October 23, 2002 - November 12, 2002
Zimbabwe, BBC and illegitimate White Control
Posted: Tuesday, November 12, 2002
From: AmonHotep: Dialogue
ABSTRACT: BBC Zimbabwe 'diverts food aid'
"Mr Mugabe denies that the food crisis is a result of his land reform programme and blames it on a drought, which has affected much of the region.
But white farmers who are prevented from working their land say that their dams are full of water.
Just a few hundred white farmers remain on their land, out of some 4,000 two years ago.
Our correspondent says that the land has gone to Zanu-PF officials, who often have no farming background, instead of the landless black people who were supposed to benefit.
In Maputo, Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge repeated his government's argument that former colonial power Britain should compensate the white farmers who have lost their land.
As a result of British colonial rule, whites owned much of Zimbabwe's best farmland.
Britain has refused to pay unless there is transparency in the redistribution of land."
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The BBC is currently funded through the UK Licence Fee payment to the tune of £2.4bn. The Licence fee from which BBC is paid is an annual fee that allows people to own and use a television in the UK. If you have any equipment capable of receiving a television signal and receive any programmes, including satellite, you must have a licence. [More from BBC]
Abstract: 'BBC gets anything it wants,' claims Murdoch
by Dan Milmo, guardian.co.uk
Friday November 8, 2002
Rupert Murdoch today launched a scathing attack on the government, accusing it of being too cosy with the BBC and of fostering anti-competitive behaviour on the part of the corporation.
He said the BBC, funded by an annual licence fee payment of £2.4bn, had been protected by successive Conservative and Labour governments. [full article]
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ABSTRACT: Carrington backs Zimbabwe farmers
By Andrew Unsworth: London. Sunday Oct 20 2002
www.sundaytimes.co.za
"Lord Carrington, who chaired the Lancaster House conference that led to the end of white minority rule in Zimbabwe, has joined in the growing controversy over Prime Minister Tony Blair's government's reluctance to support white farmers who have been evicted from land in Zimbabwe.
In a question tabled in the House of Lords this week, Carrington asked whether the British government was prepared to use money earmarked for land reform more than 20 years ago to help farmers now left destitute.
Speaking to the Sunday Times, he said that funds were available for land redistribution in 1979.
"What we intended to do at the Lancaster House negotiations and subsequently was to help Zimbabwean farmers on a willing buyer-willing seller basis, and to help the Zimbabwean government . . . to make more farms available to black farmers," he said this week. "It all fell down because the Zimbabwean government gave farms to their own cronies and the British government of the day decided the money could not be used on that basis."
He said the government's response to this had been to "waffle" . No specific sum was pledged originally, but £44-million (about R750-million) had been given to Zimbabwe up to 2000. [full article]
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South Africa fears terror threat of white extremists
Tuesday, 12 November 2002
From Michael Dynes in Johannesburg
More than 80 extreme right-wing groups are thought to be operating in South Africa. They represent a mixture of military underground cells, such as Boeremag, and an assortment of religious doomsday cults, such as Israel Vision and Daughter of Zion. Farmers, blue-collar workers, professionals, academics and retired military and police officers fill their ranks and they have cultivated the conviction that they are being "oppressed" by South Africa's black majority rule. [full article here or here]
Ayinde's comment
Western Media houses (BBC) are rather slow to highlight the terrorist threats from White extremist groups in South Africa. These Groups represent the general thinking of most Whites who still suffer from superiority complexes and feel they have a divine right to rule all people.
This attitude is at the root of all other forms of Terrorism.
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Aisha's comment
Britain wanted to continue their dictatorship. They wanted to dictate to the Zimbabwe Government who should own the land so that they (Britain) could still maintain control.
The colour of the farmers would have changed but the 'ownership' would have remained the same. White farmers would have been replaced with Black farmers who were willing to be puppets of the British government.
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Ayinde's comments...
BBC is not impartial in this whole affair.
Other US and UK media houses are being guided by some legitimate concerns muddled with their own prejudices. Their coverage generally lacks the historical perspective coupled with the agreements signed when Zimbabwe won its independence. There are many things wrong with the Resettlement Programme but I would only focus on aspects that pertain to the dishonest media reports.
No one can be against the Zimbabwe government's agents for this headline in their newspapers, "BBC gets more money to step up anti-Zim crusade".
During BBC's latest propaganda report on Television they were referring to the Resettlement Programme as "THE WHITE MAN'S LAND BEING RESETTLED".
Two questions!
1) After how many years does stolen property become the property of the thief?
2) Do inheritors of stolen property become the legitimate owners of the property by virtue of the inheritance?
Land was at the core of Zimbabwe's liberation struggle
British and American negotiators granted independence with the imposition of certain conditions destined to keep the colonial masters in control. One provision stipulated that for a period of 10 years, land ownership in Zimbabwe could only be transferred on a "willing seller, willing buyer" basis. This amounted to further rewarding people who had already profited from ill-gotten gains.
This also retarded the transformation process by ten years during which the British and American negotiators hoped they would have been able to 'install' a government favorable to their indirect control.
In 1992 the Land Acquisition Act was passed notwithstanding the pressures from Britain and the US.
Zimbabwe's government felt it could no longer continue haggling over land reform, and nearing the end of the 1990's, they started moving away from the Economic Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP), which was not adequately addressing the issues of land reform. In October 2001 Mugabe abandoned the ESAP.
The claim that Mugabe did nothing for 20 years is usually made without reference to the Independence agreement that placed restraints on what Mugabe and his government could have done for the first 10 years. It also neglects the years of trying to get the European powers to honor their agreement.
Meanwhile the Western media kept harping about the harm the economy of Zimbabwe would endure because of the land reform. They continually mention that the Zimbabweans who are getting the confiscated agricultural lands do not know about commercial farming. BBC reported that these African farmers do not have seeds and fertilizers.
If these Africans cannot acquire fertilizers and seeds it is only because of trade restrictions or sellers being discouraged from supplying them.
If in their opinion these Africans cannot grow their own food, then they should explain how humans survived in Africa for thousands of years before Europeans. This fraudulent racist position also highlights the fact that for all the years they occupied the land they were not interested in teaching those Africans whom they profited from. They were quite contented to keep them as cheap farm labour.
European superiority complexes are responsible for these statements and conscious people should treat with them accordingly. Apparently they have no problem delivering food aid which keeps the population enslaved, but allowing people to help themselves is a problem.
The unspoken suggestion is that only Whites can successfully run businesses.
MUGABE IS RIGHT!!!
Transparency for Britain means handing the land over to 'mentally enslaved Africans' who would easily 'give' the land to colonial Whites.
The land MUST go to those Africans who support his Land Reform Programme to ensure the land is not given or resold cheaply to the former White occupiers.
BRITAIN IS RUDE!!!
Britain has to pay and must do so through the legitimate government in Zimbabwe. Britain must stop trying to undermine the democratic process in that country for the benefit of a few Whites.
Where on earth could people guilty of a crime retain the right to determine when and to whom they must pay compensation?
BRITAIN wants to remain in control of African lands and her former colonies through remote control. (Through supporting 'mentally enslaved Africans' who pursue British interest first.)
Who gets land or reclaimed farms is a matter for the internal politics of Zimbabwe and is not up to the dictates of Britain. They had already decided to pay and should have continued through the legitimate government in Zimbabwe.
The Christianized, colonized Blacks they keep featuring on BBC (e.g. Zimbabwe Catholic bishop) is destined to give the impression that most Africans are against the return of their lands. In small print below his picture they put, "Archbishop Ncube is a long-time Mugabe critic". Of course he is; he is 'Christianized', colonized and walks around with his White 'Virgin' Mary and White Jesus as was seen in the background when he was leveling his criticisms of Mugabe on BBC's 24hr News Television feature.
Food Aid is being used as a tool to interfere in the political process in Zimbabwe. Many of these agencies get their funding from Europe and America and they are carrying out the dirty works of those who fund them.
Food Aid is also being used to introduce genetically modified seeds into Africa thus corrupting their own food supply. This will make these people dependant on US corporations for seeds. This is one of the ways the West intends to control all people through controlling seeds and by extension food supplies.
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Zimbabwe, Mugabe and White farmers
Dr. Chika A. Onyeani, Aug. 22, 02, The African Sun Times
"It seems the height of hypocrisy that the world should be focused on the plight and non-payment of compensation to white farmers, without as much as a mention of the savagery with which the Black African owners were massacred and their lands seized without compensation. The word Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zimbabwe, is an Ndebele word for "slaughter," and it refers to the savagery of the British settlers, including the infamous Cecil Rhodes who had crushed the attempt by the indigenes to fight back, leading King Lobengula to swallow poison rather than be captured. Or should we forget the savagery of the bestial Sir Frederick Carrington, who had publicly advocated that the entire Ndebele race should be forcefully removed or be exterminated.
Or that of profligate Ian Smith, who seized the government in 1965 and unilaterally declared the then Southern Rhodesia independent, when he refused to apologize for the atrocities he committed while he held office. In fact, he even boasted that he had no regrets about the estimated 30,000 Zimbabweans killed during his rule. Said Smith, "the more we killed, the happier we were." [full article]
¤ British Terrorist Assualt on Zimbabwe
¤ Land Issue - Fact Sheet
¤ Zimbabwe Under Siege
¤ 2000 Parliamentary elections: Electorate want change
¤ Mugabe: Zimbabwe will not be a colony again
¤ Stop imperialist intervention in Zimbabwe
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Message Board Comments
From: THANDO S
19 October 2002, at 12:18 p.m.
I am writing in relation to your article on Zimbabwe coverage by the British media. As a black Zimbabwean I have found your article to be incorrect to say the least.
Unfair economic practises have indeed contributed to Africa's woes as has the drought. However in Zimbabwe the violence and intimidation which has been used to seize the farms has greatly increased the enormity of the disaster. People who do not support Mugabe whether they belong to the opposition or not have been victimised and the law disregarded in a so called 'democratic and free' country.
'Returning the land to its rightful owners',as the Zimbabwean government puts it is just a way of getting people like you to support them.As a matter of fact seized farms are being given to Mugabe's friends on a permanent bases. The farm labourers are being driven off the land and whether they originated from Mozambique or Malawi they are Zimbabwean and their treatment is unconstitutional. At least the white farmers not only paid them, but provided healthcare, education and housing which by Zimbabwean standards is a 'luxury'. The point of colonial policy is laughable because Zimbabweans fought and died for a free and equal society not just for blacks but for whites as well and whites such as Sir Garfield Todd the former Rhodesian Prime Minister who was imprisoned by the Smith regime in the '70's for supporting the black cause, were also involved in the struggle for independence.
After independence Zimbabwe has been destroyed by its leadership which does not want to step down but would rather kill its own people to preserve its power.
Inasmuch as the British media is biased to an extent in its coverage of Zimbabwe, you should research your facts before supporting Mugabe's draconian tactics.
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Ayinde's Response...
20 October 2002, at 1:19 a.m.
Anyone can claim to be White or Black on the Internet. Claiming to be Black does not validate your comments. One would think if you had a view that was legitimate then it would not have been necessary to state if you were White or Black as the truth can stand without the colour weight.
Let us hope Mugabe remains smart enough to continue returning the lands to those people who support and lobbied for its return.
Giving farms to his opponents is equal to handing it back to the White farmers. (Mental enslavement)
Yes, it took 20 years and there is much that is wrong with Mugabe and the process, but the UK also took 20 years too long while offering tokenism. The White farmers should have acted without it reaching this stage.
Seeing that you do not support the process then you would have much to condemn and the condemnations are in all other media sources. Repeating them here is to continue the imbalance in the general news coverage.
Although you condemn the coverage you did not present one quote that was inaccurate but instead you choose to repeat the popular ignorant diatribe.
I wonder how many people would take the time to register or write a letter with much of the self-hating comments I see on the Internet.
Victims against a global corporate structure
By Ghifari al Mukhtar
Terms rather than words
I have always encountered problems with my slave tongue which is the English language, the simplistic yet perplex mode of communication latter on as I matured in the world that surrounded me more so became extremely unfathomable throughout the ever declining American revolution or the English evolution, that gave rise to the United States of America Australia to a lesser extent New Zealand and the more Cosmo politic Euro-American Israeli State somewhere in the middle East.
Terms rather than words they are; can only be determined base on the person time and circumstances of use, which is the American-way.
For example we hear of Israeli incursions but Iraqi invasion; targeted (retaliatory) killings against Palestinian children and their parents in response to Palestinian "terrorist" fighting off an invader uniform sometimes not (Settlers); Constructive engagement towards western satellite states as in the case of Apartheid but cluster bombs coupled with a can of GM expired food disguised as it were from Santa Clause 'who the hell is he is any fools 'GUEST' of non-Aryan humanities, collateral damage instead of innocent defenseless people, again-collateral damage as oppose to deliberate and calculated disregard.
Why continue on this ever expanding yet continual deceptive creative language as though the communicative extracts is what I am after rather than its users.
We see and we hear-that politics are bad even though rotten men find the use of politics meaningless and naive do-gooders endeavor to make the instrument useful.
Like politics English have always been used to perfection when coming to telling lies, its omissions as well as its pronouncements as suggestions equals advice for the purposes of deception.
Englishmen (Americans they are) are the masters of it all even the crude Israelis depend on the Americans for this lauded cultural asset.
Native Americans warned humanity; that the white man spoke with four (folk) tongue; ‘no racism intended’.
Today we hear of the other meaning for the word invasion/colonization (INTRUSIVE INTERVENTION).
