time in the history of the game, we remain steadfast in our support of the ICC, believing that the decision, of the controlling body is in the best interests of all stakeholders in the sport, including the four participating African countries." MORE
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CLR James sends us his 'Letters from London'
Posted: Tuesday, December 31, 2002
By Kim Johnson
Prospect Press' newest book, a small collection of essays by CLR James, Letters from London, is a delight for his fans.
These seven short essays were written in 1932, mere weeks after the 31-year-old James arrived in England.
Originally published in the Port of Spain Gazette, they comprise his observations of London and, in the last pages of the final essay, of Nelson, where he went to live with Learie Constantine.
The topics are: the Science and Art Museums; the Bloomsbury atmosphere; the houses; Englishmen; Englishwomen; the nucleus of a great civilisation.
Long before he left Trinidad James was already a vastly-read, self-educated intellectual. So he is not dazzled by the bright lights of London.
On the contrary, James is disappointed; the reality of London does not live up to the idealised images he had mentally constructed in Trinidad.
Crowds and traffic do not impress him. The large buildings, once their novelty have worn off, are ugly. Politicians whose speeches were marvellous in print, well, "To read them is one thing. To hear them is another."
As for the newspapers, they contain mostly lurid accounts of sex and murder: the domestic life of a murderess; the diary of her murdered husband; accounts by the wife and daughter of a perverted priest; the marriage and honeymoon of Lord Inverclyde.
Yet James's worldliness is thin. Through it you can see a country boy testing what he learnt on his small tropical island, but absorbing new knowledge like a sponge.
He attends a talk by a famous lecturer. She mentions but refuses to name a brilliant new American writer.
"Of course, that was easy," recounts James. "I told her at once that it was William Faulkner and she rather blinked."
In the question period James easily corners her in an argument about poetry.
So the CLR of later years is recognisable.
For instance, his revolutionary populism is formed.
His concluding celebration of the English spirit is contained in a story about when Nelson cinema owners attempted to reduce the operators' salaries.
"The Nelson people got wind of the matter. There were meetings and discussions. They decided that the salaries of the cinema operators should not be lowered," enthuses James.
"It was magnificent and it was war. I was thrilled to the bone when I heard it. I could forgive England all the vulgarity and all the depressing disappointment of London for the magnificent spirit of these north country working people."
He hasn't yet acquired the grand theory that unifies his understanding of culture, civilisation and class struggle, and which endears him to West Indians.
So Letters from London has little for those who read James to be edified.
But the James who is read for its own pleasure is there.
There's the James voice, now coming into its own. You can hear it: unselfconscious, confident, honest, playful.
It is the conversation of a teacher, not in a classroom, but amongst his friends.
The voice blends personal anecdote, opinion, observation and logic with an ease and frankness. It reminds me of Bertrand Russell's more than anyone else.
You feel that all of this man's opinions are completely integrated with his morals, his experience and his vast knowledge.
This is fully developed in his mature works, from The Black Jacobins and, especially, in Beyond A Boundary.
But in Letters are found aspects of James which he lost later on. There is James the diarist, who describes his crowded daily routine minute by minute, like an intellectual Samuel Pepys.
There's none of the gory sexual detail Pepys recounted, but you can see James delight in the fairer sex, and his irresistible charms.
Although he spends hours talking with women who are clearly attracted to his intelligence, good looks and blackness, yet he's no philanderer, and he flees from a woman who sidles up to him in the cinema.
"Now take a boy of 18, a coloured boy living in the colonies, where the social question is what we know it is," he moralises.
"Drop him in London, to live on his own… he is at a critical age, the age when he is apt to believe that sex and a woman are one and the same thing — an age which many may never outgrow. Round him flutter red and white faces with blond hair, red caps and red and white scarves… it is not surprising that some of the boys get spoilt."
James had completed Minty Alley in Trinidad, and in England he has the eye of a novelist. He observes things and people, and describes them memorably.
"The plane is the most beautiful thing in the (Science) Museum and one of the most beautiful things I have seen in London," he says. And then the image:
"It is like one of the graceful women you catch glimpses of on a morning stepping from the pavement to the Rolls-Royce or the Daimler, nothing superfluous, all cut and line."
You'd imagine her to be mature, at least in her thirties. Well, think of when she was a gauche teenager and you'll get a sense of pleasures Letters from London has to offer.
