``xBy: Ras Forever

Greetings Dearly Beloved in the name of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Sellassie the First.

As Rastafari who have witnessed the most massive death and destruction caused by a combination of events and forces on Tuesday 11th September in the United States of America. We would firstly like to express our deepest and most sincere regrets to all those who are now experiencing pain and trauma that most would certainly have had no inputs in creating. Our sympathies and wishes is for quick and successful resolutions of all personal difficulties and negative effects of the aftermath of Tuesday's events.

Secondly it is hoped that none of our Rastafari Collective and their families have been affected by the tragic events. If any are, our firmest heartfelt sympathies go out to you and yours. Can you please inform of us of your respective situations as soon as you can afford to do so.

Thirdly it is imperative that the idea that anyone, anywhere in the world, can use their weapons of destruction to settle disputes among the human family, be totally denounced and condemned. The slaughter of innocent people going about their business of providing for their families is a crime against humanity, always was and always will be. So as Rastafari an emphatic rejection of any such notion is compulsory and must be non partisan.

Finally as the world has been brought to the crossroads by force to confront a moral and political crisis. The question to be asked is, can the solution to this crisis be more of the same that brought us to this path, or is it our duty to find and shine a light to show another way. As Rastafari Collective we must as a solution, support and promote enlightened leadership, which exhibits moral guidance and moves mankind away from the paths that has failed us, one that has caused so much grief, pain and suffering to our fellow man everywhere.

Rastafari can lead the way and our support right now goes out to those families and individuals who are now hurting. May Jah Almighty bring healing and comfort to all afflicted, in any manner. Jah Bless, Guide and Protect. ``xamon``xamon@tstt.net.tt``xA Rastafari View of the Tragedy``x1000339200,2004,rasta``x``x ``xWAR

Until the philosophy which holds one race
Superior and another inferior
Is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned
Everywhere is war, me say war

That until there is no longer first class
And second class citizens of any nation
Until the colour of a man's skin
Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes
Me say war

That until the basic human rights are equally
Guaranteed to all, without regard to race
Dis a war
That until that day
The dream of lasting peace, world citizenship
Rule of international morality
Will remain in but a fleeting illusion
To be pursued, but never attained

Now everywhere is war, war
And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes
That hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique,
South Africa sub-human bondage
Have been toppled, utterly destroyed
Well, everywhere is war, me say war

War in the east, war in the west
War up north, war down south
War, war, rumours of war

And until that day, the African continent
Will not know peace, we Africans will fight
We find it necessary and we know we shall win
As we are confident in the victory
Of good over evil, good over evil, good over evil
Good over evil, good over evil, good over evil ``xamon``xamon@tstt.net.tt``xThe words of H.I.M as sung by Bob Marley``x1001797074,57252,rasta``x``x ``xSubmitted by Barabara Hannah-Blake

Mrs. Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Ambassador Dudley Thompson; Hon Pearnel Charles; Lord Anthony Gifford; Ras Buju Banton; Ambassador Ms.Amina Mohamed,Permanent Mission of Kenya, Geneva, Switzerland; Ras Iral Jabari, Ichirouganaim Council Advancement of Rastafari, Barbados; David Commissiong, Director, Pan African Secretariat, Barbados; Sister Yaa Ashantewaa, Play for Peace, Johannesburg; Sister Desta Meghoo-Peddie, Center for the Study of Race Relations, University of Florida; Margaret Parsons, African Canadian Legal Clinic; E. Roy Cayetano, CEO, Ministry of Rural Development & Culture, Belize; Ras Akel Williams, Rasta Speaks; Randal Robinson, THE DEBT; William E. Spriggs, National Urban League; Alvin Dollar, Georgia Black United Fund Inc.; Negist Mengesha, Director,FIDEL; Chimurenga Waller, President, INPDUM;

Greetings, Friends!

It was wonderful to meet you and share in the historic events of the World Conference Against Racism – surely one of the most important events of the 21st Century.

The WCAR officially declared open international discussion on Reparations for the 350-year enslavement of Africans, the debilatiting effects of colonialism in the Americas and Africa, and the various approaches necessary to achieve satisfactory closure on these important issues of human rights and justice.

Accordingly, I am proposing that those of us who came together in Durban should continue sharing information, discussion and planning to enable continuity of effort and relentless pursuit of our goals, in order that the good work of the WCAR shall not have been in vain. Accordingly, you have been included in this list of Reparations activists, whom I hereby invite to communicate by means of this e-mail and keep the flame alight.

I have written a report on the WCAR which can be read in the RASTA NEWS at The Rastafari Page website: http://www.geocities.com/maskel2001. The report is not comprehensive, but selective of comments and issues directly relating to Reparations. Your comments and inputs are welcome.

Our first news is that the Pan African Secretariat in the Barbados Office of the Prime Minister is working on plans to establish a Regional Reparations Secretariat, with its first objective the holding of a Reparations Conference in Barbados in 2002 on the first anniversary of the Durban WCAR.

The plan is being co-ordinated by Ras Iral Jabari, to whom all comments and offers of assistance should be directed.

I herewith invite you to circulate through this list any suggestions, information, articles for publication in local media, and other communications of value. I will act as Co-Ordinator and media clearing house, and maintain a presence on the Internet where interested persons may visit and be informed.

I look forward to hearing from you all. ``xamon``xamon@tstt.net.tt``xWCAR Reparations Group``x1001806007,37026,rasta``x``x ``xSubmitted By: Ras T. Henry

Ree Ngwenya
Harare

It was April 1980, the end of a hard week, around 4pm, on a Friday afternoon. Mick Carter was in his office, thinking about maybe leaving early for the weekend. Then the phone rang.

Bob Marley was calling from the Tuff Gong International offices in Kingston. Could Mick organise a crew and all the necessary equipment and fly to Salisbury in Rhodesia over the weekend? On Tuesday, 18 April, the country was changing its name to Zimbabwe, and the city would be renamed Harare.

Bob had two officials from Zimbabwe's government in his office with him, and they had asked him to perform at the independence ceremonies. Cost was to be no barrier: Bob, whose tune Zimbabwe had proved inspirational to the ZANLA freedom fighters, was paying for it all out of his pocket. He would be playing amidst the ruins of Great Zimbabwe.

At the Islands Record offices in West London, Denise Mills received a similar call: "Bob said he was flying into London over the weekend and wanted to continue straight on to Africa. Could we arrange it?"

Within two hours, Carter had booked his crew and PA equipment. More importantly, he had also chartered a 707 waiting on the tarmac at Gatwick airport.

The next day the plane took off at Gatwick, carrying the agent, the lighting, the soundmen and the sound equipment.

The advance party for this Bob Marley expedition to Africa caused much bewilderment when it arrived at Salisbury airport, as it was then still known.

"The import people hadn't a clue what to do, how to deal with us," Carter said.

"What got us and everyone through was a huge bag of Bob Marley T- shirts that I had sensibly persuaded Island to give me before I left. These were liberally dispensed all around. And it also helped enormously that I was wearing an Exodus tour jacket, which was my passport to everything."

The only contact Carter had been given was an address in Harare- Job's Nite Spot, a club run by one Job Kadengu, a second-hand car dealer who worked for Zanu PF, who had somehow become the promoter.

Kadengu passed Carter to a certain Edgar Tekere, the minister for planning and development. At 3:30 am, on Sunday morning, Carter was driven in a taxi to Tekere's bungalow to wake him up and receive instructions.

A bleary-eyed Tekere directed Carter to the Rufaro Stadium on the edge of Harare where the independence ceremony was to be held. When he and his crew arrived there, a team of night watchmen loomed out of the darkness, trying to chase them off.

Within hours, Carter had secured the services of a squad of soldiers and a scaffolding company to build the stage.

"But the wood we were given was green and came from a damp warehouse. As the sun came and dried it, the planks turned rotten. We laid down tarpaulin, but we kept having to make chalk-marks where the holes were. I saw two wooden gates, and had them taken down and they became the PA stage."

But there was still no electrical power and there seemed little hope of the promised generator arriving to provide it.

"However," Carter remembers, "we found a cable running underneath the pitch. It provided electricity to a nearby village (township). So this guy jumped in and cut it for us to tap into it and as he did so, you could see the lights go out in the village."

There were no hotels booked for the Marley party. Everywhere was full, booked up weeks before, to accommodate visiting dignitaries who were coming from all over the world for the independence ceremony. Although he temporarily managed to secure a hotel room, Carter was kicked out of it at gunpoint by several soldiers.

Bob and the Wailers were taken to a guest-house 20 miles out of town; even so, there were not enough rooms for the group and Bob shared his room with Neville Garrick, Family Man, Gillie and Dennis Thomson, the engineer.

Bob took a commercial flight to Nairobi. As he waited in the transit lounge for his plane, he received an unexpected message from a royal enquerry: Prince Charles was waiting in the VIP suite; would Bob care to come and join him and pay his respects?

Bob's reply was immediate:

If Prince Charles wanted to meet him, he should come out there and check him with all the people. Needless to say, Bob's invitation was not accepted.

Some time later, as Bob and the Wailers sat by the window of the departure lounge, they saw the royal party crossing the tarmac in the direction of the royal jet. When Prince Charles had walked only a few yards, however, he turned and looked up at the window where Bob was sitting. Looking directly into Bob Marley's eyes, Prince Charles smiled broadly. Then he continued on his way.

Bob and his party flew into Harare in the early evening of Sunday, 16 April.

With him were Denise Mills, Robert Partridge, and Phil Cooper, respectively the heads of press and international affairs at Island Records in London.

"The most amazing thing," Denis remembers, "was the arrival at the airport.

Joshua Nkomo, who was minister of home affairs in Robert Mugabe's new government, and various cabinet officials had to line up and shake our hands. I couldn't believe it: there were about 26 of us and I'm sure none if the people had a clue who we were.

When we went to tea at the palace with these drunken soldiers and the president, it was so English and colonial: cucumber sandwiches and lemonade-all considered a bit off by the Wailers.

However, Bob sang No Woman No Cry at the piano for the president's family."

What no one had thought to inform Bob and his team was the precise nature of the first show they would be playing: it was scheduled for the slot immediately following the ceremony in which Zimbabwe would receive its independence and was to be performed in front of only the assembled dignitaries and the media as well as the party faithful, the international luminaries included Britain's Prince Charles and India's Indira Gandhi.

Such a scheduling implied that the events would have an exact order. But instead, Carter said: "It was complete anarchy. Bob went on immediately after the flag-raising ceremony. We had arrived at 8:30 in the evening, and were leisurely getting ready. We hadn't realised just how suddenly they expected us on stage. When they announced us, we weren't ready at all."

In fact, the first official words uttered in Zimbabwe, following the raising of the new flag, were: "Ladies and gentlemen, Bob Marley and the Wailers."

Twenty minutes later, Bob and The Wailers started their set. As soon as the first notes rang out, pandemonium broke loose in the enormous crowd gathered by the entrance to the sports stadium: the gates shook and began to break apart as the crush increased, the citizens of Harare, both excited and angry at being excluded from seeing these inspirational musicians.

As clouds of teargas drifted almost immediately into the stadium itself, the audience on the pitch fell on their feet in an attempt to protect themselves. The group members tasted their first whiffs of the gas and left the stage. "All of a sudden," said Judy Mowatt, "you smell this thing taking over your whole body, going in your throat until you want to choke, burning your eyes. I looked at Rita (Marley) and Marcia and they were feeling the same thing."

"I feel my eyes and nose," remembered Family Man, "and think, from when I was born, I have to come all the way to Africa to experience teargas."

Bob, however seemed to have moved to a transcendent state. His eyes were shut, and for a while the gas didn't seem to have an effect at all. Then he opened his eyes and left the stage.

Backstage, the group had taken refuge in a truck. Outside they could see small children fainting and women collapsing. It looked like death personified to Mowatt, who briefly wondered whether they had been brought to Zimbabwe to meet their ends.

She persuaded someone to drive her and the other I-Threes back to the hotel, only to discover on the television that the show had resumed. After about half an hour Bob and the Wailers had gone back on stage. They ended their set with Zimbabwe, a song Bob had worked on during his pilgrimage to Ethiopia late in 1978, and which became arguably his most important single composition.

Bob was just coming offstage as Mowatt and her fellow women singers returned to the stadium. "Hah," he looked at them with a half-grin, "now I know who the real revolutionaries are."

It was decided that the group would play another concert the following day, to give the ordinary people of Zimbabwe an opportunity to see Bob Marley.

Over 100 000 people-an audience that was almost entirely black- watched this show by Bob Marley and The Wailers. The group performed for an hour and a half, the musicians fired up to a point of ecstasy. But Bob, who uncharacteristically hadn't bothered to turn up for the sound check, was strangely lacklustre in his performance; a mood of disillusionment had set in around him following the tear-gassing the previous day.

After the day's performance, the Bob Marley team was invited to spend the evening at the home of Tekere. This was not the most relaxed of social occasions.

As the henchmen strutted around with their Kalashnikovs, Mills was informed by Tekere that he wanted Bob to stay in Zimbabwe and tour the country. "Bob told me to say he wasn't going to, but the guy didn't want to hear me."

While Bob remained in the house, Rob Partridge and Phil Cooper sat out in the garden. "I could hear," said Cooper, head of international affairs, "Tekere saying to Bob, 'I want this man Cooper. He's been going around putting your image everywhere. He's trying to portray you as a bigger man than our President.' I could hear all this.

"Then Bob came out and said to us, in hushed, perfect Queen's English; 'I think it's a good idea for you to leave'."

"Partridge and I went and packed, and took the first international flight out, which was to Nairobi. About five months later Tekere was arrested and put in jail; he had been involved in the murder of some white settler.

The next day Carter found himself being cajoled in the way Mills had been.

"Job Kadengu told me that there was a show in Bulawayo we had to do. But I was signing for trucks on behalf of the minister of development, Tekere, in other words. So we drove out to the airport with all the gear, loaded up the plane we'd chartered and left the country."-From the book: Bob Marley: Songs of Freedom by Adrian Boot and Chris Salewicz, Bloomsbury Publishing, plc, 1995
RAS ART AND CRAFT NEW KINGSTON JAMAICA. W.I ``xamon``xamon@tstt.net.tt``xWhen Bob Marley caused Riot inna Africa ``x1001853115,55606,rasta``x``x ``xSubmitted by: RAS JAHAZIEL
by Gladstone Holder

We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe havens to terrorism. Every nation in every region has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.

President George Bush II speaking about his retaliation measures for the havoc wreaked upon the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11. The words appear to constitute a wild and dangerous threat.

If a threat by one individual to another is justifiable, would not a threat by the Head of a country armed with every conceivable type of lethal weapon who assumes the authority to sign an executive order identifying groups to be regarded as terrorists qualify as justiciable also?

This from an administration which has refused to follow the just routine of furnishing the evidence to support its claim of knowing the identity of its 'prime suspect'. Furthermore, who but the most fawning of lackeys could support it in that outrage when thousands of witnesses could bring proof that the plaintiff's country easily qualifies as the world's leading terrorist nation?

"Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists" is not only illogical. It would be funny if it did not border on blasphemy. For every Christian child is familiar with the spiritual truth it echoes.

The United States is not God nor Jesus Christ. Like any other nation, it is peopled by erring men and women. What its president does not appear to know is the difference between the secular and the sacred, nor the spiritual, the legal nor even the illegal.

One of history's simplest lessons seems to be the one most difficult for mankind to learn: Power tends to corrupt, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.

The United States, precisely because it is militarily by far the strongest among the world's nations, needs to be closely watched by the world to see it does not exert unlawful authority abroad. At home, more than 200 years ago, the founding fathers of what promised to be a great nation said of its president "In questions of power, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down by the chains of the Constitution". At the same time, when unity against a common enemy is required, its mainstream press refers to him as the most powerful man in the world, to the adulation if its citizens and in contradiction of the fact of recent history.

And so, in response to the catastrophic bombing, the United States has threatened lasting lessons to Afghanistan as well as to all terrorists everywhere, not of course, including the United States.

Said the president: "There are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries. They are recruited from their own nations and neighbourhoods and brought to camp in places like Afghanistan where they are trained in the tactics of terror".

He did not, of course, tell his fellow Americans that Osama bin Laden, like General Manuel Noriega now in a United States prison for drug trafficking, to the great benefit of his hosts, was on the payroll of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, (CIA). It is now planned to restore to the CIA the authority to carry out assassinations abroad.

Nor did he disclose that there are more than 100 centres in the United States for the training of terrorists who then served its interests in foreign lands. Nor that the CIA trained SAVAK, the ruthless secret police of the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi while United States manufacturers sold billions of dollars in arms to that country.

The story of the Shah, SAVAK and the United States is but one of many told of Cuba, Indonesia, a number of countries in Africa and even of the US invasion of Grenada in 1983. The book is Endless Enemies: The Making Of An Unfriendly World (1986) by Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal. Of this incursion he wrote:

"The result was unique in the recent history of American intervention: our troops were genuinely welcomed by the local citizens and, even more amazing we won. If all foreign intervention turned out the way the Grenadan invasion appears to have turned out, the policy will be tough to argue against, even on moral grounds. So it is important to emphasise that Grenada was unique, and to understand why it was unique. This is especially so because even now it's clear that the America people were broadly misled by their government about Grenada, in ways that might create the false impression that the Grenadan experience is transferable to other situations".

Kwitny would be very unlikely to call September 11 an expected happening. Nor would he be unique in seeing that a certain faction in the US might have needed that happening to serve their large purposes. And are the American people being misled again? The orchestrated media propaganda blitz to stir them to revenge was implacable, but as the days go by and they have time to think about what they've seen and heard, there may be a growing number who perceive the unwisdom of that anger the President admitted to experiencing when he saw the falling towers.

The President now has an overwhelming force in place to take bin Laden - 'dead or alive'. The United States is not welcome in Afghanistan and against a people prepared to sell their lives dearly, President Bush, despite denials by spokesman, may perhaps prefer to allow the rebel Northern Alliance forces to remove the governing Taliban. And for the same reason that President Richard Nixon was pleased to see President Salvador Allende replaced by General Augusto Pinochet.

In his book The Price of Power, Seymour Hersh remarks that Cord Meyer, one of Richard Helms's CIA deputies was surprised by what he had been ordered to do, since "the idea of a military overthrow had not occurred to us as a possible solution". In the eyes of many critics, wrote Hersh, the fact that a group of mature government officials would enthusiastically carry out such a policy without question provided an excellent reason for abolishing the CIA's authority to conduct covert operations.

It is the banning of such convert operations that is now being reviewed in the twilight of September 11 - "a day that will live in infamy," like Pearl Harbor.

How many Afghans, civilians or otherwise, must die by the bullet or by famine for this insubstantial and indiscriminate cause? This is the question humane people and humanitarian agencies are asking. Is the US impervious to reason, self-examination and spiritual insight?

It is interesting that rather than seek or pseudo-legal cover under the aegis of the security council to bomb the Afghan people in order to kill or kidnap 'prime suspect' Osama bin Laden, Bush is, according to a broadcast report, prepared to go it alone. This may be a greater risk than his father took - the two cases are not exactly parallel - in the kidnapping of General Noriega in 1989.

As Orwell knew, some pigs are more equal than others and President Bush II may feel that though President Slobodan Milosovec is now before the Hague Tribunal for crimes against humanity in war, she may be exempt or immune, even though he said the United States is at war. The United States may be privileged. The criterion usually rests on "good faith".

In his latest book Rogue States - The Rule of Force In World Affairs (2000) Professor Noam Chomsky asks: How should we assess the "good faith" of the only country to have vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on all states to obey international law? What about its historical record?

In this context I have a statement issues on 25 September 2001 by the spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan:

"The Secretary-General was pleased by the decision of the United States Congress to authorise payment of $582 million, in partial settlement of the dues owed to the United Nations. He wishes to thank Ted Turner for his remarkable role in facilitating this payment, and salutes him for his visionary leadership as a true global citizen.

The Secretary-General hopes that all outstanding financial issues between the United States and the United Nations can be resolved as soon as possible, in order to put this issue behind us once and for all".

Turner's role was not disclosed. As I read it, however, that letter was less of thanks than it was of "chastisement that doth [not] hide its head".

Let me summarise my position. Any state that would acquiesce in the handing over of a 'suspect' without proof of his case is in favour of fascism and contemptuous of justice and decency.

Any country aligning itself with President Bush's United States without strong evidence of bin Laden's guilt or that of his 'suspected associates' is as much a terrorist state as is America.

It is as simple as that - and as fundamental.``xamon``xamon@tstt.net.tt``xEye In The Storm: Though the Heavens fall``x1001943906,97731,rasta``x``x ``xSUMMARY: To understand Gandhi's role towards the blacks, one requires a knowledge of Hinduism. Within the constraints, a few words on Hinduism will suffice: The caste is the bedrock of Hinduism. The Hindu term for caste is varna; which means arranging the society on a four-level hierarchy based on the skin color: The darker-skinned relegated to the lowest level, the lighter-skinned to the top three levels of the apartheid scale called the Caste System. The race factor underlies the intricate workings of Hinduism, not to mention the countless evil practices embedded within. Have no doubt, Gandhi loved the Caste system.

Gandhi lived in South Africa for roughly twenty one years from 1893 to 1914. In 1906, he joined the military with a rank of Sergeant-Major and actively participated in the war against the blacks. Gandhi's racist ideas are also evident in his writings of these periods. One should ask a question : Were our American Black leaders including Dr. King aware of Gandhi's anti-black activities? Painfully, we have researched the literature and the answer is, no. For this lapse, the blame lies on the Afro-American newspapers which portrayed Gandhi in ever glowing terms, setting the stage for African-American leaders Howard Thurman, Sue Baily Thurman, Reverend Edward Carroll, Benjamin E. Mays, Channing H. Tobias, and William Stuart Nelson to visit India at different time periods to meet Gandhi in person. None of these leaders had any deeper understanding of Hinduism, British India, or the complexities of Gandhi's convoluted multi-layered Hindu mind. Frankly speaking, these leaders were no match to Gandhi's deceit; Gandhi hoodwinked them all, and that too, with great ease. Understanding of Hindu India with our black leaders never really improved even considering years later in March 1959, much after Gandhi's death, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., his wife, and Professor Lawrence D. Reddick visited India and to our way of analysis, they fared no better than their predecessors. We are certain, had Dr. King known Gandhi's anti-black and other criminal activities, he would have distanced his civil-rights movement away from the name of Gandhi. MORE / MORE``xamon``xamon@tstt.net.tt``xUnderstanding Gandhi's attitude towards Blacks``x1001982963,16244,rasta``x``x ``xBy Nubianem

ARAB COLONIALISM AND SANCTIFIED RACISM IS RAMPANT IN AFRICA AND ITS TIME AFRICANS SOLVE THIS PROBLEM

One of the most insulting events occurred a few months ago when thousands of Nigerians, Ghanians and other West Africans were lynched, attacked and killed in the streets of Libya, an Arab nation. Yet Africans continue to allow the Arab extermination of Blacks in Sudan and Mauritania, Arab racism and apartheid/racism in Zanzibar and parts of East Africa, and Arab mischief in some of the wars in West Africa. The time has long past for Black Africans to realise two things.

(1) Arabs are Caucasians whose racism and religious imperialism is responsible for the destruction of African civilizations (see the essay "African War Against the Arabs," http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire.

(2) The Arabs and other Semites will never respect Black Africans and will continue to use their henchmen in Sudan and elsewhere to continue the extermination of Black Africans so they can depopulate the continent of Blacks and occupy it, as thy have done in Northern Africa. Hence, the solution is for the unification of BLACK AFRICANS/PAN-NEGRO PEOPLES all over the world to unite in the fight to stop what is an ancient war of genocide against Blacks which began with the invasion of Nubia by the Arab armies during the 600's A.D. Although they were defeated, they continued harrassment and imposed enslavement on Blacks, destroying the Great Nubian Kingdom and occupying much of Sudan today, while imposing their religion and culture on the region.

The unification of Africa was an important step, yet for some reasons it seems that some Africans are still unaware of Arab intentions in Africa which has been the same since the invasions of Egypt during the six hundreds a.d. When one looks at a map of the world and sees Sudan, Somalia and a numnber of Black nations suddenly classified as "Arab," one has to wonder what are Africans/Blacks worldwide doing to stop this swollowing of African lands, extermination of African people, enslavement and destroying of African men, women and chiildren, and imposing of non-African religions and culture that is totally against African traditions on Africans.

What does that say, that we as Blacks will follow the cultures and religions of people like sheep, simply because we think their religions are better?

RETURNING TO AFRICAN RELIGIONS

The main problem in Africa today is one of alien occupation of African lands, alien control of African resources and alien control of the African mind. African religions MUST BE REESTABLISHED ALL OVER THE AFRICAN CONTINENT AND RELIGIONS THAT PROMOTE THE CULTURE, BELIEFS AND RACISM OF OTHER PEOPLES SHOULD NOT BE TOLERATED.

The same religious concepts such as the lie called "the curse of Ham," used by the Semitic religions to justify slavery of Blacks is used to justy and promote/practice Arab and European racism against Blacks under the guise of religious teachings.

Any religion that calls for the enslavement of Africans or whose practicioners justy and practice the enslavement of Africans or anyone else should be eliminated from the consciousness of Blacks.

The same beliefs that are used to enslave Blacks in Sudan and Mauritania are used to occupy the lands of Blacks in Indonesia, Iryan Jaya and elsewhere. Slavery and kidnapping of Blacks in SE Asia, Melanesia, Papua-New Guinea has been going on for centuries and has been carried out by people who use the very same religious beliefs they use to justify their occupation and destruction of the Nubas, Dinkas, Nubians and other Africans in Sudan, Mauritania, East Africa and elsewhere.

AFRICAN RELIGIONS SERVE AFRICAN SPIRITUAL NEEDS

The original African religions such as Shango, Imbanda, Vadu, Condomble, Lucumi and even the ancient African Coptic Christian religion found in Nubia (which the Arabs are trying to eliminate) and Ethiopia are religions that contribute to the mental, psychological and spiritual needs of Africans. These religions deal with aspects of our being. When we observe the forces of nature and the power of the human mind and human capabilities in Shango, Vadu or Condomble, we recognize our devine powers, bestowed upon us by the Devine Mind (God), instead of kneeling before the statue of what is supposed to be some god imposed on us by people who continue to apply racism and enslavement on Black people on a worldwide scale.

Obviously, it is true there needs to be a reformation in African Spiritualist Religions (see the essay, "Harry Potter and the Black Origins of Magic," http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire For example, religions such as Condomble of Brail, Shango of Trinidad, Vadu of Haiti, African Spiritualism practiced in West and Southern Africa and the religions of the Black Dalits of India and the Blacks of the Pacific/Melanesia should be unified. There should be a system of rules, lore, traditions, writings, sacred texts to store the sacred knowledge and a system of temples and architecture. THERE SHOULD BE A REFORMATION IN TRADITIONAL AFRICAN RELIGION. For example some teachings should be refined such as depending on our ancestors (as we depend on Christ for all our needs, while sitting on our backs waiting). We should say, "with the guidance of our ancestors, we shall work harder," rather than believing, "God the ancestors will provide," therefore we need not work hard or strive for improvement.

In retrospect, as long as Africans/Blacks worldwide continue to allow the religions and cultures of others to permeate our minds, destroy our cultures, corrupt our morality, we will always be slaves to Arabs in Sudan and Mauritania, Indonesia and the South Pacific. We will always be used by missionaries from religions such as Mormism whose texts and writings still contain statements that some say are very insulting to Blacks, yet whose religion is spreading in Africa, as if they realize Africans have no time to think, but will accept anybody's religion, including those that say Blacks are "cursed."

Africa and the Black world from Latin America through the Caribbean and the U.S. to Africa, Dalit India, Melanesia, Australia and elsewhere must bring into being a world Black cultural and spiritual renaissance (see African Renaissance....http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire ) Religion more than any other ideology digs deep into the essence of human spirituality and being. How can we be who we are if we are permeated with the religious beliefs invented by other people, speaking their languages, wearing their attire, following their holidays and brutalizing our own people because they (the religious imperialists) hate us and told us too (as in Sudan).