As if the underlying factor for invasions were usually preceded by way of sanctions then who must invade the United States and the allies of sanctions that resulted in mass murder on the peoples of Iraq and Palestine to name the current victims to say the least, a policy nurtured and engineered by a group of unmatched criminals who's deeds against every form of human decency against their fellow man on any scale globally or infinite throughout human existence will always be remembered even as "Zimbabwe" Africans world over flirt with branded names like Pepsi & Coco cola, GM foods, Addidas, Roebuck and Nike assisted amnesia.
They'd like us not to remember yet be fearful of, so they can keep their charge is just a tacit reminder how twisted are the meanings and use of the criminally "skilled" English usage.
The limitations prove exhausting though on the issue of the International Court of Justice only because the ICJ is a EU child and when the language (immunity) is converted to the varied EU member states languages it just didn't compute then came the evolutionary Word processor i.e. compromise, by way of coercions, arm twisting, economic whitemail and the "santa" Clauses called diplomacy.
History have proved that the last 80 years the deliberate protracted wars imposed on Africa, the subverted economic AID packages the willful spreading of the HIV virus via inoculation the orchestrated droughts throughout many states on the continent the subsequent christianisation, the blackened mainstream "media" bias the WTO WHO the IMF WB HRW are all but policies and entities that out-served the colonialist adventure hence the intrusive intervention threat from the last generation of the final Aryan empire comes at this time.
One needs not look further as the economy is rapidly slipping from the grip of their monopoly.
But invading Africa is surely the groundless pivot where the resurrection of Rhodes will find no ground secure, beneath or above them. Perception though not shared is that while all things must return to its point and place of origin Africa shall be the place where Europe and all her descendants shall be retributed. African soil as such may only occur during their disastrous return to re-colonize the continent, as it's not in her "US" nature to genuinely seek forgiveness while at strength.
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UK persecutes businessman over 'sanctions-busting'
Posted: Monday, November 11, 2002
By David Pallister and Tania Branigan
THE British government has launched a formal investigation into the allegation that a white Zimbabwean businessman — one of the richest men in Britain — has broken UK and European sanctions by supplying aircraft parts to the Zimbabwean airforce.
The allegations against the international financier John Bredenkamp were made in a United Nations report on the "illegal exploitation of natural resources" in the Democratic Republic of Congo, published last month.
In the past few days, both the foreign secretary, Jack Straw and the defence secretary, Geoff Hoon, have confirmed in parliamentary answers that an investigation has begun.
In the first answer to the Tory MP Michael Acram, Mr Straw said: "We are aware of allegations of past arms dealing activities by Mr John Bredenkamp.
On Monday Mr Hoon told the Labour MP Paul Farrelly, who accused Mr Bredenkamp of sanctions-busting in the Commons in March: "The government certainly takes seriously all credible reports of misuse or diversion of UK-exported equipment." The UN report says Mr Bredenkamp, founder of the Ascot sporting agency Masters International, "has a history of clandestine military procurement."
While Mr Bredenkamp admits he broke sanctions for the Rhodesian regime of Ian Smith, he denies any sanctions violations since then.
He said in a statement to the Guardian that he took "great exception to any allegation of wrong-doing" and described the report as "hopelessly misleading and inaccurate." MORE
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BBC gets more money to step up Zimbabwe
Posted: Saturday, November 9, 2002
Herald Reporter
THE British government has allocated more money to the BBC to continue its demonisation of Zimbabwe.
British Secretary for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Mr Jack Straw said his government recently increased funding for the BBC’s World Service by £48 million ($4 billion) over the period from 2003 to 2006 on top of an annual baseline of £211m ($17bn).
He was responding to a report of the British parliamentary foreign affairs committee, which recommended London to increase funding for the BBC to continue its propaganda against Harare.
The committee said the British government should ensure that the BBC World Service continues to have enough funds to maintain the quality and extent of its coverage in Zimbabwe and extend it further.
"The annual grant-in-aid to BBCWS’s currently stands at £200m ($16bn). Operational decisions on resource allocation, given BBCWS’s independence of government on editorial and programming matters, are for BBCWS on the basis of its spending bid and working within the framework of overall objectives agreed with the FCO.
"The FCO and BBCWS maintain constant contact over each other’s respective objectives and priorities," said Mr Straw.
He admitted that the British media was often inaccurate in covering Zimbabwe as it was biased in favour of white commercial farmers.
"The Government has gone to great lengths to explain its policy on Zimbabwe to the British media and Parliament. It will continue to do so. Regrettably, media reporting has often been inaccurate or focused unduly on the situation facing Zimbabwe’s commercial farmers."
Contacted for comment yesterday, a BBC spokesperson could only say: "The BBC strives to be impartial and balanced in all its reporting."
The Government has banned the BBC from entering the country to cover events here, saying it was biased and broadcasts falsehoods about Zimbabwe.
The British parliamentary committee also recommended London to pursue all appropriate means of supporting the work of independent journalists in Zimbabwe. Britain already funds the opposition Daily News.
In August the United States revealed that it was working with certain local journalists and some Sadc countries to topple President Mugabe and the Government.
Mr Straw also said British diplomatic missions were actively countering Zimbabwean propaganda about UK policy, confirming the meddling by the British High Commission in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe.
He ruled out the possibility of the United Nations imposing sanctions on Zimbabwe.
"UN sanctions against Zimbabwe are not currently a realistic option," said Mr Straw.
He was responding to the committee’s recommendation that London should seek support in the United Nations, G8 and elsewhere to persuade countries outside of the European Union to impose similar sanctions imposed by the EU.
Mr Straw admitted that the UK as a former colonial power had an obligation on the land issue in Zimbabwe. "The United Kingdom is under a particular obligation to assist, not primarily because white farmers with British forebears are under threat — although that is a matter of great and proper concern — but because as a former colonial power it still has a residual responsibility."
http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=15957&pubdate=2002-11-09
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A History of Corporate Rule and Popular Protest
Posted: Saturday, November 9, 2002
by Richard Heinberg *
The corporation was invented early in the colonial era as a grant of privilege extended by the Crown to a group of investors, usually to finance a trade expedition. The corporation limited the liability of investors to the amount of their investment--a right not held by ordinary citizens. Corporate charters set out the specific rights and obligations of the individual corporation, including the amount to be paid to the Crown in return for the privilege granted.
Thus were born the East India Company, which led the British colonisation of India, and Hudson's Bay Company, which accomplished the same purpose in Canada. Almost from the beginning, Britain deployed state military power to further corporate interests--a practice that has continued to the present. Also from the outset, corporations began pressuring government to expand corporate rights and to limit corporate responsibilities.
The corporation was a legal invention--a socio-economic mechanism for concentrating and deploying human and economic power. The purpose of the corporation was and is to generate profits for its investors. As an entity, it has no other purpose; it acknowledges no higher value.
Many people understood early on that since corporations do not serve society as a whole, but only their investors, there is therefore always a danger that the interests of corporations and those of the general populace will come into conflict. Indeed, the United States was born of a revolution not just against the British monarchy but against the power of corporations. Many of the American colonies had been chartered as corporations (the Virginia Company, the Carolina Company, the Maryland Company, etc.) and were granted monopoly power over lands and industries considered crucial to the interests of the Crown.
Much of the literature of the revolutionaries was filled with denunciations of the "long train of abuses" of the Crown and its instruments of dominance, the corporations. As the yoke of the Crown corporations was being thrown off, Thomas Jefferson railed against "the general prey of the rich on the poor". Later, he warned the new nation against the creation of "immortal persons" in the form of corporations. The American revolutionaries resolved that the authority to charter corporations should lie not with governors, judges or generals, but only with elected legislatures.
At first, such charters as were granted were for a fixed time, and legislatures spelled out the rules each business should follow. Profit-making corporations were chartered to build turnpikes, canals and bridges, to operate banks and to engage in industrial manufacture. Some citizens argued against even these few, limited charters, on the grounds that no business should be granted special privileges and that owners should not be allowed to hide behind legal shields. Thus the requests for many charters were denied, and existing charters were often revoked. Banks were kept on a short leash, and (in most states) investors were held liable for the debts and harms caused by their corporations.
All of this began to change in the mid-19th century. According to Richard Grossman and Frank Adams in Taking Care of Business: "Corporations were abusing their charters to become conglomerates and trusts. They were converting the nation's treasures into private fortunes, creating factory systems and company towns. Political power began flowing to absentee owners intent upon dominating people and nature."1
Grossman and Adams note that: "In factory towns, corporations set wages, hours, production processes and machine speeds. They kept blacklists of labor organizers and workers who spoke up for their rights. Corporate officials forced employees to accept humiliating conditions, while the corporations agreed to nothing."
The authors quote Julianna, a Lowell, Massachusetts, factory worker, who wrote: "Incarcerated within the walls of a factory, while as yet mere children, drilled there from five till seven o'clock, year after year what, we would ask, are we to expect, the same system of labor prevailing, will be the mental and intellectual character of future generations -a race fit only for corporation tools and time-serving slaves?... Shall we not hear the response from every hill and vale: 'Equal rights, or death to the corporations'?"
Industrialists and bankers hired private armies to keep workers in line, bought newspapers and (quoting Grossman and Adams again): "painted politicians as villains and businessmen as heroes. Bribing state legislators, they then announced legislators were corrupt, that they used too much of the public's resources and time to scrutinise every charter application and corporate operation. Corporate advocates campaigned to replace existing chartering laws with general incorporation laws that set up simple administrative procedures, claiming this would be more efficient. What they really wanted was the end of legislative authority over charters."
During the Civil War, government spending brought corporations unprecedented wealth. "Corporate managers developed the techniques and the ability to organise production on an ever grander scale," according to Grossman and Adams. "Many corporations used their wealth to take advantage of war and Reconstruction years to get the tariff, banking, railroad, labor, and public lands legislation they wanted."
In 1886, the US Supreme Court declared that corporations were henceforth to be considered "persons" under the law, with all of the constitutional rights that designation implies.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, passed to give former slaves equal rights, has been invoked approximately ten times more frequently on behalf of corporations than on behalf of African Americans. Likewise the First Amendment, guaranteeing free speech, has been invoked to guarantee corporations the "right" to influence the political process through campaign contributions, which the courts have equated with "speech".
If corporations are "persons", they are persons with qualities and powers that no flesh-and-blood human could ever possess--immortality, the ability to be in many places at once, and (increasingly) the ability to avoid liability. They are also "persons" with no sense of moral responsibility, since their only legal mandate is to produce profits for their investors.
Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, corporations reshaped every aspect of life in America and much of the rest of the world. The factory system turned self-sufficient small farmers into wage-earners and transformed the family from an interdependent economic production unit to a consumption-oriented collection of individuals with separate jobs. Advertising turned productive citizens into "consumers". Business leaders campaigned to create public schools to train children in factory-system obedience to schedules and in the performance of isolated, meaningless tasks. Meanwhile, corporations came to own and dominate sources of information and entertainment, and to control politicians and judges.
During two periods, corporations faced a challenge: the 1890s (a depression period when Populists demanded regulation of railroad rates, heavy taxation of land held only for speculation, and an increase in the money supply), and the 1930s (when a profound crisis of capitalism led hundreds of thousands of workers and armies of the unemployed to demand government regulation of the economy and to win a 40-hour week, a minimum-wage law, the right to organise, and the outlawing of child labour). But in both cases, corporate capitalism emerged intact.
In the words of historian Howard Zinn: "The rich still controlled the nation's wealth, as well as its laws, courts, police, newspapers, churches, colleges. Enough help had been given to enough people to make Roosevelt a hero to millions, but the same system that had brought depression and crisis remained."2
World War II, like previous wars, brought huge profits to corporations via government contracts. But following this war, military spending was institutionalised, ostensibly to fight the "Cold War". Despite occasional regulatory setbacks, corporations seized ever more power, and increasingly transcended national boundaries, loyalties and sovereignties altogether.
GLOBAL PILLAGE
In the 1970s, capitalism faced yet another challenge as postwar growth subsided and profits fell. The US was losing its dominant position in world markets; the production of oil from its domestic wells was peaking and beginning to fall, thus making America increasingly dependent upon oil imports from Arab countries; the Vietnam War had weakened the American economy; and Third World countries were demanding a "North - South dialogue" leading towards greater self-reliance for poorer countries. President Nixon responded by doing away with fixed currency exchange rates and devaluing the dollar, largely erasing US war debts to other countries. Later, newly elected President Reagan, at the 1981 Cancún, Mexico, meeting of 22 heads of state, refused to discuss new financial arrangements with the Third World, thus effectively endorsing their further exploitation by corporations.
Meanwhile, the corporations themselves also responded with a new strategy. Increased capital mobility (made possible by floating exchange rates and new transportation, communication and production technologies) allowed US corporations to move production offshore to "export processing zones" in poorer countries. Corporations also undertook a restructuring process, moving toward "networked production"--in which big firms, while retaining and consolidating power, hired smaller firms to take over aspects of supply, manufacture, accounting and transport. (Economist Bennett Harrison defined networked production as "concentration of control combined with decentralization of production".) This restructuring process is also known as "downsizing", because it results in the shedding of higher-paid employees by large corporations and the hiring of low-wage contingent workers by smaller subcontractors.
Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello write in Global Village or Global
Pillage that: "As the economic crisis deepened, there gradually evolved a 'supra-national policy arena' which included new organizations like the Group of Seven (G7) industrial nations and NAFTA and new roles for established international organisations like EU, IMF, World Bank, and GATT. The policies adopted by these international institutions allowed corporations to lower their costs in several ways. They reduced consumer, environmental, health, labor, and other standards. They reduced business taxes. They facilitated the move to lower wage areas and threat of such movement. And they encouraged the expansion of markets and the 'economies of scale' provided by larger-scale production."3
All of this has led to a globalised economy in which (again quoting Brecher and Costello): "All over the world, people are being pitted against each other to see who will offer global corporations the lowest labor, social, and environmental costs. Their jobs are being moved to places with inferior wages, lower business taxes, and more freedom to pollute. Their employers are using the threat of 'foreign competition' to hold down wages, salaries, taxes, and environmental protections and to replace high-quality jobs with temporary, part-time, insecure, and low-quality jobs. Their government officials are justifying cuts in education, health, and other services as necessary to reduce business taxes in order to keep or attract jobs."