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UK in bid to oust President
Posted: Monday, December 30, 2002
By Dr David Nyekorach-Matsanga, www.herald.co.zw
Africa is in a praetorian trap where coups, counter- coups, plotting insurgency and military rule have become a common feature in the continent's political life.
Behind this veil are agents or puppets of the CIA and MI6 on the continent.
The failure of the British hegemony to destroy Zimbabwe through many civil outlets such as Nepad and the Commonwealth troika, the European Union sanctions, among other ploys, has forced our mighty kingdom to revert to old tactics of divide and rule and overt and covert operations.
Some African countries, knowingly or unknowingly, are now being used as conduits of neo-colonialism on the continent. Their new assignment is to remove President Mugabe.
The London-based Ditcheley Foundation, which authorises and sponsors war and other underground activities in Africa, has now hired some fellow African brothers to deliver Zimbabwe to the altar of the "House of Windsor". Sources close to the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) have confirmed to Africa Strategy that secret contacts have been made for such a strategy to be implemented.
Already millions of pounds have been allocated to organisations such as the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust (ZDT) of Annabelle Hughes in London to recruit and sponsor those who want to train in all forms of warfare against the son of the soil, Cde Robert Mugabe.
There are frantic movements between London and Harare, which have seen an increase in the number of those opposed to President Mugabe being given visas to enter Britain on the grounds that President Mugabe's law courts and instruments of Government are persecuting them.
In fact, half of the plane that left Harare on Friday November 22 2002, on flight UM 762, was full of relatives and associates of members of the opposition who claimed to be fleeing persecution.
Sources at Gatwick Airport told Africa Strategy that the British High Commission in Harare has a parallel way of issuing visas for Zimba-bweans travelling to the UK.
Those for President Mugabe are excluded from this warm reception on this side of the divide. You only need to shout loud at Gatwick airport against President Mugabe to receive the best reception and a cup of coffee from several immigration officials.
There is now an exodus of young Zimbabweans claiming asylum in Britain.
My biggest worry now is where the young men are being taken? Is there a form of military training they are attending in the UK? Or they are only in transit to some countries that are pretending to be friendly to President Mugabe?
Who pays for these expensive tickets if they are not being paid by an organised ring of those opposed to President Mugabe in London and elsewhere?
One can easily get a visa at the British High Commission in Zimbabwe if one is very close to a member of the MDC or somebody who hates President Mugabe.
One of the passengers who confided in me said his visa was given by telephone and he never filled any forms because he was hiding in an office, fearing to be arrested by the police as compared to the cases of other applicants.
This brings me to the crux of the matter behind all these manoeuvres that have made the opposition in Zimbabwe speculate of chaos in December.
As far as last week, highly placed sources in this great city of conspiracy, London, have indicated that all being in place, the nation of Zimbabwe might have the second wave of random killings and genocide.
The purpose is to cause instability so as to force the UN Security Council to intervene to restore peace. This will occur in an organised manner where President Mugabe will be overthrown and a new leader is installed in Zimbabwe.
Defence analysts close to Africa Strategy have told us that an operation code-named "Open Shield" has been secretly launched by those who hate President Mugabe in London and Washington. Sources have told us that advanced plans are underway to infiltrate Zimbabwe and cause chaos so as to spark off an internal strife.
They have managed to persuade some people in two African countries I shall not name to infiltrate and stop President Mugabe and his Government from completing the land reform programme.
It is now crystal clear that chaos will start in Zimbabwe soon when the leadership of the trade union movement has been given to an intellectual "horse" that would drink the "hurry fixes" of the British toxins of war and under-cover terrorism, said a defence analyst in London.
Arms from an African country are the source of genocide in the whole of the Great Lakes region. A research conducted by Africa Strategy and backed by several humanitarian agencies found out that most of the weapons killing people in DRC are supplied by companies from this African country.
There are serious concerns expressed by those who have followed the crisis in the DRC about the influence of some African countries on the matters of peace in the DRC.
Zimbabwe, which has defended the DRC since 1998, has been sidelined by a section of people in the DRC and reduced to a level of onlookers and "dormant spectators" while those who have supplied arms that have killed the people of the DRC have the biggest say and cult in deciding the fate of this country.
Now that peace has come as a result of the sacrifice of the people of Zimbabwe, the usual tactics of the Pharisees in the Western world has started.