The time has come to return to our own religions and culture. The key is reforming beliefs that ar4e outdated, preserving and improving what will contribute to the progress of Blacks worldwide. THE ESSENCE OF AFRICAN RELIGION IS BELIEF IN SELF AND BELIEF IN THE POWER OF THE DEVINE MIND (GOD) WITHIN US. With such belief, we will never feel inferior to anyone, we will never sit aside and watch invaders and religious imperialists swallow our motherland and exterminate our relatives (as some Africans are sitting back while Arab religious imperialism and racism destroys Africans), we will work to earn and take our place in the world as a great people, as we were before our minds become confused and our objectives changed.

Pianke Nubianem
Nubianem3@webtv.net
http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xArab Racism And Imperialism In Sudan (Africa)``x1007870400,58733,rasta``x``x ``xby Pianke Nubian

The political, cultural, economic and racial of Blacks (Africans, Dalit Indians, Black Latin Americans, Melanesians, Australian Aborigines...others) is very important in this period of the history of Blacks on this planet.

Efforts to exterminate or forcibly destroy the culture of Blacks in Sudan and Mauritania (Africa), Latin America, Melanesia, Papua-New Guinea, West Papua, Australia, and North Africa is rampant. The time has come to take measures to begin the process of unification iin order to stop the atrocities that are being committed against Blacks, particularly in Sudan, Africa and West Papua. The very same types of people, inspired by the very same type of religions are responsible for GENOCIDE AGAINST NEGRITICS (BLACKS) IN SUDAN AND IN WEST PAPUA.

In order to put a stop to the atrocities, Blacks (Papuans, Melanesians, Australian Aborigines, ect...) in Melanesia and the region shiould and must unite with Blacks in the Americas (there are 300 millon Blacks throughout the Americas), Africa (with 800 million), Europe (abot five million), India (300 million Black Dalits/Untouchables and 300 million Black "Tribals."). The entire Black population of Melanesia/South Pacific Region may be about 30 million. (Read more on the ancient Black trade networks, "Susu Economics: The History of Pan-African Trade, Commerce, Money and Wealth," pub. by www.1stbooks.com also "Susu and Susunomics," www.iuniverse.com and "A History of the African-Olmecs: Black Civilizations of America from Prehistoric Times to the Present Era," pub. by www.1stbooks.com

The first agenda must be to convene a worldwide Pan-Negro conference, where all people of Black/Negritic/Black Australoid origins, who are victims of the same racism, colonialism, casteism and religious sanctified racism are suffering. WE ARE SUFFERING BASED ON ONE THING....OUR SKIN COLOR, OUR NEGRITIC/AFRICAN RACIAL ORIGINS.

(1) The Black community of Papua New Guinea, West Papua, Fiji, Melanesia, Australia, the South Pacific SHOULD WORK TO CREATE A SINGLE PAN-MELANESIAN NATION IN THE REGION. That can be accomplished by working to politically and economically unite the Melanesians, Papuans and Black Aboriginals, to work on methods of improving the economies and creating a regional and united force for self-defence

(2) Blacks of the Melanesian region, Papua-New Guinea/West Papua, East Timor, Australia and the region should work to unify with Blacks in Africa and America. So far, Africa has taken steps to unify the continent and that attempt is simply one stage of the OBJECTIVE OF IMPLIMENTING PAN-NEGROISM (THE UNIFICATION AND PROTECTION OF THE BLACK RACES OF THE WORLD), on a worldwide basis and stopping the atrocities and destruction of the cultures of Blacks. See more on this issue at http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire
http://dalitstan.org
http://www.raceandhistory.com

(3) Melanesians, Papua-New Guineans, West Papuans, Australian Aborigines and other Blacks in Asia MUST AND SHOULD JOIN IN THE YEARLY (PAN-AFRICAN/PAN-NEGRO) conferences that are held, where the liberation, economic assistance, military assistance and cooperation among the world's Black nations and communities is discussed.

The fact is, as far as Africans are concerned as well as Blacks in the Americas and elsewhere, Blacks in the Melanesian, Papan, Australian and South Pacific are part of the African/Black diaspora (see the book, "The Black Untouchables of India, pub. by www.claritypress.com see also "Susu Economics: The History of Pan-African Trade, Commerce, Money and Wealth," pub. by 1stBooks Library, www.1stbooks.com email, 1stbooks@1stbooks.com ) One writer Runoko Rashidi and others such as V.T. Rajshekar made that point clear in their works ( see http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runko.html ) or www.raceandhistory.com

During the 1960's and 1970's, when Africans in Africa and elsewhere were fighting for their independance, so were Blacks in East Timor, Papua and Melanesia. Senegal, an African nation along with others took an interest in contributing to the liberation of Black people in these Pacific nations. Today, the objective of Pan-Africanism or Pan-Negroism (which includes uplifting the entire Negritic population of planet earth) is still one of the strong political objectives of Blacks, although many isms and confusing schemes are aimed at pulling Blacks apart.

As long as Blacks continue to suffer and continue to be exploited, the need for African and Black world unity will forever remain. When we are totally free of alien racist and sanctified religious colonialism, we will still need unity and cooperation in order to maintain our upward mobility and security, just as Europeans will do everything to maintain theirs.

In retrospect, the time has come for Blacks in Papua-New Guinea, West Papua, Fiji, Melanesia, Australia and the entire Pacific/Asia region to unite among themselves and work for unification and military, economic, cultural and other types of unity and cooperation among Blacks in places like America, Latin America, Africa, Europe, and elsewhere.

The colonialists, occupiers of Black lands, religious imperialists will do all they can to tell Blacks they are not "Black," and they have no connection. Yet, these same people will use the racism and the sanctified racism of their religions to implement oppression on ALL BLACKS BECAUSE OF OUR FACTUAL CONNECTIONS AND THE FACT OF OUR BEING
BLACK PEOPLE.

When Blacks around the world unite economically, culturally and militarily to stop the atrocities being committed against Blacks in Mauritania (occupied by Arabs and Berbers), Sudan (occupied by Arabs), West Papua (also occupied), New Caledonia, parts of India and parts of Northern Africa, it is when we will be able to develop on a worldwide scale. As long as Blacks in places like Colombia, Brazil, other Latin American nations, parts of Africa, Europe, North America, Melanesia, India and Australia continue to be divided, we are going to be like scattered grains of sand over the planet, with no strength and no power.

Just try this for once. Let the Black Melanesians of Papua New Guinea, West Papua (Irian Jaya), Melanesia, Australia and Torres Straits and the entire region unite into a single Nation, just as the Japanese composed of thousands of islands and the Philipinos and Indonesians are made up of thousands of islands but are still united. When Blacks in Melanesia accomplish this objective, the racist poliies of "ASIANIZATION" AND GENOCIDE BEING WAGED ON BLACKS IN MELANESIA WILL HAVE TO STOP.

A UNIFIED BLACK NATION IN MELANESIA WILL HAVE TO BE SUPPORTED BY AUSTRALIA, BECAUSE IT WAS BLACKS (EAST TIMORESE BLACKS AND MIXED) IN EAST TIMOR WHO STOPPED THE JAPANESE FROM INVADING AUSTRALIA DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR.

Can Australia and New Zealand feel safe today?? They ought to help Melanesia unify and build a strong Black nation of more than twenty million people in the region, well armed and politically and economically strong and pwoerful. In a few decades, Indonesia, China, Japan and other nations in the region may implement their "Asianization" policy and overrun Australia, where the Black Aboriginal population has suffered enough.

In retrospect, it should be and is the duty of Blacks everywhere to join in unity with Blacks in Melanesia as well as the South Pacific and India, some of the world's most oppressed, in order to bring about the development of Blacks in Asia. We should then unify all over the world and stop the genocide, economic deprevation, exploitation and racism being committed against Blacks all over the world.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xBlacks Around The World Must Unite``x1008043200,32712,rasta``x``x ``x( Ras Mandingo )

There's a very good book called "Jesus lived in India" wich can illustrate this topic. Also "the murder of Christ" is wonderful.
So interesting to see Jesus as an articulated disciple, who chose himself, to show how much we could do ourselves!
it's really degenerative this idea of Jesus as someone who could do our work for ourselves!
As Cheik Anta Diop said in Civilization or Barbarism " Crist is a title for someone who watch over the misteries".
Thanks for the cultural and educational vibes!
RAs Mandingo, posting from Brasil.
________________________________________________________

( Ingrid )

That is an interesting book, which I read a while back but it is important to remember that Christ or KRST is the title of a person at a particular stage of development and throughout African history there were many. That is the reason the descriptions vary from region to region. But at least from all evidence they were black.
________________________________________________________

( RootsWomb(man) )

The title "Christ" (anointed one) has its ROOTS from the word KRST, also seen in the word "Krishna" in its masculine form, "Kali" in its feminine form, both meaning and being BLACK.

"The earliest gods and messiahs on all the continents were black. Research has yielded an impressive amount of material on the subject...The Messiahs, some of whom lived many centuries before Christ, had lives which so closely paralleled that of Christ that it seems most likely that the story of the latter was adapted from them. Moreover, the word Christ comes from the Indian, Krishna or Chrisna, which means "The Black One." J.A. Rogers

ROOTS
________________________________________________________

( Akinkawon )

Generally most of J.A. Rogers work could be easily proven today and I maintain a healthy respect for his insights, however, I believe that the Greeks and Romans got their concept of a Christ from the Egyptians hence they got closer to the ancient meaning - the anointed one.

Given the fact that persons in training for higher enlightenment used to travel to distant lands to learn about our diversity, the Indians knew the concept of Christhood before the Greeks and Romans. They would have coined the meaning ‘the Black one’ from the appearance of the enlightened one. They may not have known what the Egyptians then later the Coptic meant by a KRST which is pronounced Christ before and after the use of vowels.

The Jews learned of this divine state from the Egyptians and they have been trying since then to make an anointed one for themselves. They do not know how that state is attained.

Egypt was the dominant power in the World at one time and people from all lands traveled to Egypt to get enlightened or at least sit at the feet of high priests.

A point of importance is that the enlightened ones of Egypt came from many different regions in Africa all the way to the Bantu people. The Egyptians were very fond of learning from the other African peoples with whom they traded and they held the elders in Nubia and Ethiopia in high regard.

I am drifting from the topic to make an important point often missed in the best of African history. All past and present enlightened Africans learned from all the peoples they encountered and they held the elders in the remotest parts of Africa in high regard.
Also there are many different African names for that same state of Christhood that is well depicted in the symbols of more indigenous Africans.

Even in the Christian concept of a Christ they show him traveling to many regions to learn. This was not only an Egyptian practice but was a practice developed in more Ancient African culture.

So as Ingrid alluded, a KRST is not one physical person for all eternity. Many different people have embodied the essence of life and have been able to assist in the evolution of humanity. KRST is the highest stage of human development. However what is depicted in the Christian concept of a Christ is not of the highest realization but more of a compilation of the characteristics of more indigenous anointed ones. There are many parts of their depiction that rings true but there are other parts that clearly show they did not grasp the essence of that stage of development. (QUITE UNDEDRSTANDABLE)

Looking for a Christ is a big deal today only because most people are lost but this was a natural developmental process for all people before people entered a new phase of corruption that started when Europeans migrated/invaded Africa, a land they had lost contact with and did not regard and remember was their former homeland.

I feel sorry for those who are in search of a White saviour because historically no one has stood out but the African saviours are many and legendary. That would make another interesting discussion. The idea that people could stay ignorant and simply claim to believe and that equals salvation or enlightenment is the most disrespectful thing they can do today. It means the very myths they hold they don’t understand. As even in the Christian book it shows how a saviour is a learned person who does not allow racial prejudice to block him from learning.

These are the good examples they could draw from their ‘bibles’ but no, today if you tell some Black Christians (that includes Rasta Christians) to examine the culture closest to them, they are more afraid than Whites. There can be no worst form of slavery than that.
________________________________________________________

( RootsWomb(man) )

HOTEP!

YES! You are absolutely correct! The KRST pre-dates KRISHNA, as Kush/Khemet is India's MOTHER...but I LOOOOOVED when you said this:

"These are the good examples they could draw from their ‘bibles’ but no, today if you tell some Black Christians (that includes Rasta Christians) to examine the culture closest to them, they are more afraid than Whites. There can be no worst form of slavery than that."

TRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

AFRIKANS - ARIZE!
________________________________________________________

( livelyup )

Greetings,

I give thanks for the powerful reasoning.
I&I believe that there is an important relationship that has been alluded to here but not spoken of explicitly, that is the the need for a context out of which an elightened one (KRST, christ, buddha, sadhu, sage...) may emerge. It is probably not enough for any individual to simply wish to become wise. For this wish to become reality requires that they are able to exist in a community that values wisdom, as opposed to the rote repition of 'truth', and that has developed a respect for the methods of attaining that wisdom. This, of necessity, is synonymous with a repect for the importance of the individual reaching understanding by their own power, rather than this understanding being handed down via an institutionalised source.
This may be the reason for the large number of african sages that have achieved historical prominance. In the african communities there seems to have existed communities that treasured wisdom, activley researched and applied the means to its attainment, and who celebrated and protected the wise.
In my own ancestral lands of Europe this was not the case since the coming of the romans. With them came institutionalised truth, which served their broader aims of a total dominance of all forms of defining what was legitimate. They activley sought to completely destroy all traces of the existing wisdom culture in its druidic form sending their death squads to explicitly exterminate these forms of social practices. Any subsequent efforts on the part of european people to re-connect with traditions of wisdom were met with persecution, torture, and death. This institutionalised legitimacy became part and parcel of european culture, and was a significant part of the genocide that we wrought on the indiginous inhabitants of the lands that we subsequently subjegated. We became the new romans. On an individual level for the average european this situation that has only very recently been, to some extent, reversed, with the renewed interest in wisdom traditions that has taken place since the 1930's and a corresponding lessening in the institutional capacity to suppress this trend. While the wait continues for a visible manifestation and personification of this new appreciation of wisdom amongst those of european cultural origins, ini would suggest that appropriate icons and exemplars may be found in the myths and belief systems that existed before the influence of the roman conquerers. Scratch an old celtic god/goddess, hero / heroine deep enough and you may just find the faintest traces of the 'white krst' that currently proves so ellusive.
Far more insidious has been the position of women with respect to participation in the search for enlightenment. Even within cultures that have been tolerant and supportive of those who seek wisdom, i&i believe that it is true to say that women have not been able to participate with equal freedom and power. Once again, perhaps it is in the more symbolic forms of myth and legend that we see personifications of the female krst principle.
Ini believe that the rasta collective need to be aware of this. Perhaps it is important for us to reason on how we may best create a community that best supports and transmits wisdom, and that activley pursues and develops the ways of wisdom, for all people who have the desire to travel this road.

Much respect and love,

Paul
________________________________________________________

( Akinkawon )

Interesting point, but a wise one ‘a KRST’ does not have a fragile ego that needs massaging. A KRST comes with the wisdom for the times we live in and the time we live in is antagonistic to the truth and higher principles so a real enlightened one would know how to navigate these times. It is not as if an enlightened one could be ignorant of the present environment.

Those that are in search of higher heights would value the truth for what it is whether it comes through a Man or Woman. It is the arrogance of males that has opened the way for females to become Women. As most females had to rely on their wits and other senses to survive the arrogance of male superiority, many are more developed today to reason on higher levels. The principle of Christhood is gender neutral, therefore any one (male or female, Black or White can attain it) the key is in knowing the processes for developing that essence in your self. This can be discussed some time in the near future.

But for the purposes of this discussion, it does not matter if many or few people can detect the KRST as those that were/are on the path of resisting mental slavery would see the KRST first as a aid or teacher then in themselves.

The KRST has different levels of meaning.

First it relates to those who have attained that union with the universal essence therefore can reason from a Universal understanding, then as a principle.

Another point is the reason at a particular time different cultures see the KRST with different features is because it usually is more that one person.

One person attains this union, and then the lessons are passed to others who were seeking (disciples). This brings about many such enlightened persons who disperse to areas where enlightenment is needed. So in China they may depict an anointed one with different features around the same time others are being portrayed differently in other parts of the world.

It is about a body of ideas that are realized through a discipline.

To become the embodiment of higher divine essence those seeking must first develop their principle of Manhood and Womanhood (this is different from maleness and femaleness). These principles are what give birth to the neutral essence (kundalini), commonly called the Son of God.

There are female names for Women who have attained this balance of Christhood. We can always develop this further as I have seen RootsWomb(man) referred to a few.

The people who are aware of these forces always hold the principles in high regard and they hold their teachers in the highest esteem. This is present today. It is just that too few people are sufficiently aware of the rudiments of history to be mentally liberated.

That is what they mean by many are called but few a chosen. The words of truth go out to the multitude but few people are willing to overcome laziness to do their own investigation to realize the truths for themselves.

Today many are called but so few have done the preparatory work of informing themselves so they are unprepared to reason on any level above their emotions.

Many Whites are trying but they are yet to overcome their superiority complexes and to some extent arrogance when attempting to reason with the past and to a large extent Africans.

RA SPECT
________________________________________________________

( livelyup )

Greetings,

thankyou for the clarifications and reasoning. Seen. The importance of community that I was reffering to was not for the benifit of those that have achieved mastery. As you have quite rightly pointed out, the sage has little need for the approval of others, being as they are aware of the futility of such distinctions as approval and disapproval. Rather i considered it to be of importance to those (such as myself) who are beginning on the way. The sort of disciple/master relationship that you referred to is an example of what I had in mind, though I also had in mind some of the more practical elements of life. This concern stems from a growing unease about the fundamental incompatibility of modern forms of life and the attainment of any form of wisdom. I&i am wishing to reason further on this, the relationship of wisdom to both the culture that surrounds (and hopefully supports) it, and the meditations, methods, tools, and techniques used for the perfection and development of understanding.

Respect and love
Paul
________________________________________________________

( Akinkawon )

You have a good understanding as you interpreted the points quite well.

The point about finding a master is really something that you discover for yourself by you posing the questions and examining the responses you get. If you have the ability to grasp higher heights soon you would find yourself relating to several persons on a different level without any one telling you they are part of any particular group or school.

Discovering a Master is part of your own personal journey. I know my master and even if I introduce you to the individual, who has assisted many other individuals who in turn assist others, you still may not recognize them based on your needs.

Also, to ensure you do not waste your time in your search you should put on the table the deep questions you have and examine the different answers you get.

Finding masters is a major part of self-discovery as no one can do it on their own. But it is really up to you to recognize the master first through your own diligence and perseverance. Trust yourself!

RA SPECT
________________________________________________________

( Ras Mandingo )

Greetings Brehtren!

Someone told me that: "when the disciple is ready, the master will appear". Good topic that you point. One has to be honest and listen to the own conscience , that is always judging, comforting or praising us. In the old times, God was the voice of one's conscience. It's funny because in portugues, conscience means "with science. when I can realize what is wrong, I'm closer to re-vealing what is right.

There's a youniversal/universal truth that can be feel and experinced directly. And so, one will start to meet people that are also looking for answers, and will be able to compare, to inpire, to get inspiration... It's getting self-conscious that you are on a way. But to where? heaven or hell? How we die is how we live.

THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS

Jesus said: "Whoever finds the interpretation of this sayings will not taste death. Let one who seeks not stop seeking until one finds. When one finds, one will be disturbed. When one is disturbed, one will be amazed, and will reign over all."
________________________________________________________

( E.A.Sisi Tafari )

BLESSED BE THE HOLA ANNOINTED,HAILE SELLASSIE 1
Yes I;

Perfect trend;I give thanks.

To the brother from europe, pursue whatever is your righteous dream and help will come your way.
________________________________________________________

( IanI )

Ah! Greetings, Greetings!
Paul and Akinkawon!

What a refreshment for me morning to see the two reasoning here this day. And reaching overstandings and seeing the points made, how I must admit that brings I a wonderful sense of joy and a warmth. Seen.

Years ago, when I did first climb the hills to reason with James, quite a few white ones came to meet him, but me notice them brought with them pre-concieved attitudes and ideas of "enlightenment" from other religions or books or churches or temples. And all they saw when they saw James was, because of all that mind-conditioning and in-doctrination, was a 'dirty, scraggly, little, black man' that them could not relate to. A very, very few stayed and realized His Wisdom and accepted Him as their teacher and guide. But to most, Africa, Rastafari, Blackness, Natural Livity... all held undertones of the 'un-civilized'... the 'savages'. I think that for them this was sub-conscious, but isn't that what 'self knowledge' and 'enlightenment' is all about? Getting to know ones own self...consciously as well as sub-consciously?
I never felt any kind of ill feelings towards these people, just that I felt that maybe them would be on a very long, long journey since them did not seem to have a very good grasp on what them was really lookin for.

Irie Ites.
ONE LOVE/HEART/MIND
IanI Rastafari
Guidance and Protection
________________________________________________________

( Jenny )

That is quite true for even African people. A very intelligent friend introduced me to a man whom he said was a teacher of the way and I traveled all the way to another country to meet him. The man did not look like an intelligent person so I wrestled with the idea about what is the look of intelligence. I could remember struggling with the feeling of disappointment. It is funny, but I want to go back because I missed out on an opportunity. Ingrid supposed to know who I talking about.
Many people are unaware of how media and certain images in books have altered our perceptions. I had this image of how Sai Baba looks and moves so I expected someone like him. But this man was very ordinary looking and he didn’t do anything spectacular at first glance. When I got home I had these strong feelings and I still wish to go back. You are correct and it affects even African people who don’t know ordinariness. Simplicity, that’s it.
________________________________________________________

( IanI )

irie Sistren

Oh so true. In Jamaica is where IanI Rastafari get so much condemnation and rejection and scorn! And yet a white preacher man will come talkin about a white savior god and the people literally fall at his feet!! Pre-con-cieved brainwashment of the masses that can be that obvious, or as sub-conscious as I did speak of earlier.

The Realization for IanI is that the Naturalness of Creation is the Beauty of the Manifestation and that is the Simplicity the I speaks of. As far as 'going back', sistren, well may I suggest that the I forward when the opportunity presents itself once again and then perhaps the I will be in the mental and spiritual place where all that is being offered will be available unto the I. Seen. Give thanks.

Ites to the Most High.
IanI Rastafari
Guidance and Protection
________________________________________________________

( livelyup )

Greetings and thanks to all!

First may i&i thank Akinkawon and all of the others who have patiently taken the time to reason and respond to the questions that i&i asked. This board is a special place that produces a truly wonderous array of thought and vision. I&i am lucky indeed to have stumbled upon it, it is not at all what i expected.....
Which brings me to this. IanI, once again you have demonstrated your uncanny gift at seeing straight into my mind and past the pretense that it is so often guarded with. Indeed, i&i have struggled to accept this rasta way. I have compared it overmuch with that which i was familiar, the zen, the tao, and the other asian schools. I cannot count how many times i&i have said in my mind, "they are really just like......". But you aren't, are you? Rasta is itself, and while it may be true that this livity aims to the same place as others, that is not the same as it being an identical thing. And so i&i have struggled on, thinking, thinking, too much thinking, when it is surrender that i&i must be practising instead. I have been a poor student of history. The truth never comes in the form that you expect it to (is this the first trial on the quest?). All of the great teachers have come from unexpected places, which in itself is a teaching about the idiocy of expectation....
So, Akinkawon, i&i will practice accptance and surrender, and will meditate, and hopefully one day will have a question of some worth to ask of those that write on this board. I will attempt to reveal my deep questions. But there is work to be done first. Thank you, and all, again for your help along the way.

Respect and love
Paul ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xJesus travel to Ethiopia according to Coptic``x1008561600,99364,``x``x ``xPosted By Ayinde

I am now watching this White woman on BBC cable, who is relating how she is leading a group that is fighting for their rights to live in peace in Zimbabwe.

It is amazing to hear how she condemns Mugabe for passing laws to legitimize what he wants to do.

The bias, hypocritical BBC interviewer cannot even pose proper questions to this silly mindless female who thinks that the only rule of law are those set down by the British.

I don't support Mugabe's methods and timing. I find he stayed too long to do something about land reform. I find his campaign on land reform is more about staying in power than the true reform that is required to develop that country.

But hearing this female articulate how he is passing laws to legitimize what he wants to do would have been humorous if we were not addressing serious issues. These hypocrites pretend they cannot reflect and see that their occupation of Lands in Africa was illegal and staying there illegally over time does not make it legal. They cannot see that Britain and the rest of Europe/America continually pass laws in an attempt to legitimize their crimes.

In fact the debt to sensible Zimbabweans is far greater than they imagine, and it cannot simply be repaid with land reform alone. In fact some Zimbabweans are so mentally enslaved that they are worse than many other Africans in the Diaspora who are trying to erase their African heritage.

But this is the power of European Bias Media; they convey what they want to viewers without putting things in a proper historical context.

Why Mugabe is right...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe: Whites condemn Mugabe ``x1008804936,13337,rasta``x``x ``xby P.A.Barton

There have been many contributions to the origins of AIDS (Aquired Immune Defficienty Syndrome) over the past few years. There have been
many versions of the sources of AIDS. Yet, a study of African history
does not show any evidence of any disease like AIDS having such a
devastating effect on Africa since Egyptian times to the rapid spread of AIDS over the past ten years. (See the book: Susu Economics The History of Pan-African Trade, Commerce, Money and Wealth (ISBN# 1-58721-454-7) 1stBooks Library, www.1stbooks.com

For example, some have blamed a "green monkey" for having spread AIDS among humans, raising the question as to why AIDS was not around thousands of years before the green monkey is said to have bitten someone. Was this the first "green monkey" to bite a human and pass AIDS? The question is as haunting as the idea that the moon is made of
"green cheese."

There are many scientists, doctors, biologists and ordinary people who believe that the so-called AIDS "virus" was invented in a laboratory with the intention of being used a tool for population control. According to some scientists, including prominent immuno-defficiency specialists, it appears that the AIDS virus is a "retro-virus" composed of viruses from two sources.

One source is sheep (syphilis is said to come from sheep as well) and the other is bovine (or cow) viruses. It is also said that retroviruses alread inhabit the body and are dormant but can be triggered to flare up later. The stomach may contain such retroviruses and it is a fact that diseases can be spread when persons visit the bathrooms and do not wash their hands before leaving.

IS "AIDS" THE ONLY CULPRIT IN AFRICA

At the present time, AIDS is devastating the Nations of Africa and South Asia, the Caribbean and parts of Brazil. One notices that these nations have one thing in common. They have large populations of people of African descent, huge populations faced with poverty, a myriad of tropical diseases with symptoms very similar to AIDS, such as "sleeping sickness", malaria, tuberculosis, worms and others.

According to African Link Magazine (Volume 6, #4; 4th Quarter, 1997, p. 27), the isolation of many African communities from Africa's great rivers and water drainage systems such as the Zambizi, Nile, Volta, Gambia, Niger, Limpopo and other river systems have led to many poor and isolated rural people having little access to potable water. In other areas where drainage is not efficient, "because of this lack of access some diseases such as water-borne bilharzia, intestinal parasites and guinea worm are common."

Sadly, these and many other such tropical diseases are now lumped into the "AIDS" category. Malaria and sickle cell anemia is widspread in Africa and the tropics as well. There is also a factor that is being lookied at by many nations in Africa. Is AIDS being spread by mosquitoes? In the Dominican Republic, that issue was made public after many startling observations.

MEASURES MUST BE TAKEN TO STOP AIDS:

1. Governments must take steps to create the medicines that will help stop the spread of AIDS and cure any of those infected. Many governments can use or combine their scientists to work on creating cures

2. Measures should be taken to stop all behavior that causes the spread of AIDS. Ancient traditions, sexual taboos and laws making irresponsible behavior illegal should be passed.

3. Young people and adults alike must be reminded of the value of not being promiscuous, of staying faithful to one partner and of not engaging in risky behavior.

4. Drug consumption must be lessened significantly. Crack cocaine and many narcortics including legal toxic drugs may help weaken the immune system. Alcohol abuse can also weaken the body's ability to fight diseases.

5. Measures should be taken by organizations, governments and individuals to encourage testing for AIDS as well as other diseases.