Corporations, no longer bound by national laws, prowl the world looking for the best deals on labour and raw materials. Of the world's top 120 economies, nearly half are corporations, not countries. Thus the power of citizens in any nation to control corporations through whatever democratic processes are available to them is receding quickly.
In November 1999, tens of thousands of students, union members and indigenous peoples gathered in Seattle to protest a meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This mass demonstration seemed to signal the birth of a new global populist uprising against corporate globalisation. In the three years since then, more mass demonstrations--some larger, many smaller--have occurred in Genoa, Melbourne, Milan, Montreal, Philadelphia, Washington and other cities.
In January 2001, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney took office, following a deeply flawed US election. With strong ties to the oil industry and to the huge energy-trading corporation Enron, the new administration quickly proposed a national energy policy that focused on opening federally protected lands for oil exploration and on further subsidising the oil industry.
Enron, George W. Bush's largest campaign contributor, was the seventh largest corporation in the US and the 16th largest in the world. Despite its reported massive profits, it had paid no taxes in four out of the previous five years. The company had thousands of offshore partnerships, through which it had hidden over a billion dollars in debt. When this hidden debt was disclosed in October 2001, the company imploded. Its share price collapsed and its credit rating was slashed. Its executives resigned in disgrace, taking with them multimillion-dollar bonuses, while employees and stockholders shouldered the immense financial loss. Enron's bankruptcy was the largest in corporate history up to that time, but its creative accounting practices appear to be far from unique, with dozens of other corporations poised for a similar collapse.
Following the outrageous and tragic attacks of September 11, Bush launched a "War on Terror", raising the listed number of potential target countries from three to nearly 50, most having exportable energy resources. With Iraq (holder of the world's second-largest proven petroleum reserves) high on the list of enemy regimes to be violently overthrown, the Bush administration's Terror War appeared to be geared toward making the world safe for the expanded reach of US oil corporations. Meanwhile, new laws and executive orders curtailed constitutional rights and erected screens of secrecy around government actions and decision-making processes.
It remains to be seen how the American populace will react to these new developments. Here again, a little history may help us understand the options available.
HURDLES IN THE PATH
The Populism of the 1890s failed for two main reasons: divisiveness within, and co-optation from without. While many Populist leaders saw the need for unity among people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds in attacking corporate power, racism was strong among many whites. Most of the Alliance leaders were white farm owners who failed in many instances to support the organising efforts of poor rural blacks, and poor whites as well, thus dividing the movement.
"On top of the serious failures to unite blacks and whites, city workers and country farmers," writes Howard Zinn, "there was the lure of electoral politics." Once allied with the Democratic party in supporting William Jennings Bryan for President in 1896 the pressure for electoral victory led Populism to make deals with the major parties in city after city. If the Democrats won, it would be absorbed. If the Democrats lost, it would disintegrate. Electoral politics brought into the top leadership the political brokers instead of the agrarian radicals... In the election of 1896, with the Populist movement enticed into the Democratic party, Bryan, the Democratic candidate, was defeated by William McKinley, for whom the corporations and the press mobilised, in the first massive use of money in an election campaign."4
Today, a new populist movement could easily fall prey to the same internal divisions and tactical errors that destroyed its counterpart a century ago. In the recent American presidential election, populists faced the choice of supporting their own candidate (Ralph Nader) and thereby contributing to the election of the far-right, pro-corporate Republican candidate (Bush), or supporting the centrist Gore and seeing their movement co-opted by pro-corporate Democrats.
Meanwhile, though African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, European Americans and Native Americans have all been victimised by corporations, class divisions and historical resentments often prevent them from organising to further their common interests. In recent elections, ultra-right candidate Pat Buchanan appealed simultaneously to "populist" anti-corporate and anti-government sentiments among the working class, as well as to xenophobic white racism. Buchanan's critique of corporate power was shallow, but it was often the only such critique permitted in the corporate-controlled media. One cannot help but wonder: were the corporations looking for a lightning rod to rechannel the anger building against them?
While Buchanan had no chance of winning the presidency, his candidacy did raise the spectre of another kind of solution to the emerging crisis of popular resentment against the system--a solution that again has roots in the history of the past century.
A FALSE REVOLUTION
In the early 1900s, workers in Italy and Germany built strong unions and won substantial concessions in wages and work conditions; still, after World War I they suffered under a disastrous postwar economy, which fanned unrest. During the early 1920s, heavy industry and big finance were in a state of near-total collapse. Bankers and agribusiness associations offered financial support to Mussolini--who had been a socialist before the war--to seize state power, which he effectively did in 1922 following his march on Rome. Within two years, the Fascist Party (from the Latin fasces, meaning a bundle of rods and an axe, symbolising Roman state power) had shut down all opposition newspapers, crushed the socialist, liberal, Catholic, democratic and republican parties (which had together commanded about 80 per cent of the vote), abolished unions, outlawed strikes and privatised farm cooperatives.
In Germany, Hitler led the Nazi Party to power, then cut wages and subsidised industries.
In both countries, corporate profits ballooned. Understandably, given their friendliness to big business, Fascism and Nazism were popular among some prominent American industrialists such as Henry Ford) and opinion shapers (like William Randolph Hearst).
Fascism and Nazism relied on centrally controlled propaganda campaigns that cleverly co-opted the language of the Left (the Nazis called themselves the National Socialist German Workers Party--while persecuting socialists and curtailing workers' rights). Both movements also made calculated use of emotionally charged symbolism: scapegoating minorities, appealing to mythic images of a glorious national past, building a leader cult, glorifying war and conquest, and preaching that the only proper role of women is as wives and mothers.
As political theorist Michael Parenti points out, historians often overlook Fascism's economic agenda--the partnership between Big Capital and Big Government--in their analysis of its authoritarian social program. Indeed, according to Bertram Gross in his startlingly prescient Friendly Fascism (1980), it is possible to achieve fascist goals within an ostensibly democratic society.5 Corporations themselves, after all, are internally authoritarian (courts have ruled that citizens give up their constitutional rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, etc., when they are at work on corporate-owned property); and as corporations increasingly dominate politics, media and economy, they can mould an entire society to serve the interests of a powerful elite without ever resorting to stormtroopers and concentration camps. No deliberate conspiracy is necessary, either: each corporation merely acts to further its own economic interests. If the populace shows signs of restlessness, politicians can be hired to appeal to racial resentments and memories of national glory, dividing popular opposition and inspiring loyalty.
In the current situation, "friendly fascism" works somewhat as follows. Corporations drive down wages and pay a dwindling share of taxes (through mechanisms outlined above), gradually impoverishing the middle class and creating unrest. As corporate taxes are cut, politicians (whose election was funded by corporate donors) argue that it is necessary to reduce government services in order to balance the budget. Meanwhile, the same politicians argue for an increase in the repressive functions of government (more prisons, harsher laws, more executions, more military spending). Politicians channel the middle class's rising resentment away from corporations and toward the government (which, after all, is now less helpful and more repressive than it used to be) and against social groups easy to scapegoat (criminals, minorities, teenagers, women, gays, immigrants).
Meanwhile, debate in the media is kept superficial (elections are treated as sporting contests), and right-wing commentators are subsidised while left-of-centre ones are marginalised. People who feel cheated by the system turn to the Right for solace, and vote for politicians who further subsidise corporations, cut government services, expand the repressive power of the state and offer irrelevant scapegoats for social problems with economic roots. The process feeds on itself.
Within this scenario, George W. Bush (and similar ultra-right figures in other countries) are not anomalies but, rather, predictable products of a strategy adopted by economic elites--harbingers of a less-than-friendly future--as the more "moderate" tactics for the maintenance and consolidation of power founder under the weight of corporate greed and resource exhaustion.
CAUSE FOR HOPE?
These circumstances are, in their details, unprecedented; but in broad outline we are seeing the re-enactment of a story that goes back at least to the beginning of civilisation. Those with power are always looking for ways to protect and extend it, and to make their power seem legitimate, necessary or invisible so that popular protest seems unnecessary or futile. If protest comes, the powerful always try to deflect anger away from themselves. The leaders of the new populist movement appear to have a good grasp of both the current circumstances and the historical ground from which these circumstances emerge. They seem to have realised that, in order to succeed, the new populism will have to:
¥ avoid being co-opted by existing political parties;
¥ heal race, class and gender divisions and actively resist any campaign to scapegoat disempowered social groups;
¥ avoid being identified with an ideological category-- "communist", "socialist" or "anarchist"--against which most of the public is already well inoculated by corporate propaganda;
¥ direct public discussion toward the most vulnerable link in the corporate chain of power: the legal basis of the corporation;
¥ internationalise the movement so that corporations cannot undermine it merely by shifting their base of operations from one country to another.
As Lawrence Goodwyn noted in his definitive work, The Populist Moment, the original Populists were "attempting to construct, within the framework of American capitalism, some variety of cooperative commonwealth". This was "the last substantial effort at structural alteration of hierarchical economic forms in modern America".6
In announcing the formation of the Alliance for Democracy, in an article in the August 14, 1996 issue of The Nation, activist Ronnie Dugger compiled a list of policy suggestions which comprise some of the core demands of the new populist movement. These include: a prohibition of contributions or any other political activity by corporations; single-payer national health insurance with automatic universal coverage; a doubling of the minimum wage, indexed to inflation; a generic low-interest-rate national policy, entailing the abolition of the Federal Reserve System; statutory reversal of the court-made law that corporations are "persons"; establishment of a national public oil company; limitations on ownership of newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations to one of any kind per person or owning entity; and the halving of military spending. The new populists are, in Ronnie Dugger's words, "ready to resume the cool eyeing of the corporations with a collective will to take back the powers they have seized from us".7
The new populism draws some of its inspiration from the work of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD), a populist "think-tank" that explores the legal basis of corporate power. POCLAD believes that it is possible to control--and, if necessary, dismantle--corporations by amending or revoking their charters.8
Since the largest corporations are now transnational in scope, the new populism must confront their abuses globally. The International Forum on Globalization (IFG) was founded for this purpose in 1994, as an alliance of 60 activists, scholars, economists and writers (including Jerry Mander, Vandana Shiva, Richard Grossman, Ralph Nader, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Jeremy Rifkin and Kirkpatrick Sale), to stimulate new thinking and joint action along these lines.
In a position statement drafted in 1995, the International Forum on Globalization said that it: "views international trade and investment agreements, including the GATT, the WTO, Maastricht and NAFTA, combined with the structural adjustment policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to be direct stimulants to the processes that weaken democracy, create a world order in the control of transnational corporations and devastate the natural world. The IFG will study, publish and actively advocate in opposition to the current rush toward economic globalization, and will seek to reverse its direction. Simultaneously, we will advocate on behalf of a far more diversified, locally controlled, community-based economics We believe that the creation of a more equitable economic order--based on principles of diversity, democracy, community and ecological sustainability--will require new international agreements that place the needs of people, local economies and the natural world ahead of the interests of corporations"9
Leaders of the new populism appear to realise that anti-corporatism is not a complete solution to the world's problems; that the necessary initial focus on corporate power must eventually be supplemented by a more general critique of centralising and unsustainable technologies, money-based economics and current nation-state governmental structures, by efforts to protect traditional cultures and ecosystems, and by a renewal of culture and spirituality.
It would be foolish to underestimate the immense challenges to the new populism from the current US administration and from the jingoistic, bellicose post-September 11 public sentiment fostered by the corporate media. Nevertheless, POCLAD, the Alliance for Democracy and the IFG (along with dozens of human rights, environmental and anti-war organisations around the world) provide important rallying points for citizens' self-defence against tyranny in its most modern, invisible, effective and even seductive forms.
Endnotes:
1. Grossman, Richard and Frank Adams, Taking Care of Business: Citizenship and the Charter of Incorporation, pamphlet, 1993, available at http://www.poclad.org/resources.html.
2. Zinn, Howard, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present, Harper Perennial, 2001.
3. Brecher, Jeremy and Tim Costello, Global Village or Global Pillage: Economic Reconstruction from the Bottom Up, South End Press, 1998.
4. Zinn, op. cit.
5. Gross, Bertram, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, South End Press, 1998.
6. Goodwyn, Lawrence, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America, Oxford University Press, 1978.
7. The Alliance for Democracy website, http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/.
8. POCLAD website, http://www.poclad.org.
9. IFG pamphlet, 1995; revised position statement at IFG website, http://www.ifg.org.
About the Author:
Richard Heinberg is a journalist, educator, editor, lecturer and musician. He has lectured widely and appeared on national radio and TV in five countries. He is a core faculty member of New College of California, where he teaches courses on Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community.
He is the author of: "Memories and Visions of Paradise"; "Celebrate the Solstice"; "A New Covenant with Nature"; and "Cloning the Buddha: the Moral Impact of Biotechnology". His next book, "The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies", is to be published by New Society in March 2003. His essays have been featured in The Futurist, Intuition, Brain/Mind Bulletin, Magical Blend, New Dawn and elsewhere.
Richard is also author/editor/publisher of MuseLetter, a monthly, subscription-only, alternative newsletter which is now in its tenth year of publication. MuseLetter's purpose is "to offer a continuing critique of corporate-capitalist industrial civilization and a re-visioning of humanity's prospects for the next millennium". His article, "A History of Corporate Rule and Popular Protest", was originally published in MuseLetter in 1996 as "The New Populism", and was revised in August 2002. Visit the MuseLetter website at http://www.museletter.com.