The British and Americans are fooling the government of the DRC with baits of reconstruction and rehabilitation packages so as to distance it from its only friend at the hour of need - Zimbabwe. There are indications that the DRC has started taking a rather unsavoury stance towards Zimbabwe by recalling their ambassador from Harare.
Britain has decided to hand over Zimbabwe to other African countries because it is easier to accelerate the political changes it wants from Africa than from 10 Downing Street.
The Prime Minister is facing a crisis at home, which is growing every day. All departments of life in Britain in the near future will see more and more strikes that are about to bring the UK to a halt. This has put the entire cabinet of Tony Blair in total disarray.
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UK Cricketers 'urged to boycott Zimbabwe'
Posted: Monday, December 30, 2002
By Paul Waugh, Independent/UK
The Government made a desperate attempt to distance itself from the England cricket team's decision to travel to Zimbabwe yesterday when it said it had "asked" players not to go.
Mike O'Brien, a Foreign Office Minister, said: "We cannot order the ECB [England and Wales Cricket Board] not to go to Zimbabwe, but we have asked them not to go. The final decision must rest with them. Our opinion is clear – given the abuse of human rights and the dire circumstances of the people of Zimbabwe, it would be wrong to play a game of cricket there."
The Foreign Office also said that Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, had told the ECB just before Christmas that he did not want the team to compete in the World Cup in Harare.
Mr O'Brien's remarks, made as Downing Street finally came out against the tour, represent a significant hardening of the Government's line. On 17 December, Mr O'Brien said: "My personal view is that it would be better if they did not go."
In a last-ditch attempt to find a solution before the tournament starts on 13 February, David Graveney, chairman of the selectors, yesterday urged ministers to hold an emergency meeting with the players. MORE
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England refusing to play in the World Cup?
Posted: Sunday, December 29, 2002
Cricket World Cup: Misgivings mount as England's participation is given Short shrift
By Hugh Bateson, Independent/UK
The prospect of England refusing to play in the World Cup in Zimbabwe in February came much closer yesterday when the captain, Nasser Hussain, appealed for the Government to make a decision and said the team would boycott the country if told to do so, and a spokesman at 10 Downing Street said: "We have no power to order a team not to go. It is up to them, but our advice is that they should not go."
At the same time, the chairman of selectors, David Graveney, was reported to have said he would not visit the country, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, let it be known he was against the trip and another Cabinet minister, Clare Short, called the idea of England playing there "deplorable and shocking" and said she would raise the issue with Tessa Jowell, the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport.
Hussain, writing in his column in a Sunday newspaper, said the decision to go or not should not be made by cricketers, but by a "government body". "Even if it means that England will forfeit points by not playing in Zimbabwe that would be willingly done if the Government believes it right that England should not play. Cricket comes a long way down the list of what is important, especially compared with people starving," he said. MORE
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Racial Label Surprises Many Latino Immigrants
Posted: Saturday, December 28, 2002
By Darryl Fears - The Washington Post
December 28, 2002
At her small apartment in Washington, D.C., Maria Martins quietly watched as an African American friend studied a picture of her mother. "Oh," the friend said, surprise in her voice. "Your mother is white."
She turned to Martins. "But you are black."
That came as news to Martins, a Brazilian who, for 30 years before immigrating to the United States, looked in the mirror and saw a morena--a woman with caramel-colored skin that is nearly equated with whiteness in Brazil and some other Latin American countries. "I didn't realize I was black until I came here," she said.
That realization has come to hundreds of thousands of dark-complexioned immigrants to the United States from Brazil, Colombia, Panama and other Latin nations with sizable populations of African descent. Although most do not identify themselves as black, they are seen that way as soon as they set foot in North America.
Their reluctance to embrace this definition has left them feeling particularly isolated--shunned by African Americans who believe they are denying their blackness; by white Americans who profile them in stores or on highways; and by lighter-skinned Latinos whose images dominate Spanish-language television all over the world, even though a majority of Latin people have some African or Indian ancestry.
The pressure to accept not only a new language and culture, but also a new racial identity, is a burden some darker-skinned Latinos say they face every day.
"It's overwhelming," said Yvette Modestin, a dark-skinned native of Panama who works as an outreach coordinator in Boston. "There's not a day that I don't have to explain myself."
E. Francisco Lopez, a Venezuelan-born attorney in Washington, said he had not heard the term "minority" before coming to America.