6. African, Indian, Caribbean, American and other governments faced with AIDS in their territories and continual infections, should encourage population expansion. In Africa, the tradition has always been to have large families due to the devastation that diseases such as malaria, sickle cell anemia, kwashiokor, parasites and others can and have caused in negatively affecting population growth. (Read more on this issue in: Susu Economics The History of Pan-African Trade, Commerce, Money and Wealth (ISBN# 1-58721-454-7) www.1stbooks.com

7. AIDS was curtailed in Cuba from the beginning. African governments should study what methods they used to control the spread of AIDS and should implement these methods.

8. There should be studies of people who are immne to AIDS. For example, according to U.S. News and World Report (January 29, 2001; p.40) "Some people with Eastern European roots have a gene that confers resistance to AIDS." Governments and Pharmacuetical companies in Africa and worldwide should conduct studies to see whether cures can be created from these "anti AIDS genes." After all, it is the resistance of some Africans to malaria that has helped to create anti-malaria vaccines.
(read more on the AIDS crisis and how it can be controlled
http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xHow Aids Can Be Stopped Or Controlled``x1008806000,63338,rasta``x``x ``xBy Corey Gilkes

For most Xians the story of the birth of the Jesus figure is pretty much clear cut; simply turn to the New Testament and there outlined is everything one needed to know about how the saviour, god incarnate came into being. Exactly how Dec 25th came to be the celebrated date may pose a bit of a problem for some but that is hardly a problem worth graying hairs over. After all, the main thing is that "He" was born and he was born to save mankind from eternal damnation.

That is the story of the Jesus of faith. And, as is usually the case, the Jesus of faith is confused with actual history. The story of the baby Jesus being born to humble parents in a manger with three wise men paying homage to him and later being spirited out of the country to escape the wrath of Herod is romantic but by no means reality. In fact, as Dr John Dominic Crossan, of Depaul University once pointed out in an interview, we do not know where Jesus was born, we don’t know when he was born and, if you examine the whole issues of the Virgin birth, we do not know how he was born either.

Truth is often stranger than fiction and nowhere is that more obvious than in matters relating to religion; as Edward Gibbon pointed out the historian must be more circumspect than the theologian. For "people of colour" an additional question must also be asked: "what does this have to do with my position in the world socially, politically and economically?" This question should be the single most important question in the minds of the colonised because the most destructive of the colonised institutions is religion. The best way to bring about complete subjugation of a people is to destroy their image of the Divine. The political implications of historicising age-old allegorical myths is perhaps one of the least examined aspects of religion by those who have been colonised by it. This will be explored in another article.

Beginnings of the Nativity

Even today in the so-called Information Age it comes as a profound shock to many Xians to learn that their Nativity story, far from being a miraculous event some 2000 odd years ago, is a refashioned compilation of pre-Xian myths stretching back to very ancient times. The damning evidence can still be found in the Nile Valley upon the walls of Amenope’s tomb, in a cave in India called Elephanta, in the Drama of Bel and the life of Pythagoras and Zeus and a host of other historical and mythical figures all of whom preceding the Xian Era.

One of the remarkable things about early Xianity is the fact that the early devotees made no mention of the birth of their supposed saviour or even his supposedly fleshly existence for that matter. The earliest Gospel, Mark, speaks nothing about the ancestry, birth and genealogy of Jesus and contemporary Greek and Roman writers and historians of that period have nothing to say about him either save vague, generic references to the [temporal] title of the Christ. In some cases where writers like Josephus and Paul make "specific" mentions of Jesus, these references turn out to be forgeries written in by zealous students, and redacting bishops. Also, there was strong opposition to the "pagan" custom of celebrating birthdays – ironic when one considers that from top to bottom "paganism" is woven into Xianity’s beliefs and customs. At first, his birth date was on January 6th; however, by the 4th century it was noticed that Xian worshippers were also partaking in Mithraic celebrations of the Sun [natalis solis invicti] on December 25th. Realising that their followers were gravitating towards the worship of Mithra, Roman Xian authorities moved the feast date of Jesus from January 6th to December 25th. Such were the lengths these early proselytisers were prepared to go to win or retain converts.

The need to locate and document hard evidence of the various aspects of Jesus’ life did not gain momentum until the various books that make up the bible were being compiled. Up until this time there was a prevailing belief that the end of the world was imminent and the Christ would return. By the time it was realised that this was not going to happen, the Doctors of the Church, in an effort to consolidate their positions of authority, needed to gather as much evidence of the errant saviour. The details of his "biography" and genealogy were pieced together from the numerous Asian mythologies that permeated Rome at the time. Even more profound was the influence of "pagan" Africa: up until the time of Constantine, the capital of Christendom was not in Rome at all but in Egypt. It was Egyptian monks, such as Anthony the Hermit, who started the Church’s tradition of monasticism. The worship of Yusir and Auset was still immensely powerful and as I will show in a subsequent article was the main source for the Jesus myth.

It was also necessary for the Church Fathers to create a lineage that linked Jesus to the line of David. According to Jewish legend a saviour from the line of David would be born and he would lead the Hebrews out of Roman bondage. Interestingly, though the authors of the Synoptic Gospels copied from Mark, theirs was a shabby job indeed. To this day there are two almost totally contradicting genealogies [thank goodness the authors – who, remember, were "inspired men" – were not able to meet and match their stories! If we were to accept these biblical narratives as historical, as Xians say we should, innumerable inconsistencies would pop up. In fact, the Gospels are so muddled – even if we allow for the well-documented mistranslations, liberal editing and outright forgeries – it almost impossible to extricate reality from mythology and fact from absurdity. We have, for instance, the much misrepresented virgin birth; virtually all pre-Xian sacred sciences had their saviours born of a Virgin – among the Nile Valley Africans, Heru/Horus, as was his father Yusir/Osiris, was born of a virgin, the Great Mother Auset/Isis. The Osirian Drama spread to other parts of the Mediterranean and Asia becoming Mithra in Persia, Krishna in India, Bacchus and Dionysus in Greece and Rome. The creators of the biblical Jesus saw the advantage of matching the feats and characteristics of these pagan deities with similar feats and characteristics of Jesus. To this end they saw no problem with appropriating various attributes of a number of deities, particularly, those of Egypt and Asia Minor, and appending them to Christ Jesus.

Then there is the familiar story of the wise men coming from the east following a star. In Luke’s account there is no star; what we do have are shepherds watching their flocks by night which itself presents a problem. Shepherds are not out in the fields in December unless they have a death wish. But the yarn about the star itself should be looked at; here we have three "kings", coming from the east, following a star from the east [can you follow a star that is behind you?]. Further, how is it that we have a star detaching itself from orbit, and no one, especially the Chinese astronomers who at this period were observing everything in the heavens, did not notice such an astounding and for many terrifying event? How did the Dogon of Mali or the Greek and Roman star-gazers fail to take note of this? Most Lay Xians are blissfully unaware that we are speaking about a period in which just about everything was documented and many of these historical documents are still around. Such abnormal phenomenon would certainly cause a noteworthy upheaval.

The American Atheists view of this star-tale is worth repeating here:

How does one follow a star, anyway? If you start to follow a star, such as described here, shortly after its rising you will begin to head east (after all, it is said to have risen in the east). Thus, the Magi would have begun to head back home to Iran. By midnight, however, the star would have been south of our wise guys and the Magi would have been heading toward Saudi Arabia. As the night wore on toward morning, they would head westward toward the Mediterranean Sea. With the beginning of a new night of travel, this mad hatter behavior would replay again, the path of our unwise men describing a series of curlicues on the earth's surface. Depending on how fast they walked how regular their rate, the absolute sizes of these curlicues would differ greatly, and the final destinations would be incredibly different.

Even allowing for the miraculous stopping of the star over the nativity scene -- an impossibility of literally astronomical dimensions -- how would the wise men know which house was under it? Every time they came to a house apparently under the star, if they just walked around to the other side of the house, they would find the star apparently had moved to be over the next house, and so on! If there are any true believers reading this message, I have a challenge. Tonight go out and try to follow a star -- any star except the North Star. See where it gets you!

On second thought, don't exclude the North Star. Go for it! When you get to Santa Claus's house, give my regards to the elves.

We are told that in the Old Testament there were several prophecies foretelling the coming of Jesus. It’s claimed that the Old Testament contains numerous prophecies foretelling the coming of Jesus. For instance, Matt. 2:23 speaks about Jesus and his parents returning from Egypt and going to Nazareth "this was to fulfil the words spoken through the prophet: ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’". First off, the sect known as the Nazarenes were not given that name because of anything to do with Nazareth; judging by Roman maps, Nazareth did not even exist until the 4th century. Neither is there any such prophecy anywhere in the OT. Neither is there any credence in the view that Isaiah 7. V. 14 is foretelling Jesus’ birth by a virgin. The passage reads "Behold a virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel". However, the Hebrew text reads: "Behold the young woman [almah] is with child, and will give birth to a son, and she will call his name Emmanuel. This has nothing to do with any miraculous birth a few hundred years later. It is referring to a young woman who is already pregnant and it seems she has plans on naming him Emmanuel. Note that this passage was directed to King Ahaz and was not some reference to Jesus and Mary [who certainly did not name her child Emmanuel].

The term "virgin" also needs to be dealt with because, contrary to popular belief, it does not necessarily have to do with whether a woman had sexual intercourse. The Hebrews used two words to denote virgin – almah, which simply meant ‘a young woman’, and bathur which denoted a woman betrothed. The Greek writers, lacking a similar word in their vocabulary, used ‘parthenoi’ [hymen intact], thereby sowing the seeds for the misconception of the millennium. Also, in many traditional societies, ‘virginity had to do with one’s conduct, power, state of consciousness. So a woman who had five children would be called ‘virgin’ if here ways were pure, she embodied the values the values of the community, and every child she bore had an "Immaculate Conception".

Another discrepancy has to do with Herod. Now we are told that Herod murdered every male child in a grisly attempt to eliminate the infant Jesus. Remember now, we are told that all this actually happened, it is not to be read allegorically [which it should have been]. So if Herod did indeed do all this then how could he have done it from beyond the grave, because this man did after all die in the year 4 BCE? Now Herod was indeed guilty of killing infant children – his own. These children were murdered so that there could be no legitimate challenger for the position of High Priest. Note also that the many chroniclers of Herod, such as Josephus, who never hesitated to point out Herod’s many crimes, made no mention of what would surely have been the piece-de-resistance. In fact given the nature of such a crime, someone, whether in Syria, Rome, India or Egypt was bound to have recorded it. But we have nothing at all.

But wait, it gets better; Jesus was a baby during the reign of Herod and Quirinius, governor of Syria. Another problem arises here; if Herod died in the year 4 BCE and Quirinius did not become governor until the year 7 CE, Jesus remained a baby for 11-odd years! Then we have the census to deal with, the same census where "all the world" [the whole world?] was to be taxed. What census was this? We have no record of any empire-wide census by Augustus and Quirinius did conduct a census, but it was in Judea, not Galilee. And, given the militancy of the Hebrews, they would have been moving away from their villages, not towards them. Had the authors and redactors been more versed in history, they would have gotten away with it. Further, had the Romans really conducted a census and instructed everyone return to his ancestral village and city, the Empire would have collapsed. What with the state of transport in those days, having Spaniards return to Spain from Egypt, Africans returning to Egypt, Carthage, etc, it would have been utter chaos.

The purpose was not to mock anyone’s religious beliefs [though it could do with a kick in the backside], my aim as always is to shed some light on certain aspects of history so that there could be some discussion, research and deep introspection. Faith is no excuse for ignorance. The insistence by Eurocentric religious authorities that we simply accept these biblical stories on the basis of faith [the implication here is that these events are to be taken as historical] had and still has nothing to do with any god or piety. It has everything to do with political power and who holds it. This has been noted not only by Africentric scholars such as Dr Marimba Ani but by such outstanding Eurocentric religious scholars as Elaine Pagels and Robert Eisenman.

In another article I hope to expand upon the allegorical interpretation of the Nativity by showing its origin in the Egyptian funerary rituals and that culture’s astronomical observations.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xNATIVITY NONSENSE The Christmas Story ``x1009339200,21293,``x``x ``xby Tim Wise

The reviews came in quickly. And to no one’s surprise, the verdict was "two thumbs down."

"Can you believe how ruthless this man is? How cold blooded?"

"That monster has no regard for human life."

"What kind of person laughs about the deaths of thousands of innocent people?"

These are but a few of the righteously indignant comments heard over the course of the last two weeks: the reactions of journalists, U.S. political leaders, and everyday folks to the recently aired Osama bin Laden tape. Therein, bin Laden appears to take credit for the atrocities of 9/11 and to cavalierly dismiss any moral concerns about the loss of life involved.

To the extent the tape is an accurate translation, it is certainly a disgusting display of ethical depravity. But really now, did we need grainy VHS footage to demonstrate that Osama bin Laden was a thug? Or was its dissemination primarily for the purpose of re-inflaming the American public?

Of course there is nothing so true about indignation as the simple fact that it’s usually applied in a highly selective fashion. So it was easy to condemn the horrific rationalizations for brutality offered up by Soviet Commissars or their proxies during the cold war, for example, but much more difficult to apply the same moral calculus to the statements of America’s allies: often brutal dictators whose regimes we supported no matter how many innocent civilians they butchered, tortured or "disappeared."

Certainly there is little reason to doubt that if someone had trained a video camera on U.S. clients like Duvalier, Marcos, Somoza, Pinochet or Suharto, we would have had the chance to be regaled with dismissive rationalizations of murder from them as well. Inhumanity, cruelty and barbarity, as it turns out, have never been deal-breakers for gaining the support of the United States government, after all.

What is of course interesting--or at least would be to a nation insistent on something so mundane as consistency--is how Americans react with horror to the cold, calculating comments of bin Laden, and yet brush aside (or fail to even learn about) the equally cold, calculating ways in which their elected officials and other U.S. spokespersons have regularly dispensed with human life, absent so much as a twinge of remorse.

After all, are the things bin Laden said really any more morally troublesome than the comments of former Secretary of State Madeline Albright? Remember, it was Albright who explained, also on camera, that even though roughly half-a-million children in Iraq had died from U.S. sanctions and bombing, ultimately, this cost was "worth it." (1)

In fact, the calculation that civilian deaths are "worth it" has a healthy pedigree, even extending to the Bush family itself. While George W. might become apoplectic at the dismissive manner in which Osama bin Laden shrugs off innocent lives, one doubts that he has ever lectured his father about the same thing. This, despite the fact that when Poppa Bush was asked whether capturing Manuel Noriega had been worth the deaths of the thousands of innocent Panamanians killed by U.S. forces in 1989, he responded that while "every human life is precious," ultimately "yes, it has been worth it." (2)

Are we to suppose that merely mouthing the words "every human life is precious," somehow makes the acceptance of mass killing less objectionable? More decent? Or instead, might not such a schism between what we say and what we do be even more disconcerting than similar pap spewing from the lips of bin Laden? At least Osama isn’t a phony.

As we bask in our rage over the bloodthirsty ruminations of our current Public Enemy Number One, perhaps we should also be willing to roll the tape, so to speak, on any number of equally disturbing comments by red, white and blue Americans.

Like the U.S. soldiers who bombed Iraqi forces even after they had surrendered on the field of battle in Operation Desert Storm--a certifiable war crime--and laughed about their actions, calling the strafing "a turkey shoot," and likening it to "shooting fish in a barrel." As one of America’s finest put it: "It’s the biggest Fourth of July show you’ve ever seen. And to see those tanks just ‘boom,’ and more stuff keeps spewing out of them...it’s wonderful." (3)

Or how about Ed Korry, Ambassador to Chile in 1973, when the U.S. sponsored the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende, and replaced it with one of the most brutal dictatorships in the hemisphere’s history? Prior to Allende’s victory, Korry was on record as saying: "Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty." (4)

Or what of former Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson? In 1971, as the U.S. seared the Laotian countryside with phosphorous bombs and napalm, killing tens of thousands of civilians, Johnson described the slaughter as "something of which we can be proud as Americans." He explained further that, "what we are getting for our money there is, I think, to use the old phrase, very cost effective." (5)

Or how about Robert Martens, who served in the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta at the time of the Indonesian coup that brought Suharto to power in 1965, and resulted in the mass murder of roughly 500,000 people? In discussing how the CIA provided the Indonesian military with a list of suspected subversives to assassinate, Martens noted: "It really was a big help to the Army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad. There’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment." (6) Little doubt that the head of al-Qaeda would second that emotion.

Then there’s Fred Sherwood, a former CIA pilot who was involved in the U.S.-led coup that overthrew the elected government of Guatemala in 1954. Later he took up residence in the country and became President of the American Chamber of Commerce there. In the late 1970’s, as the United States continued its two-decade long support of death squads and military dictators, Sherwood could think of nothing wrong with their murderous deeds: "Why should we be worried about the death squads? They’re bumping off the commies, our enemies. I’d give them more power...The death squad--I’m for it…Shit!" (7)

And last but not least, what should we make of Dan Mitrione? Mitrione was the former head of the U.S. Office of Public Safety in Uruguay. In that capacity, Mitrione’s job appears to have been instructing Uruguayan police and military officials on how to torture their political enemies more effectively. His favorite slogan, according to those with whom he worked, was "the precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect." Since torturers need to practice their craft, Mitrione would have his students test out all manner of devices--including electric shock to the genitals--on homeless beggars, kidnapped from the streets. Once Mitrione and his charges were finished with these torture models, they were routinely murdered. (8)

And yet in 1970, when Mitrione was himself kidnapped and killed by an Uruguayan rebel group, Secretary of State William Rogers attended his funeral, as did Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis, who staged a benefit for the family. White House Spokesman Ron Ziegler said of Mitrione, that his "devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example to free men everywhere." (9)

Yes indeed, the willingness to snuff out human life with absolutely no remorse or sense of guilt goes back a long way. At the risk of spoiling the patriotic mood, one might recall that the founding of this nation was dependent on the butchering of millions of indigenous people, who were typically dispatched gleefully by those "settlers" and pioneers who saw fit to steal their land. So too were we dependent on the stuffing of black bodies into the cramped bowels of slave ships, utterly indifferent as to how many would die on the long trip from Africa to the Americas. And millions did, while others laughed about it.

Ruthless? Cold-blooded? No regard for human life? To be sure, these statements describe Osama bin Laden, and on that we can all agree. But so too do they describe far too many of our own leaders, our own political and military elites. Unless and until we show as much interest in condemning this kind of bloodthirsty rhetoric from all quarters, and not just those defined for the moment as our adversaries, we will continue to stand as hypocrites to the rest of the world. We will continue to be seen as a people who don’t mean what we say. Or rather, as a nation that applies one standard of morality to ourselves, and a completely different standard to everyone else. And still we wonder, "why do they hate us?"

Tim Wise is a writer, lecturer and antiracist activist. He can be reached and footnotes for this article can be procured from him at tjwise@mindspring.com



NOTES:

(1) CBS, "60 Minutes," interview with Madeline Albright, conducted by Lesley Stahl, May 12, 1996. In discussing the effects of sanctions in Iraq, the following exchange took place:

Lesley Stahl: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

(2) New York Times, December 22, 1989, p. 16

(3) Blum, William 1995. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II. Common Courage Press: 336; also, "Road to Basra," Washington Post, February 27, 1991: 1.

(4) Quoted in "Controlling Interests," documentary film (San Francisco: California Newsreel), 1978, cited in Parenti, Michael. 1989. The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race. St. Martin's Press: 57

(5) Testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee, Hearings on Fiscal Year 1972 Authorizations, July 22, 1971: 4289; cited in Blum, 1995: 140

(6) Blum, 1995: 194; also, Kadane, Kathy, "CIA Lists," San Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1990; also, Covert Action Information Bulletin. Number 35, Fall 1990: 59, contains excerpts of interviews with U.S. Diplomats conducted by Kadane for SF Examiner article.

(7) Pearce, Jenny. 1982. Under the Eagle: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean. Latin American Bureau, London: 67; also, Schlesinger, Stephen and Kinzer, Stephen. 1999 (updated edition). Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. Harvard University Press; also, Lernoux, Penny. 1984. In Banks We Trust. Doubleday Books: 238, citing a CBS News Special, March 20, 1982 ("Update: Central America in Revolt")

(8) Blum, 1995: 200-203; Extracts from the report of the Senate Commission of Inquiry into Torture, accompanying the film script for the documentary, State of Siege. 1973, Ballantine Books: 194-196; also, "Death of a Policeman: Unanswered Questions About a Tragedy," Commonweal, September 18, 1970: 457; also, Langguth, A.J. 1978. Hidden Terrors. Pantheon: 249; also, New York Times, August 5, 1978: 3

(9) Blum, 1995: 203; also Langguth, 1978: 305.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xSelective Indignation: bin Laden’s Inhumanity, and Ours``x1009496843,96413,``x``x ``xBy Amon Hotep
November 01, 2001
http://www.uscrusade.com/

When people domesticate animals they enslave them, they rob them of their freedom to roam and live under the direct influences of nature. They are subjugated to the wills of people however misinformed and misdirected their wills.

This is the nature of nations that continually claim they are civilized. They wage wars under the pretext of helping the less fortunate or to advance 'noble ideals'. They have taken the arrogant and racist position that their values and outlook on life are somehow superior and all must yield to their wishes. In other words they seek to domesticate more and more people, who, just like domesticated animals, are very easy to control and exploit. They are also easier to slaughter. Of course these leaders' motives are always about economics and people are somewhat aware of this but most people are domesticated and when the master calls with a firm voice they know how to submit.

The problem America and its allies are having is that Afghanistan has resisted all attempts at Western Domestication and continue to do so today. A less domesticated people are difficult to capture. They don't have a single stable ruler whom Western Leaders could corrupt and exploit for the resources in that region.

Why do you believe Western Leaders keep insisting that Afghanistan should have a single ruler? Why can they not leave these people to work out their own system of governance and if they seek aid then make demands for changes in their human rights policies in exchange for the assistance? If European leaders felt there were people who wanted to leave the region they could easily address this through their own immigration policies.

But no, the people is not their concern, they can at best be cheap labour when domesticated the European way. What they need is a ruler who would yield to European demands. What about someone who is familiar to the people in the region but likes the luxuries of the West? Such a leader could serve 'our' interest. Talk to him, tell him we would finance him and protect him if he returns as the leader over all the Afghan tribes. Tell him he would be the person we would recognize and with whom we would enter all business transactions. What if he is old? Well better yet, he may not be too bothered with details; all 'we' have to do is keep him comfortable. Think of it, we could get him to sign contracts with us that no other government would be able to overturn. We can set up bases to protect our interest. These people need to be trained.

In animal training, positive reinforcement (the term for bribing with treats) is now the popular model. This is similar to bribing leaders to exploit the resources of a region. But if this fails with animals they easily revert to their old tried and tested ways of beatings. In the case of Nations it is war. Bomb them into submission.

This is not Al Capone and his bunch; this is the United States and its allies the biggest gangsters on the block.

Students of history should be aware how the Europeans made deals with American Indians and African 'nobodies' who were suddenly given titles and the 'rights' to sell the properties of all Africans and Indians. This is how it is done. One is only a leader if leading European powers recognizes and can manipulate him or her. So it takes little for them to appoint 'leaders' to sign deals. All of this is the exploitation that accompanies European domestication.

In order to exploit the resources in a region, they have to first exploit the people living on the land. The people have to be domesticated with European Leaders as their controllers so they would be accomplices in their own exploitation. Western leaders are impatient with the slow process of domestication that comes through food aid and 'religious' coercion. These tactics worked in the past, but in this age of instant communication and competing powers such methods could seem rather slow. Their economical needs are urgent.

They say there is a global recession and they are eager to exploit other untapped resources and stimulate some of their key industries. Who can complain about a two hundred billion dollar military aircraft contract? They have all seen the urgency in strengthening the military defenses. Who benefits and who pays the bill? A nation ripe with fear will not question the need for developing and improving defenses. A paranoid nation will not question the speed at which funds can be allocated to wage war. So ok, the UN has finally gotten some of the money the U.S. owes so they are now mute. They are obedient to the dominant European powers. They have demonstrated the level of their domestication.

I can imagine Bush and company in their offices talking among themselves prior to the U.S. attack: "You know it is time we get more involved in exploring the oil and natural gas pipelines in that region. We could easily get hold of that land and own all. What do these people know about billions of dollars? Let us hold our hands on negotiating with them. Something will give soon and we could pin everything on this Bin Laden chap. We can easily attack Afghanistan and put in place a leader favorable to our interest. Who will stop us if there is a compelling case requiring urgent actions to protect national security? Just keep the public sufficiently afraid to maintain support for our raids. Remind them it is our nation's security that is at stake."

In December 1940 William Henry Chamberlin wrote:
"I am anticipating the day when the possession of Tibet and Afghanistan will be represented as vitally necessary to the security of Kansas and Nebraska. There is no logical end to this elastic conception of 'security' short of the conquest of the whole world."
-- "War – Shortcut to Fascism," American Mercury, LI, 204 (December 1940), p. 399.

Given the history of American deceptions such a scenario is possibility.

Historically, this has been done; wars have been waged to advance economic interests. Most leaders claim it is their nation's security they are protecting. It is for these reasons the beginnings of many wars are shrouded in mystery (lies). To start a war one must stray far from the real intent and this is what we are witnessing today. To sustain wars leaders rely on lies and the means to communicate lies to people en masse. For these lies to have any impact, they require a highly domesticated public, suspicious of any view other that that of the controllers. They have coined the term 'propaganda war' as a way to legitimize misleading information. A propaganda war is very effective on a domesticated population. How else can anyone explain the ease at which so many people are willing to accept that their politicians are telling the truth?

They speak of having indisputable evidence but it is too sensitive to give the public, so they put out a set of circumstantial evidence that can fit a broad spectrum of people and have decided on bombardment with 'broad based' 'manufactured consent'. How else can you explain the gullibility of people notwithstanding the historical evidence that is available about wars and deceptions? American leaders are noted for lying to the public and they seized an opportunity when they felt the domesticated public would blindly support revenge to launch an attack on semi-domesticated Afghanistan. Yes these people in that region may be ignorant and the Taleban are trying to bring the people under their own brand of 'Taleban Domestication' but at least as a country they were not attacking another country to so do. Incidentally not one of the suicidal hijackers was from Afghanistan, most were from Saudi Arabia and they lived in different parts of Europe. There is no evidence that the Taliban supported or ordered the initial attack on America.

What makes European powers feel their brand of domestication is best for all people? Why are they so busy manufacturing consent and trying to control even the media outside of their borders? Freedom certainly does not exist for many people and most who feel they have attained it in European dominated countries are lost in the material trappings. Those immersed in Western materialism in their extreme illusionary states see themselves just like dog trainers and handlers who reign supreme over their animals.

Try telling any of those who are convinced that their leaders are correct to examine other possibilities and you may be snapped at like a well-trained dog that tolerates no subversion to his master's authority. I told one person on a discussion board to let us examine the so-called evidence and he immediately snapped back with a comment on the amount of people who died in the United States. There can be no discussion with such blind rage that seeks an outlet readily supplied by politicians.

The masters understand their dogs and most times they know how far they can go before they themselves get bitten. Anyhow, dog handlers are quick to remove animals from the pack that do not submit to their authority. Long ago they would openly killed such people who did not yield to domestication and although killings are still done, they regularly label such people who immediately become ostracized from the pack. So the word 'extremist' is the new label for those in opposition to European domestication.

Such is the world today, where leaders with the aid of mass media could command the masses to suspend reason and blindly follow them, even to their own destruction.

But this phenomenon is not new for each time people marvel at the obedience of their pets they are marveling at their ability to enslave another and are reinforcing their feeling of superiority over that animal.

People are conditioned through religion, politics and countless other ways to neglect reality and reason and be herded. Such people are considered 'civilized'.

Well, I have to disappoint many, they are not civilized they are simply domesticated.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThey are not civilized``x1010358353,71279,rasta``x``x ``xThe Solidarity Rastafari Organization wishes to inform all invited Guests or Delegates about the present situation in coming to St Martin.

Here in this French ruling Caribbean Island it is strict in dealing with immigration. You need to file for a 10 days visa from the embassy in your Island.

Taking into consideration the seriousness of the matter I and I inform one/ones, that entering the airport customs will require you present an Address for staying on the French Side of the Island, and a Visa for sojourning on the French Side of the Island.