Reproduced by consent of Richard Heinberg & www.nexusmagazine.com
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Christianity, Islam and Slavery
Posted: Friday, November 8, 2002
Published: June 7, 1999
By Kwaku Person-Lynn, Ph.D.
The most difficult subject to write about is when you are dealing with someone's spiritual belief system. Something someone grew up with since the day of reasoning. On the other hand, being a historian, I am obligated to bring forth the whole truth, no matter how devastating it may be. In the 1960s, it was almost sacrilege to talk about certain things Black people did. Two things come to mind, though not always honored: the woman of Afrikan descent, and the Afrikan involvement in the slave trade.
Back when I was a graduate student at UCLA, studying Afrikan world history and music, I wrote an article for the Afrikan student newspaper, NOMMO. It was entitled, "Can Afrikans Be Forgiven?" meaning ourselves. It focused on the Afrikan complicity in assisting Europeans in the Afrikan Holocaust, which today we commonly label as the Atlantic Slave Trade. Many people of Afrikan descent stopped talking to me and looked at me funny out of the corner of their eyes. That's when my greatest scholastic influence at that time, the late Dr. Boniface I. Obichere, stepped in and told me, "Kwaku, you don't worry about what others are saying. You keep writing about the truth. That's what history is supposed to do."
There was slavery in Afrika prior to the Arab and European incursions. In Afrika, one could become a slave in virtually one of three ways: prisoner of war; to pay off a debt; as a criminal. But a slave in Afrika rarely ever lost his/her humanity and could rise very high in particular societies. When Arabs invaded Northeastern Afrika in the 7th century A.D., in the name of Islam, this brought about a whole new relationship to the institution of slavery. Afrikans were captured, treated brutally and inhumanely, then shipped off to other Arab countries in Asia, or other parts of Afrika that they controlled. This happened approximately 600 years before the European Christians got involved.
The saddest and most painful reality of this situation is, that same slave trading is occurring today, still in the name of Islam. It is primarily happening in the countries of Mauritania, located in northwest Afrika, and Sudan, in northeast Afrika. There is a lot of denial about this from various corners, but as a scientist, the body of available evidence can only determine proof. In my case, I will sight three sources. For the past fifteen years, every Arab I have asked about this subject has openly admitted that it exists. Not some mind you, but each and every one.
I have read various articles of eyewitness accounts that seemed believable. But the most prevailing evidence that I have seen comes to us by a scholar named Samuel Cotton, a documentary filmmaker, an investigative journalist, and a brother. He presents us with his book, SILENT TERROR – A Journey Into Contemporary African Slavery. This book was published in 1998, which records his undercover journey into Mauritania, at extreme danger to his life, and actually witnessed, and interviewed present and former Afrikan slaves there, gives the best analyses of the present situation, and shows how it is all cloaked under the auspices of Islam. For a Muslim, this is horrifying, but then again, if those Arab Muslims were truly Muslims, practicing the religion of peace, they would not continue to be in the business of the slave trade, contributing to the Afrikan Holocaust.
If we assess what we have before us, this only leaves us to conclude that this is a horrendous misuse of Islam. Brother Cotton states in his vitally important book, "It is especially important for me to see that those who worship Islam, whether they are white or black, say or do something about the abuse and enslavement of their black spiritual brothers and sisters."
Of course, this could be continued, but I don't want to leave out the Christians. The reason people of Afrikan descent are in the Americas today can be attributed to the massive slave trading business of the European Christians. The reason Afrika is in the state that it is in today can basically be attributed to the European Christians. The reason most people of Afrikan descent do not know who they are and may frown when someone accidentally calls them an Afrikan, can also be attributed to the European Christians. This whole process began with Pope Julius II who signed a document entitled the "Papal Bull," dividing the world amongst his two most powerful Christian countries, Portugal and Spain. Prior to the 16th century, Spain signed a contract with the Portuguese called "Asiento," allowing them a monopoly in the carrying and selling of Afrikans across the Atlantic, until the English, who were the most aggressive, along with the French, Dutch, and later the rest of Europe joined in.
Slavery in the United States, by the European Christians, in the name of Christianity, was the development of the worst form of slavery in world history; "chattel slavery." In other words, Afrikans were not considered human but property or animals, with absolutely no type of human rights at all. This was justified through the misinterpretation of Bible stories, particularly about Afrikan people being cursed and turned black. I say in my classes all the time, I will give any student $100 if they can prove that Afrikan people were cursed and turned black in the Bible. After a number of years, I still have the $100.
Lastly, let me briefly mention those Europeans who converted to the ancient Hebrew Afrikan religion called Judaism. Though they were not involved to the extent of the Christians, their basic contribution to the Afrikan Holocaust was turning the slave trade into a business, and running it very effectively in Europe and Central and South America.
I approach this subject with much trepidation. When one believes in a particular spiritual belief system, generally referred to as organized religions, it can be very hurtful to hear what has happened in the past in the name of their religion. But as I have attempted to show, if a person is a true Christian, Muslim or Jew, there is no way that this tragic event in world history, and presently, could possibly occur. That being the case, looking at all that is happening in the world today, under the guise of a particular religion, one has to wonder, is God heading these religions, or is Satan?
Dr. Kwaku Person-Lynn is on the faculty at California State University, Dominguez Hills, Africana Studies, and author of FIRST WORD Black Scholars Thinkers Warriors.
Reproduced by consent of Dr. Kwaku Person-Lynn
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Afrikan Involvement In Atlantic Slave Trade
Posted: Friday, November 8, 2002
By Kwaku Person-Lynn, Ph.D.
Facing the truth about the past is not always a pleasant adventure. In fact, it is extremely painful dealing with why Black people are in the United States, after the 16th century. In no way is this an attempt to belittle the great and amazing history of Afrika, but simply to look at a portion of the past that does not merit a positive spot light, but is part of the Afrikan story nonetheless.
An authentic way to attack this problem is to look at a passage from Adu Boahen, a noted Afrikan historian, author and former chair of the History Department at the University of Ghana. He approaches this issue with a pure honesty: "How were all these numerous unfortunate Africans enslaved and purchased? African scholars and politicians today must be honest and admit that the enslavement and sale of Africans from the seventeenth century onwards was done by the Africans themselves, especially the coastal kings and their elders, and that very few Europeans actually ever marched inland and captured slaves themselves. Africans became enslaved mainly through four ways: first, criminals sold by the chiefs as punishment; secondly, free Africans obtained from raids by African and a few European gangs, thirdly, domestic slaves resold, and fourthly, prisoners of war," (Adu Boahen, Topics In West African History p. 110).
There is adequate evidence citing case after case of Afrikan control of segments of the trade. Several Afrikan nations such as the Ashanti of Ghana and the Yoruba of Nigeria had economies depended solely on the trade. Afrikan peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as middlemen or roving bands warring with other Afrikan nations to capture Afrikans for Europeans.
Extenuating circumstances demanding exploration are the tremendous efforts European officials in Afrika used to install rulers agreeable to their interests. They would actively favor one Afrikan group against another to deliberately ignite chaos and continue their slaving activities.
I.A. Akinjogbin, noted Afrikan historian, in his article, 'The Expansion of Oyo And The Rise Of Dahomey 1600-1800," gives an example in the Aja Kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin): "The principal European traders took active part in installing kings who they judged would favor their activities, irrespective of whether such kings were acceptable to their subjects, or were the right candidates according to Aja traditions," (History of West Africa, J.F.A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, eds., p. 389). This is the exact same system used today, whereby certain American Afrikans are put in positions to divide people of Afrikan descent through radio programs, editorials, books, chairs of academic departments, so-called fabricated leaders, executive directors of white supremacists organizations, and so forth.
A couple of additional points to be addressed are the Arab slave trade in Afrika, occuring almost 1000 years prior to the European slave trade, and continues even today, and continental Afrikan slavery, which was part of the culture, but more humane and unlike the chattel slavery of the United States. In Afrika, slaves were still human beings. In the United States, slaves were property. The cold reality, Afrikans controlled the capture of other Afrikans, initiated several wars and raiding parties to secure captives, set prices for buyers and even extended credit to Europeans for the purchase of Afrikans.
One prevailing and probably wishful sentiment on the part of many is that Afrikan rulers did not know what type of slavery they were selling Afrikans into. A view dispelled by the fact many rulers knowingly went to war with their neighbors, killing millions and destroying entire communities in order to capture fellow Afrikans for sale. Maintaining power, expanding the economy, greed and expansionist ambitions were the prime motivating factors.
There is no way anyone can defend or justify Afrikan involvement in the slave trade, other than acknowledge that it is one of many historical facts that must be faced.
It is mandatory to look at the mistakes of the past so as not to duplicate them again. There are several people of Afrikan descent psychologically and culturally involved in the negative, anti-Black philosophy of western culture. They would turn against other Blacks at the drop of a dime, especially if they felt it would curry favor with their European companions, and often add to their pockets. It is essential to examine the slave trade, in order to understand the same behavior operative today.
Though this effort concentrated on the Afrikan involvement in the slave trade, by no means does it dismiss the European role in the most traumatic, brutal, oppressive event in human history. Europeans, through the church in Rome, and lessons learned from Arabs, launched the Atlantic slave trade, financing the European and American industrial revolution. Thus, the birth of an economic system we practice today, capitalism. Europeans developed it from a pirating operation into a business, partly the European Jewish contribution to the trade, and supplied favored groups with arms and ammunition, contributing to the deaths of millions. Without the Europeans, there would have never been an Atlantic slave trade.
Kwaku Person-Lynn is the author of On My Journey Now - The Narrative And Works Of Dr. John Henrik Clarke, The Knowledge Revolutionary.
Reproduced by consent of Dr. Kwaku Person-Lynn
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Zimbabwe hits back on sanctions
Posted: Friday, November 8, 2002
Herald Reporters
ZIMBABWE yesterday imposed retaliatory sanctions against Britain while London introduced visas for Zimbabweans travelling to the United Kingdom in response to the growing number of people entering the country on unfounded claims of political asylum.
In a statement, the Government said the decision to impose the sanctions was taken to safeguard the country’s sovereignty, secure its national interests, peace and stability.
The sanctions are with immediate effect.
The Government will also freeze with immediate effect, all local assets associated with or traceable to the listed persons.
In addition, the Government downgraded the United Kingdom from category "A" to category "B" of its visa regime with effect from today.
"This means all persons travelling to Zimbabwe on British passports will require visas either in advance through Zimbabwe’s diplomatic missions or at the port of entry," the Government said in the statement. MORE
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Fighting To Maintain illegitimate White Control
Posted: Thursday, November 7, 2002
From: AmonHotep: Dialogue
ABSTRACT: BBC Zimbabwe 'diverts food aid'
"Mr Mugabe denies that the food crisis is a result of his land reform programme and blames it on a drought, which has affected much of the region.
But white farmers who are prevented from working their land say that their dams are full of water.
Just a few hundred white farmers remain on their land, out of some 4,000 two years ago.
Our correspondent says that the land has gone to Zanu-PF officials, who often have no farming background, instead of the landless black people who were supposed to benefit.
In Maputo, Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge repeated his government's argument that former colonial power Britain should compensate the white farmers who have lost their land.
As a result of British colonial rule, whites owned much of Zimbabwe's best farmland.
Britain has refused to pay unless there is transparency in the redistribution of land."
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The BBC is currently funded through the UK Licence Fee payment to the tune of £2.4bn. The Licence fee from which BBC is paid is an annual fee that allows people to own and use a television in the UK. If you have any equipment capable of receiving a television signal and receive any programmes, including satellite, you must have a licence. [More from BBC]
Abstract: 'BBC gets anything it wants,' claims Murdoch
by Dan Milmo, guardian.co.uk
Friday November 8, 2002
Rupert Murdoch today launched a scathing attack on the government, accusing it of being too cosy with the BBC and of fostering anti-competitive behaviour on the part of the corporation.
He said the BBC, funded by an annual licence fee payment of £2.4bn, had been protected by successive Conservative and Labour governments. [full article]
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ABSTRACT: Carrington backs Zimbabwe farmers
By Andrew Unsworth: London. Sunday Oct 20 2002
www.sundaytimes.co.za
"Lord Carrington, who chaired the Lancaster House conference that led to the end of white minority rule in Zimbabwe, has joined in the growing controversy over Prime Minister Tony Blair's government's reluctance to support white farmers who have been evicted from land in Zimbabwe.
In a question tabled in the House of Lords this week, Carrington asked whether the British government was prepared to use money earmarked for land reform more than 20 years ago to help farmers now left destitute.
Speaking to the Sunday Times, he said that funds were available for land redistribution in 1979.
"What we intended to do at the Lancaster House negotiations and subsequently was to help Zimbabwean farmers on a willing buyer-willing seller basis, and to help the Zimbabwean government . . . to make more farms available to black farmers," he said this week. "It all fell down because the Zimbabwean government gave farms to their own cronies and the British government of the day decided the money could not be used on that basis."
He said the government's response to this had been to "waffle" . No specific sum was pledged originally, but £44-million (about R750-million) had been given to Zimbabwe up to 2000. [full article]
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South Africa fears terror threat of white extremists
Tuesday, 12 November 2002
From Michael Dynes in Johannesburg
More than 80 extreme right-wing groups are thought to be operating in South Africa. They represent a mixture of military underground cells, such as Boeremag, and an assortment of religious doomsday cults, such as Israel Vision and Daughter of Zion. Farmers, blue-collar workers, professionals, academics and retired military and police officers fill their ranks and they have cultivated the conviction that they are being "oppressed" by South Africa's black majority rule. [full article here or here]
Ayinde's comment
Western Media houses (BBC) are rather slow to highlight the terrorist threats from White extremist groups in South Africa. These Groups represent the general thinking of most Whites who still suffer from superiority complexes and feel they have a divine right to rule all people.