"I didn't know what it meant. I didn't accept it because I thought it meant 'less than,"' said Martins, whose father is black. "'Where are you from?' they ask me. I say I'm from Brazil. They say, 'No, you are from Africa.' They make me feel like I am denying who I am."
Exactly who these immigrants are is almost impossible to divine from the 2000 Census. Latinos of African, mestizo and European descent --or any mixture of the three--found it hard to answer the question "What is your racial origin?"
Some of the nation's 35 million Latinos scribbled in the margins that they were Aztec or Mayan. A fraction said they were Indian. Nearly forty-eight percent described themselves as white, and only 2 percent as black. Fully 42 percent said they were "some other race."
Race matters in Latin America, but it matters differently.
Most South American nations barely have a black presence. In Argentina, Chile, Peru and Bolivia, there are racial tensions, but mostly between indigenous Indians and white descendants of Europeans.
The black presence is stronger along the coasts of two nations that border the Caribbean Sea, Venezuela and Colombia--which included Panama in the 19th century--along with Brazil, which snakes along the Atlantic coast. In many ways, those nations have more in common racially with Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic than they do with the rest of South America.
This black presence is a legacy of slavery, just as it is in the United States. But the experience of race in the United States and in these Latin countries is separated by how slaves and their descendants were treated after slavery was abolished.
In the United States, custom drew a hard line between black and white, and Jim Crow rules kept the races separate. The color line hardened to the point that it was sanctioned in 1896 by the Supreme Court in its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which held that Homer Plessy, a white-complexioned Louisiana shoemaker, could not ride in the white section of a train because a single ancestor of his was black.
Thus Americans with any discernible African ancestry--whether they identified themselves as black or not--were thrust into one category. One consequence is that dark-complexioned and light-complexioned black people combined to campaign for equal rights, leading to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
By contrast, the Latin countries with a sizable black presence had more various, and more fluid, experiences of race after slavery.
Jose Neinstein, a native white Brazilian and executive director of the Brazilian-American Cultural Institute in Washington, boiled down to the simplest terms how his people are viewed. "In this country," he said, "if you are not quite white, then you are black." But in Brazil, he said, "If you are not quite black, then you are white."
The elite in Brazil, as in most Latin American nations, are educated and white. But many brown and black people also belong in that class. Generally, brown Brazilians, such as Martins, enjoy many privileges of the elite, but are disproportionately represented in Brazilian slums.
Someone with Sidney Poitier's deep chocolate complexion would be considered white if his hair were straight and he made a living in a profession. That might not seem so odd, Brazilians say, when you consider that the fair-complexioned actresses Rashida Jones of the television show "Boston Public" and Lena Horne are identified as black in the United States.
Neinstein remembered talking with a man of Poitier's complexion during a visit to Brazil. "We were discussing ethnicity," Neinstein said, "and I asked him, 'What do you think about this from your perspective as a black man?' He turned his head to me and said, 'I'm not black,"' Neinstein recalled. " ... It simply paralyzed me. I couldn't ask another question."
By the same token, Neinstein said, he never perceived brown-complexioned people such as Maria Martins, who works at the cultural institute, as black. One day, when an African American custodian in his building referred to one of his brown-skinned secretaries as "the black lady," Neinstein was confused. "I never looked at that woman as black," he said. "It was quite a revelation to me."
Those perceptions come to the United States with the light- and dark-complexioned Latinos who carry them. But here, they collide with two contradictory forces: North American prejudice and African American pride.
Vilson DaSilva, a native of Brazil, is a moreno. Like his wife, Maria Martins, he was born to a black father and a white mother. But their views on race seem to differ.
During an interview when Martins said she had no idea how they had identified themselves on the 2000 Census form, DaSilva rolled his eyes. "I said we were black," he said.
He is one of a growing number of Latin immigrants of African descent who identify themselves as Afro-Latino, along the same color spectrum as African Americans.
"I've learned to be proud of my color," he said. For that, he thanked African American friends who stand up for equal rights.
DaSilva agreed that nuances separate African Americans and Afro-Latinos, but he also believes that seeing Latin America through African American eyes gave him a better perspective. Unfortunately, he said, it also made him angrier and more stressed.
When DaSilva returned to Brazil for a visit, he asked questions he had never asked, and got answers that shocked him.