Seeing also that all invited delegates and the various representatives from each Island and Organ will be making the trod to Anguilla , for the Conference, and in returning from Anguilla, the French Custom will demand you show him your Visa. That will permit you and your delegation a legal stay in the Island.

This goes for all English speaking Caribbean Country or Island, with the exception of Anguilla and all those with American nationality.

File for your Visa in advance, take along with you the letter of invitation, that will be send to you and your Organization from the St Martin / Anguilla Rastafari Organization working Committee.

All Delegates, Houses or Mansions wishing to participate in the
8th Caribbean Rastafari Organization Conference must confirm before the 15th of May in order to be registered. We request 40,-- USD (100,-- E.C.) per delegate in order to offset the cost of housing the International Gathering. This could be also offset with contributions of Ital Food and other means that we will be using on a daily basis.

If you need to communicate please call :

Cell : (int. prefix) 590 690 34 34 41
Phone:(int. prefix) 590 590 29 06 05
Fax : (int. prefix) 590 590 87 14 96
or e-mail us at solidarity@wanadoo.fr

As to coordinate this effort may the Blessings and Guidance of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie I be with de I dem.

In closing : we now Hail to our Most High and Supreme Creator for granting us life, strength, courage, faith and the Spirit of will to communicate within I and I Livity.

Multiples of Ises to our King and Redeemer -JAH RASTAFARI HAILE SELASSIE I- to fill you all with His Love, His Fear, and accept your Offers as a Sacrifice and allow I and I Consecration to be accepted in His Hola Sight.

RAS TAFARI BLESSINGS ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``x8th Caribbean Rastafari Organization Conference ``x1011441117,8047,rasta``x``x ``xBy: Ras Carlos Seales

Greetings Bredrins and Sistrens:

Give thanks and praises to the Almighty Jah for InI blessing in InI struggle to unite.

Today I received email from the Caribbean Rastafari Organization (CRO) 8th annual conference that will be held on May 23 to May 29, in St. Martin with an agenda of Solidarity.

I send CRO an email requesting that their house send a representative to InI conference in Panama and likewise InI in Panama will send a representative to St. Martin CRO conference. Rasta in Panama and Spanish speaking countries needs the support of InI from abroad to expand solidarity to all Afrikans in the diaspora because they lack the knowledge of InI Afrikans story.

Back to Panama conference, several Rasta groups and individuals made suggestion to incorporate the following to Rasta Agenda on the Panama conference program. They are as follows:

1. Ras Junior Johnson from RCO, Jamaica, suggest that a International Rastafari Youth Policy be establish for youth age 0 to 24.
2. Ras Panter from Colombia, suggest that coordination should be establish to translate Rastafari literature from English to Spanish. The need to know about InI story is not available in Spanish.
3. Ras Ira Imbert from EWF, Jamaica suggest that organic agricultue and trade be part of InI reasoning.

InI know that unity is priority in the mind of Rastafari globally- Panama and now Solidarity conferences are taking action to bring InI into one fold.

Panama conference is written in a book titled A United States of Africa, edited by Eddy Maloka, published by Africa Institute of South Africa. In the conclusion of Rastafari Diasporic Practice, Globalisation, and the African Renaissance, Panama conference is mentioned. So InI can make this book prophecy a reality. CRO conference is a must and so is Panama conference.

A little history of Panama, the year 2002 will make it 500 years since Cristobal Come bust us arrived on the shores of Portobelo for the 1st time.

Panama is the land where Spain established the 1st township on firm Land, Bayano, King of the maroons of the whole colonies of Spain, who almost made the entire colonial system collapse but was trick when a treaty was not honored by Spain. This event was the 1st signing of a treaty for liberation by Colonial Spain and a Afrikan in America. The greatest amount of capital to purchase the first ship for the Black Star Liner came from Afro in Panama.

"Never trade a continent for an island"
More time, One love Ras Sela

8th Caribbean Rastafari Organization Conference
- January 19, 2002

Panama Conf. and Barbados Conf. on Repatriation/Reparation 2002
- January 18, 2002``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xNew Info on Upcoming Rasta Conferences ``x1011646638,17007,rasta``x``x ``x6th Feb 1945 - 11th May 1981

February, 01, 2002
By Barbara Makeda Blake Hannah

Each year as February rolls around, so does the annual celebration of the birth of Jamaica’s unofficial National Hero, Bob Marley. Falling as it conveniently does in Black History Month, Bob’s birthday and the events hosted by his siblings in Bob Marley Week, give reasons for a serious look at the Rastafari movement in both a national and global context. This is in view of the fact that – of all the Rastafari who have ever existed – Marley is the most famous and the one whose life has had the most far-reaching global effect.

Marley internationalized reggae music as a vehicle of Black protest and revolution in the early 70’s. Echoing the feelings of the youthful urban poor with the angry anthems "Small Axe" "Three O’Clock Road Block" and "Johnny Was a Good Boy", Bob Marley and the Wailers were the original ghetto rude boys who dared to confront "the shitstem" with musical verse, expressing their outrage at the inequality and injustices which pervaded Jamaican life at the bottom of the social ladder.

MARLEY’S MUSICAL MESSAGES

At the same time as creating his musical revolution in the 70s, Marley activated the twin half of his life work, namely the internationalization of the Rastafari movement, religion and lifestyle. Marley sang the songs which explained Rastafari beliefs in the divinity of Emperor Haile Selassie I, in Repatriation to Africa, and in the victory of Good over Evil. "Three Little Birds", "Exodus", "Rastaman Chant" and the rare "Haile Selassie is the Chapel" were some of the most powerful of Bob’s religious messages. As the power of Rastafari swelled out of the countryside Nyabinghi tabernacles and the inner-city Kingston ghettoes, Bob Marley put a handsome, media-friendly face on the controversial movement and not only took Rastafari ‘uptown’ but overseas across the globe.

In the process, Bob became world famous, equaling and in many ways surpassing the global effect of other famous musicians such as The Beatles, Elvis or Michael Jackson, for Bob’s fame encompassed a religious philosophy which filled the yearning of the world’s oppressed peoples. His fame not only remained so following his passing 20 years ago, but increases in fame as the years increase.

My link with Bob Marley goes back to 1972, when I decided to return to live in Jamaica after spending 8 years in England. My last job has been as PR Officer for the international launch of THE HARDER THEY COME -- Jamaica’s first feature film which first exposed reggae and Rastafari to the world. Before I left England, the film’s backer Chris Blackwell asked me on my return to host some foreign journalists he had invited to Jamaica to check out the music scene then just bursting into reggae-rich creativity and meet a new group. The group he introduced me to was The Wailers, whose leader Bob became a friend of mine for the remainder of his life.

Looking back at Bob Marley in his life, it is interesting to speculate on what Bob would have thought about the Rastafari world that exists today, 20 years after his death.

THE JESUS CHRIST CONTROVERSY

I wonder what Bob would have thought about the two new Rastafari viewpoints that have emerged regarding that controversial historical figure -- Jesus Christ. In Bob’s time Rastafari viewed Emperor Haile Selassie as Christ reborn, a 20th Century MAN-ifestation of God living again on earth in human form. This belief formed the most controversial of all the Rastafari philosophical and spiritual principles, and caused orthodox Christians to regard Rastafari as heretics and fools. Yet, it was the foundation of most of his songs. Bob’s song "JAH LIVE!", created after the word spread that the Emperor had allegedly been assassinated, showed that Rastafari philosophy was not in any way altered by the news.

Today, 20 years later, Rastafari views on Jesus Christ have developed into two main streams. Leading one stream is the philosophy of the multi-racial Twelve Tribes of Israel, which states that Emperor Haile Selassie was not Christ but a man, that the Emperor is dead and that the the rightful occupant of the throne of Ethiopia whom Rastafari should honour and help restore to the monarchy, is the exiled Crown Prince Zara Jacob.

The other stream, led by Rastafari’s most outstanding folk philosopher Mutabaruka, dismisses the name "Jesus Christ", replacing it with the Hebrew "Yeshua" – claimed to be the correct name of the man of Nazareth who lived 2000 years ago. Refuting many Biblical stories and claims, the Bible is rejected as ‘a book of Christian myths" reworking immemorial truths. The Divinity of Emperor Haile Selassie I is not regarded as in any way linked to, or the result of, a previous existence as Jesus of Nazareth who attained the title of "Christ". Selassie I’s divinity stands on its own in the eyes of this Rastafari philosophical development.

What would Bob say about all this?

REPATRIATION AND REPARATIONS

30 years after "Exodus" became an anthem of the Repatriation movement, would Bob be disappointed at how little progress has been made? Would he be surprised that the original Rasta cry: "NO REPATRIATION WITHOUT REPARATIONS!" has been forgotten, and that some have set out on their own to repatriate to Africa and start a new life?

Looking down on the pioneering efforts of Rastas in Africa, would Bob have reminded them of the wisdom of the Elders, who realized that without massive funding, Repatriation would not be successful? Would Bob have urged I&I to make greater efforts to receive reparations for the unpaid labour of our ancestors, the exploitation of our Continent and Diaspora, and the impoverishment of our peoples?

WHITE RASTAS

The dynamism and growth of Rastafari philosophy, has also led to other changes which Bob would never have envisaged. I remember being at 56 Hope Road one day when Bob, Skill Cole and Seeko were speaking angrily to a blonde American teenager, telling her to leave the premises and go back home to America. The girl said she had come to Jamaica and to Bob Marley because she wanted ‘to become a Rasta’. Bob and his associates were telling her in strong terms that it was not possible for her to become a Rasta – it was a ‘movement of Black people, FOR Black people."

What would Bob think of the proliferation of "white Rastas" who have grown up since the global spread of Rasta reggae music in the 70s? Just as there is no country in which one cannot meet a traditional African-race Rasta, Rastafari has believers in practically every single race on earth. There are Rastafari White Americans, Jews, Europeans and South Africans, North and South Amerindians, Aboriginee tribes of New Zealand and Australia, Polynesians of Hawaii and the Phillipines, Japanese, Indians and Chinese Rastafari, carrying the message of Rastafari in multi-racial voices.

Many ask if non-Africans whose genes and family histories do not store memories of centuries of suffering and oppression of an entire race, can really become Rastas. Non-Black Rastas are asked if they feel the deep emotions that cause people of African descent to become Rastafari in order to educate, explore and develop their Black racial and spiritual consciousness. The growth of "white Rastas" seems peculiar, because the Rastafari philosophy is so directly aimed at Black people, so it is strange to hear non-Africans state with assurance the basic Rastafari belief that an African man is the Deity of their faith. What would Bob say, if he was to see the thousands of white people eager to identify with Rastafari – whether Rastafari like it or not.

Would Bob be surprised by the fact that, as a result of the proliferation of "white Rastas", some of them have reached important ‘heights’ of Rastafari life, hosting Rastafari seminars, Rastafari radio programmes, and Rastafari Internet websites that present Rastafari to the world? What would Bob think of the fact that Rastafari is now being taught as a graduate subject in white universities to white students by non-Rastafari professors? What would Bob think of the fact that Rastafari is now authenticated by an ‘academic dictatorship’ which has become an ‘authority’ over the movement, publishing books and presenting international academic papers which claim to accurately define Rastafari expression, but which always fall short of full accuracy because they are prepared by those who proudly remain ‘outsiders’ of the movement?

RED, GOLD AND GREEN COMMERCIALISATION

Would Bob be pleased to see how many non-Rastas make money selling Red, Gold and Green books, clothing, food, drink, art, craft and souvenirs? What would he think about the "Reggae Rum" or the "Lion of Judah Overproof White Rum" with Rasta emblems on their labels, created and sold by non-Rasta Jamaicans, with no protest whatsoever from the Rasta community?

I wonder what Bob would think about his song "One Love" becoming a Jamaican tourism anthem, and Rasta colours used to advertise Jamaica by its official agencies -- especially when there are no Rastas visible in the Jamaican tourism industry – neither at the top level management, not employed within the official industry, nor even by the national tourism agencies. I think Bob would have been horrified to see his song being stripped of its revolutionary conception and watered down to the mundane level of a "Yellow Bird". But I know Bob would be pleased to see that the Red, Gold and Green banner has become an ‘unofficial’ Jamaica flag, and that everybody – not just Rastas – are smoking ganja anywhere and everywhere.

ONE LOVE

Most of all, I wonder what Bob Marley would have thought of Jamaica today – burdened by a political divisiveness which has few solutions. Bob knows that Rastafari long ago offered a political solution based on the objective of uniting all I&I as Jamaicans in the "One Love" about which he sang.

"One Love, one heart; let’s get together and feel alright" was not written to invite tourists to enjoy hedonistic pleasures, but to invite Jamaicans, Black people, the world to come together in loving I-nity to bring peace and harmony for all mankind.

This is what has drawn people of all races to Rastafari. The revolutionary content of much of Bob’s work has been lost under the glossy packaging of record company’s boxed sets, while the coffee table books on Bob and reggae by non-Rastas have translated and re-presented Rastafari in a format more acceptable to a potentially racist white audience.

In the process, controversial but important aspects of Rastafari principles as Garveyism, Afro-centricity, Egyptology, repatriation, reparations and legalization of the ganja sacrament are hidden, while Marley’s half-white racial background and non-confrontational songs are promoted -- to the constant tinkle of an ever-flowing cash register. If it is true, as one report indicates, that the Bob Marley estate earns US$1 million PER DAY in revenues from the proliferation of Marley music and memorabilia, then it is clear that sales would decrease dramatically if Marley was to become identified with a form of Rasta that was too militant. Peter Tosh – with his unrepentant militant Rasta stance – suffered in life and death from what Bob’s musical handlers have been careful to avoid. Yet Bob was I&I original Rebel.

MARLEY’S POLITICAL LEGACY UNFULFILLED

Bob Marley left a political legacy which I&I, his brothers and sisters still in flesh, are yet to inherit – not just in Jamaica. Dreadlocks have become a fashion hairstyle for Blacks everywhere and even some whites, but do dreadlocks unite more Black people to join together to achieve political and economic goals as seriously as – say – Jews?

And what of Bob’s other ‘political heirs’ – the Rasta men and women of reggae who tour the world sharing Rasta philosophy in music and reaping economic rewards far beyond their expectations? Have they contributed financially to the much-needed development of the wider Rastafari community? Where are the Rasta banks, co-operative farms, schools and educational foundations, chains of Red, Gold and Green shops and ital restaurants, the media outlets to deliver Rastafari messages, music, films and more?

Where is the united Rasta political lobby which can force a government to act on Rastafari demands, because its large number speaks with one voice and is backed by other Rastafari power groups around the globe? Would Bob be depressed to find that these foundations which should have been well-established by now, are instead invested in personal real estate, luxury material goods and exclusive lifestyles?

And would Bob be surprised to discover that, despite the international population of Rastafari, there is no I-nity of prayer, no powerful global gathering together at regular pre-announced times to ‘chant down the walls of Babylon’?

What would Bob Marley think of all this, were he alive today?

ONE LOVE

Makeda

makeda@msn.com

"Emancipate yourself from mental slavery,

None but ourselves can free our minds

Have no fear for atomic energy

Cause none of them can stop the time….

Won’t you help to sing

These songs of Freedom

They’re all I ever had

Redemption songs.

Barbara Makeda Blake Hannah - is an author ('RASTAFARI - THE NEW CREATION'; 'JOSEPH - A RASTA REGGAE FABLE") film maker and journalist devoted to issues of Afro-centric culture and history. She operates The Rasta Information Service at website: The Rastafari Page - http://www.geocities.com/maskel2001

Discussion on Rastafari Speaks Message Board``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xIf Bob Marley Was Still Here``x1012536000,21111,rasta``x``x ``xNOT REPARATIONS FOR A MORE COMFORTABLE SEAT IN THE WHITE MAN'S HOUSE

By RAS JAHAZIEL

The present resurfacing of the call for BLACK REPARATIONS must be seen like the miraculous survival of a victim who has long been thrown off the ole pirate ship and left to drown. The re-emergence of this victim from beneath the waves of political and religious mis-education marks the blossoming a new level of political maturity amongst the Black peoples of the world today.

Before the development of such political maturity, the people who were bred in bondage had long forgotten what freedom is all about, and therefore their vision of FREEDOM was confined to any new paint-job on the old slave house.

But who could blame them? The only place where some of them had ever seen FREEDOM was on paper, and the vast majority could not even read, so they had little chance of even seeing it there. They had long grown accustomed to being treated like dogs, and many had come to believe the lie that Africa's poverty was a result of some form of intrinsic inferiority. They were encouraged to blame themselves for their situation, and many preachers had explained "that was the way "GOD" made it to be."..........................
CONTINUED AT http://members.aol.com/rastavis/reparations.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xReparations For Black Nation Building``x1012796074,47648,rasta``x``x ``xMalcolm X

Posted By: Raz Marcus

Hail all Ises, i give solemn thanks and praises to one true prophet and martyr on this day Feb 21. This is a day marking one of our greatest black leaders entrance into Paradise, Father, teacher and brother, El Hajj Malik El Shabbazz: Malcolm X. Assasinated in the Audobon Ballroom in Harlem, NY 1965.

I can't say enough about the works and wisdom of this man, who was the fire Black people the world over needed, to face the DEVIL and the plots of deciet and oppression.

the unfortunate fact that MLK seems to get all the attention as the "acceptable" leader, overshadows the Fire of the true Prophet that was present during the same era. While many will debate or may not want to debate one over the other, it is not until one thoroughly studies Malcolm's visions, that ones can see more clearly how far advanced Malcolm was with so little dues of respect.

While MLK was busy kissing up to the very white man that was brutalizing, raping, decieving and oppressing black people. Malcolm knew the DEVIL from the distance and followed in the footsteps of Marcus Garvey: Race First.

Few people know that Malcolm's father Earl Little was a hardcore Garveyite, heading Michigan's UNIA branch in Detroit and Lansing. In fact little Malcolm would travel with his father to UNIA meetings in Detroit, never knowing that he would eventually rise to become a great Pan-African visionary himself, carrying on Garvey's works.

Most people don't like Malcolm because he called white people the devil. But history stands as a testament to the evil works that have been done. Even Christ told Peter, "get behind me Satan", and St. Peter could not be mentioned in comparison to what these demons have been doing to black people the world over.

While MLK was begging the white man for rights that were already possesed. Malcolm exposed the lying devils for what they were. Malcolm once stated:

"As long as Uncle Sam has black folks barking up the civil rights tree, they'll won't be thinking about the Human rights tree. As long as we fight for civil rights, we'll be under Uncle Sam's jurisdiction, and he can decide whether to give us civil rights or not. Why go to the white man to try and solve the problem, he created the problem, He's the CRIMINAL!!!!Yu don't take your case to the CRIMINAL, yu take the CRIMINAL to court".

And that is what Malcolm attempted to do. While MLK was begging for crumbs, Malcolm had master minded a way to take the United Snakes to the UN and charge it with violating the Human rights of black people, exposing the blatant lies of hypocrisy these Nazis live with day by day.

How did Malcolm propose to do this? Thru Africa!!!! In June of 1964, the OAU, headed by HIM, had convened a conference involving all the African heads of state, on a boat on the Nile river in Cairo, Egypt. The only outside observer, and non-head of state allowed on this boat, was the one Malcolm X, who came as a dignitary and representative of Black people in the western hemisphere. As several important issues were discussed, Malcolm X was working fervently amongst the different African leaders in getting support to take the United Snakes to the UN under charges of human rights violations!!!! This case could only be proposed at the UN thru an African delegate to the UN, since black people in the US had no representative other than the beast that oppressed them. Malcolm wrote a moving letter to the conference participants that stands as one of the most powerful declarations of Pan African solidarity of that time, reminding the African leaders of the struggle of Blacks in the west was one and the same with the African struggle in the east.

Unfortunately, his martyrdom came before this vision could be fulfilled. But his attempt sets Malcolm far apart from the antics of begging for justice from criminals!!!!

Like Garvey, Malcolm understood the global struggle against oppression for black people and the need for Black race unity. But Malcolm also saw what the white oppressors had done to all people's of color around the world, often stating the people of color from around the world all have a common enemy: The white man. Again history stands as the testatment to this truth, that we witness even more today!!!!

There are so many other chapters of Malik's life that blazed a path of truth for us to follow, I cannot tell all here. But if possible check out the web link below and listen in to our live broadcast salute to El Hajj Malik El Shabbazz on our radio program that can be heard online.

The Show airs every Sunday our tribute will be around 12 noon EST, our reggae program begins at 2pm EST. Yu can go to our station website at address below and click Listen.... remember SUNDAY at 12 noon!!!!!

Jah reigns Supreme
Raz Marcus ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xHail to a Prophet: El Hajj Malik El Shabbazz (Malcolm X)``x1014264000,61351,rasta``x``x ``xPosted By: Makeda

The 3-day visit last week to Jamaica of Queen Elizabeth of England as part of her Jubilee Year tour of the Commonwealth, may have been intended to reinforce the supremacy of the British monarchy over its subjects in the colony of Jamaica. Though vestiges of 'shero'-worship still manifested in the Union Jack flag-waving crowds and military pomp, the overwhelming issue of the week was the Rastafari call for Reparations and Repatriation.

Determined to make every effort to present these fundamental Rastafari pcinciples to Her Majesty the Queen, the Rastafari community mounted various peaceful and diplomatic assaults on the British head of state, using the media, public demonstrations and an unprecedented legal suit against the Queen herself.

The BoboShanti community were the first to make their presence felt. Dressed in white robes and colourful turbans, beating drums and chanting Nyabinghi hymns, waving flags and banners, the Bobos stood in the sun at the roundabout leading from the airport into Kingston as the Queen and her entourage drove speedily past. The Queen may have been in a hurry, but the media stayed to interview the Bobos and hear first hand of the call for "Repatriation with Reparations!".

Another group of Rases persuaded the Public Defender, W.C. Howard Hamilton, to present a petition for Repatriation and Reparations to the Queen. This had to be done via a royal protocol officer, but the Rases were allowed to be present at Kings House with the Public Defender when it was presented., though they were not allowed to carry flags or banners.

On Wednesday, attorney-at-law Ras Miguel Lorne sued the Queen, filing an unprecedented legal demand against the British monarch for Reparations which received much media attention. Lorne had also hoped to present his legal papers to the Queen at Kings House, but was barred from entering the gate and had to present them to the secretary of the Governor General's secretary.

Another major Rastafari presence was visible when Queen Elizabeth visited Montego Bay for the opening of the City's Civic Center. There Ras Astor Black had managed to capture a piece of sidewalk under a tree, from which scores of Rastafari flags flew visibly each time the camera features the monarch. The Queen's tour of the Civic Center, with its relics of slavery including a hangman's noose, shackles and chains, was conducted by the museum's Rastafarian curator, and for ten minutes the Queen walked and talked side by side with a Rasta man.

As a result of all the above activities, the issue of Reparations became the Topic of the Week. Each day talk shows and radio news magazine programmes covered the subject of Reparations in depth and from various aspects. Members of the recently-launched Jamaica Reparations Movement, of which I am co-ordinator, have been interviewed on several of these programmes. The Sunday current affairs programme aired midday on TVJ focuses on Reparations, with interviews with myself and international reparations lawer expert, Lord Anthony Gifford.

The JaRM is now setting up Reparations committees in each Parish, working towards a national conference later this year.

ONE LOVE
Makeda
The Rastafari Page``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xQueen's visit Stirs Reparation Fires``x1014568340,44697,rasta``x``x ``xPosted By: Blair

Greetings and JAH blessings

Yes again another post on this whole white issue and the movement...but I make no apologies for it as I feel it needs to be re-said.

The first step and the best thing I believe we the white Rasta can do for the movement and for the reparation struggle is to step back. We need to give this movement back to the people who are really struggling. We need to take back our distortions, corruptions. To remove our issues of who is Christ and what colour he was. To remove our own issues of the NAM and our own issues of white thought we have bred into the movement.
We need to put the RASTA movement and its roots first well above our own trivial ideas that we throw around in need of being accepted into what is and should always be a black movement until all healing is reached.

This struggle is not about us and in knowing this we need to step down and let the brothers and sisters who this struggle is about stand up and teach how it really is and let them correct the mis-education of western thought and society that has shadowed the movement from the true light of doing and performing its work as what the first RASTA gathered to do.
The RASTA struggle IS A BLACK STRUGGLE and this should never be removed from its teachings. Never ever until again Africa and its people stand as an equal or above for its works.

How do we the White RASTA truly expect to be trusted by those within the struggle when we ourselves can not let the Black RASTA within there own movement move forward without us telling them how it should be or why it should be????

Yes we all preach equal rights with our pro-black ideas (That is the white idea of what is pro-black) and yes we all scream out for justice. However we do this while we trod over those who really struggle as again we oppress as we try to be the martyr when it is not ours to take.

Our calling for a culture and people to be given back which was once stolen as we use these people as the stepping stones to build our own egos.

The RASTA movement is not a selfish movement or a quick fix. It is a struggle that needs closure and to get this we need to put trust and respect into it by letting those who are at the heart of the struggle lead it. We need to step back and support it in everyway it turns but we need to do this with the true RASTA leading the way. The true RASTA being those at the heart of the struggle.

My work in the movement is not about me but it is what will be in the future when there is true respect and trust and the movement has succeeded in its work and my children and great grand children can stand as RASTA themselves because we in this time stood behind the movement and its people and backed them up and let them lead the movement down the right path which is a path only the true RASTA can overstand and know.

Please overstand I am not being anti-white within the movement here as I am also white but I do know that I could never know how it feels to be of black skinned and oppressed and because of this I have no right to stand up as a RASTA and put the true fighters behind me. I can never guide them or teach them. I can only step back and let them guide me and teach me.

I please ask all White RASTA and Black RASTA to give the movement back and have the trust and faith in the real people who struggle so as they can lead the movement how it should be led, which is from its roots.
Our first step should be our step back and a step forward for the movement. Remember this is not about us but about the movement so lets trust the movement at its roots and let it do its work in giving what is owed back to those who await it.

RASpect and JAH blessings
Iheart Militia
Blair
http://www.triniview.com/cgi-bin/rasta/webbbs_config.pl/read/11408``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xFirst step is to step back for the white RASTA. ``x1016647640,35274,rasta``x``x ``xHola Alphas & Omegas:

In the name of H.I.M Haile Selassie I, Jah Rastafari , lets give thanks and Ises for InI trod of Inity. The Elders of InI separate nation will be picking up tickets on May 5, 2002. I will send information of the exact airline where the Elders shall receive their airline tickets. Also, the Address of InI Elders stay in Panamá is Solimar Cabins, Majagual, Arraijan. Elders must request visa from the 23rd of May to the 31st of May 2002.

All other house/mansion that as the desire to attend and participate in this historical events, should send a representative at their own expense. InI here in Ianama will be covering the expenses of the Elders and it is only fair that InI provides for InI representatives.

InI here have made arrangement to stay at Rocamar Hotel in Veracruz, Arraijan. The hotel is walking distant to Solimar Cabins. Also, the management of the hotel as provide InI with a special rate for InI nation representatives. The hotel as 30 rooms of 3 and 5 beds, InI can share rooms from $6 to $10 daily. The rooms have air condition, color TV and access to a swimming pool, Management will also provide fruit salad and Vegetarian dish for InI at moderate price. But InI in Ianama will provide meals when InI conference is in session.

InI here in Ianama are working to get discount from COPA airline for this trod. But the management and sales office is delaying on InI proposal for discount. I am going to request from InI abroad to assist I to pressure COPA airline by calling them at InI local region. If I can call COPA/Continental and let them know that InI here have submitted documentation to Emma Herrera, Sales Supervisor in Panamá and have not receive any feedback from her office, maybe, the airline where InI at can speed up the process by contacting Emma Herrera by email. Remember this conference is an Afrikan event and in Panamá InI don´t get nuff respect from the European conquistador.

I will be trodding to Colorado April 8 to visit my brother and sister and I will trod to D.C. the following week to check Pa´Jack, Irice and Jake. I will then trod to N.Y. to pick up my son and daughter and forward to Panamá to set up final arrangement for InI Inity Conference. Ras Nini will make an attempt to trod to RCO conference the end of March.