This attitude is at the root of all other forms of Terrorism.
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Aisha's comment
Britain wanted to continue their dictatorship. They wanted to dictate to the Zimbabwe Government who should own the land so that they (Britain) could still maintain control.
The colour of the farmers would have changed but the 'ownership' would have remained the same. White farmers would have been replaced with Black farmers who were willing to be puppets of the British government.
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Ayinde's comments...
BBC is not impartial in this whole affair.
Other US and UK media houses are being guided by some legitimate concerns muddled with their own prejudices. Their coverage generally lacks the historical perspective coupled with the agreements signed when Zimbabwe won its independence. There are many things wrong with the Resettlement Programme but I would only focus on aspects that pertain to the dishonest media reports.
No one can be against the Zimbabwe government's agents for this headline in their newspapers, "BBC gets more money to step up anti-Zim crusade".
During BBC's latest propaganda report on Television they were referring to the Resettlement Programme as "THE WHITE MAN'S LAND BEING RESETTLED".
Two questions!
1) After how many years does stolen property become the property of the thief?
2) Do inheritors of stolen property become the legitimate owners of the property by virtue of the inheritance?
Land was at the core of Zimbabwe's liberation struggle
British and American negotiators granted independence with the imposition of certain conditions destined to keep the colonial masters in control. One provision stipulated that for a period of 10 years, land ownership in Zimbabwe could only be transferred on a "willing seller, willing buyer" basis. This amounted to further rewarding people who had already profited from ill-gotten gains.
This also retarded the transformation process by ten years during which the British and American negotiators hoped they would have been able to 'install' a government favorable to their indirect control.
In 1992 the Land Acquisition Act was passed notwithstanding the pressures from Britain and the US.
Zimbabwe's government felt it could no longer continue haggling over land reform, and nearing the end of the 1990's, they started moving away from the Economic Structural Adjustment Program (ESAP), which was not adequately addressing the issues of land reform. In October 2001 Mugabe abandoned the ESAP.
The claim that Mugabe did nothing for 20 years is usually made without reference to the Independence agreement that placed restraints on what Mugabe and his government could have done for the first 10 years. It also neglects the years of trying to get the European powers to honor their agreement.
Meanwhile the Western media kept harping about the harm the economy of Zimbabwe would endure because of the land reform. They continually mention that the Zimbabweans who are getting the confiscated agricultural lands do not know about commercial farming. BBC reported that these African farmers do not have seeds and fertilizers.
If these Africans cannot acquire fertilizers and seeds it is only because of trade restrictions or sellers being discouraged from supplying them.
If in their opinion these Africans cannot grow their own food, then they should explain how humans survived in Africa for thousands of years before Europeans. This fraudulent racist position also highlights the fact that for all the years they occupied the land they were not interested in teaching those Africans whom they profited from. They were quite contented to keep them as cheap farm labour.
European superiority complexes are responsible for these statements and conscious people should treat with them accordingly. Apparently they have no problem delivering food aid which keeps the population enslaved, but allowing people to help themselves is a problem.
The unspoken suggestion is that only Whites can successfully run businesses.
MUGABE IS RIGHT!!!
Transparency for Britain means handing the land over to 'mentally enslaved Africans' who would easily 'give' the land to colonial Whites.
The land MUST go to those Africans who support his Land Reform Programme to ensure the land is not given or resold cheaply to the former White occupiers.
BRITAIN IS RUDE!!!
Britain has to pay and must do so through the legitimate government in Zimbabwe. Britain must stop trying to undermine the democratic process in that country for the benefit of a few Whites.
Where on earth could people guilty of a crime retain the right to determine when and to whom they must pay compensation?
BRITAIN wants to remain in control of African lands and her former colonies through remote control. (Through supporting 'mentally enslaved Africans' who pursue British interest first.)
Who gets land or reclaimed farms is a matter for the internal politics of Zimbabwe and is not up to the dictates of Britain. They had already decided to pay and should have continued through the legitimate government in Zimbabwe.
The Christianized, colonized Blacks they keep featuring on BBC (e.g. Zimbabwe Catholic bishop) is destined to give the impression that most Africans are against the return of their lands. In small print below his picture they put, "Archbishop Ncube is a long-time Mugabe critic". Of course he is; he is 'Christianized', colonized and walks around with his White 'Virgin' Mary and White Jesus as was seen in the background when he was leveling his criticisms of Mugabe on BBC's 24hr News Television feature.
Food Aid is being used as a tool to interfere in the political process in Zimbabwe. Many of these agencies get their funding from Europe and America and they are carrying out the dirty works of those who fund them.
Food Aid is also being used to introduce genetically modified seeds into Africa thus corrupting their own food supply. This will make these people dependant on US corporations for seeds. This is one of the ways the West intends to control all people through controlling seeds and by extension food supplies.
___________________________________________
Zimbabwe, Mugabe and White farmers
Dr. Chika A. Onyeani, Aug. 22, 02, The African Sun Times
"It seems the height of hypocrisy that the world should be focused on the plight and non-payment of compensation to white farmers, without as much as a mention of the savagery with which the Black African owners were massacred and their lands seized without compensation. The word Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zimbabwe, is an Ndebele word for "slaughter," and it refers to the savagery of the British settlers, including the infamous Cecil Rhodes who had crushed the attempt by the indigenes to fight back, leading King Lobengula to swallow poison rather than be captured. Or should we forget the savagery of the bestial Sir Frederick Carrington, who had publicly advocated that the entire Ndebele race should be forcefully removed or be exterminated.
Or that of profligate Ian Smith, who seized the government in 1965 and unilaterally declared the then Southern Rhodesia independent, when he refused to apologize for the atrocities he committed while he held office. In fact, he even boasted that he had no regrets about the estimated 30,000 Zimbabweans killed during his rule. Said Smith, "the more we killed, the happier we were." [full article]
¤ British Terrorist Assualt on Zimbabwe
¤ Land Issue - Fact Sheet
¤ Zimbabwe Under Siege
¤ 2000 Parliamentary elections: Electorate want change
¤ Mugabe: Zimbabwe will not be a colony again
¤ Stop imperialist intervention in Zimbabwe
___________________________________________
Message Board Comments
From: THANDO S
19 October 2002, at 12:18 p.m.
I am writing in relation to your article on Zimbabwe coverage by the British media. As a black Zimbabwean I have found your article to be incorrect to say the least.
Unfair economic practises have indeed contributed to Africa's woes as has the drought. However in Zimbabwe the violence and intimidation which has been used to seize the farms has greatly increased the enormity of the disaster. People who do not support Mugabe whether they belong to the opposition or not have been victimised and the law disregarded in a so called 'democratic and free' country.
'Returning the land to its rightful owners',as the Zimbabwean government puts it is just a way of getting people like you to support them.As a matter of fact seized farms are being given to Mugabe's friends on a permanent bases. The farm labourers are being driven off the land and whether they originated from Mozambique or Malawi they are Zimbabwean and their treatment is unconstitutional. At least the white farmers not only paid them, but provided healthcare, education and housing which by Zimbabwean standards is a 'luxury'. The point of colonial policy is laughable because Zimbabweans fought and died for a free and equal society not just for blacks but for whites as well and whites such as Sir Garfield Todd the former Rhodesian Prime Minister who was imprisoned by the Smith regime in the '70's for supporting the black cause, were also involved in the struggle for independence.
After independence Zimbabwe has been destroyed by its leadership which does not want to step down but would rather kill its own people to preserve its power.
Inasmuch as the British media is biased to an extent in its coverage of Zimbabwe, you should research your facts before supporting Mugabe's draconian tactics.
####
Ayinde's Response...
20 October 2002, at 1:19 a.m.
Anyone can claim to be White or Black on the Internet. Claiming to be Black does not validate your comments. One would think if you had a view that was legitimate then it would not have been necessary to state if you were White or Black as the truth can stand without the colour weight.
Let us hope Mugabe remains smart enough to continue returning the lands to those people who support and lobbied for its return.
Giving farms to his opponents is equal to handing it back to the White farmers. (Mental enslavement)
Yes, it took 20 years and there is much that is wrong with Mugabe and the process, but the UK also took 20 years too long while offering tokenism. The White farmers should have acted without it reaching this stage.
Seeing that you do not support the process then you would have much to condemn and the condemnations are in all other media sources. Repeating them here is to continue the imbalance in the general news coverage.
Although you condemn the coverage you did not present one quote that was inaccurate but instead you choose to repeat the popular ignorant diatribe.
I wonder how many people would take the time to register or write a letter with much of the self-hating comments I see on the Internet.
Victims against a global corporate structure
By Ghifari al Mukhtar
Terms rather than words
I have always encountered problems with my slave tongue which is the English language, the simplistic yet perplex mode of communication latter on as I matured in the world that surrounded me more so became extremely unfathomable throughout the ever declining American revolution or the English evolution, that gave rise to the United States of America Australia to a lesser extent New Zealand and the more Cosmo politic Euro-American Israeli State somewhere in the middle East.
Terms rather than words they are; can only be determined base on the person time and circumstances of use, which is the American-way.
For example we hear of Israeli incursions but Iraqi invasion; targeted (retaliatory) killings against Palestinian children and their parents in response to Palestinian "terrorist" fighting off an invader uniform sometimes not (Settlers); Constructive engagement towards western satellite states as in the case of Apartheid but cluster bombs coupled with a can of GM expired food disguised as it were from Santa Clause 'who the hell is he is any fools 'GUEST' of non-Aryan humanities, collateral damage instead of innocent defenseless people, again-collateral damage as oppose to deliberate and calculated disregard.
Why continue on this ever expanding yet continual deceptive creative language as though the communicative extracts is what I am after rather than its users.
We see and we hear-that politics are bad even though rotten men find the use of politics meaningless and naive do-gooders endeavor to make the instrument useful.
Like politics English have always been used to perfection when coming to telling lies, its omissions as well as its pronouncements as suggestions equals advice for the purposes of deception.
Englishmen (Americans they are) are the masters of it all even the crude Israelis depend on the Americans for this lauded cultural asset.
Native Americans warned humanity; that the white man spoke with four (folk) tongue; ‘no racism intended’.
Today we hear of the other meaning for the word invasion/colonization (INTRUSIVE INTERVENTION).
As if the underlying factor for invasions were usually preceded by way of sanctions then who must invade the United States and the allies of sanctions that resulted in mass murder on the peoples of Iraq and Palestine to name the current victims to say the least, a policy nurtured and engineered by a group of unmatched criminals who's deeds against every form of human decency against their fellow man on any scale globally or infinite throughout human existence will always be remembered even as "Zimbabwe" Africans world over flirt with branded names like Pepsi & Coco cola, GM foods, Addidas, Roebuck and Nike assisted amnesia.
They'd like us not to remember yet be fearful of, so they can keep their charge is just a tacit reminder how twisted are the meanings and use of the criminally "skilled" English usage.
The limitations prove exhausting though on the issue of the International Court of Justice only because the ICJ is a EU child and when the language (immunity) is converted to the varied EU member states languages it just didn't compute then came the evolutionary Word processor i.e. compromise, by way of coercions, arm twisting, economic whitemail and the "santa" Clauses called diplomacy.
History have proved that the last 80 years the deliberate protracted wars imposed on Africa, the subverted economic AID packages the willful spreading of the HIV virus via inoculation the orchestrated droughts throughout many states on the continent the subsequent christianisation, the blackened mainstream "media" bias the WTO WHO the IMF WB HRW are all but policies and entities that out-served the colonialist adventure hence the intrusive intervention threat from the last generation of the final Aryan empire comes at this time.
One needs not look further as the economy is rapidly slipping from the grip of their monopoly.
But invading Africa is surely the groundless pivot where the resurrection of Rhodes will find no ground secure, beneath or above them. Perception though not shared is that while all things must return to its point and place of origin Africa shall be the place where Europe and all her descendants shall be retributed. African soil as such may only occur during their disastrous return to re-colonize the continent, as it's not in her "US" nature to genuinely seek forgiveness while at strength.
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UK behind plot to invade Zimbabwe
Posted: Thursday, November 7, 2002
Thursday November 7, 2002
Herald Reporters
THE United States yesterday distanced itself from threats to invade Zimbabwe amid revelations that three MDC activists from Matabeleland presented falsehoods on the situation in this country at a meeting set up by the British in Washington last Saturday.
The US embassy in Harare said that no US government official had made such a threat.
"We believe that only the people of Zimbabwe can solve their nation's problems," said the embassy in a statement last night.
The assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Mr Mark Bellamy, had been quoted in the Washington Times as saying the US was considering intrusive and interventionist measures that could challenge Zimbabwe's sovereignty.
"The dilemmas in the next six months may bring us face to face with Zimbabwe's sovereignty," he said in the Washington Times.
Mr Bellamy made his remarks at a meeting on "Famine and Political Violence in Matebeleland" organised by the Londoned-based Zimbabwe Democracy Trust (ZDT) and sponsored by the Centre for International and Strategic Studies.
Three MDC activists on the ZDT panel were: a former magistrate Johnson Mnkandla; Bulawayo Residents Association president Edward Simela and Ernest Mtunzi who now lives in Britain.
A former secretary at the British High Commission in Harare, David Troup chaired the meeting.
ZDT is funded by the British just like the Amani Trust, a non-governmental organisation, which has been on the forefront of campaigning against the Government of Zimbabwe.
The three said they had come to Washington to raise awareness on an impending human rights catastrophe and famine in their tribal homeland.
They charged the Government and Zanu-PF with stifling the rule of law through the arrest and harassment of magistrates and using food relief as a political weapon.
In their presentations, the three distributed a document they claimed revealed a Zanu-PF strategy to destroy the Ndebele people.