His mother told him why her father didn't speak to her for 18 years: "It was because she married a black man," he said. One day, DaSilva's own father pulled him aside to provide his son some advice. "`You can play around with whoever you want,"' DaSilva recalled his father saying, "`but marry your own kind."' So DaSilva married Martins, the morena of his dreams.
She is dreaming of a world with fewer racial barriers, a world she believes she left in Brazil to be with her husband in Washington.
As Martins talked about the nation's various racial blends in her living room, her 18-month-old son sat in front of the television, watching a Disney cartoon called "The Proud Family," about a merged black American and black Latino family. The characters are intelligent, whimsical, thoughtful, funny, with skin tones that range from light to dark brown.
The DaSilvas said they would never see such a show on Latin American TV.
Martins said her perspective on race was slowly conforming to the American view, but it saddened her. She doesn't understand why she can't call a pretty black girl a negrita, the way Latin Americans always say it, with affection. She doesn't understand why she has to say she's black, seeming to deny the existence of her mother.
"Sometimes I say she is black on the outside and white on the inside," DaSilva said of his wife, who threw her head back and laughed.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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A UN mandate does not make war on Iraq right!
Posted: Saturday, December 28, 2002
www.transnational.org
By Jorgen Johansen, TFF Associate, Director of the Centre for Peace Studies at Tromsø, University, Norway, and Jan Oberg, TFF director
A UN mandate does not turn war into peace
Governments, editors, commentators and even supporters of the United Nations currently express the view that a war against Iraq is, or will be, acceptable if the United States and others "go back" to the Security Council and obtain a "UN mandate" before they attack.
But, this is false logic and could spell the end of the UN as a peace organisation. If you think that the planned war is or entails a violation of international law, such a mandate does not make it more legal. If you think that the war is morally wrong or unfair, such a mandate won't make it right or just. If you think that war has nothing to do with conflict-resolution but must be categorised as aggression, a resolution - inevitably the result of horse-trading among the Five Permanent (and nuclear) Security Council members and the other ten under the leadership of Columbia - does not turn war into wise politics.
The Security Council has no magic formula and no magic wand to wave in order to turn war into peace and human folly into wisdom.
A Security Council resolution that endorses war is not the same as a "UN" mandate, as is often stated. It's hard to believe that something like a referendum among all members in the General Assembly would result in a go-ahead. There is still little enthusiasm for this war among "we, the peoples" around the world. If the Security Council self-importantly decided that it is the High Judge and that Judgement Day has come, all talk of an "international community" standing behind a war with Iraq would be grossly misleading.
A mandate is no comfort; no UN mandate is the better option
It is as if a "UN mandate" serves to make some people feel better about this war. The Swedish government, as an example of a country whose solidarity with the UN has never been questioned, seems to hope that it will not be forced to criticise the United States. Because, if there is such a UN mandate, it would be possible for Sweden to say, "well, we don't like wars, but this one has a UN mandate, and therefore it is acceptable to us." The Danish government, still the head of the EU for a few more days, has declared that it is willing to participate directly in the war if there is such a mandate.
There are two important arguments against a UN "mandate". Firstly, if there is no such mandate, it will be considerably more difficult for many member states to accept it or go along with it. That is, the United States would rather stand alone and carry the major burden of a political, legal and moral disaster. Secondly, it would save the UN from being dragged down into the quagmire called bombing, invasion, occupation and control of Iraq - not to mention the humanitarian consequences and the resources needed to rebuild the country physically, as well as psychologically. With no UN mandate, the UN could say "not in our name" and remain a genuine peace organisation true to the words and the spirit of its charter.
To put it simply, if George W. Bush and the people around him want to destroy Iraq, they should go it alone. The UN must never be misused to legitimate bellicose policies of any member state. The UN can hardly survive with repeated humiliation as has been the case in Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Somalia and Afghanistan.
The planned war violates the Charter's words and spirit
Let us hope that the war against Iraq will never receive approval from the United Nations. The Charter of the UN is clear; the organisation's highest purpose is "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." And "Armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest". There exists no common interest to do what is being planned against Iraq.
The war against Iraq has been going on for eleven years now. Since September 11 last year, the Security Council has lost colossal legitimacy due to a number of resolutions that have been passed. The tragic new interpretation of International Law itself and the implementation of it has seriously undermined the foundation of a system constructed to handle international conflicts. The principles and conventions developed in the post-Westphalian era have been damaged due to paranoid policies of revenge after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Centre.