I must say that the Rastafari nation is taken a Majestic leap to shine the light of Jah Rastafari to all the corners of InI planet and InI must trod to fulfil I Father´s works. InI usually jump and rally to attend major reggae concert but this is not a concert, this is InI mission on Earth. What InI will do in this Iwah? InI have I email, I phone # is 507-250-0260 call after 7PM and 507-652-2229, fax # 507-314-0602 or regular mail PTY 4018, P.O. Box 025724 Miami, Fl. 33102.
Excuse I typos.

Now it is on InI to contact I to coordinate InI stay in Ianama. One Love, Jah Rastafari


James P. Landis Robinson (Ras Nini)
President

Carlos A. Seals(Ras Sela) 2nd VP/International Affairs``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xPanamá Conference Ticket Distribution and Words``x1016827771,95871,rasta``x``x ``xBy Gman

As me always say, when Black people and people of color are no longer down-pressed, disenfranchised, starved, murdered and held back in all parts of the world by the system of global white supremacy/capitalism... then I will no longer look at categories like "Black" and "white" but will see only hue-manity. But until that day, I represent BLACK firmly and I intend to play my part, small as it may be, in liberating IanI African poor people from the physical, mental and spiritual shackles that we are bound by. As for white Rastas, it is not for I to judge that, it is only for JAH, in the end we will see who and who is the true Rastas.

"Race" does not really exist, as you know if you've looked at biology. There is more genetic variation within any given "race" than between "races". But race as a social construct does exist and has a huge effect on people's lives (not to mention people's deaths)! It cannot be ignored. It's easy to be/think you are colorblind when you're a member of the privileged race/caste. When you're a member of the down-pressed race/caste, it's SUICIDAL to be totally colorblind. That don't mean hate white people or have nothing to do with them, it means be careful. Don't be too quick to trust them. (Not that you don't have to be careful with ones of your own color sometimes too!)
By the way, my dad is "white", if that matters to you. ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xColorblind``x1019931769,53696,rasta``x``x ``xBy SOLIDARITY RASTAFARI ORGANIZATION

Blessings in the Name of JAH the Father, JAH the Son Christ,
and the Holy Spirit of Judah, JAH RASTAFARI HAILE SELASSIE I.

INI of Solidarity as the hosting body give Thanks to the Almighty for de I concern and also for promoting this international event here on the Island of St Martin.

The CRO 8th Conference that will be held from the 23rd to 29 th of May both in St Martin ( first 4days) and in Anguilla (3 last days) is the Main event in the which INI will gather in iration and in reasoning (see Agenda). Seeing also that African Liberation Day will also fall during the Conference, INI will have a Celebration (see poster) ; likewise INI will alos be hosting as part of the Conference an Open Craft Market (see poster attached). Those two last events will naturally be taking place in St Martin

One and all are invited as you may have see it on the Invitation.
INI hope to see de I end of the Month.

JAH GUIDE AND PROTECT
RASTAFARI BLESSINGS

PS : all links concerning the Conference are available at :

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/solidarity/Agenda.doc
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/solidarity/Conference.doc
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/solidarity/Poster.gif
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/solidarity/AfricanDay.gif
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/solidarity/CraftMarket.jpg ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xCRO 8th Conference - May 23rd - 29th ``x1021333659,50716,rasta``x``x ``xTHE RASTAFARI PATRIARCHS & MATRIARCHS
JUBILEE WORLD CONFERENCE
THE CARIBBEAN RASTAFARI ORGANISATION
8TH CONFERENCE

St.Martin/Anguilla May 23rd-29th 2002
Report and Resolutions

The 8th Conference of the Caribbean Rastafari Organisation (CRO) which was held in St.Martin & Anguilla ,was attended by delegates from Trinidad, St.Lucia, Barbados, Martinique, Dominica, Antigua & Barbuda, Guadeloupe, St.Kitts, Nevis, St.Thomas (USVI), Anguilla and St.Martin. The opening ceremony at the Omnisports Stadium, Galisbay, commenced with prayers and Nyahbinghi Ises Presentations were made by the Organising Committee and spokespersons from respective organizations in the region. In the absence of the CRO Chairman, Ras Iral Jabari, CRO,s Treasurer, Ras I-Ron Tafari, addressed the gathering on behalf of the Secretariat.

The second day, Friday 24th, began with the presentation of annual reports from CRO members, visiting organizations and individuals. The reports addressed the challenges confronting the Rastafari Community and emphasized the necessity for greater economic development at this point in time. The consideration of relocating the secretariat from Barbados to possibly Antigua was discussed and will be further explored in September when an executive meeting has been proposed to be convened in Barbados. Rotation of the responsibilities of the secretariat every three years was agreed upon at an earlier conference and Barbados has been providing this service from the establishment of CRO in Dominica 2000 as well as previously from 1998 when it functioned as the Eastern Caribbean Rastafari Organisation (ECRO).There was also a proposal to have the next summit in Martinique and a small delegation was selected to visit there in the near future to discuss its feasibility. The Solidarity Foundation was asked to coordinate the visit on behalf of CRO because of Solidarity's bi-lingual ability and communications skills.

In the afternoon session, Sister Keturah Babb, one of the delegates from Barbados, who had attended the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa last year, addressed the gathering on the subject of reparations and repatriation. One of the main points of her presentation dealt with the CRO lobbying more resolutely for the subject of repatriation to be included in the language of the WCAR's Plan of Action document. Other important references were made with respect to debt cancellation, the return of stolen African artifacts/relics, financial assistance in alleviating the AIDS pandemic and a more meaningful approach to the commemoration of Emancipation Day -August 1st-.She stated that for repatriation to be feasible, African governments would have to be approached and engaged in dialogue; also, that Caricom governments would have to be lobbied on the question of reparations.

The morning activities of Saturday May 25th, African Liberation Day, took place at the Solidarity Rastafari Tabernacle where the uplifting and energetic prayers and ises were administered by High Priest Fayaco, Ras Touzah Jah Bash and Ras Trini. In the evening, the celebrations at the Richards Stadium saw a huge and appreciable crowd witness a disciplined and enjoyable display of excellent cultural presentations mainly from the local St.Martin and Anguilla Rastafari communities.

The following day, Sunday May 26th was reserved for the exposition and marketing of Arts and Craft which is a regular feature of these summits and which introduces an economic and cultural element to the activities of our Rastafari community. The attendance at this event was moderate although more visitors and patrons supported it in the afternoon segment.

The second phase of the summit unfolded on the next day when all delegates journeyed to the neighbouring island of Anguilla .Delegates were greeted at the Blowing Point Port with the drumming and chanting of the David House Solomonic Gathly and then transported to 'The Dune' where I&I dwelled for the duration of our stay on the island. In the evening, there was a panel discussion on Rastafari - The Healing of the Nation -which was chaired by Bongo Shaka from Wadadli (Antigua).Presentations were delivered by Jah Bash Touzah on the subject of Spiritual Edification, Ras Frank-I Tafari of the Wadadli Council for the Advancement of Rastafari who presented the 'Case for the Hola Herb' with Sisters Asheba (B'dos) & Ijahnya (Anguilla) giving contributions as well on the topics of the Rastafari Family and Repatriation respectively.The overview from these debates was for Rastafari to achieve greater harmony by becoming spiritually stronger while at the same time centralizing and organizing ourselves for Reparations and Repatriation.

The Tuesday's activities of the conference consisted of a trip to Irie Acres where an intense workshop on Sustainable Agriculture was held. The proceedings got under way after the morning's Nyahbinghi Ises and were chaired by Bongo Wisely, the Chairman of CRO's Agriculture sub-committee. Minutes from the previous Agriculture workshop in St.Kitts (2001) were delivered by Ras Frank-I Bongo Wisely then began his contribution by quoting speeches from H.I.M. pertaining to agriculture and then proceeded to report on initiatives currently being worked on in St.Lucia with respect to soya-bean production. Varieties of soya-bean seeds were then distributed among some CRO members so that a seed bank could be established and ultimately result in an overall Organic Farming Network in this region. Other input on the subject came from Ras I-Ron of the Kornerstone Organic Farm in Barbados (Ichirouganaim).Areas such as niche markets, dangers of pesticides/herbicides to health, horizontal networking, regional trade and bee pollination were discussed at length. On the subject of trade, participants were unanimous that there was need for marine transport and a committee was set up to research and see how feasible it would be for I&I to acquire such transport as a long term investment that could facilitate our trade and travel in the region. On the afternoon following the Agriculture Committee Meeting, the gathering exhibited their craft at the Arts & Craft Centre in the Valley.

Our return to the Dune Preserve that night saw us witnessing a presentation by one of the delegates from Barbados, Sister Fortunia, who shared her experiences on the African continent as they compared with her sojourn amongst I&I in the Caribbean. Our host, Bankie -Banx a stalwart in the reggae world, then provided us with top class entertainment into the wee hours of the morning.

Our return to St.Martin the following morning was uneventful, however, the rest of the day was spent with some brethren & sistren making sure that the final reports and resolutions were documented .In the evening, the Solidarity Rastafari Organisation distributed certificates of appreciation to all who had participated in this well organized and edifying gathering of Rastafari from various houses and mansions of this hemisphere. The programme concluded with a rousing, riveting Nyahbinghi Ises where all ones bade their farewell as they prepared to return to their respective places of abode. One bright morning when my work is over, I will fly away home. Jah Guide.

P.S.I&I from the secretariat and from the family of Ras Iral, Sister Margaret, Ras Makonnen & Daughter Metasebia express our heartfelt gratitude and appreciation of the kind words and tributes paid by Elder King Frank-I and everyone else during the issembly with respect to the transition of our son, brother, friend and Nyahbinghi youth-man Hailu Abebe Talma who succumbed to a chronic liver ailment on May 15th 2002. This fire-man was a fixture in previous CRO summits and was loved by all. One remembers in the 1997 gathering in St.Croix when Hailu entered the Tabernacle about 4.00A.M.in the morning and on noticing most persons near slumber, shouted 'FIYAH' and 'JAH RASTAFARI' thus reviving everyone and causing I&I Elders Bongo Rocky & Sister Baby-I to respond that 'Hailu is a blessed youth; take good care of him' .His work amongst us is now over, but his love and pleasant disposition will remain an iternal example for I and I to emulate. Praises to I&I Father H.I.M. Haile Selassie Ist Jah Rastafari.

RESOLUTIONS.
Having met in the islands of St. Martin and Anguilla from May 23rd to 29th 2002,and expressing great appreciation for the hospitality and love bestowed on I and I by our hosts in the respective islands, we the members of the Caribbean Rastafari Organisation :

1.Abhor the apathy of Caribbean governments towards the issue of Reparations/Repatriation with respect to the recently held United Nations sponsored World Conference Against Racism in South Africa, and are resolved to agitate and lobby individual Governments and Caricom Heads of Government to immediately institute the procedures to secure Reparations and Repatriation for the people of African descent they represent.

2.Urge Caribbean Governments to amend any laws on the statute books which may criminalize the cultivation and use of cannabis, taking into consideration a September 2001 declaration in the High Court of Antigua acknowledging Rastafari's right to the sacramental use of the herb while supporting the Jamaican Prime Minister's attempts to institute the findings of his Government's Marijuana Commission

3. Recommend the establishment of an Organic Farmer's Network among CRO members .

4. Recommend that the Health and Nutrition Committee of the CRO arrange Health Seminars in the various islands. Selah.

Compiled June 28th 2002``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Caribbean Rastafari Organisation 8th Conference ``x1026002446,93758,rasta``x``x ``xPosted By: Ayinde
Date: 16, July 02, at 5:23 p.m.
In Response To: The Opposite of Racism Isn't Colorblindness

empresschantee, you are so 100% correct.

Those are the points that others should understand especially when detractors come around trying to encourage amnesia under the disguise of 'onelove' or 'christianity'. These are concepts they do not practice and if they did they would join the few Whites who are busy trying to educate other Whites.

I hope people notice that I have posted articles written by Whites to show that the few hypocrites we encounter are not a reflection of all Whites. It is just that the more sensible Whites are few.

It is pain some of them feel when they see a congregation of Blacks working on their own issues and making the effort to give their own meaning to a life that most Whites do not value. Some of them are like informers and want to know what Blacks are planning so they lurk around trying to charm the vulnerable and divide the congregation.

Once I see this happening, I sharpen my swords and focus on the issues they should address. It is always instructive how the dishonest ones shy away from these discussions.

I do understand that some use these hypocrites to test their wits and sharpen their swords. These sensible ones are not a problem. But there are the “house negroes” who will always jump in defense of these hypocrites and I am not mincing words with them either.

Black people have been realizing salvation before White people evolved. White people are just Africans who lost pigmentation and OUR STORY and by extension salvation. Some are doing much to improve but others want to hold on to the destructive status quo.

Before the word Christianity was invented and before all their churches, Black people (although too few today) WERE REALIZING SALVATION and continue to develop in spite of all the opposition, so it is not the Black congregations that need saving. It is not Black people who want to own the world and developed weapons of mass destruction. It is not Africans who voted for that idiot of a US president. So let these hypocrites who do not respect African people's right to be different stay and learn or suffer and go. Let them learn of their own oppressions under the minority WHITE MALE CLIQUE who financially profit from all this ignorance. Then they may enter with an open mind and more respect. Until then, when they come with their Christian perversions and ‘onelove’ they are trying to maintain White superiority.

It is these issues that test the level of their awareness and shows their true intent. In this exercise the house slave also gets exposed.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Opposite of Racism Isn't Colorblindness``x1026878400,98662,views``x``x ``xby David Comissiong

A MAJOR AFRICAN Diaspora “World Conference” will be held in Barbados during the month of October.

At present, literally hundreds of black activists from the continent of Africa, the United States, Canada, Britain, Latin America, Europe and the Caribbean are making preparations to journey to Barbados for the official Africans and African Descendants’ NGO follow-up conference to last year’s United Nations World Conference Against Racism.

The United Nations world conference, which was held in Durban, South Africa, ended with 168 governments committing themselves to the Durban Programme of Action, aimed at eradicating racism and racial inequalities.

In spite of all the deliberately negative propaganda put out by the Western media about the World Conference Against Racism, the fact is that this conference represents a major step forward for the people of Africa and the African diaspora, in their quest for justice and material development.

The amazing solidarity and political will demonstrated by the governments and non-government organisations (NGOs) of Africa, the Caribbean and other areas of the African diaspora, prevailed against the initial intransigence of the European governments of the so-called “Western world” and forced them to conceded that poverty and marginalisation which the African world is experiencing today can be traced right back to the systems of slavery and colonialism that Europe imposed upon Africa and her scattered sons and daughters.

Upon this central admission of historical guilt and responsibility was built a Programme of Action which purports to deal with such matters as – the HIV and health care crisis; youth development programmes; educational initiatives; business and economic development for black communities; reparations; racial profiling and other abuses of the criminal justice system; the negative impact of globalisation; the development of culturally sensitive media systems, and the list goes on.

The hundreds of representatives of black organisations who will be coming to Barbados in October, will develop a collective strategy to ensure that the Durban Programme of Action is implemented. The Barbados conference will also see the establishment of a permanent global Pan African coalition or institution.

Primary responsibility for the organising of this historic conference has been given to a newly-formed Barbadian organisation called the Congress Against Racism (Barbados) Inc., and made up of the Barbadian NGO delegates who participated in the Durban World Conference.

The president of the Congress Against Racism (B’dos) Inc. is the Rev. Aaron “Buddy” Larrier. Other members of the committee of management are Glenroy Straughn, Ras Iral Talma, Phillip Knight, Keturah Babb, Leroy Campbell and Marvene Holder.

The local organisers are however working in tandem with international organising committees in every major region of the African world.

Indeed, Rev. Larrier and I recently visited Britain to meet with and consult the British organisers – the Forum of African and African Descendants Against Racism, led by Ms Esther Standford, a barrier-at-law of Barbadian parentage.

We were able to visit three cities during our tour – London, Liverpool and Birmingham – and to hold meetings with a large variety of “black” and mainstream British organisations.

Larrier and I also spoke at three town-hall meetings and broadcast the message of the Barbados conference on such radio stations as the BBC – London; Radio Merseyside; Voice of Africa; Galaxy Community Station andIrie FM.

There is a palpable sense of excitement in the black community of Britain about our October conference. Britain is still to be cured of the disease of racism! In fact, the British Director of Public Prosecutions recently publicly admitted that Britain is a thoroughly racist society; infested with “institutionalised racism”.

Our brothers and sisters in Britain are therefore welcoming the opportunity to come to Barbados to build an international coalition to assist them in their struggle.

Reproduced from: Rastafari Speaks``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xCrucial Conference! – Facing Reality``x1029284240,28026,rasta``x``x ``xBy Deborah John, trinidadexpress.com

Marcus Garvey“No one remembers old Marcus Garvey, no one remembers old Marcus Garvey”, reggae artiste Burning Spear’s plaintive complaint becomes an affirmation ensuring that in essence we never forget his name.

Tomorrow is his birthday to be celebrated with bashments throughout the country.

Marcus Moziah Garvey was born in the quiet little town of St Ann’s Bay, on the northern coast of Jamaica, on August 17, 1887.

He was named Marcus, after his father, and legend has it that his mother, Sarah, sought to give him the middle name of Moses, explaining prophetically, “I hope he will be like Moses and lead his people,” Not a religious man, his father compromised with the less prominent biblical middle name of Moziah.

The Garveys had 11 children but only Marcus, the youngest, and his sister, Indiana, lived to maturity.

When he was 14, family financial difficulties forced Garvey to leave school and go to work. He was apprenticed to learn the printing trade with his godfather, a Mr Burrowes. After two years he left St Ann’s Bay to go to Kingston to work at his new trade.

By age 18 he had become foreman of PA Benjamin and Co and in 1908 he headed the printers’ strike and was blacklisted.

Subsequently, conscious of the need for organised action to improve the lot of the black worker, he began editing a periodical known as Garvey’s Watchman. He was involved in other efforts and in 1912 journeyed to London to learn what he could about the condition of blacks in other parts of the British empire.

He also became interested in the position of blacks in the United States, and it was in London he came across a copy of Booker T Washington’s autobiography Up From Slavery.

This book had a profound effect upon him as he later testified: “I read Up From Slavery by Booker T Washington and then my doom—if I may so call it—of being a race leader dawned upon me... I asked... ‘Where is the black man’s Government? Where is his King and his Kingdom? Where is his President, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?’ I could not find them and then I declared, ‘I will help to make them.’”

The seeds of Garveyism had unwittingly been sown.

In the summer of 1914 Garvey went back home to Jamaica, his head spinning with plans for a programme of race redemption. “My brain was afire,” he recalled as he considered the possibility of “uniting all the Negro peoples of the world into one great body to establish a country and government absolutely their own”.

Back in Jamaica, he contacted some of his old friends and on August 1, 1914, he established the organisation that would occupy his time and energy until his death, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Communities League.

UNIA soon boasted of a membership of 4,000,000 members internationally. Garvey also created within the UNIA, the Black Cross Nurses to take care of the sick and disabled Africans.


A poster advertising the Black Star Line Steamship Corp. Sometime in early 1919, Garvey projected the idea of an all black steamship company that would link the coloured peoples of the world in commercial and industrial intercourse. “Now is the time,” he said, “for the Negro to invest in the Black Star Line so that in the near future he may exert the same influence upon the world as the white man does today.”


Soon, The Negro Factories Co-operation was formed. This co-operative included a chain of groceries, restaurants, steam laundries, small-scale industries and publishing houses and under Garvey’s dynamic leadership. The UNIA also founded the Black Star Shipping Line and later, the Black Cross Navigation Co. To further propagate the philosophy of Pan African nationalism, Garvey and the UNIA founded the weekly newspaper, Negro World, which was distributed in America, England, Canada, Africa, the entire Caribbean and almost every corner of the world where Africans lived at that period in time.

Tony Martin writes: “The UNIA was an international movement of massive proportions. At its height in the 1920s it contained over 1,200 branches in over 40 countries. Its membership spread to almost every nook and cranny of the world where African people lived in appreciable numbers.

“In many areas where there were no organised units of the association, individuals could still be found in spirit and who subscribed to Garvey’s principles.”

It wasn’t long before his enemies saw the UNIA as a threat and began to wage a campaign of terror against the UNIA and the progressive works of Marcus Garvey.

This campaign not only arose from the governments of England and the United States, but also from communists and certain African intellectuals, such as WEB Dubois, CLR James, A Phillip Randolph and George Padmore (who would later change his philosophy to Pan Africanism after being rejected by the Communist party).

The UNIA and Garvey’s philosophy has often been misinterpreted by many, as being the “Back to African Movement”, as being a racist organisation and under the leadership of a racist leader.

Garvey had never advocated total repatriation for all Africans in the Diaspora to Africa. Garvey and the UNIA advocated that Africans in the Diaspora with high technological skills should make their contributions to the development of the Motherland, Africa.

He sent doctors, lawyers, engineers, technicians and other professionals to Liberia as part of the UNIA’s contribution to the industrialisation, liberation and unification of Africa and African people.

Before his untimely death on June 10, 1940, in England, Garvey left statements with us that were to be beneficial to all African people, if put into practice at all times. He said:

“The greatest weapon used against African people is disorganisation” and “Africa for the Africans, those at home and those abroad. We have a beautiful history and we shall create another in the future that will astonish the world.”

Garvey inspired generations of great Africans, past and present, including: Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammed, Kwame Ture (Stokley Carmichael), Yosef Ben Jochannan and Hoki Madhubuti.

This weekend, various Rastafarian groups and popular entertainment personalities will honour the memory of the Honourable Marcus Garvey on the anniversary of (what would have been) his 115 birthday.

—Additional reporting Nigel Telesford``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xHonouring an African leader``x1029470400,537,rasta``x``x ``xPosted By: RAS JAHAZIEL
Date: 17, August 02, at 8:26 p.m.

REPARATIONS FOR BLACK NATION BUILDING

NOT REPARATIONS FOR A MORE COMFORTABLE SEAT IN THE WHITE MAN'S HOUSE
***********************

The present resurfacing of the call for BLACK REPARATIONS must be seen like the miraculous survival of a victim who has long been thrown off the ole pirate ship and left to drown. The re-emergence of this victim from beneath the waves of political and religious mis-education marks the blossoming of a new level of political maturity amongst the Black peoples of the world today.

Before the development of such political maturity, the people who were bred in bondage had long forgotten what freedom is all about, and therefore their vision of FREEDOM was confined to any new paint-job on the old slave house. But who could blame them? The only place where some of them had ever seen FREEDOM was on paper, and the vast majority could not even read, so they had little chance of even seeing it there. They had long grown accustomed to being treated like dogs, and many had come to believe the lie that Africa's poverty was a result of some form of intrinsic inferiority. They were encouraged to blame themselves for their situation, and many preachers had explained "that was the way "GOD" made it to be."

In those times it was easy to pull a veil over the eyes of the people, and many were led to believe that the gaining of political independence and having a new flag and not singing "God save the Queen" anymore was the real attainment of freedom. Having a Black Prime minister and a Black government looked very much like the children of slaves were now free at last. Just like they did on emancipation day, there was dancing and singing when the new flag was raised. In some quarters it was really believed that the provision of MORE JOBS, the building of better roads, and the right to sit at desegregated lunch counters would have meant an end to the downward slide of the carriage of protracted genocide. Little did the "ex-slaves" know that after the excitement, the "better roads" would lead to nowhere.

Aside from the wide-spread political ignorance that governed the people, there was also another factor that always made them cautious about their demands. They were quite aware of the long history of THE TERRORISTS and their capacity for becoming BEASTS. Even an attempt at registering to vote could bring down the lynching party, and if just a simple demand for the right to cross the segregated line could be met with such TERRORISM like the murder of little children, they well understood that the hour of history was not yet on their side.

RACIAL TERRORISM was so dreadful in its restraint of the Black voice that only someone of privilege and high standing in white society could dare go before the seats of power and raise the call for BLACK REPARATIONS. That is why it was actually a white man by the name of Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania who in 1867 placed the issue of REPARATIONS before the US fortieth congress in section 4 of HR 29.

Thaddeus Stevens, a white Republican, was not too blind to recognize that Reparations was the only just policy after enslaving a race for so many centuries, but the conscience of the slave holding nations was not susceptible to the bidding of such noble ideals. As they are accustomed to do when their clients have lots of money, "LEGAL MINDS" used their tricks successfully to keep the case out of the court house, so that it was eventually confined to the rubbish heap of history and the garbage bin of forgetfulness.

Unfortunately, throughout the history of The White World Order, the majority opinion has never been of the Thaddeus Stevens sort, and so, every effort has been made to delay the case for Black Reparations until the day when the excuse can now be offered that it has become an irrelevant issue because "TOO MUCH TIME HAS ELAPSED AND THE INJUSTICE HAPPENED TOO LONG AGO."

But suppose the criminal element of society learns from this lesson that CRIME can be made to benefit one's offspring as long as one can keep the case out of the court house long enough! If this lesson is taken as an example of what can be achieved by delaying the legal process, the criminal spirit is bound to be emboldened by the surety of such de-facto exoneration. But this has serious consequences in terms of the NON-ETHIC that it establishes, which is nothing less than "CRIME DOES INDEED PAY." What a contradiction for a people who profess to be anti-terrorists, a people who profess to be defenders of "freedom and democracy" and "law and order," and upholders of "values."

The true principles of justice demand that as long as it can be shown that there are beneficiaries of the crime, there must be compensation for the crime, and this is not a very hard task. In the "developed" Euro-American nations of today which were founded on robbery and slavery, every single advantage that is enjoyed over those peoples who were dispossessed and enslaved, is an advantage gained from such history. Whether it be the physical infrastructure of the nation, the advanced economic level of the nation or the advanced social services of the nation, they are all benefits which are enjoyed by the inhabitants of such developed nations because of the labors of millions of slaves and underpaid laborers FOR CENTURIES. Not only is their present "first-world" status a benefit that is derived from having slave labor in the formative stages of their economic development, but such "first-world" economies have also benefitted from centuries of draining the natural resources of the world's NON-WHITE peoples.

To put it in a nut-shell, as long as one is sheltered in the house that slaves built, one is benefitting from slave labor. The only way to escape this truth is to minimize the contribution of slave labor or to erase and distort history completely. This is the main reason why European history books describe ROBBERS as discoverers, and the victimized people as "savages", "cannibals" and "heathens." Such historiography is in the same vein as a CRIMINAL trying to cover up his tracks. If such covering up of tracks had not been done so successfully there would be no reason to have to argue the case for BLACK REPARATIONS today.

Whether they know it or not, the anti-reparations activists are really arguing that CRIME DOES AND SHOULD INDEED PAY. One only has to keep the case outside of the courthouse long enough till everyone agrees that the date of the crime is too far away.

***********************

REPAIRING MINDS
THE PRIMARY TASK OF REPARATIONS

Now that the time has finally come when the issue of BLACK REPARATIONS can no longer be shunned, it is also time to look at the role of MIS-EDUCATION to see how its widespread presence could make Reparations payments nothing more than a windfall bonus with very little long term effect.

It cannot be denied that MIS-EDUCATION is one of the main legacies of slavery and colonialism. Out of the crucible of racial terrorism and mis-education, a certain mind-set was programmed in the newly cloned creature called "THE NEGRO." This mind-set was designed to benefit those that had enough money to buy Black people and snuff out their identity in THE SLAVE-BREAKING PROCESS.

It is this slavery-inherited mind-set, scientifically known as ACUTE NEGRO PSYCHOSIS, that presently chains the vast majority of "ex-slaves" to the worship of A WHITE GOD-HEAD, and it is very rare to find an "ex-slave" who has miraculously emerged from its influence. The worship of the white god-head has become so normal on the plantation that even those who do not hold on to church and religion are still faithful to the white god-head through their cherishing of the same value system, the same standard of beauty, the same philosophy, and the same ideology as the white slave owner. It would not be overly inaccurate to say that roughly 99 percent of all Black people today worship the white god-head, and this is a direct result of having been BROKEN IN, subdued, and DOMESTICATED by white slave owners. Even in the blackest strongholds where everybody in government is black and all the lawyers and judges are black, the god-head that is worshiped is still WHITE. If you know a peoples' standard of beauty, their standard of values, their choice of philosophy, and their choice of ideology, you can know what god they are praising and worshiping. The Black man and black woman only have to examine themselves on the basis of this criteria and they will know what color god they are truly worshiping.