They also claimed that three children had died in Binga as a result of the unfair distribution of food.
Other issues raised by the three include the Gukurahundi disturbances in Matabeleland in the early 1980s and unemployment which they said was caused by the firms that were relocating from Bulawayo to Harare.
The three also claimed that some women at Mpilo Hospital were being sterilised without their consent and that this was a strategy to reduce the Ndebele population.
It was after the three had presented their reports that Mr Bellamy said the US would find ways of intervening in Zimbabwe even if it means violating Zimbabwe's sovereignty.
A Government spokesman however, said: "You cannot find a more sinister manipulation of food than this one. We have had people threatening to invade other countries on terrorism charges but to threaten to invade our country in order to come and feed us is idiotic."
He linked the threat by the US to recent utterances by the MDC that "something was to happen in December".
Commenting on Mr Bellamy's utterances, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Cde Stan Mudenge said the issue had not been communicated to him officially by the US ambassador in Harare.
"The reports by three people from Matabeleland were just a pack of falsehoods," said Cde Mudenge.
Meanwhile, Cde Mudenge yesterday left for Maputo, Mozambique to attend the Sadc/EU ministerial dialogue.
He said the meeting's venue was switched from Copenhagen, Denmark to Maputo, Mozambique following a threat by Sadc to boycott the meeting if Zimbabwe was not allowed to attend.
As a member of the EU, which slapped sanctions against the Government, Denmark had barred Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs Minister and other top officials from attending the meeting.
He said the Maputo meeting would focus on various issues of co-operation.
Reproduced from:
http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=15894&pubdate=2002-11-07
Guardian UK Report: US may intervene to save Zimbabweans
Top official says administration is considering defying Mugabe and delivering food to starving opposition areas
Andrew Meldrum in Harare
Thursday November 7, 2002
The Guardian
The US government warned yesterday that it might take "intrusive, interventionist measures" to deliver food aid directly to millions of famine-hit Zimbabweans if President Robert Mugabe continues to starve his political opponents.
Washington is considering measures that would challenge Zimbabwe's sovereignty, the Guardian was told by Mark Bellamy, the principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa. Such drastic measures are being studied because the Mugabe regime is aggravating the effects of a region-wide famine by blocking food from areas which support the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), he added.
"We may have to be prepared to take some very intrusive, interventionist measures to ensure aid delivery to Zimbabwe," Mr Bellamy said by telephone from Washington.
The plan was disclosed in the Zimbabwean state-owned Herald newspaper under the headline "US plans to invade Harare".
A spokesman for Mr Mugabe said other African countries should take heed of "the mad talk of intrusive and interventionist challenges to Zimbabwe's sovereignty. Today it is about Zimbabwe. Heaven knows who is next", he said.
Mr Bellamy, who develops US policy on Africa, said: "We have disturbing reports of food being used as a political weapon by the Mugabe government, of food aid being diverted and food being denied to millions of opposition supporters.
"For the sake of those hungry people it may be necessary for us to undertake intrusive delivery and monitoring of food. The dilemmas in the next six months may bring us face to face with Zimbabwe's sovereignty."
He said Mr Mugabe was "holding his people hostage the way Saddam Hussein is holding his people hostage".
Mr Mugabe and other Zimbabwean officials deny using aid as a political weapon. They maintain that food relief is distributed freely and fairly.
Continue...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,2763,834914,00.html
Harare accuses U.S. in food flap
By David R. Sands November 7, 2002
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Zimbabwe yesterday accused the Bush administration of using the famine threatening southern Africa as a pretext to invade or undermine the government of President Robert Mugabe.
"The United States is planning to invade Zimbabwe within the next six months on the pretext of bringing relief aid to people who were allegedly being denied food on political grounds," the state-owned Zimbabwe Herald, considered an accurate mirror of government opinion, said in a front-page story yesterday.
The U.S. Embassy in Harare issued a statement denying the accusations, but Zimbabwe army Chief of Staff Gen. Vitalis Zvinavashe told the newspaper the U.S. government was trying to control private relief groups distributing food and aid in the country "and disregard the laws of Zimbabwe."
Continue...
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20021107-9502912.htm
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Elma Francois 1897-1944
Posted: Sunday, November 3, 2002
by Corey Gilkes
October 14th marked the birth of one of the most vociferous Africentric activists in the history of Trinidad & Tobago and the Caribbean. She is Elma Constance Francois. In the study of the struggle of African people on the Continent and in the Diaspora to free themselves of European and Arab domination and redefine their existence the women who were the standard bearers of those struggles are often given less attention than their male counterparts. Even when they are acknowledged, the names of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Angela Davis are the names spoken. Elma and her contemporaries gave the lie to the myths about meek acceptance of colonialism by the colonised and to the lack of political and social consciousness among women.
Elma Francois was born in Overland, St Vincent. In her youth she received primary education up to 5th Standard and she worked alongside her mother picking cotton. From an early age she struggles for the betterment of her people since life in St Vincent was very hard for labourers, especially women. Some could work picking up cotton chaff and separate the seeds for which they would receive 12-14 cents a day. Others worked as domestic servants while others worked at the Mt. Bentick sugar factory producing syrup or 'sweetening'. The outspoken Elma quickly set about trying to organise the labourers of Mt Bentick sugar factory where she worked - of course, she was fired.
In 1917 her son Conrad was born; in 1919 however, she was forced to leave him in the care of his grandmother for she was migrating to Trinidad where there were better opportunities. There she first found work as a domestic servant. Not surprisingly she joined the Trinidad Workingman's Association under Captain A. A. Cipriani. Cipriani, a former West India Regiment soldier, served in WWI and in spite of his ancestry was aware of the racism and squalid conditions of the working class of Trinidad. He sympathised with their plight and came to call himself the 'champion of the "barefoot" man'. He continued this after the war and in 1923 was asked to assume leadership of the TWA, which functioned as a trade union. Cipriani reorganised the TWA into a political party, a wise move since two rights conferred upon trade unions in Britain by the Act of 1906 - the right of peaceful picketing and protection against actions in tort - were not extended to unions in the Caribbean and Africa.
Unlike other women members, Francois did not restrict herself to political activity as defined by the TWA. The outspoken and confrontational Elma certainly did not fit the mould of the Western or "Afro-Saxon" woman and her personality inevitably clashed with that of Cipriani. Cipriani, though a supporter of worker's rights, favoured non-confrontational action. His outlook was also coloured by the fact that his class position as a landowner from the propertied Catholic French Creole class often presented a serious conflict of interest. Also he almost completely accepted the British labour party's brand of 'Labour and Socialism' and his adherence to their policies and priorities as a yardstick by which he measured progress in Trinidad and Tobago. On the other hand Francois preferred direct action through the workers, not employers. She clashed wit him on the question of May Day which she felt should be declared a public holiday.
She was an avid reader, very conscious about her African heritage and loved nothing better than to engage people in debates. She was also one of the few people with the courage to challenge the Church and the authority of the bible. Elma spoke in Woodford Square (an open-air park in Port-of-Spain where to this day people gather to argue social, religious and political views), on street corners, in various towns. This is how she met Jim Headley who, together with Francois, became a founding member of the Negro Welfare Cultural and Social Association [NWCSA].
The Marxist oriented NWCSA, though it was committed to the empowerment of people of African descent, also had Indian and Chinese members. Also, from its inception it set out to attract women, hence the inclusion of the words 'cultural and 'social' as these were the areas of work in which, it was felt, women could initially be most easily incorporated. The organisation took the position that women and men should cooperate in the development of their collective political consciousness. There was no separation of women into 'women's arms/auxiliaries' and within the organisation executive positions changed regularly so that these responsibilities were shared equally. Elma usually, however, retained the position of Organising Secretary.
The NWCSA organised the unemployed, celebrated Emancipation Day, lobbied for small traders. Their "hunger marches" provided the impetus for the sugar workers' Hunger March of 1934 and the 1935 Hunger March of another radical thinking leader, TUB Butler. The NWCSA was responsible for galvanising national response against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 - the outcry was so great that many dockworkers refused to unload Italian ships. The NWCSA was responsible for the formation of the Seamen and Waterfront Workers Trade Union and the Federated Workers Trade Union.
During the famous "Butler Riots" of 1937, the NWCSA mobilised support for the striking oil workers, held meetings in the north and the turbulent south Trinidad, partly under the auspices of Butler's party the British Empire Workers and Citizens Home Rule Party. All this was done in spite of harassment by the police and their attempts to infiltrate the party's meetings. The NWCSA also circulated false reports regarding Butler's whereabouts when he was in hiding. Elma was eventually arrested. She became the first woman in Trinidad's history to be tried for sedition. She defended herself and was found not guilty.
In 1944 Elma Francois died; the result, some say of a broken heart after her son Conrad joined the army to fight in a war in which she bitterly opposed the black involvement. She, along with fellow party members Jim Barrette, Clement Payne had publicly disagreed with the showing of solidarity to the British Crown on the grounds that the Western allies had allowed the rise of Hitler as a counter to Stalin in the Soviet Union. It was only when Hitler turned on them that they mobilised militarily to defend themselves and in the process drew in colonials, whom they otherwise discriminated against racially, to fight and die with them in their war. There certainly was a strong thread of anti-British sentiment at first; several leading calypsonians [folk singers] sang against the war and in his autobiography Through a maze of Colour Albert Gomes noted that cinema crowds cheered when film clips showed the British being defeated by Nazi forces. However, by 1940, colonial propaganda, plus the withholding of the Report of the Moyne Commission, which investigated the causes of labour riots in the Caribbean, had intensified to the point where loyalty to the Crown became the dominant outlook on the war. Francois was understandably crushed when she learned about Conrad's decision to enlist. She regarded his decision to enlist as a personal failure on her part.
On September 25 1987, Elma Francois was declared a national heroine of Trinidad and Tobago.
For additional reading of Elma Francois and the labour struggles in Trinidad read:
¤ Elma Francois: the NWCSA and the workers struggle for change in the Caribbean in the 1930's - Rhoda Reddock
¤ Trinidad labour Riots of 1937 - Roy Thomas [ed]
¤ Smiles and Blood - Susan Craig-James
¤ Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present - Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd [ed]
¤ Calypso and Society in pre-Indepedence Trinidad - Gordon Rohler
¤ Atilla kaiso: a shorthistory of Trinidad Calypso - Raymond Quevedo [Atilla the Hun]
http://www.trinicenter.com/Gilkes/
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Mugabe wins key by-election
Posted: Monday, October 28, 2002
Monday, 28 October, 2002, Summary: BBC
Zimbabwe's ruling party has won a key by-election in the south-west of the country.
President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF took the seat of Insiza from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
The Insiza seat, near Bulawayo, was won by more than 7,000 votes, with Zanu-PF getting more than 12,000 to the MDC's 5,000.
The by-election reversed an MDC victory in parliamentary elections in June 2000.
Bulawayo is the second largest city in Zimbabwe, and it is also a stronghold of the MDC. From BBC
Opposition youths attack ZDECO
www.herald.co.zw
A GANG of suspected MDC youths yesterday attacked the Zimbabwe Distance Education College (ZDECO) and destroyed property worth thousands of dollars in apparent anger after their party lost the Insiza by-election.
It is understood that this prompted Zanu-PF youths to retaliate by attacking the MDC offices in Bulawayo.
The undisclosed number of youths descended on the college and smashed flowerpots, windows and doors before attacking some of the workers.
The college belongs to Dr Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, the Zanu-PF deputy political commissar. MORE
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White farmers co-exist with resettled people
Posted: Friday, October 25, 2002
By Features Editor, herald.co.zw
WHITE commercial farmers who have embraced Zimbabwe’s land reform, make up at least half of the tobacco growers registered to plant the crop this season.
According to the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board, at least 840 large-scale farmers are so far registered growers for the 2002/2003 season about half of them being existing large-scale growers.
About 1 200 commercial farmers were registered growers last season.
The revelation puts to rest claims that most white farmers have been stopped from farming as a result of the agrarian reform.
In some commercial farming areas throughout the country, including the Mazowe district, there is co-existence between white farmers and new farmers.
Farming activities are taking place in those areas with white farmers continuing with their planting operations.
At Sachel Farm in Glendale, a white farmer, who was left with 105 hectares including the farmhouse, is into export of oranges.
The farmer, who previously had 565 hectares, is still carrying on unhindered with his activities.
The balance of the land was allocated to 14 new farmers who have also begun preparing for the coming season. MORE
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African leaders etch lasting imprint on Earth Summit
Posted: Friday, October 25, 2002
For many years to come, the UN Earth Summit in Johannesburg will be remembered for three things.
First, President Sam Nujoma of Namibia pointing his index finger in the direction of the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and telling him: "The Honourable Tony Blair is here, and he created the situation in Zimbabwe."
Second, the prolonged applause and the standing ovation that President Mugabe received from the 1 500 heads of state, government officials and NGO representatives for his "land-redistribution" speech, the only leader among the 100 who spoke at the Summit to be so accorded a standing ovation.
Third, is the booing and jeering of the US Secretary of State, Collin Powell, the highest-ranking black person in the Bush Administration, when he took a swipe at Zimbabwe a day after Mugabe’s landmark speech.
No matter on which side you are on, these were truly landmark incidents that will make the powers that be sit up and look at the way they are currently running the world.
For three years (since 1999) Western governments and their media (with Britain leading the charge) had created the impression that Cde Mugabe was existing in splendid isolation and that the whole world was against him. The world spoke loud and clear, when they gave Mugabe the standing ovation.
And it was not even President Mugabe who started it all. It was President Sam Nujoma from Namibia.
Before coming to the Summit, the Namibian president had warned white farmers in his country who own "80 percent of the farmland" there, to look at Zimbabwe and read the writings on the wall.