Since September 11, the UN has suffered even more blows
This loss of legitimacy is naturally more obvious among the 1,300 million Muslims in the world. They are about to loose confidence in an organisation in which 80 per cent of the permanent members of the supreme body are Christian countries. Seen from their vantage point, the Four Permanent members possess, if you will, Christian bombs and share the basic Old Testament image of the world that "the others" are either with us or they are against us and must be exterminated.
When the UN accepted to use International Law and not Criminal Law for the reaction to September 11, it opened doors that will be (mis)used by many actors in the future. Up until then, political and violent crimes had been handled by the police and not by the military. This shift is very dangerous. Then the U.S. decided, and the UN accepted, to use the principle of "self defence", but with a delay of almost a month (September 11 to October 7). In the field of Criminal Law, this would resemble that the attacked escapes from the attacker, locate him a month later and (with a bunch of friends) exercise his "self-defence" out of proportion to the first crime committed.
The Bush regime moves from MAD to NUTS
The UN Security Council resolutions on Iraq represent an even more dodgy new interpretation. This time the act of self-defence will be carried out years before the attacked assesses that he could, perhaps, be hit, i.e. pre-emptively. Unfortunately for the UN, international law holds no provisions for such pre-emptive policies or wars. They are found only in recent strategic documents from the Bush regime. Even worse, they contain a philosophical demolition of the principles of deterrence that enables the United States to use weapons of mass-destruction against countries that are not known to possess such weapons but are judged to be able to possess them some time into the future.
In short, instead of moving towards general and complete disarmament world-wide, or the abolition of all WMD (Weapons of Mass-Destruction) we are moving from MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) to the fundamentally immoral and destabilising NUTs (Nuclear Use Theories).
Kidnapping Iraq's report and keeping U.S. involvement in Iraq's military secret
In spite of its real importance, the weapons inspection process is exploited as a game by the United States. Its representatives have done their best to provoke and find Iraqi violations of resolutions by the Security Council, including SC Resolution 1441. The recent U.S. kidnapping of the 12,000-page report produced by Iraq is one of the most serious in a long line of aggressive acts.
The U.S. claims that it wants to know everything about Iraqi military programs, but obviously not which U.S. and other Western companies have made them possible. Money doesn't smell of course until it comes out into the open. Instead of causing an outrage forcing the Bush regime to back down, most members accept this gross violation of decency and of the integrity of the United Nations.
Colin Powel returned from a short visit to Bogota on December 4 where he had announced major increases in American military aid to Colombia. Colombia presently serves as the chair of the Security Council. In exchange for the military support, Colombia presumably promised to let the U.S. steal Iraq's report to "edit" it, i.e. to practise censorship.
Kofi Annan should remember Article 99 and 100 and use them to save the UN
Despite the serious injury done to the UN, there is no other organisation that can assume global responsibility in the situation we are facing today. The Iraqis will suffer no less because "there was a UN mandate." A UN mandate only means that the UN will suffer too, most likely beyond repair. Western countries that bomb Muslim countries only amplify the hate against West. The number of potential suicide-bombers and terror attacks must be expected to grow with every military attack on innocent Muslims. They cannot possibly see the UN as a trustworthy world organisation.
Let the UN get back its status as a legitimate actor working for "peace by peaceful means." Let the U.S. establishment stand alone as the naked aggressor. The United Nations has already administered a genocide of up to 1 million Iraqis due to a sanctions regime only the U.S. insists on maintaining.
We prefer our world to be running according to the norms of the UN, not those of the U.S.! Article 99 of the UN Charter states that the Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security. Thus, he stands over and above the member governments. If he thinks that a U.S.-led war on Iraq is a threat to world peace, he has the power to act. Article 100 states that the Secretary-General and his staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or from any other authority external to the Organisation.
If the Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, makes use of Article 99 and 100 of the Charter, war on Iraq will not happen. Will he do so?
The U.S. tail must not wag the UN dog...
Letting the tail (the U.S.) wag the dog (the UN) is morally unacceptable and a violation of the Charter. The U.S. has tried and will try to do it again. Now is the time for the UN to stand up for itself, for the genuine international community.
Or will 2003 be remembered by future generations as the year in which a few members, against the will of the greater majority, decided to destroy the UN as a peace organisation? And got away with it only because the Secretary-General and member states who didn't want the war, failed to show civil courage in time and hid behind a self-condemning "UN mandate"?
© TFF 2002
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