The Slave Owner's mind-set has always been focused on keeping his slaves in their place of subservience under his control, so naturally when slaves share their owner's mentality they actually collaborate in their own oppression, and by their choices, show a mis-educated preference for their state of TOTAL DEPENDENCY.

When the light of Black selfhood and ROYALTY is snatched from one generation, the next generation is left with mentors who are bereft of the light. Three and four generations later, there comes a generation who have neither mother, father or grandparent to whom they may look for light. Total darkness is the outcome. That is the kind of darkness where even the Teacher and the Preacher have completely lost touch with their own sacred origins that house the wellspring of their true soul, and like self-rewinding tape recorders, all that they can repeat is that which was given to them in the white man's house. The darkness can become so thick that the people find themselves chained in all sorts of emotional confusion, spiritual confusion and even sexual confusion. Men become confused and are not comfortable with being men, and women start to hate being women. In the UN-SURENESS of such spiritual confusion and gender confusion, the very sacred act of sex itself becomes a Demon in search of satisfaction beyond its natural boundaries, and there are few to whom the confused may look for guidance on what is right and what is wrong, what is natural and what is unnatural. When a people reach a state where there is no longer any clear voice on what is right and what is wrong, when no one is sure of what is natural and what is unnatural, it can be said that people is wallowing in the piss of their slave master.

Black humanity has been degraded to such great depths by its long sojourn under the degenerate rule of Greco-Roman and Sodom and Gomorrah culture that when the judgment FIRE comes down on Rome there will be very few Black people that will not be burned. Under the steady and relentless influence of the decadence and depravity that emanates from the soul of U-rocentrick civilization, the spiritually orphaned generations have become spellbound in the grips of immorality. Such is the way of the continuing process of DEHUMANIZATION, and the shackles of immorality and decadence soon assume such a hold that The Slave Master no longer needs iron chains to bind his slaves. Every day their spiritual confusion will cause them to fashion more chains for themselves. This is the pit, the deep spiritual abyss from whence the souls of Black folks must now be dug if the glory of Black civilization is to shine again.

If the ultimate goal of the struggle for Reparations is only to put some more money in the pockets of Black folks so that they can survive more comfortably in the white man's house, the struggle would be meaningless to future generations. Without a Pan-African vision that has as its goal the establishment of BLACK NATIONHOOD with a restored concept of BLACK ROYALTY AND DIVINITY, the root of the problems that now face Black civilization cannot be rooted out. The truth must be faced that the problems are not only economic, political and cultural, but they are also spiritual in the sense of having been subjected to unnaturalness for so long that naturalness becomes an unwelcome stranger.

TRAPPED, domesticated and tethered for centuries to the stake of unnaturalness, the caged and domesticated creature is apt to lose its spiritual equilibrium and forget what is clean from what is unclean, what is right from what is wrong, and what is high from what is low. This is the condition of the "ex-slaves" in this time, sorely in need of something more than a political movement, something that involves the reshaping of character in the similitude of ROYALTY. As long as such spiritual confusion exists, the God of confusion will continue to reign in his cloak of red white and blue. There is just no way of escaping it, you cannot praise the same god as the slaver and expect to be delivered from the slaver. If there is no spiritual revolution, Africans can easily find themselves building a United States of Africa that is no different from the United States of America. The only difference would be oppressors in black faces.

TRAPPED in the mixed-up meditations of acute Negro psychosis , and TRAINED as they are to give their strength to their owners, Negroes would still not emerge from their present position of total dependency if REPARATIONS were awarded on an individual basis. A few may use the money wisely, but the vast majority will give it back to their owners, and this will always be the case while the SLAVE-MENTALITY still exists. Not only would the money filter right back to the slave master's house because of mental slavery, but also because THE BASIC STRUCTURE of the global economic system is geared to drain the victims of slavery and colonialism, not to secure their independence.

If REPARATIONS payments are not wisely focused on breaking the cycle of chronic dependency, then a mere fifty years from now the Black children of tomorrow will be no better off for it. They will still inherit the situation of this present generation where they are condemned to be BOYS FOREVER in a white man's world.

If it is to be true to its real purpose of resurrecting Black civilization from its grave of dehumanization and serfdom where it was interred by the forces of white racism, the focus of REPARATIONS must be on those linch-pins of economic and psychological dependency which continue to keep slavery intact long after so-called "emancipation".

The first and perhaps the most important of these unyielding cast-iron pins that keep slavery intact, is LACK OF CONTROL over the mind-manufacturing industry.

Slavery is a condition where the one enslaved has no control over his life. If someone else has control over the mind-manufacturing industry, one is essentially a slave in the controller's hands. This lack of control which was lost in the pit of slavery and colonialism, means that present-day Black civilization is still living in a white man's world.

What is the significance of the white man's ownership and control over the mind-manufacturing industry?

It means that as a Black parent, your child is not your own. Just like it was on the plantation of old, from the day that the Black child is born his mind is injected with the Negro blue-print. This means that he is instantly being programmed to think in a way that benefits the owners of the plantation and to the detriment of his own race. It is the presence of this Negro blueprint in the Black man's head which today causes him to collaborate in his own genocide. Removing this Negro blueprint must therefore be a central component of any REPARATIONS policy.

Without ownership and control of THE EDUCATION PROCESS, the minds of the newly compensated people would still continue to work against themselves in a way that would perpetuate their CHRONIC DEPENDENCY. "Ownership of the education process" should not be misunderstood as mere ownership and control of schools and universities, but also CONTROL OF THE THOUGHT PROCESS that sits within the books and the thought process that governs the television.

INTENSIVE effort backed by generous resources must be placed on The Project of Re-education. The people who have been mis-educated by the slave master to see themselves as separate peoples called Bajans, Trinidadians, Jamaicans, Afro-Americans, Ghananians and Nigerians, etc, must be re-educated to see themselves as integral states of ONE BLACK NATION. When it is recognized that artificial barriers of separate national identity were specifically created to facilitate control of the slave master's plantation, it will become clear that PAN-AFRICAN THINKING is the only life-boat for the drowning peoples of Africa wherever they are scattered. This new thinking can only be achieved if it becomes a priority on every school's agenda, and the bottom line of every church sermon.

The truth must be faced that the education system which was inherited from the Slave-master was designed to keep the plantation running on a more sophisticated level. Better and more highly skilled SERVANTS was the goal, and it is not an accident that THE EDUCATED CLASS of Blacks today are for the most part ORDERS-TAKERS. There is absolutely no way how the cycle of dependency and subserviency will be broken without the introduction of a new education system that has as its goal the development of AFRICAN NATIONHOOD in place of the present goal of Black servant-hood.

Seeing that the Black mind is still being invaded on all sides by the visions and ideas of the white man's house, its rehabilitation will call for the setting up of a vast and all-encompassing PAN-AFRICAN CENTERED education system. It must be realized that NATIONHOOD is first and foremostly AN IDEA which needs to be cultivated, and it could never have been cultivated in the past while the plantation was being run by white owners who wanted to keep Black slave hands tied to the plantation. When the idea of BLACK NATIONHOOD is not being cultivated in our present religious and education systems it is because such an idea will make slaves question their landless-ness and their powerless-ness. All the teachings, be they religious or otherwise, that have bound the allegiance of Black peoples to their separate estates in the plantation economy are complimentary to the global schemes of THE WHITE WORLD ORDER.

The United States of America is AN IDEA that had to be planted and cultivated, and it was cultivated essentially for the betterment of white civilization. Separate groups of Europeans were taught THE IDEA of the USA, and the idea was not considered inconsistent with their religion. It is only slavery-inherited religion that holds the vison of BLACK NATIONHOOD to be unimportant. The white man had the wisdom to know that his personal security and prosperity depended on the establishment of A COMMON NATIONHOOD with a land base. Those who are presently known as JEWS also knew that scattered as they were in minority positions all over the globe, they needed a central land base that made NATIONHOOD a reality, and hence they set up the state of Israel.

The Black man must ask himself,
Where is my vision of Black nationhood?

Is my slavery-inherited religion blocking my mind from seeing the necessity for Black nationhood?

Does my long-term security rest with the fragmented plantation identity?

Am I comfortable with my centuries-old task of building the white man's house?

Should I continue to invest my labors and my monies in the white man's house when it is getting bigger and richer from my labors while Africa is getting poorer and more dependent every day?

Am I satisfied with my dependent position in world affairs where every major decision in my life as a Black man must be made by a group of white men who cannot help being racist?

Is this the situation that I want future generations to inherit?

Am I contented with the island identity which the slave-master gave me so that I would remain a powerless satellite, always lingering on the outskirts of white prosperity?

None but the most drunken can fail to acknowledge the need to cultivate the idea of BLACK NATIONHOOD with the prospect of putting it into reality.

If white men can come together from all parts of U-rope and build their white strongholds, why should the Black man not be doing the same? why should the Black man continue to seek refuge in the white man's stronghold instead of building his own?

In this stage of the struggle to correct the damage of slavery and colonialism, one of the greatest opponents is the white high-tech mind-control system which dominates the movie industry and global communications. It is so powerful that the way how controlled people will be thinking fifty years from now can be plotted on a drawing board and then implemented without fail.

Therefore to cultivate this idea of BLACK NATIONHOOD, major funding must also be allocated for the development of an independent Black theater and movie industry devoted to THE BLACK RESURRECTION. When the word "BLACK" is clearly defined as that which is conscious and effective in its capacity to break chains, there will be no chance of such a venture coming close to the Blakspoitation movie genre where "Black" just meant putting a black face in place of a white face. Neither minds that are bleached white by the U-rocentrick aesthetic, nor minds that are bleached color-less by white-liberal education can create the groundwork which is necessary for Black independence and Black nationhood. More than enough time has passed under the influence of both forms of mind-control to show that such thinking ultimately perpetuates white domination.

In this project of repairing Black minds for the fulfillment of Black nationhood, it will not be enough to put financial resources into the building of schools, universities and movie studios, but paralleled with all this must also be funding for the type of scholarship that is necessary for producing Black-centered books and learning materials to fulfill A BLACK CURRICULUM

The building of any nation demands an education system that is centered within the struggles and ambitions of that nation. That is why the European education system has always been WHITE-CENTERED with a historiography that places slavers, colonialists, invaders and robbers at the center. The victims of the U-ropean project cannot correct their disadvantage or re-arrange their lives without an education system that is centered on their own historical perspective and national ambition. It must be BLACK CENTERED in order to be redemptive.

The importance of repairing Black minds has to be therefore seen as a major task on the REPARATIONS agenda, and success in this venture will determine whether generations fifty years from now or three hundred years from now will benefit from today's struggles for REPARATIONS. The work of breaking down the mental chains of white racism and colonialism has to be seen for what it is, the only key to unlock the dungeon of captivity. Without a break-through in these stubborn walls of mental slavery there can be no TRUE BLACK NATIONHOOD AND ROYALTY.

A STRONG BLACK HOME BASE.

In every land, the welfare of the individual is directly dependent on the welfare of the state and its ability to maintain a prosperous economy. Take for instance the welfare of the average European tourist. He is able to be a tourist because he comes from a country that has a sufficiently prosperous economy that allows him to have enough surplus income to go on tour. He has a HOME BASE that is strong economically. It is not an accident that within the tourist economy, most tourists are white and the servants are black. While the white tourist has a strong economic home base that enables him to have surplus income, the black servant has A BEGGING AND DEPENDENT HOME BASE that barely allows him survival wages. If on the continent of Africa or in the Caribbean the safety of a white tourist is threatened, he has a strong government back at home that will come to his assistance with guns blazing if necessary. On the other hand look at the predicament of Blacks in the USA, the UK, or any part of U-rope where they may be now exiled. They are subject to the worse treatment where they can be lynched and crucified on the cross of racism and there is no strong Black government that can forcefully intervene on their behalf.

A realistic look at the Black diaspora shows that wherever they are presently domiciled, their economic survival is totally dependent on the economic health of the dominant white U-ropean nations. In places like the Caribbean where they depend on tourism, Black survival depends on the white man having enough money to go on tours. If the white man tightens his belt, many black belts will have to be further tightened throughout the islands. In places like the U-ropean strongholds of the USA and the UK, if the white man is losing money and decides to close his factory, out goes Black survival through the window of job cuts.

Throughout the history of the Caribbean, national survival has always been very dependent on exporting labor to the white man's home in the US, the UK, and Canada. Economic survival has long been structured along the lines of the plantation where the Black villagers had to leave their homes and trek to their workplace in the Big House to scrub floors, wash clothes, clean yards and do the dirty jobs. There is total dependency on the white man's economic health, and that is reflective of a situation where a people have no prosperous home base of their own. If Africa was a prosperous home base, Blacks from all over the world would be migrating to Africa in search of work instead of trekking to the U-ropean capitals of the world where they are subject to the scourge of racial discrimination which can escalate at any time.

In the white capitals of power which are so racially charged from centuries of white racism, it is quite unlikely, and even ridiculous to imagine any form of meaningful Reparations to the minority Black populations, for the simple reason that it would create what would appear to the majority white population as the creation of a privileged minority class. If in these countries, Reparations were paid on an individual basis, the majority white population can be expected to lash out angrily at the DEFENSELESS Black minority who would appear to be gaining an unfair economic advantage. Remember Black Wallstreet

(see website http://www.littleafrica.com/opportunity/opprage.html "The date was June 1, 1921, when "Black Walstreet," the name fittingly given to one of the most affluent all-Black communities in America, was bombed from the air and burned to the ground by mobs of envious whites. In a period spanning fewer than 12 hours, a once thriving 36-Block business district in northern Tulsa lay smoldering--A model community destroyed, and a major African-American economic movement resoundingly defused.

The nights carnage left some 3,000 African Americans dead, and over 600 successful businesses lost. Among these were 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores and two movie theaters, plus a hospital, a bank, a post office, libraries, schools, law offices, a half dozen private airplanes and even a bus system. As could have been expected the impetus behind it all was the infamous Ku Klux Klan, working in consort with ranking city officials, and many other sympathizers.")

If the issue of REPARATIONS is broken down into insular pockets of interest where the Afro-American has one agenda and the Caribbean people have another, and the Africans on the homeland have another, one should expect Willie Lynch to exploit the situation. A good look at the continent of Africa today demonstrates how eagerly Willie Lynch exploits differences. If Willie Lynch has his way again, REPARATIONS will be granted with a great show of outward magnanimity which will prove to be the biggest PR stunt of the ages. An end would be put once and for all on the complaints that U-rope did this and U-rope did that, but with insularity and mental slavery still rampant, Black people would find themselves in the same old hole as before, TOTALLY DEPENDENT ON THE WHITE WORLD ORDER.

MYOPIC VISIONS will be exploited and INSULARITY will be coopted in the same way that present day MIS-EDUCATION is being enlisted in the age-old business of COLLABORATIVE GENOCIDE.

What is at stake is the future of Black peoples worldwide, and barring a serious intervention of BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS, that future is as dim as it could ever have been. What kind of future will the Black visionaries of this time hold out for the salvation of the race? All the TRUE VISIONARIES have already pointed to BLACK NATIONALISM as the only means towards ending the scourge of being Black and totally dependent in a white man's world, and it should never be forgotten that racial harmony in the white man's strongholds has always depended on Black obeisance and Black subservience. The only hope for the Black race lies in its ability to get its act together on the continent of Africa. Little island satellites and little minorities are already being jettisoned by the onward sweep of history.

If the present agitation for Reparations is governed by a strong Black Nationalist commitment as it ought to be, priority will be given to establishing A POWERFUL BLACK HOME BASE as a means of securing the future of Blacks throughout the world. Greek thinking, U-ropean thinking, and insular thinking will have to give way to PAN-AFRICAN THINKING.

It is only from this WISE base of Pan-African thinking that the proper areas of NEEDED DEVELOPMENT will be identified. "NEEDS" will be seen as the abolishment of every single relic of slavery and colonialism which serves to perpetuate current BLACK DEPENDENCY, BLACK SUBSERVIENCY, AND BLACK DEHUMANIZATION.

To correct the slavery-inherited maladies, CONTROL AND OWNERSHIP must be restored to those that have been robbed and chained in dependency. As long as the Slaver still controls Black lands, Black resources, and the education process, he will continue to control BLACK LABOR AND BLACK MINDS.

To negotiate and implement this vision of Black Resurrection, A PAN-AFRICAN INSTITUTION should be established comprising of people's representatives from throughout the African diaspora and the African homeland. Similar to how the UN is structured with many subsidiary organizations, this institution should stand as an integral part of the now embryonic UNITED STATES OF AFRICA. This will enable negotiations to proceed on a GOVERNMENT TO GOVERNMENT level which offers a much better chance of bringing about the long-term betterment of African peoples than would an individual arrangement.

On a much broader level however, it must be recognized that this struggle for the long-term betterment of African peoples will prove to be a catalyst for change to the present global economic system. Further up the ladder of CONSCIOUSNESS, the question will have to arise, "What are the chances of turning a vampire into a vegetarian?" Can the proposed betterment of African peoples be achieved while the global economic system is structured on the same rapacious model as the plantation system? The answer to this question will show that for African peoples, the struggle to end racial discrimination will be very much linked to the struggle of all the world's poor to end the fundamentally parasitic nature of global capitalism. That cherished brainchild of old pirates and slave masters who always valued profit above human life has now become a Frankenstein out of control, imperiling the continued existence of all life irrespective of race, class or creed. Even the very earth and its endangered ecological system are now crying out because of the same economic policies that continue to put PROFIT first to the detriment of all life.

The magnitude of the problem is so great that it is going to take more than just a political solution, more than just an economic solution and more than just a religious solution, and the solution will not drop out of the sky. The leadership of THE BLACK RESURRECTION will have be of a quality that is seldom seen in today's human market place where the price of a man's soul has dropped so very cheap. Let the struggle for REPARATIONS become a uniting force that crystalizes the consciousness of AFRICAN NATIONHOOD. AFRICA AWAITS HER CREATORS.

Ras Jahaziel
http://members.aol.com/jahpaint/index1.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xA Long-Term Vision For Black Reparations``x1029632123,86323,rasta``x``x ``xby Deborah John, Express

Greetings in that Divine name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who has revealed himself through the personality of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I...(traditional greeting)

Rastafari are ready.

All over the world they’ve been ready.

Now, they say is the time.

Time for repatriation...to Ethiopia.

Repatriation was a word that would be repeated several times during the gathering.

Rastafari from all over the country had come together to discuss the upcoming visit to Trinidad and Tobago of His Imperial Majesty Crown Prince Zere Yacob Afsa Wossen.

Around the room there were the flowing robes and high turbans of the Bobo dreds, and rastafari sported dreads of all lengths and stages of development.

There was some disappointment in the night as an expected appearance by the dreadlocks wearing government Minister Fitzgerald Hinds did not materialise.

But the point would be made that it was a history making occasion as there were representatives of the different rastafarian sects in Trinidad and Tobago gathered under one roof for the first time —12 Tribes of Israel, the Bobo Shanti, Nyabinghi, Ethiopian World Federation, Rastafarian Corporation, Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, Universal Love.

Though the organising House for this visit is the Trinidad Chapter of the 12 Tribes of Israel established in 1978, all rastafari in the country are coming together to ensure that this visit of the Crown Prince is a success, particularly as it will follow on the heels of a visit to Jamaica. He is to spend a month here.

At the microphone was Sister Carol Rocke who made the point over and over that not only was repatriation a “must by any means necessary” it was also a must that the Crown Prince be returned to the throne.

“He must sit on the throne”, she reiterated over and over.

The affirmations to this were many in the repeated cries of “rastafari” whenever the point was made during the night.

Many were awkward in their delivery but all were steadfast in declaring their intention towards repatriation.

“We must leave them,” Rocke declared, “nuff foolishness ah gwan in de West.”

Later in an in interview Rocke explained that the Crown Prince though in exile is doing a series of benefit dinner and dances throughout the world. The purpose of this is two fold to let the world know he is the successor to the world know he is the successor to the throne; secondly to raise funds for repatriation and to help put into place schools, hospitals, buildings and projects for those who wish to return there.

Basically, the Crown Prince is due here in November for a visit in which the highlight will be a benefit dinner and dance on November 27, followed by a show, November 30 featuring Jamaican and local artistes. This is still in the planning stages. An impressive line up of Jamaican artistes have already pledged to perform for free.


The Crown Prince is head of an organisation of which he is the founder called The Ethiopian Peace Foundation. Founded “for the purpose of the repatriation and development of Ethiopia and Africa by those Ethiopians and Rastafarians in the international diaspora who wish to return and make a contribution.”

Through this Foundation which is based in Manchester, England, the Crown Prince has been sending out letters to rastafari worldwide telling them about a fundraising effort through a series of benefits called the Musical Odyssey Concerts.

“The Foundation is requesting all vocalists and musicians to contribute their time and effort to accelerate the repatriation movement. The time has come for all those who are committed to repatriation to Africa, specifically to Ethiopia to finally unite and cause our dreams to become a reality,”the letter states.

Rocke and other rastafari in Trinidad and Tobago agree that this should be so.

“Repatriation is a must. He must sit on the throne,” she reiterates and points out that things have already started happening.

These include a building foundation preparing land and a hundred-plus room hotel which is heing built. There is also an organisation called Nurses of Israel, which comprises sisters from England and America seeing about hospitals and health infrastructure.

She herself, a businesswoman, visited several African countries including Ethiopia in 1986. She points out that a number of Trinidadians and other West Indians and rastafarians from all over the world already live in Shashamane, which is in the Shore Province of Ethiopia.

Of her visit there she remembers “beautiful, it is like bible land”.

Shashamane, she explains, is 500 acres of land given by His Majesty to rastafarians who want to “come home.” His Majesty, she explains earnestly, was the only African head of state to designate a piece of land to any black person who wanted to go home.

But why would rastafarians want to live in a land where the royal family is exiled?

Rocke and other rastafarians believe that the day is coming soon, when the royal family will once again sit on the throne in Ethiopia.

“The government” (in Ethiopia) she insists, “has got to acknowledge the monarch, the present government is lenient towards repatriation.”

Efforts are now concerted to making the Crown Prince’s visit a success.

“We want all rastafari to come out to the airport, when him step off the place, he must see rastafari,” she says.

Emperor Haile Selassie I

According to Rastafarian belief, Emperor Haile Selassie I is the only true God (originally known as Ras Tafari), and Ethiopia is their spiritual homeland, the true Zion.

Haile Selassie I (1892-1975) was the last emperor of Ethiopia (1930-1974). Born near Harar on July 23, 1892, Selassie’s original name was Lij Tafari Makonnen. He was a grandnephew of Emperor Menelik II. In 1916, when he was 24-years-old, he ousted Lij, Iyasu, Menelik’s successor, replacing him with Zauditu, the old emperor’s daughter. Selassie made himself regent. When Zauditu died in 1930, he succeeded her, taking the name Haile Selassie I, which means “Might of the Trinity.” His other titles included Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, and King of Kings.

In 1935 the Italians invaded Ethiopia. Selassie made an impressive plea for help before the League of Nations, but was unsuccessful. He went into exile in England in May 1936 and from there he helped the British plan a campaign that led to the liberation of Ethiopia. He returned to power in 1942. Another attempt to overthrow Selassie was made in 1960 but was quickly stopped. By 1974, however, worsening conditions in Ethiopia— government corruption, inflation, drought, starvation, and Selassie’s perceived hesitancy in dealing with these and other issues — led the army to revolt. Once again, Selassie was removed from power. He was formally deposed in September 1974 and died in Addis Abeba on August 27, 1975. He was 83 years old. Today, some Rastafarians say they are looking forward to the worlds they know he is laying down on their behalf.

Among Selassie’s accomplishments were major land reform, (1942 and 1944), emancipation of slaves (1942), and a revised and somewhat broadened constitution (1955) that provided for universal suffrage. He also played a leading role in the formation of the Organization of African Unity in the 1960s.

Ethiopia, formerly Abyssinia, is a republic in eastern Africa, bounded on the northeast by Eritrea and Djibouti, on the east and southeast by Somalia, on the southwest by Kenya, and on the west and northwest by Sudan. The area of the country is 1,128,176 sq km (435,606 sq mi).``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xCloser to Ethiopia - Crown Prince comes to T&T``x1029697322,43053,rasta``x``x ``xBy Ras Jahaziel

When the arguments against Black Reparations are sifted and weighed in the balance, there is one overriding attitude that stands out like a centuries-old vampire that still refuses to die.

“Emancipation” did not kill him, “Civil Rights” did not kill him, Black national “Independence” did not kill him, and modern evangelism has not changed him. He still is a beast that views BLACK HUMANITY with malignant contempt. Even though he takes great care to cloak himself in righteous garments and often resorts to righteous pretense, he still cannot conceal the fact that his malignant contempt for Black humanity is still sticking to him as tight as his first birth-day suit.

This centuries-old vampire who has for so long roamed the plantation has ever shown by his words and his actions that in his estimation, Black life is not equal to other life. If the victims of a holocaust are white as in the case of “The Jewish Holocaust,” then no effort is spared in reminding the world that CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY have been committed. Monuments, commemorations and reparations are considered quite in order. But when the victims are Black as in the case of The African Holocaust, the vampire believes that they should be forgotten and dismissed as so much COLLATERAL DAMAGE. He even resents the use of the word “HOLOCAUST”in describing the Black experience at the hands of U-rope, and no matter how long he dips himself in religion he is still not convinced that the term “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” should be used when the victims are Blacks. His words and actions throughout history have long shown that “the vampire of malignant contempt for Black humanity” draws a firm line between “NEGROES” and HUMANITY.

So the truth has to be faced that the much boasted “civilization, and progress, and democratic values” are nothing but a transparent cloak disguising an unreformed vampire who is as arrogant, egocentric, self-deluded, and racist as he was in his formative years when he was not so concerned about disguises. This callous, insensitive and indifferent attitude towards the sanctity of Black life has always been common-place on HELL-PLANTATION, and it has become so “NORMAL” that it is like a pair of contact-lens that sit right on top of the eyes forming the vision of the viewer without being seen themselves.

Because of this vampire called “malignant contempt for Black humanity,” certain racist assumptions have become a sacrosanct foundation of thought permeating the psyche of “post-slavery” society. With the long indoctrination on these basic racist assumptions, it is little wonder that Black humanity is still seen in very much the same way as it was in the days of HELL PLANTATION when Black life was an expendable commodity that could be easily bought and sold. Long habit, long custom and long indoctrination have perpetuated the old attitude of “Work the slave to death and get another. The job is more important than the slave.” Of course today in this age of political correctness, that attitude is no longer prominently worn on top of the nose for everyone to see, but recent admission that the unparalleled brutality of black slavery is still not regarded as CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY shows that the old racist world-view has merely moved from spectacles to contact lenses.

The whole issue of REPARATIONS today is really a searching out of the soul to see how far our concept of “GOD” has evolved from the dark ages of barbarism, when “Christian” founding-fathers robbed, raped and butchered their fellow-man and then said “In the name of GOD, let us have a THANKS-GIVING DAY.”

The vampire, “malignant contempt for black humanity,” was the chief architect of that concept “GOD” which held that SLAVE MASTERS, SLAVE-CATCHERS, ROBBERS and INVADERS should be honored and glorified, while showing little concern for the people who put in the real hard work that created today’s first-world wealth.

Because of the resurfacing of the reparations issue, international morality and conscience are now being tested to their very core, and the moral authority of THE INHERITORS OF THE SLAVE-MASTER LEGACY is once more proving to be as bankrupt as it ever was. To honor COLUMBUS-invaders and slavers while denying that the Black experience at the hands of Europe meets the definition of CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, amounts to condoning the brutal robbery and enslavement of the African peoples. To hold this position IN THE NAME OF GOD is a profession of faith in a god who either condones crimes against humanity, or else he is being seen as a god who made the world’s non-white peoples on the same level as the chickens and goats and pigs which men slaughter every day with impunity thinking that “such lower life-forms were made “for the service of man.”

In these trying times when the mighty are waging war in the name of “RIGHT” it becomes most imperative that such long-standing concepts of “GOD” be re-examined, because if one’s concept of “GOD” is wrong, so too will be one’s concept of “RIGHT.” When racism has been truly abandoned as a guide for international policy, there will be a general willingness to accept certain basic truths which were hitherto not admitted.