"If those arrogant white farm owners and absentee landlords do not embrace the government’s policy of willing-buyer willing-seller now, it will be too late tomorrow," Nujoma said, showing that his and his nation’s patience was running out. MORE
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Daily News article rapped
Posted: Wednesday, October 23, 2002
By Lovemore Mataire, www.herald.co.zw
ANALYSTS yesterday described as rabid Rhodesian propaganda, an opinion piece in the Saturday edition of The Daily News asserting that blacks were not yet ready to run the affairs of Zimbabwe.
Headlined "Black bourgeoisie a disgrace to their race" and under the pseudonym "M Anoti", a name synonymous with a Rhodesian programme called "Padare", the writer openly glorified former Rhodesian leader Ian Smith for saying that blacks were incapable of governing themselves.
"The argument by the Rhodesian Front that black people were not ready to run the affairs of state may well have been vindicated," read a paragraph from the article.
Chairman of the English and Communication Department at the University of Zimbabwe, Dr Rino Zhuwarara said in simple terms the writer was trying to say that blacks are incapable of constructing their own civilisation.
"It is synonymous with Rhodesian propaganda which used to come out on a programme called Padare which described anything that would have been done by blacks as primitive," said Dr Zhuwarara.
He said it was frightening that a paper managed by an African would actually publish an article that undermines and ridicules blacks as nothing but primitive beings.
The most dangerous assertion advanced by the author of the article was that different races and tribes in the country should compete separately in their various fields.
"To this end, whites, Karangas, Zezurus, Manyikas, Indians and Coloureds should each have their own social and sporting clubs competing to be the best," said the writer.
A social and political commentator Mr Olley Maruma said there was no better way to describe the author of the article other than being a "downright racist."
"We can’t keep on saying the same things again and again. Africa is the cradle of mankind and civilisation but these racists would never want to accept that," said Mr Maruma.
He said the so-called captains of industry who are whites, were actually Rhodesian rejects who took over the companies after independence in 1980.
Mr Maruma said that the essence of racial prejudice was that it was based on primitive irrational emotions, which cannot be influenced by reasoning.
"The stock on trade of racism are stereotypes which sometimes do not bear any resemblance to reality," said Mr Maruma.
He said the wealth in the hands of whites that the columnist boasts about was actually built out of slavery and colonialism and the theft of black intellectual property.
"The evidence that the black man has made major contributions to world civilisation is overwhelming. But for the last 500 years, Western racists who are still with us today, have been churning out racist myths and stereotypes, in order to foster the impression that Western civilisation is responsible for all human progress. We know that is a lie," said Mr Maruma.
Chairman of the Media and Information Commission Dr Tafataona Mahoso said that although The Daily News claims to be a proponent of globalisation, it fails to realise that what is happening to the Zimbabwean economy is similar to what is happening globally.
Dr Mahoso said the report was synonymous with reports in the white-owned media in South Africa.
"The same things that are being demonstrated against in South Africa that the media is not reflecting African views are the same things that The Daily News is publishing," said Dr Mahoso.
He said no Zimbabwean would believe the columnist’s assertions that blacks are "good for nothing".
"Even the author himself or herself does not believe a single thing that he or she wrote," said Dr Mahoso.
http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=15429&pubdate=2002-10-23
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Against terrorism or expansion of the American Empire?
Posted: Wednesday, October 23, 2002
By William Blum, www.uscrusade.com
William Blum, author of three books covering U.S. foreign policy, gave the following speech at the University of Colorado in Boulder on October 16, 2002.
Good evening, it's very nice to be here, especially since the bombs have not yet begun to fall; I mean in Iraq, not Boulder; Boulder comes after Iraq and Iran if you folks don't shape up and stop inviting people like me to speak.
The first time I spoke in public after September 11 of last year, I spoke at a teach-in at the University of North Carolina. As a result of that, I and some of the other speakers were put on a list put out by an organization founded by Lynne Cheney, the wife of you know who. The organization's agenda can be neatly surmised by a report it issued, entitled "Defending Our Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It." In the report and on their website they listed a large number of comments made mainly by faculty and students from many schools which indicated that these people were not warmly embracing America's newest bombing frenzy. These people were guilty of suggesting that some foreigners might actually have good reason for hating the United States, or what I call hating U.S. foreign policy.
Because of that listing, as well as things I wrote subsequently, I've gotten a lot of hate mail in the past year, hate e-mail to be exact. I'm waiting to receive my first e-mail with anthrax in it. Well, there are viruses in e-mail, why not bacteria?
The hate mail almost never challenges any fact or idea I express. They attack me mainly on the grounds of being unpatriotic. They're speaking of some kind of blind patriotism, but even if they had a more balanced view of it, they would still be right about me. I'm not patriotic. I don't want to be patriotic. I'd go so far as to say that I'm patriotically challenged.
Many people on the left, now as in the 1960s, do not want to concede the issue of patriotism to the conservatives. The left insists that they are the real patriots because of demanding that the United States lives up to its professed principles. That's all well and good, but I'm not one of those leftists. I don't think that patriotism is one of the more noble sides of mankind. George Bernard Shaw wrote that patriotism is the conviction that your country is superior to all others because you were born in it. And remember that the German people who supported the Nazi government can be seen as being patriotic, and the German government called them just that.
The past year has not been easy for people like me, surrounded as we've been by an orgy of patriotism. How does one escape "United We Stand," and "God Bless America"? And the flag - it's just all over - I buy a banana and there it is, an American flag stuck on it.
We're making heroes out of everyone - the mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, became a hero. On Sept. 10 he was an arrogant, uncompassionate reactionary - suddenly he was a hero, even a statesman, speaking before the U.N. George Bush also became a hero. People who called him a moron on September 10 welcomed him as hero and dictator after the eleventh.
In the play, Galileo, by Bertolt Brecht, one character says to another: "Unhappy the land that has no heroes." The other character replies: "No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes."
Although I'm not loyal to any country or government, like most of you I am loyal to certain principles, like political and social justice, economic democracy, human rights.
The moral of my message to you is this: If your heart and mind tell you clearly that the bombing of impoverished, hungry, innocent peasants is a terrible thing to do and will not make the American people any more secure, you should protest it in any way you can and don't be worried about being called unpatriotic.
There was, sadly, very little protest against the bombing of Afghanistan. I think it was a measure of how the events intimidated people, events, along with their expanding police powers, led by Ayatollah John Ashcroft. I think it was also due to the fact that people felt that whatever horrors the bombing caused, it did get rid of some really nasty anti-American terrorists.
But of the thousands in Afghanistan who died from American bombs, how many do you think had any part in the events of 9-11? I'll make a rough guess and say "none." How many do you think ever took part in any other terrorist act against the United States? We'll never know for sure, but my guess would be a number in the very low one digits, if that. Terrorist acts don't happen very often after all, and usually are carried out by a handful of men. So, of all those killed by the American actions, were any of them amongst any of those few handfuls of terrorists, many of whom were already in prison?
Keep in mind that the great majority of those who were at a training camp of al Qaeda in Afghanistan were there to help the Taliban in their civil war, nothing to do with terrorism or the United States. It was a religious mission for them, none of our business. But we killed them or have held them under terrible conditions at the Guantanamo base in Cuba for a very long time now, with no end in sight, with many attempts at suicide there amongst the prisoners.
It is remarkable indeed that what we call our government is still going around dropping huge amounts of exceedingly powerful explosives upon the heads of defenseless people. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Beginning in the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev put an end to the Soviet police state, then the Berlin Wall came down. People all over Eastern Europe were joyfully celebrating a NEW DAY, and South Africa freed Nelson Mandela and apartheid began to crumble, and Haiti held its first free election ever and chose a genuine progressive as president ... it seemed like anything was possible; optimism was as widespread as pessimism is today.
The United States joined this celebration by invading and bombing Panama, only weeks after the Berlin Wall fell.
At the same time, the U.S. was shamelessly intervening in the election in Nicaragua to defeat the Sandinistas.
Then, when Albania and Bulgaria, "newly freed from the grip of communism," as our media would put it, dared to elect governments not acceptable to Washington, Washington just stepped in and overthrew those governments.
Soon came the bombing of the people of Iraq for 40 horrible days without mercy, for no good or honest reason, and that was that for our hopes of a different and better world.
But our leaders were not through. They were soon off attacking Somalia, more bombing and killing.
Meanwhile they continued bombing Iraq for years.
They intervened to put down dissident movements in Peru, Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia, just as if it were the cold war in the 1950s in Latin America, and the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and still doing it in the 1990s.
Then they bombed the people of Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights.
And once again, last year, they grossly and openly intervened in an election in Nicaragua to prevent the left from winning.
Meanwhile, of course, they were bombing Afghanistan and, in all likelihood, have now killed more innocent civilians in that sad country than were killed here on Sept. 11, with more to come as people will continue to die from bombing wounds, cluster-bomb landmines, and depleted-uranium toxicity.
All these years, they're still keeping their choke hold on Cuba. And that's just a partial list.
There was none of the peace dividend we had been promised, not for Americans nor for the rest of the world.
What the heck is going on here? We had been taught since childhood that the cold war, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the huge military budgets, all the foreign invasions and overthrows of governments - the ones we knew about - was all to fight the same menace: The International Communist Conspiracy, headquarters in Moscow.
So what happened? The Soviet Union was dissolved. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved. The East European satellites became independent. The former communists even became capitalists....yet nothing changed in American foreign policy. Even NATO remained, NATO which had been created - so we were told - to protect Western Europe against a Soviet invasion, even NATO remains, bigger than ever, getting bigger and more powerful all the time, a NATO with a global mission. The NATO charter was even invoked to give a justification for its members to join the U.S. in the Afghanistan invasion.
The whole thing had been a con game. The Soviet Union and something called communism per se had not been the object of our global attacks. There had never been an International Communist Conspiracy. The enemy was, and remains, any government or movement, or even individual, that stands in the way of the expansion of the American Empire; by whatever name we give to the enemy - communist, rogue state, drug trafficker, terrorist.
You think the American Empire is against terrorists? What do you call a man who blows up an airplane killing 73 people, who attempts assassinations against several diplomats, who fires cannons at ships docked in American ports? What do you call a man who places bombs in numerous commercial and diplomatic buildings in the U.S. and abroad? Dozens of such acts. His name is Orlando Bosch, he's Cuban and he lives in Miami, unmolested by the authorities. The city of Miami once declared a day in his honor - Orlando Bosch Day. He was freed from prison in Venezuela, where he had been held for the airplane bombing, partly because of pressure from the American ambassador, Otto Reich, who earlier this year was appointed to the State Dept. by George W.
After Bosch returned to the U.S. in 1988, the Justice Dept condemned him as a totally violent terrorist and was all set to deport him, but that was blocked by President Bush, the first, with the help of son Jeb Bush in Florida. So is George W. and his family against terrorism? Well, yes, they're against those terrorists who are not allies of the empire.
The plane that Bosch bombed, by the way, was a Cuban plane. He's wanted in Cuba for that and a host of other serious crimes, and the Cubans have asked Washington to turn him over to them; to Cuba he's like Osama Bin Laden is to the United States. But the U.S. has refused. Can you imagine the reaction in Washington if bin Laden showed up in Havana and the Cubans refused to turn him over? Can you imagine the reaction in the United States if Havana proclaimed Osama Bin Laden Day?
Washington's support of genuine terrorist organizations has been very extensive. To give just a couple of examples of the past few years - The ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have carried out numerous terrorist attacks for years in various parts of the Balkans, but they've been our allies because they've attacked people out of favor with Washington.
The paramilitaries in Colombia, as vicious as they come, could not begin to carry out their dirty work without the support of the Colombian military, who are the recipients of virtually unlimited American support. This, all by itself, disqualifies Washington from leading a war against terrorism.
Bush also speaks out often and angrily against harboring terrorists. Does he really mean that? Well, what country harbors more terrorists than the United States? Orlando Bosch is only one of the numerous anti-Castro Cubans in Miami who have carried out hundreds, if not thousands of terrorist acts, in the U.S., in Cuba, and elsewhere; all kinds of arson attacks, assassinations and bombings. They have been harbored here in safety for decades. As have numerous other friendly terrorists, torturers and human rights violators from Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, Indonesia and elsewhere, all allies of the Empire.
The CIA is looking for terrorists in caves in the mountains of Afghanistan at the same time as the Agency sits in bars in Miami having beers with terrorists.
What are we to make of all this? How are we to understand our government's foreign policy? Well, if I were to write a book called The American Empire for Dummies, page one would say: Don't ever look for the moral factor. U.S. foreign policy has no moral factor built into its DNA. Clear your mind of that baggage which only gets in the way of seeing beyond the clichés and the platitudes.
I know it's not easy for most Americans to take what I say at face value. It's not easy to swallow my message. They see our leaders on TV and their photos in the press, they see them smiling or laughing, telling jokes; see them with their families, hear them speak of God and love, of peace and law, of democracy and freedom, of human rights and justice and even baseball ... How can such people be moral monsters, how can they be called immoral?
They have names like George and Dick and Donald, not a single Mohammed or Abdullah in the bunch. And they even speak English. Well, George almost does. People named Mohammed or Abdullah cut off arms or legs as punishment for theft. We know that that's horrible. We're too civilized for that. But people named George and Dick and Donald drop cluster bombs on cities and villages, and the many unexploded ones become land mines, and before very long a child picks one up or steps on one of them and loses an arm or leg, or both arms or both legs, and sometimes their eyesight. And the cluster bombs which actually explode do their own kind of horror.
But our leaders are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care ... if that's a distinction worth making. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the Empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them ... then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home - the ones who make it back - with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. Our leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things.
It must be great fun to be one of the leaders of an empire, glorious in fact ... intoxicating ... the feeling that you can do whatever you want to whomever you want for as long as you want for any reason you care to give ... because you have the power ... for theirs is the power and the glory.
When I was writing my book Rogue State a few years ago I used the term "American Empire," which I don't think I had seen in print before. I used the term cautiously because I wasn't sure the American public was quite ready for it. But I needn't have been so cautious. It's now being used proudly by supporters of the empire.
There's Dinesh D'Souza, the conservative intellectual at the Hoover Institution, who became well-known with his theories on the "natural" inferiority of Afro-Americans. Earlier this year, he wrote an article entitled "In praise of American empire," in which he argued that Americans must finally recognize that the U.S. "has become an empire, the most magnanimous imperial power ever."
Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment writes: "And the truth is that the benevolent hegemony exercised by the U.S. is good for a vast portion of the world's population. It is certainly a better international arrangement than all realistic alternatives."
And syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer speaks of America's "uniquely benign imperium."
So that's how people who are wedded to American foreign policy are able to live with it - they conclude, and proclaim, and may even believe, that our foreign policy is a benevolent force, an enlightened empire, bringing order, prosperity and civilized behavior to all parts of the globe, and if we're forced to go to war we conduct a humanitarian war.
Well, inasmuch as I've devoted much of my adult life to documenting in minute detail the exact opposite, to showing the remarkable cruelty and horrific effects of U.S. interventions on people in every corner of the world, you can understand, I think, that my reaction to such claims is ... Huh? These conservative intellectuals ... Is that an oxymoron? They are as amoral as the folks in the White House and the Pentagon. After all, the particles of depleted uranium are not lodging inside their lungs to keep radiating for the rest of their lives; the International Monetary Fund is not bankrupting their economy and slashing their basic services; it's not their families wandering in the desert as refugees.
The leaders of the empire, the imperial mafia - Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney and Powell and Rice and Wolfowitz and Perle - and their scribes as well, are as fanatic and as fundamentalist as Osama Bin Laden. And the regime change they accomplished in Afghanistan has really gone to their heads. Today Kabul, tomorrow the world.
So get used to it, world. The American Empire. Soon to be a major motion picture, coming to a theatre near you.
A while ago, I heard a union person on the radio proposing what he called "a radical solution to poverty - pay people enough to live on." Well, I'd like to propose a radical solution to anti-American terrorism - stop giving terrorists the motivation to attack America.
Now our leaders and often our media would have us believe that we're targeted because of our freedom, our democracy, our wealth, our modernity, our secular government, our simple goodness, and other stories suitable for schoolbooks. George W. is still repeating these clichés a year after 9-11. Well, he may believe it but other officials have known better for some time. A Department of Defense study in 1997 concluded: "Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States."
Jimmy Carter, some years after he left the White House, was unambiguous in his agreement with such a conclusion. He said:
We sent Marines into Lebanon and you only have to go to Lebanon, to Syria or to Jordan to witness first-hand the intense hatred among many people for the United States because we bombed and shelled and unmercifully killed totally innocent villagers - women and children and farmers and housewives -- in those villages around Beirut. ... As a result of that ... we became kind of a Satan in the minds of those who are deeply resentful. That is what precipitated the taking of our hostages and that is what has precipitated some of the terrorist attacks.
The terrorists responsible for the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 sent a letter to the New York Times which stated, in part: "We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region." And finally, several members of al Qaeda have repeatedly made it quite plain in the past year that it's things like U.S. support of Israeli massacres and the bombing of Iraq that makes them hate the United States.
I present more evidence of the same sort in one of my books along with a long list of U.S. actions in the Middle East that has created hatred of American foreign policy.
I don't think, by the way, that poverty plays much of a role in creating terrorists. We shouldn't confuse terrorism with revolution.
And the attacks are not going to end until we stop bombing innocent people and devastating villages and grand old cities and poisoning the air and the gene pool with depleted uranium. The attacks are not going to end until we stop supporting gross violators of human rights who oppress their people, until we stop doing a whole host of terrible things. We'll keep on adding to the security operations that's turning our society into a police state, and it won't make us much safer.
It's not just people in the Middle East who have good reason for hating what our government does; we've created huge numbers of potential terrorists all over Latin America during a half century of American actions far worse than what we've done in the Middle East. I think that if Latin Americans shared the belief of many Muslims that they will go directly to heaven for giving up their life and acting as a martyr against the great enemy, by now we would have had decades of repeated terrorist horror coming from south of the border. As it is, there have been many non-suicidal terrorist attacks against Americans and their buildings in Latin America over the years.
There's also the people of Asia and Africa. The same story.
The State Department recently held a conference on how to improve America's image abroad in order to reduce the level of hatred; image is what they're working on, not change of policies.
But the policies scorecard reads as follows: From 1945 to the end of the century, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist movements fighting against insufferable regimes. In the process, the U.S. bombed about 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair.
If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize - very publicly and very sincerely - to all the widows and orphans, the tortured and impoverished, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. Then I would announce that America's global interventions have come to an end and inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but - believe it or not - a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90 percent and use the savings to pay reparations to our victims and repair the damage from our bombings. There would be enough money. Do you know what one year's military budget is equal to? One year. It's equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.
That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I'd be assassinated.
On page two of The American Empire for Dummies, I'd put this in a box outlined in bright red: Following its bombing of Iraq, the United States wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Following its bombing of Yugoslavia, the United States wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia.
Following its bombing of Afghanistan, the United States is now winding up with military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and perhaps elsewhere in the region.
That's not very subtle, is it? Not really covert. The men who run the empire are not easily embarrassed. And that's the way the empire grows, a base on every corner, ready to be mobilized to put down any threat to imperial rule, real or imagined. Fifty-seven years after World War II ended, the U.S. still has major bases in Germany and Japan; and 49 years after the Korean War ended, the U.S. military is still in Korea.
A Pentagon report of a few years ago said: Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere ... we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.
The bombing, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan have served the purpose of setting up a new government that will be sufficiently amenable to Washington's international objectives, including the installation of military bases and communications listening stations and, perhaps most important of all, the running of secure oil and gas pipelines through Afghanistan from the Caspian Sea region, which I'm sure many of you have heard about.
For years, the American oil barons have had their eyes on the vast oil and gas reserves of the Caspian Sea area, ideally with an Afghanistan-Pakistan route to the Indian Ocean, thus keeping Russia and Iran out of the picture. The oilmen have been quite open about this, giving very frank testimony before Congress for example.
Now they have their eyes on the even greater oil reserves of Iraq. If the U.S. overthrows Saddam Hussein and installs a puppet government, as they did in Afghanistan, the American oil companies will move into Iraq and have a feast and the American empire will add another country and a few more bases.
Or as General William Looney, the head of the U.S.-U.K. operation that flies over Iraq and bombs them every few days, said several years ago: If they turn on their radars we're going to blow up their goddamn missiles. They know we own their country. We own their airspace. ... We dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now. It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need.
We've gone through a few months now of a song and dance show that passes for debate, a debate about whether to attack a sovereign nation that has not attacked us, that has not threatened to attack us, that knows it would mean instant mass suicide for them if they attacked us. This debate is absurd not simply because Iraq is not a threat - by now, even the Martians must know that - but because our imperial mafia know that Iraq is not a threat, at all. They've been telling us one story after another about why Iraq is a threat, an imminent threat, a nuclear threat, a threat increasing in danger with each passing day, that Iraq is a terrorist state, that Iraq is tied to al Qaeda, only to have each story amount to nothing; they told us for a long time that Iraq must agree to having the weapons inspectors back in, and when Iraq agreed to this they said "No, no, that isn't good enough." How soon before they blame the horror in Bali on Iraq?
Does any of this make sense? This sudden urgency of fighting a war in the absence of a fight? It does, I suggest, only if you understand that this is not about Saddam Hussein and his evilness, or his weapons, or terrorism. What it's about is that the empire is still hungry and wants to eat Iraq and its oil and needs to present excuses to satisfy gullible people. And then they want to eat Iran. And then? ... I understand when George W. was asked: "Who next?" he said "Whatever."
The empire, in case you missed it, is not content with merely the earth; the empire has been officially extended to outer space. The Pentagon proudly admits this and they have a nice name for it. They call it "full-spectrum dominance," and for years now they've been planning to fight wars in space, from space, and into space. And that's a quote.
And if you're wondering "Why now?" about Iraq. I think - as many have said - that the coming election plays a role. It's going to decide which party will control congress and there's nothing like a lot of talk about war and defending America to sway voters, and make them forget about the economy and health care at the same time.
In addition to all the absurdities and lies they've been throwing at us, what I've found most remarkable and disturbing about this period has been the great absence in the mass media of the simple reminder that a U.S. attack upon Iraq means bombs falling on people, putting an end to homes, schools, hospitals, jobs, futures. The discussion has focused almost entirely on whether or not to go after the evil Saddam and his supposed evil weapons. What it all means in terms of human suffering is scarcely considered worthy of attention. Is that not odd?
Also absent from the discussion is that over the course of several years in the 1990s, the U.N. inspectors found and destroyed huge amounts of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq. I'm sure that most Americans are convinced that Saddam got away with hiding virtually all his weapons and that he'll get away with it again if there's a resumption of the inspections. But that's not what happened. Scott Ritter, chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, recently stated that "since 1998 Iraq has been fundamentally disarmed; 90-95 percent of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have been verifiably eliminated. This includes all of the factories used to produce chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and long-range ballistic missiles; the associated equipment of these factories; and the vast majority of the products coming out of these factories."
And we have similar testimony from others who were involved in the inspections.
Each of the big American bombing campaigns carries its own myths with it, but none so big as the one before last. I must remind you of that.
We were told that the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was to save the people of Kosovo from ethnic cleansing by the Serbs. And since the ethnic cleansing finally came to an end, the bombing seems to have worked. Right? First there was the ethnic cleansing, then came the bombing, then came the end of the ethnic cleansing. What could be simpler? I'm sure that about 90 percent of those Americans who think about such things firmly believe that, including many of you, I imagine.
But it was all a lie. The bombing didn't end the ethnic cleansing. The bombing caused the ethnic cleansing! The systematic forced deportations of large numbers of Kosovars - what we call ethnic cleansing - did not begin until about two days after the bombing began, and was clearly a reaction to it by the Serb forces, born of great anger and feelings of powerlessness due to the heavy bombardment. This is easily verified by looking at a daily newspaper for the few days before the bombing began the night of March 23/24, and the few days after. Or simply look at the New York Times of March 26, page 1, which reads:
... with the NATO bombing already begun, a deepening sense of fear took hold in Pristina [the main city of Kosovo] that the Serbs would NOW vent their rage against ethnic Albanian civilians in retaliation. The next day, March 27, we find the first reference to a "forced march" or anything of that sort.
How is it possible that such a powerful lie could be told to the American people and that the people would swallow it without gagging? One reason is that the media don't explicitly point out the lies; at best you have to read between the lines.
There's the story from the Cold War about a group of Russian writers touring the United States. They were astonished to find, after reading the newspapers and watching television, that almost all the opinions on all the vital issues were the same. "In our country," said one of them, "to get that result we have a dictatorship. We imprison people. We torture them. Here you have none of that. How do you do it? What's the secret?"
Can any of you name a single American daily newspaper that unequivocally opposed the U.S.-NATO bombing of Yugoslavia three years ago?
Can any of you name a single American daily newspaper that unequivocally opposed the U.S. bombing of Iraq eleven years ago?
Can any of you name a single American daily newspaper that unequivocally opposed the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan?
Isn't that remarkable? In a supposedly free society, with a supposedly free press, with about 1500 daily newspapers, the odds should be way against that being the case. But that's the way it is.
I suppose that now some of you would like me to tell you how to put an end to all these terrible and absurd things I've talked about. Well, good luck to all of us.
I could say that personally I proceed from the assumption that if enough people understand what their government is doing and the harm that it causes, at some point the number of such people will reach critical mass and some changes can be effectuated. But that may well be a long way off. I hope I live to see it.
I'm sure that if all Americans could see their government's bomb victims up close, see the body fragments, smell the burning flesh, see the devastated homes and lives and communities, there would be a demand to end such horror so powerful that even the imperial mafia madmen couldn't ignore it. But how to get Americans to see the victims? I and many of you don't need to see those terrible sights to be opposed to the madmen's policies, but most Americans do. If we could figure out why we have this deep empathy for the victims, this imagination, it might be a very good organizing tool.
Gandhi once said that "Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but you must do it." And the reason I must do it is captured by yet another adage, cited by various religious leaders: "We do these things not to change the world, but so that the world will not change us."
Sam Smith, a journalist in Washington, whom some of you are familiar with, in his new book makes the point that "Those who think history has left us helpless should recall the abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labor organizer of 1890, and the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not get to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to choose what they did with it."
He then asks: Knowing what we know now about how certain things turned out, but also knowing how long it took, would we have been abolitionists in 1830, or feminists in 1870, and so on?
We don't know what surprises history has in store for us when we give history a little shove, just as history can give each of us a little shove personally. In the 1960s, I was working at the State Department, my heart set on becoming a Foreign Service Officer. Little did I know that I would soon become a ranting and raving commie-pinko-subversive-enemy of all that is decent and holy because a thing called Vietnam came along. So there is that kind of hope as well.
Let me close with two of the laws of politics which came out of the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, which I like to cite:
The First Watergate Law of American Politics states: "No matter how paranoid you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine."
The Second Watergate Law states: "Don't believe anything until it's been officially denied."
Both laws are still on the books.
¤ The World's Only Superpower
[William Blum left the U.S. State Department in 1967, abandoning his aspiration of becoming a Foreign Service Officer, because of his opposition to what the United States was doing in Vietnam. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, and West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Political Memoir.]
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