Foremost amongst these truths will be the fact that somewhere in the darkness of our formative years, A CRIMINAL GOD-HEAD had enthroned itself in the spiritual seat of government. One of our great philosophers (Dr John Henrik Clarke) once said “ALL HISTORY IS CURRENT EVENT.” If at one stage of your history, your god condones and pardons terrorism, and every year you reaffirm the fact of his criminal nature by offering up thanks for the spoils, how will you escape the bloody scourge of terrorism at a later stage of that same history? If it is agreed that both the slave and the slaver all shared one common humanity, then in light of the extraordinary and UNPARALLELED barbarity that accompanied black slavery, it is fair to say that today’s leading “democracies” have been built on CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.

The only escape from such a conclusion is to argue that some of the builders were not humanity. And this is the question that the children of Africa are asking today, how can your democracy be valid, how can you be truly recognized as an enlightened civilization when you declare that some of your citizens have fore-parents that were “humanity” and some have fore-parents that were not?

Does such ideology not show that today’s generation is still worshiping the same god who yesterday condoned terrorism against the world’s non-white peoples on the grounds of their supposed “NON-HUMANITY?

This revelation automatically poses another question..........
How can the hands of present generations be free of the blood of past generations if they are still worshiping the same god-head that condoned terrorism against the world’s non-white people yesterday on the basis of their supposed NON-HUMANITY ?

If as a people we were not DOPED by the vampire of malignant contempt for Black humanity, the voice of reason would have long brought a change to the old world-views which concocted a god who stood on the side of the racist. It is funny how the same god that gets a people wealth and power can also blind them from seeing the precipice of their own making.

A Long-Term Vision For Black Reparations

Visit Ras Jahaziel Website:
http://members.aol.com/jahpaint/index1.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Centuries-Old Vampire That "Romes"``x1030288662,24486,rasta``x``x ``xThe Elders, The Statesmen and Women, The Defenders of the Faith. On the Celebration of The Ethiopian New Year. Sept 11th 2002

Rastafari Speaks
by Ras Forever

A Tribute to The Matriarchs and Patriarchs of Rastafari: The Elders, The Statesmen and Women, The Defenders of the Faith. On the Celebration of The Ethiopian New Year. Sept 11th 2002.

Hail Rastafari, Blessed and Glory be to all in this the month of the Ethiopian New Year, especially to the ones who stood up and represented Rastafari under the leadership of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Sellassie and the banner of the ites, gold and green. They gave the only thing they could ever give, they gave the only thing they ever had, they gave their pain, their blood, their sweat, their tears, their lives. It is to this select band of men and women that we pay tribute to, for their memories, presence, and contributions and we are eternally greatful to them from this.

From this day onward they would continue to live in I an I hearts for generations present and for generations not yet born. To their families who stood alongside them as they struggled on, rest assured that Rastafari extend thanks to you also, and all the others with names unknown, who played what ever part, however small, to bring Rastafari to this day, much respect and thanks is due to you also. So no one is forgotten, when we pay tribute to the Frontline Warriors, the Elite Troops, the Standard Bearers, the Holy of the Faith.

We select for special mention, Leonard Howell, Joseph Hibbert, Archibald Dunkley, Robert Hinds, Altamont Reid, Paul Erlington, Vernon Davis, Ferdinand Ricketts, Bongo Watto, Sista Bubbles, Ras Pidow, Jah Bones, Rasta Headful, Papa Dyer, Peter Tosh, Jacob Miller, Bob Marley, Bongo Shep, Sam Brown Ras Mack, Ras Planno, Ras Alvaranga and the countless Matriarchs and Patriarchs not mentioned here, that you should add to the list.

No honor is to great, no tribute is to small as we make sure that the new generations of Rastafari, the world over, in every nation, among every people, and in all corners of the earth, hold steadfast with the sacredness of the memories of those who brought I an I to this day and to this hour, in this here hostile, unrepenting and unforgiving environment, where many would try to distract, deny, deter and destroy Rastafari.

In this light all Rastafari are reminded to be aware of the danger of mindless activities and discussion, with which those who would like to change I an I focus away from that which advances our cause.

In Africa today like elsewhere, a devastating bomb called HIV/AIDS, is being exploded everyday and it takes over eight thousand lives per day and we can expect to be flooded on the day of the Ethiopian New Year Sept 11th, with news of the American tragedy of the same date, which focuses on the lives of four thousand people lost at the World Trade Center, in unfortunate circumstances, that compares in no way, with what is taking place in Africa today.

On September 11th the Day of the Ethiopian New Year, we must keep our focus and remember the grave threats that Africa faces, while the Babylon system inundates the world’s communications networks with the one day tragedy of Sept 11th, World Trade Center in New York City, U.S.A. While at the same time billions upon billions of dollars are being spent on weapons of mass and further destruction and the tragedy and urgency that is HIV/AIDS receives mostly verbal platitudes and token resources, from those who have historically sucked Africa dry of her resources and wealth, and continues to do so, to this today.

Oh Rastafari in the month of September especially on the 11th, the Ethiopian New Year, the spirits of our Matriarchs and Patriarchs must prevail, the will to battle and solve the HIV/AIDS disease in Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere, must prevail, the concerns of the world’s poor must prevail, the concerns of I an I people must prevail. Give thanks and praise to His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Sellassie I. RASTAFARI. Everytime.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xTribute to The Matriarchs and Patriarchs``x1031075253,84833,rasta``x``x ``xThe Progeny of Neo-Colonialism and White Racism
(Part One) Re recent conference in Barbados on racism

by Ras Jahaziel
members.aol.com/jahpaint

The historical white racism that created The White World Order of this day has become a self-regenerating ideological and economic system that makes it no longer necessary for whites to be racist on an individual level. This self-regenerating ideology of white racism has been established for so long on both sides of the railway track that it has acquired an aura of credibility, respectability and normality. As a result, the inferior behavior that Blacks were forced to adopt in an effort to escape their own outlawed and scorned identity has now become fashionable and normal. The victims of such scorn have been convinced of their own inferiority and have firmly resolved to convert to the image of their Caucasian master and mistress. Because their basic view of themselves and the world has been learned from the centuries-old manual of white racism, the victims have actually been enlisted in the oppression of their own image as well as their own kind. Though their skin is black, they have become chauffeurs on the carriage of white racism.

Oppression of THE BLACK IMAGE was the first code of the plantation, and it was instituted in order to make real the lie of African inferiority.

Oppression of one's own image is the same as oppression of one's own kind. Whenever a Black woman perms her hair in the Caucasian image of the slave-mistress she is automatically collaborating, even if unknowingly, in the centuries-old oppression of her own kind and also cooperating in the original racist scheme to clone A NEGRO. The cloned Negro was supposed to be AN INFERIOR COPY of the Caucasian slave-master and slave-mistress. By their futile attempt to attain straight hair, straight nose, white skin, and blue eyes, an image which they were not biologically equipped to attain, they thereby made real the lie of Black inferiority, and gave their owners great pleasure at seeing ludicrous yellow-headed and straightened hair caricatures of themselves. When slave behavior becomes fashionable and normal, CLONING is complete.

Racist slave-masters well understood that if the mother of Black civilization could be coopted in oppressing her own image, the rest of Black civilization would be raised from the cradle nursing on the complexes of inferiority. Because of the great success of this mission, there is no longer any need for a white slave-master or a white slave-mistress to be around, because the mother of Black civilization has been tricked into pinning the white beauty standard and the badge of inferiority on her progeny. Therefore even when no white folks are around, WHITE RACISM still enforces itself in the Black community. In that manner the ideological system of white racism has become self-regenerating. Once the germs have been sown, the victim becomes a carrier.

In addition to the psychological operation of cloning THE NEGRO, the robbery and enslavement of Blacks fostered an economic system that operates on a basic law which says you must have money to get money. Of course, if you had been already robbed of your land and your natural resources, you would not have started off the race with money, so the only money you would ever get would be determined and measured by those who started off with the money that was gained from having slaves and stolen property.

Emancipation therefore became a smokescreen that actually legitimized and perpetuated A PERMANENT GAP between the inheritors of the slave-master legacy and the inheritors of the slave-legacy. From the very beginning of the race for economic development, the basic laws of the race left no possibility for there to ever be a catch up. That is why the nations that benefitted from robbery and slavery are so far ahead and Africa is so far behind. This head-start that came from having slaves, now makes it possible for the recipients of the said legacy to not have slaves but get increasing benefits from the time when they did have slaves, because money begets more money and so there is no longer any need to be personally racist.

Because of this ongoing historical reality of white racism which has been systematized and impersonalized, life for the victims is a constant battle with invisible racist forces which predetermine the quality of their human existence, and this battle takes place even when the races are not in contact. Meaningful debate about racism is therefore not about the need for blacks and whites to become color blind and intermarry, because even if they do become friends and lovers, the dynamics of white racism will still be inflicting pain. Its impersonal, systematic, and robotic nature makes it totally indifferent to what form of human relationship exists between the races. The educational system, the information system, the political system, the legal system, the religious system and the economic system have long been geared to perpetuate the status quo of the plantation, so without radical change to all of these systems, being COLOR BLIND will not change anything. None of these systems are color blind, and even the most well-meaning of whites are forced by the economic chains which also grip them too, to cooperate in the maintenance of The White World Order. The same also goes for the Black victims. They too cooperate in the maintenance of The White World Order because of the controlling force of economic chains and psychological chains.

The robot has become bigger than its maker and independent of its maker. In fact, when the emphasis is placed on becoming color blind, Acute Negro Psychosis always tends to increase. That is why racial integration without restoration of the black psyche which has been damaged by the teachings of black inferiority and white superiority can only serve to perpetuate the hypnotic trance that is now the legacy of black slavery.

INTRUSION is the first crime of white racism.

Even the most sacred of Black spiritual spaces have been invaded and contaminated by violence and destruction, to the extent that there are no longer any black sacred spaces left haloed and uncontaminated from intrusion. The mummies of Black ancestors, the great Black Kings, Black Queens and Pharaohs are right now being dissected in white laboratories as white scientists peep up in their insides, and all of their sacred possessions are now in white museums exposed to the same peeping intrusive eyes. The temples of the black man and black woman which are their living human bodies have also been penetrated and polluted ruthlessly by rape and sexual abuse throughout their long history of enslavement. Every day from the cradle their minds are being invaded with thoughts that emanate from the U-rocentrick soul. On a continual basis their psyche is being penetrated by THE WHITE IMAGE which is always dressed in robes of false superiority, whether it be in the form of blue-eyed Jeezus in church, or Hollywood "stars" on tv. Black sacred culture has been so profaned and commercialized that it is only valued now as a tourist attraction, a thing to be peered at by the same intrusive eyes. How then is it possible to decry and condemn the victims of such TOTAL INTRUSION for wanting to have family reunions without intrusion?

Who can blame a gathering of African peoples for wanting to discuss their strange and unique predicament amongst themselves? Who can blame them for wanting the opportunity to look around at each other and say "WE, the same we who were bound together at the bottom of the slave ship, the same we who have toiled and never got any pay, the same we who were raped and abused by the rapist's sperm, the same we who felt the lash of the slave-master's whip, the same we with whom no one wanted to mix, the same we who have been cast aside as non-humans, the same we who have always been scorned and kept down, the same we who were torn apart from the love of each other, the same we who never had a chance to be WE." ? Is it not A HOLY THING that those who never had a chance to come together in unity as "WE" should at last want to say "WE" without having to qualify that "we" ?

This desire and this sacred right is the first right that the scattered family of African peoples around the world must establish in order to regroup and rebuild that oneness which has long been prevented. It is a healthy sign that those who were taught to despise their own image are now wanting to savor the beauty of their own image without distraction from THE WHITE IMAGE that they have been so long forced to worship. It can be said of such a gathering, "This is a gathering of those who suffered the destruction of their natural image at the hands of white racism, and have come together to behold the mirror of their own painful experience in the faces of their family who were brutally ripped from their embrace almost forever."

There was a time when the cruelty and wretchedness of plantation slavery did not allow such ones to even cross over to the next plantation a few hundred yards away to see their loved ones. Even now economic chains still bind the vast majority of African peoples to the plantation that was chosen for them by their slave-master. And now at this late stage in history, that which ought to have been a common and regular occurence must now be hailed as a great historical achievement.

Condemnation of the attempt to reclaim the "WE' that was deliberately hindered by white racism is clear proof that white racism can even spring from liberal white mouths and black mouths too. But this is a logical outcome of the historical intruder's long years of arrogance, contempt, and insensitivity to the human dignity of African peoples. Long years of such INTRUSION accompanied by attitudes of contempt for the African sacred space have actually bred a sense of ENTITLEMENT which now causes indignation at the thought of putting an end to intrusion. Because the U-rocentrick thought process has now become a norm in black heads, it is not even surprising to hear the U-rocentrick echo proceeding from black mouths.

So because the evil of white racism has long been internalized by Blacks who now unconsciously echo the sentiments of their masters, it is quite obvious that a great part of the work of dismantling white racism has to be done amongst blacks themselves. Equally important is the internal work that has to be done amongst whites, for the simple reason that white racism is a cultural norm that is internalized from the cradle, and it permeates the fundamental myths of white society, conferring honor and sainthood on the architects of genocide and robbery. Fed from cradle on such myths which totally disembowel non-white peoples of their humanity, racism becomes such a normal world view that it is easy to be nice, liberal, and racist at the same time without even being aware of it.

Too often in addressing the evil of racism, failure to identify the root makes the problem look like a mankind problem, but the evidence of history shows that it is a white disease that eats black blood vessels. When one considers the fact that David Livingston never ended up on a plate, it is quite obvious where the real cannibals and savages have always had their nesting place. The truth must be faced that the ideological root of racism lies in the soil of U-rocentrick thought, and that which is often described as black racism is very often A REACTION to white racism when Blacks fail to act in the way that is expected of Negroes. As A GOOD NEGRO you are supposed to always act like you have "gotten over it and moved on." You are supposed to be totally non-racial and eager to be MIXED in order to demonstrate your voluntary amnesia. In former times when a slave failed to comply with the etiquette of Negro-hood it would be said that he was getting "uppity." Today this "uppity-ness" is now being used against the slave by describing it as racism, and thereby diverting attention from the real root of racism.

When the root is not properly identified there is naturally a tendency to generalize the problem, and the prescriptions for healing the infectious disease therefore consist of. integration medicines with the vain hope that intermarriage, color blindness and having at least one or two friends from the other race will effect a cure.

Such simplistic analysis of the disease of white racism will therefore never place emphasis on the system itself which has become master of the individual participants. The fundamentally racist economic and psychological structures which underpin racial domination and racial submission are indifferent to smiles and shake hands. Even with a Black government, a black judiciary, a black police force and a black army, one can yet suffer excruciatingly from white racism on a daily basis, because the black faces are just the deputies. They are not THE SHERIFF.

White racism is an international world order created on the profits from black slavery. It is the mother ship upon whose deck little black nations march. Dollar bill rule is assisted by mental slavery, and if the mind has not been thoroughly purged of the plantation blue-print, black political power is powerless in understanding and addressing the results of white racism.

If your mind is a product of the same white racist ideological and cultural system, it is most likely that you have grown to understand the master's point of view. You have been rehearsed by the education system of the plantation to see the reasonableness in what the slave-master is saying, and you have grown to understand why it is his land and not your land. That is what the plantation education system does for the Negroes of the plantation, it makes them forsake their own thoughts and prefer those of the master. The U-rocentrick education system endows the white mind and the white idea with a stamp of authority and God-hood, because after all, such education says that whites discovered everything including Black folks and brought them to civilization.

With such God-like authority conferred upon it, the white idea or the white mind can say "that plant is evil" and it can be expected that all the Negro minds will say "amen." Even though you are supposed to be an independent "black" government, if the white mind says "Your chief judge must wear a white head, and your speaker in the parliament must also wear a white head," it can be expected that the "black" government will say amen. The overshadowing power of long indoctrination will not allow the black mind to see the symbolism of "the white wig." Under the influence of long indoctrination, it will not be understood that such symbolism establishes the right and authority of the white mind to rule the black head and the black mouth. This explains why even under black governments the movement for African liberation has always been met with stout resistance. The black mind has been so conditioned to wait for authorization from the white mind that if the Pope, the Queen or the White House say "Rasta is the right way, stop persecuting them for practicing their culture," the black mind that now thinks of persecuting the Rastas could be expected to adopt a different point of view.

We should not forget that many times in history, plantations have been run by appointed slaves when the master was away, and to their credit, those plantations were run very efficiently, never wavering once from the master's point of view. Many times the slaves would be glad for the master to come back, because the need to prove their faithfulness caused the temporary masters to be real severe. If the real slave-master would give you twenty lashes for being black, the temporary masters would give you twenty for being black and twenty more for being a reminder of their own blackness which they despised.

The economic and psychological legacy of white racism has therefore become a robot that no longer needs whites to make a personal input. The program has already been laid down, and the many human parts of its machinery do their appointed tasks in order to remain on the vital payroll. The inherent evil in the system itself is actually endorsed, since CRIMES AGAINST BLACK HUMANITY are legitimized in the psyche of the victims and the victimizers by yearly observation of such festivals as Columbus day, Thanksgiving day, Settlers day, Hole Town Festival, Crop Over etc. Black humanity and Black self worth have therefore been ideologically relegated to the realms of unimportance and insignificance to such an extent that walking in another man's image now comes natural to the children of Africa. This is inevitable when all the annual rituals of the colonial plantation have succeeded in placing CRIMES AGAINST BLACK HUMANITY more firmly beneath the radar of human conscience.

These invisible economic and psychological forces which have been unleashed by historical white racism place the present-day victims in a predicament of wide-spread psychic pain which is shared only by those of similar fate wherever they are scattered. The evidence of this UNITY IN PSYCHIC PAIN is to be found in the music which emanates from their souls, be it Blues, Jazz, Soul, Gospel, or Reggae etc. They all draw from A UNITY OF PSYCHIC PAIN, and the music, the art and poetry that come from the soul often contradict the lie of having "gotten over it."

Despite this predicament, the precarious condition of economic insecurity, total dependency, and critical vulnerability that historic white racism has placed upon the inheritors of the slave legacy, now forces them to present an appearance of "the non-racial Negroes who have gotten over it." This situation is somewhat similar to one where a bully is standing on your toes but you have to smile and pretend he isn't doing it. Such forces if not resisted unceasingly can actually infect the victims with that wide-spread disease of ACUTE NEGRO PSYCHOSIS which is so prevalent today on the plantation.

But in accordance with the Willie Lynch Plan, the psychology that now operates in Middle Class Heaven is such that Negroes can actually "get over it" by immersing themselves in the hamburger and plastic bag delights which are commonly mistaken for progress. These ANESTHETICS of Hamburger Heaven help the Negro to desensitize his perception of pain to the extent that he becomes distanced from the pain of the majority of his race. It is not uncommon to hear such Negroes say "we Negroes over here in The Big House are different, we don't hurt so much like those out there who are always getting on so bitter." And they will say it very loudly, because it is very important that their master hears and makes note of their unflinching fidelity.

True to the spirit of Negro-hood, the Negro's brain will not be busy studying how to correct the vulnerable and insecure predicament which has been bequeathed to him by historical white racism. Instead, the Negro will be more concerned and agitated about the spoiling of the "good Negro" name, thinking that preservation of the good name will forestall the inevitable.

Negro-hood is so binding on the consciousness, that Negroes will try to preserve their servile hold on the plank until whenever the slave master pushes them off. Their lack of historical memory will not remind them that the Arawaks also had a good name and it never helped them to escape genocide. Despite the oncoming rush of the economic precipice which has no regard for Negro fidelity, misplaced concerns will naturally cause agitation over "those other ones who are giving us a bad name"

And so, the ANAESTHETICS of Middle Class Heaven continue to create a wide division between those that "haven't gotten over it and moved on" and those that have "moved on" to A LOANED PROGRESS, where month to month leases on borrowed houses, borrowed cars and borrowed gadgets is more important than your soul. It is therefore important to maintain the etiquette of the plantation and suppress the visions that come from your own natural origins, because such visions do not pay when neo-colonialism is the order of the day.

Ras Jahaziel http://members.aol.com/jahpaint/index1.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xSpiritual Prostitutes``x1034783264,55715,rasta``x``x ``xPrinces's arrival
Photos: Jermaine Cruickshank

Two articles from Trinidad & Tobago's newspapers

'One love' for young Salassie

By Sateesh Maharaj, Express TT

Prince Zere Yacob Asfa WossenTHE love started long before his arrival.

In knitted tri-colour hats and flowing locks they waited, some for over two hours.

By maxi loads they arrived until the number neared a thousand.

The congregation grew by the minute.

They converged on the arrival area of Piarco International Airport. They wore jerseys with his picture, lit incense and as they greeted each other the salutation was the same: "Jah Rastafari!"

At 2.45 p.m. yesterday Crown Prince Zere Yacob Asfa Wossen—grandson of Haile Selassie-stepped on to Trinidadian soil. His entourage was led up to the VIP section at the airport. There Wossen met local members of the Ethiopian Peace Foundation, of which he is the international head and founder, airport officials and MP Fitzgerald Hinds.

Wossen wore a black suit and Panama straw hat, a stark contrast to the garb of the waiting masses.

As the media cautiously approached him Wossen described his visit as "a mystery" and one of which he was pleased to be a part.

"We feel part of that mystery."

His voice was low and husky, almost secretive.

He described the local followers as family and had a special message for them.

"I see them as my brothers and sisters. We get along. They want to help. Thank you for your interest."

When asked if he was concerned that this government was not doing enough for the Rastafarian movement Wossen smiled: "The Rastafarian movement is a government by itself."

The interview was cut short by a member of his entourage.

Wossen was then led to the faithful.

Many of them were not looking in his direction. Those that saw him were at first sceptical.

"Da’s him? Da’s the man?"

When the realisation hit them the emotion was overwhelming.

"Jah!" Someone shouted.

"Rastafarai!" was the response.

PrinceWith that they surged forward. Calling his name they broke down in tears. They were kept at bay by airport security but could no longer be restrained as he stepped through sliding glass doors adorned, by his followers, with palm leaves.

They pounced on him; delirious with glee. The melee lasted for almost 15 minutes. To touch him, see if he was really there, make contact with the bloodline of the most high.

Even after he entered an awaiting car the crowd would not budge. It was another fifteen minutes before a path in this sea of people was cleared for his departure.

As the Wossen group left, many scampered to their maxis; desperate not to lose sight of him.

Wossen had his vehicle circle back to wait on them. The motorcade then left the compound.

Many were left too emotional to speak.

Malcolm "Marley" Critchlow filtered his locks through his fingers. Tears flowed freely from his reddened eyes and he was at times incoherent as he tried to express his feelings.

"I start to sweat. Fus I know that is the Lord of lords. Selassie I grandson. Selassie I. Jah! Da's meh blessed soldier. Selassie I. I never knew I would live to see Selassie I grandson in Trinidad and Tobago."

MP Hinds then expressed his own emotions.

"The most happy feeling that has come over me for a long time; from birth maybe. This is a real blessing. I am extremely happy to have welcomed His Majesty to our land. We are happy to have him. I say so on behalf of all the thousands gathered here today. Rastafari."

He then explained the significance of such a visit.

"It is extremely important. Ethiopia is the cradle of human civilisation. His Majesty is from a line of kings from David, from Solomon. We are blessed in Trinidad and Tobago to have such royalty walk on our land."

Clyde "Trini Levi" Noel, representative from the 12 tribes of Israel in Trinidad, called the event "history in the making."

He said: "We the Rastafarians in Trinidad are determined to go to Africa. He came here for all those Africans who desire to return to Ethiopia.

"That is why the Ethiopian Peace Foundation has come about, to foster brotherhoodly love and unity amongst all nations and direct all those that want to return to Africa to let them know that they have a haven in Ethiopia."

He described Rastafarianism as "life" adding: "We come to show Christ in his kingly character. We hold on to the lineage of David. We know once we hold on to that lineage we are in order. That is what we want. We want to be in order with the Father. One with the Father. Owning one spirit, one love, one God, one aim, one destiny. Rastafari."

Copyright (c) Trinidad Express
Reproduced on RastafariTimes.com by consent of Trinidad Express

Rastas rush to see Selassie grandson

Guardian TT

Prince
Rastafarians rush after the car in which Zerah Yacob Asfa Wossen, grandson of Haile Selassie I, was escorted from the Piarco International Airport yesterday. The Ethiopian prince is due to meet with Prime Minister Patrick Manning today.

Hundreds of Rastafarians from various Rastafarian communities rushed to greet grandson of Haile Selassie I, Zerah Yacob Asfa Wossen, on his arrival at Piarco International Airport yesterday.

MP for Laventille East/Morvant Fitzgerald Hinds was also jostled in the melee as he and several others came in their numbers to greet the Crown Prince, who is expected to stay until December 10.

When the Crown Prince arrived at at 2.45 pm, he was met by the enthusiastic crowd, most wearing Rastafarian colours.

The crowd created havoc as they lunged forward to touch the prince. Despite the melee, the event was obviously a joyous occasion, as several of them, including young children, could not contain their emotions.

The prince was escorted to the VIP lounge where he met six Rastafarian leaders.

He was later whisked away by a motorcade to the 12 Tribes of Israel headquarters in Diego Martin.

The prince is to be officially welcomed by Prime Minister Patrick Manning at a function at St Clement’s Church, Ste Madeleine today.

It is the first of many events, including a concert, planned for his three-week visit. ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xCrown Prince Zere Yacob Asfa Wossen in T&T``x1037716042,73353,rasta``x``x ``xAuthor: RastaFrog
Email: lonefrog615@yahoo.com

I'm writing this mostly in respone to some of the articles posted here at Rastafari Times, but also for the understanding of all.

Whites. Violators of humanity and dignity. Destroyers of culture and identity. Inhabitants of Babylon and enemy of Rasta.

I am White. I am Rasta. I don't just agree with that which was just stated. I know it to be truth. Some Rasta say "White man is evil, weather he do so intentionally or not, he oppress my people." Some Rasta say "White man is the cause of the hardship which all Rasta sruggle against." Some Rasta say "How can white man be Rasta?"

Some Rasta need to remember. It is the White man's ideas and values towards the Black man that they are trying to change. So why do some Rasta deny the white Rasta. A White man who doesn't just agree that all life is equal and every man is a man. A White man who knows that it was his blood, his ancestors that commited tremendous crimes against humanity, but he knows the truth and denounces that behavior in himself.

The White Rasta know the crime was his, but chooses to fight for the side of LIFE.

Jah make tree and flower in all shape, size, and color.

Why not Jah make Rasta the same way?``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAre not some worthy?``x1038197175,39874,views``x``x ``xBy Earl Manmohan, Express TT

Visiting Crown Prince Zere Yacob Asfa Wossen, grandson of Ethiopia’s late Emperor Haile Selassie, pays a four-day visit to Tobago starting tomorrow.

He arrives at Crown Point International Airport at 11:25 a.m. and he will be met by a party led by Aldwyn Mc Phee, overseer of the Twelve Tribes of Israel and representative of the Ethiopian Peace Foundation.

Following a brief reception, the Crown Prince will be at the head of a motorcade into Scarborough where he will pay a courtesy call on Chief Secretary Orville London at noon.

In the afternoon, the Crown Prince will meet members of the public at the Twelve Tribes of Israel headquarters in Canaan.

On Thursday, he will visit the Castara Government Primary School at 9 a.m. and later take an herbal bath at Castara Bay. At 5 p.m. he will attend a service at the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Darrel Spring.

The Crown Prince will visit the world famous Buccoo Reef and Nylon Pool on Friday, as well as Fort James at Plymouth and Fort King George at Scarborough.

On Friday night there will be a concert in honour of the Crown Prince at the Twelve Tribes headquarters.

He returns to Trinidad on Saturday.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xSister isle gets royal visit``x1038959513,61641,rasta``x``x ``xBy Carol Matroo, Guardian TT

PM ManningA member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has accused Prime Minister Patrick Manning of disrespecting Ethiopians, the Rastafarian community and the Ethiopian Church, by not meeting with Ethiopian Crown Prince Zere Yacob Asfa Wossen.

Robert Lewis, who visited the Guardian yesterday, said Manning's comments about the prince not being recognised as part of the Ethiopian monarchy by the Ethiopian Government was "totally disrespectful."

Wossen is the grandson of Haile Selassie, the last Ethiopian emperor, who was said to be a direct descendant of King David. Wossen is in T&T on a three-week visit.

"Mr Manning say the Foreign Affairs Ministry advised him that the prince is not recognised by his (Wossen) Government and he cannot go back to Ethiopia.

"He say that the monarch lineage was abolished in Ethiopia but I say the monarch lineage does not stop because the government says so.

"The Ethiopian Government is not an elected, recognised government because it was won by the gun. Ethiopia is run by guns and not the ballot box," Lewis claimed.

Responding to the criticism of the Rastafarian community, Manning said he acted on the advice of Foreign Affairs Minister Knowlson Gift.

Speaking at a meeting of chairmen, Boards of directors and chief executive officers of State enterprises at the Crowne Plaza Hotel yesterday, Manning repeated that the monarchy was abolished in Ethiopia.

"The prince is not recognised by his own Government and if, therefore, we in Trinidad and Tobago do anything to give official recognition, then we can find ourselves at fault with the (Ethiopian) government and the Ethiopian Government is a friendly government," he explained

When asked why President Arthur NR Robinson met with the prince, Manning replied: "He (Robinson) is not a member of the executive."

On the prince's courtesy call on Orville London, Chief Secretary of the Tobago House of Assembly, Manning said: "The chairman of the Tobago House of Assembly is at a different level than that of the Central Government."

Gift could not be reached for comment.

Rasta: PM's shunning of prince disrespectful

December 06, 2002
By Danielle Martin, Express TT

Robert Lewis, a Rastafarian since 1975, is upset with Prime Minister Patrick Manning for refusing to meet the Imperial Majesty Crown Prince of Ethiopia, Zere Yacob Afsa Wossen.

Lewis described Manning's actions as disrespectful to Rastafarians and advised Manning to learn his history before opening his mouth and not let the wrath of Ethiopia come down on him.

"An article in a daily newspaper reported that Manning was advised not to meet the Crown Prince because he was not recognised in Ethiopia, and which went on to say that the monarchy was abolished and that the said Prince could not return to his homeland," stated Lewis.

However, Lewis strongly disagreed with these statements. "He is not on the throne because of the Muslim fascist government currently in control of Ethiopia.

"The Ethiopian government is not recognised because they took power by the gun; in fact any government that attains power (in that way) is not recognised, even by the UN," Lewis said.

In addition, Lewis said it was silly to say that the monarchy's lineage was abolished..."A government cannot abolish a lineage, it only stops when there's no heir," he stressed.

He said the British Queen's lineage went back to 1028 with Constantine, but the Ethiopian monarchy dated back to King Solomon and Sheba.

The Crown Prince is the grandson of Haile Selassie I and is the 227th King of Ethiopia and is welcomed by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church anytime he visits home, he said.

"If the crown prince had come here prior to elections I am certain Manning would have greeted him with all the pomp and ceremony necessary," Lewis argued.

The crown prince is the head and founder of the Ethiopian Peace Foundation, based in Manchester, England, which has as its major goal the repatriation and development of Ethiopians who wish to return and make a contribution to that country.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xEthiopian church member: Manning disrespectful``x1039090558,66892,rasta``x``x ``xFrom Earl Manmohan in Scarborough Tobago, Express TT

Crown Prince of Ethiopia

Crown Prince of Ethiopia, Zere Yocob Asfa Wossen, said yesterday that Prime Minister Patrick Manning is entitled to his views on the situation in the African country.

He arrived in Tobago at 1.10 p.m. with his wife at the start of a four-day stay as guest of the 12 Tribes of Israel and the Ethiopian Peace Foundation.

A large group of local followers dressed in red, yellow and green and led - by Overseer of the 12 Tribes of Israel, Aldwin McPhee - were at Crown Point Airport to greet him.

In an interview with the Express Tobago Bureau at the airport, the Crown Prince, who was asked whether he was hurt or concerned in any way by the Prime Minister's refusal to accept him replied: "Mr Manning is entitled to his own views, I am not hurt or concerned about it."

He said he was not taken aback by this opportunity and, contrary to what Manning had said, he and his wife would be returning to Ethiopia at the end of his current tour of the western world. He leaves Trinidad on Tuesday for the United States.

Wossen said he was on a holiday trip to this region and intended to enjoy his four-day stay in Tobago, taking in the "beautiful sites" and meeting the people.

Following the brief reception at the airport, he was taken directly to Calder Hall where he paid a courtesy call on Chief Secretary Orville London. A much larger crowd of followers were on hand to greet him as he emerged from the building.

Pressed by other reporters for his feelings on Manning's statement, the African visitor replied: "I would prefer you make no mention of this again."

PM ManningManning failed to show up to meet him at the St Clement's Anglican Church in San Fernando last week and later explained that the monarchy had been abolished in Ethiopia, and the Crown Prince was not recognised by his own government.

He added that the Crown Prince was not allowed to go to Ethiopia and if he received and official recognition here, Trinidad and Tobago ran the risk of offending a friendly Government in Eithopia.

However, the Crown Prince has met with President Arthur NR Robinson, the Mayors of Port of Spain and Chaguanas, and yesterday with the THA Chief Secretary.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xPrince not offended by PM's snub``x1039120438,11730,rasta``x``x ``xby Suzanne Mills, www.newsday.co.tt

Newsday's senior political and parliamentary reporter, Ria Taitt had, in her usual unaffected fashion, come directly to the point.

We were discussing the controversy over the Prime Minister's failure to meet the Ethiopian Crown Prince, Zere Yacob Asfa Woosen, a mini bacchanal I seemed to have sparked in this very space a fortnight before.

"You started the fire," she had remarked. "Now you want to put it out?"

Ria's assessment of my feelings was not far off target. Indeed, I did not want to see the flames of the debate over the grandson of His Majesty, Emperor Haile Selassie fanned by a lot of hot air into a conflagration. I had never intended to roast the Prime Minister either, just light a little "fire" under this administration, make it explain what was being seen by many as a neo-colonial attitude.

I didn't want the talk about the Prince though, to cease totally, just to simmer down. Though the outrage of some Rastas was singeing the Prime Minister, I thought the discussion to the nation's benefit. The row had brought to the fore, the marginalisation of the Rastafarian and TT society's prejudices toward him. Thus, beyond the din of the fury, there was perhaps the faint sound of an approaching, slightly brighter red, yellow and green future.

I also felt no particular concern for the heat that Manning was taking. The Prime Minister could take care of himself after three decades in politics. Furthermore, I had given him the opportunity to respond to my queries of his administration's treatment of the Prince. Manning's explanation for not seeing Zere Yacob, contained in his carefully drafted parliamentary note, had been published in the daily Newsday. Even the Prince said he had felt not, the least slighted by Manning.

In addition, what really knew we of this Ethiopian monarch, of his source of income, his politics, save that there was a move to reinstate him, an option rejected by the majority of Ethiopians years ago? Zere Yacob Asfa Woosen was heavily guarded, making access to him nigh impossible. He had held no press conference, had opened himself to no probing. Perhaps the PM had been right not to grant him an audience.

"The Monarchy has been abolished in Ethiopia and therefore, the Crown Prince is not recognised by his own government," Manning had written. "If therefore he receives any official recognition in Trinidad and Tobago, either directly or tacitly, we run the risk and are likely to run afoul of a friendly government in the Gov't of Ethiopia."

Manning's Ministry of Foreign Affairs had advised him not only to refuse to meet the Prince, but also to give Zere Yacob, no "official recognition in TT." The word "official" had been underlined by Manning in his neat note. No one in his executive could meet the Prince, which is why he had sent Fitzgerald Hinds, the PNM backbencher to greet Zere Yacob.

The Prime Minister's reasons for not meeting the Prince seemed reasonable enough under all the circumstances. Nevertheless, I still had a nagging feeling that there was more in this Manning mortar than the protocol pestle, even if I did not care to stir the Zere Yacob pot any longer.

What was bothering me was that I knew that Manning could have — if he had so desired — ignored the advice of his Foreign Ministry. How had I come to this conclusion? I had witnessed the Prime Minister a few years ago run tacitly afoul of another friendly Government. And under ironically similar circumstances!

I recalled that months before he lost office in 1995, the Manning Government had permitted the Dalai Lama to come to TT after the Chinese Government, through its Embassy in Port-of-Spain, registered its objections to the visit. China did not wish the exiled Tibetan to be granted a visa.

Nevertheless, the PNM not only gave the Dalai Lama permission to enter our shores; it participated in his visit.

I was not comparing the Dalai Lama to the Crown Prince, though arguably for the two groups that brought them both to TT, each man was of equal importance: they were both considered spiritual leaders in exile.

Zere Yacob had to leave Ethiopia when his grandfather, the self-proclaimed descendant of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, was overthrown and killed in a socialist coup. When socialist rule ended, the people of Ethiopia voted for a federal democracy. The Dalai Lama had been expelled from Tibet after China's absorption of the tiny Himalayan nation and would only be allowed to return if he acknowledged he was a Chinese citizen.

Whatever their opinion of the rights of each man, Manning and the PNM were not allowed to practise "Orwellian" diplomacy, to deem one exile more deserving or holier than the other, one government worthy of more respect than the other. Diplomatic relations with the Governments of China and Ethiopia meant that TT was not permitted the luxury of deciding that the Dalai Lama deserved to rule Tibet, but that the Crown Prince was persona non grata in Ethiopia.

That the PNM might unevenly apply the rules of protocol however, was quite
conceivable. It was the favourite game of many governments. The George Bush-led Republicans' war on terrorism was a good example of this sort of flexible foreign policy.

One would have thought though, that Manning would not have wanted to run afoul of the friendly government of China: TT had more than benefited from its friendship with the powerful Asian nation. If the PNM Government were practising expedient diplomacy, surely China would be an ally, not a foe.

However, on the other hand, the Dalai Lama cause was of greater celebrity; it enjoyed the support of not only Hollywood actor Richard Gere, but of TT's more influential citizens. The group that brought the Tibetan monk had been comprised of social and intellectual heavyweights. But, who, just tell me who, had ever heard of the Ethiopian Peace Foundation and its campaign to reinstate the Crown Prince!

I wondered if I was again being too hard on the Manning Government. Maybe, the Prime Minister had learnt a harsh diplomatic lesson from the Dalai Lama visit; maybe there had been repercussions to his administrations' actions about which, we had never learnt.

I did not wish to fan further the flames of the Crown Prince controversy. However, Manning's explanation of his behaviour towards Zere Yacob had raised yet more questions about the way we viewed the world from our little Caribbean island in the sun. One such was, did we regard the Dalai Lama more because the Western world deemed him an important religious and political leader?

I had another question for our Prime Minister. Would Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, be granted a visa to visit TT? Or, would the PNM follow England's lead and ban him?


Suzanne Mills is the Editor of the daily Newsday.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xFanning the flames``x1039369195,88830,rasta``x``x ``xAuthor: RastaFrog
E-mail: lonefrog615@yahoo.com

I am (or was) looking out the window this afternoon. I saw on the water before me, a barge. Atop the barge was a crane holding a piece of iron framework down into the water to which was attached a drill of sorts.

The whole mess was causing a terrible racket and churning the water and mud in a most unnatural and mechanically morbid way. On the pier, (from which my window peered, no pun intended) was a young man. He was sitting and smoking a cigarette watching the arcane display of power from the drill. I decided that I would go down and ask to join him. When I arrived to the spot the young man had been, he was gone.

Fascinated by the atmosphere, I took up a perch on one of the decorative moorings made of concrete. As I watched this steel beast scar the floor of Jah's sea, I couldn't help but decide that we as people are doing too much. Too much drilling. Too much building. Too much poking and prodding of Mother Irth.

But I could have been wrong.

When I got up to leave I saw a man, obviously a supervisor, climb out of a brand new shiny white Lexus and look on with me.

That's when I knew that I wasn't wrong.

Jah be praised for me vision of truth this day.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xMy vision of truth``x1039795017,56956,views``x``x ``xRastafariOn Bad-Friday in the year of our JAH Two Thousand and Three it will be forty year to the day since the government of that day declare in I man vibes, WAAARRR on Rastafari in Montego Bay and is like every anti-rasta was happy for the announcement on what suppose to be their good Friday so it spread Island wide. If one was seen displaying the Rastafari colours proudly they was at war with kill Rasta people.

Today every one loves the Red, Gold and Green. The Indians, the Americans, users of all race and nationalities love it. It was written, before the Rastaman was murdered on a cross, the bredren say he was going to prepare a place where he is I and I will be also.

RastafariTime magazine span the globe and found Rastafari in Jamaica and declared him Man of the Millennium with his song, Song of the Millennium, and album, Album of the Millennium.

This is a miracle or what? Nineteen sixty-three, them kill all of us and today we are more than fifty percent of the population, dread or not, and the Red, Gold and Green is a marketing tool to put money in the murderers pocket.

Christmas morning Rastafari will watch them again running into their house of begging for forgiveness for not recognising that the Man with Locks like wool and feet like bronze was HIM and should be call by his new name, Ras Tafari, Head Creator and allow their employee to show their true principles of Rastafari and walk in looks and manner of the Creator. I have never seen the image of a bald head Jesus yet, so why is the shepherd leading the sheep a stray?

Please, I Rastafari is asking all users of the Creator, Ras Tafari, to cool out. Stop disrespecting Rastafari in Jamaica. I and I have worked just as hard as your Ministers of every ting, church and state, to up hold the righteousness and the disrespect is over baring now. Our eyes are open wide and we see what you are doing and the money you are making off the Blood, Sweat and Tears flowing from the goody of the poor Children of the Rasta who was murder in nineteen sixty three.

Thanks for allowing I this space in your Irie vibes

One perfect love

Ras Astor Black, President & Prime Minister Caretaker

Jamaica Alliance Movement - Rastafari Government``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xDem still a dis Rastafari ina Jamaica``x1040392693,1473,views``x``x ``xTrinicenter Staff

Christopher Williams (Ras Forever, Ras Akel) the co-founder of the Rastafari Speaks Message Board has passed forward on December 23, 2002.

He was on his way to visit relatives at Superville Hill, Chinapoo, when an accident occurred.

At around 8pm Williams and his daughter Akelia, 17, were in his car proceeding up a narrow road on Superville Hill, en route to a relative's home. At the same time, a truck was heading down the hill, forcing Williams to reverse his car to allow the truck to pass. While reversing, Williams reportedly lost control of the car which ran off the road and plunged 56 feet down, crashing into a ditch.

Ras Forever passed forward on the spot, while his daughter left the car seeking help.

His son, Akel Williams, posted a notice on Rastafari Speaks Message board.

Ras Forever was one of the direct contributors to the many Trinicenter Websites. His contributions in Trinidad were many and he tirelessly supported and lobbied for African oriented programs in the media.

He was a constant student of history and was widely known in the Rastafari community. He was about to release an updated copy of his book Rasta: Emperor Haile Sellassie and the Rastafarians which is available at amazon.com.

Being a student of world history Ras Akel knew that no person should be excluded or made to feel inferior or superior solely on the basis of his or her skin color or academic achievements. He acted in accordance with this understanding.

He was a businessman as well as a social activist who was always willing to help others.

#

Ras Forever's final message sent out via Rastafari Speaks mailing list:

Rastafari Greetings in the Name of His Imperial Majesty Emperor
Haile Sellassie I the First.

As most of our planet joins in the celebration of the Christian festival of Christmas. The Rastafari Community extends fraternal love and best wishes to our brothers and sisters all over the world.

It is our greatest wish and deepest desire, that the care and concern shown to our fellow human beings at this time, be not restricted to this season, but that it continue into each and everyday of our existence, so that we may make an improvement where needed to the condition and the lives of those around us and to those that we meet as we journey through the landscape of life.

Let us try to feed those that need to be fed, heal those that need to be healed, teach those that need to be taught and protect those that need to be protected.

Let whatever we do at this time of the year, lead to a doubling of our resolve, to making this our earth space, a much more humane place.

We should give of our best, our children demand nothing less. The only future they are going to inherit, is the one we create, the one that we build each and everyday, the one that starts with us from the very words we utter.

So Let Jah Be Praised and Thy Works Be Done.

Rastafari Love To You and Yours. One Perfect Love.

Funeral service
Posted: Monday, December 30, 2002

Funeral service for Christopher Williams (Ras Forever, Ras Akel) will be held on Tuesday 31st December 2.30pm at Simpson’s Funeral Home at 63 Eastern Main Road Laventille, Trinidad and Tobago. From there, the body would be taken to the Tunapuna Cemetery for burial.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRas Forever (Ras Akel) passes forward``x1040844294,32315,rasta``x``x ``xFuneral service for Christopher Williams (Ras Forever, Ras Akel) will be held on Tuesday 31st December 2.30pm at Simpson’s Funeral Home at 63 Eastern Main Road Laventille, Trinidad and Tobago. From there, the body would be taken to the Tunapuna Cemetery for burial.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xFuneral service for Christopher Williams``x1041293474,69613,rasta``x``x ``xDecember 12, 2002
by Professor Alejandro Correa & Professor Emeritus Willie Thompson

African Venezuelan Young MenThis month, for the first time in history, Venezuelan people of African descent have total control of their historic Black university, the Instituto Universitario Barlovento. They are already planning a university administered hotel and a restaurant for students, faculty and the community. This is an achievement of a lifetime, and the people of Barlovento gather around their seat of higher learning to reflect on their success.

Another topic on their minds and hearts is the fate of President Hugo Chavez. He is Venezuela's first multiracial president and is called "Negro" (nigger) by his detractors because of his African-Indigenous features. Behind the enemies of Venezuela and Hugo Chavez are very large sums of money being spent to destroy the dreams of the people who historically have been discriminated against because of race, economic ideas, etc.

African Venezuelan School ChildrenThese dreams of the African Venezuelan people may be deferred if the United States replaces Chavez with a rightwing businessman as president. Currently, three Blacks are state governors elected by the people; the secretary of education is black; two Indigenous Venezuelans are congresspersons elected directly by the people; Indigenous Venezuelans have the complete right to claim their historic lands; land is protected and available to Black and Indigenous Venezuelan farmers so that they can now engage in farming for the first time in generations; and Venezuelans of African descent are participating in conferences against racism around the world and establishing strategic relationships with international organizations. They have attended Congressional Black Caucus conferences in 2000, 2001 and 2002; the pre-conference against racism in Chile in 2000; and the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. The African Venezuelan community in Barlovento also hosted the Second International Reunion of the African Latin Family in 1999.

Sixty percent of the population of Venezuela are people of African descent. The others are Mestizos of Indigenous and European descent and Indigenous. The support of the people of African descent in the United States is one of the most strategic factors in helping the people of African descent survive and prosper in Venezuela.

President Hugo Chavez was elected in a democratic election with more than 70 percent of the 11 million votes cast. One of his first actions was to call for an election of a National Constituency Assembly whose mission was to reform the 1969 national Constitution. During 40 years of democracy this Constitution was used to avoid empowering the people. The election of the National Constituency Assembly allowed the participation of students, business related organizations, community representatives and parties opposed to the president in the Assembly. The entire society had its opportunity in the Assembly.

The National Constituency Assembly designed a new national constitution, which was widely discussed all around the country. Then a national election was called to consider the acceptance of the new constitution. The Venezuelan people, in direct election, said, "We do accept the new constitution" in 1999. New national elections were called at all levels of government to test the acceptance of the new constitution and renegotiate the public powers. President Hugo Chavez, again, won the election with over one million votes more than his closest opponent. The party supporting Chavez also won, as did several state governors who belonged to the party.

During his three years in power – the complete term is six years – President Chavez has been an advocate for the education of the poor. After 50 years of being eliminated, schools were created with full schedules from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., allowing children to stay longer in recreational programs and special classes.

Never before have small businesses flourished with the full support of the government at the local and national levels. Chavez has opened the doors for the participation of those who have long been excluded.

When President Chavez came to power, 80 percent of the population lived below poverty. Overcoming this difficult obstacle requires a joint effort at all levels of society. Unfortunately, the support has not echoed in the upper economic brackets of Venezuelan society. What have they done? Organizing a coup is not the way to support the government.

Venezuela is the fourth largest oil producer in the world and the second largest oil exporter to the United States. President Chavez has never threatened the export of oil to the U.S. He has visited the U.S. about five times, holding meetings with businesspersons, seeking to stimulate foreign investment in Venezuela in order to raise the level of employment and mitigate the conditions of the poor.

Unfortunately, the sectors of society wanting to reverse these important advances decided to violate Venezuelan democracy. A group of renegade military generals formed a coalition with "businessmen" – land owners whose ancestors stole it from Indigenous Venezuelans and used enslaved African labor to build the Venezuelan economy and society.

Some members of the press also belong to the business establishment. Three main private TV stations led a campaign against the evolution of democratic change in the same style Hitler used against the Jews: "Say a lie a thousand times and everybody will believe it as a truth."

These forces formed a coup to destroy freedom in Venezuela. For three days they controlled the government and instituted practices not seen in Venezuela since the ‘50s, during the days of the military rulers. Venezuelans in their 60s were astonished to see such violations of civil rights.

Leaders of the coup imprisoned President Chavez, isolating him from any public contact, lying about a presidential resignation, dissolving all legitimate national powers at all levels. Then they started hunting down the legitimate member of Congress and of the president's cabinet. Even the Supreme Court was forced to resign. They did all that in a period of three days. Further, they derogated the 1999 constitution.

In response, however, people of all races and backgrounds took to the streets, the military bases and public buildings to liberate President Chavez. He is in control again.

Venezuelans watched with deep concern how Ari Fleisher, Bush's press secretary, and Condoleezza Rice, Bush's defense advisor – a black woman – avoided calling the coup against President Chavez what it really was: a vulgar, right wing coup against a democratic government. Both have used vague rhetoric to criticize Chavez' administration rather than condemn the coup. The Bush administration in general looked with sympathy at the coup and issued no declaration condemning it.

The New York Times also has presented the facts in a less than objective way. Rather than going into the countryside to talk with the people, Times reporters appear to have visited only the Caracas suburbs to assess public opinion. Furthermore, the local media consider only the opinions of wealthy people. All other opinions are considered unworthy. So, if you are poor or if you are not in agreement with the media, then you are not considered a part of the public opinion.

U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd has expressed dismay over the Bush administration's behavior regarding the situation in Venezuela. His position is an example of goodwill and is appreciated by Venezuelans.

There's an international effort to destroy the public image of President Chavez. Let us briefly analyze it.

1) Hugo Chavez has visited Iraq, Iran and Libya. Because he is a friend of those nations, he is branded an enemy of the United States. Venezuela and the countries visited by President Chavez are members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Together with these countries, Venezuela regulates oil prices and must agree with them on strategies for maintaining profitability while at the same time making prices affordable to the oil importing countries such as the U.S. With 60 percent of its national budget based on oil income, clearly Venezuela must talk with members of OPEC. This doesn't make Venezuela a partner in terrorism as has been insinuated by the U.S. and the media.

2) Hugo Chavez is a friend of Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro. It is insinuated that he is therefore an enemy of the U.S. Venezuela is a free and self-determining nation in its business relations with Cuba. It has a right to have business relations with China or any other country.

3) It is said that Hugo Chavez didn't condemn the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and is therefore an enemy of the U.S. But President Chavez most certainly did condemn the Sept. 11 attacks and said, just as France and Russia and the Pope did, that he doesn't support a heavy and indiscriminate attack against Afghanistan which might cause civilian casualties. The Bush administration considers neither the presidents of France and Russia nor the Pope as enemies of the U.S. and is not willing to plan and finance a coup against those leaders because they express humanitarian points of view.

4) President Chavez is said to be a supporter of the Colombian guerrillas and is therefore involved in terrorism. The truth is that President Chavez has condemned terrorism in Colombia. Furthermore, the Venezuelan government under his administration has been a mediator in peace talks between the guerrillas and the Colombian government.

5) The people of the U.S. should think deeply about U.S. support of the failed coup and its leaders and its plans to change the regime in Venezuela. The result of President Chavez' trip to oil exporting countries was agreement on a solid oil price. In Venezuela, the price of oil is extremely important for education, health care and public services generally. The first declaration of the leaders of the failed coup was the abandonment of the quota system, which caused oil prices to drop.


Writer's note: Africans and people of African descent are beginning to tell our own story. Most other people have no vested interest in telling the truth about us. Professor Correa of Barloyento University is an African Venezuelan, and he tells the story of the achievements of African Venezuelans, the United States' participation in the failed attempt to overthrow President Chavez, and the certain reversal of the social, economic, cultural and psychological gains to African Venezuelans if President Chavez is overthrown. He pleads with us to 1) discuss in open forums, churches and community organizations the U.S. attacks on Venezuela and the conditions there, and 2) write letters to the U.S. Congress asking that the U.S. respect the Venezuelan government and follow the rule of law and international treaties in dealing with Venezuela. You can trust his advice and act on it.

Comments here...

More on the Venezuelan Crisis...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAfrican Venezuelans fear new U.S. coup against President Chavez``x1041393600,99798,world``x``x ``xEmail from: Mxolisi

Greetings in the name of the Most High King Selassie I selah!

This massage is intended for those who still remember the 'Christamas' of Ethiopia (Ganna), I 'n' I wish all the best in this day to all Jah people across the universe, I give thanks.

Irie felling in this a day may Jah be praise and all enemies be scattered and defeated in front of Jah-Rastafari I.

IN PRAISE OF JAH, PRAISE JAH ALL PEOPLE , PRAISE JAH ALL NATIONS HIS LOVE FOR US IS STRONG AND HIS FAITHFULNESS ETERNAL, PRAISE JAH (PS:117)

Thanks-giving
Mxolisi (Joseph in Tribe)``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xGanna Massage``x1041912000,76307,rasta``x``x ``xBy Doreen Miller, YellowTimes.org

It seems like only yesterday when the world was caught up in mass hysteria and dire predictions of doom and gloom about the impending Y2K crisis that would plunge the world into utter chaos and darkness. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when, at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2000, planes did not plunge from the skies, computer systems continued to function, and the lights remained on. In short, life went on as usual. Little did people realize, however, that the year 2000 was to herald in a unprecedented age of terror and darkness.

The road to hell began barely nine months into George Bush's presidency, when the American public suffered a major terrorist attack made possible allegedly by a simple failure of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to connect the dots. The dust had barely settled when select congressmen were graced with letters laced with weapon-grade anthrax whose origins mysteriously point to a U.S. source. Next, U.S. citizens had their Constitutionally guaranteed civil rights sharply curtailed by the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act. Their right to privacy was even further eroded by the just recently passed Homeland Security Act which sets up a Total Information Awareness operation that would make George Orwell blush.

Color-coded warnings signifying levels of terrorist threat are announced in the media on a regular basis -- always jacked up a notch or two in time for the holidays to further intimidate an already fearful and paranoid public. The economy is being rocked by one corporate scandal after another; the numbers of those without jobs, health insurance or a place to call home continue to climb; and the few remaining safeguards protecting the environment are quickly being dismantled. Terrorism and other acts of violence are escalating around the globe. The world's most powerful leader, drunk with a belief in his own invincibility, belligerently threatens pre-emptive war and nuclear retaliation on any country suspected of trying to undermine U.S. interests and superiority. Indeed, the world has been plunged into an age of darkness far surpassing its worst Y2K nightmares.

Most Americans see themselves as innocent victims in a world gone mad and believe, quite naively, that their government holds the moral high ground in its efforts to establish a Pax Americana worldwide. The facts, however, reveal the United States to be not only a part of the cycle of violence, but the largest exporter of death and destruction this world has ever known.

Richard Grimmet of the Congressional Research Committee reported that in fiscal year 2001, of the $26.4 billion in registered sales of international military weapons, the United States exported $12.2 billion, or roughly 46 percent of the total. This represents 2.5 times more than the amount sold by the second (UK) and third (Russia) largest exporters, 9.7 times greater than the level exported by France, and 19 times more than that of China.

The Center for International Policy estimates that about 80 percent of U.S. arms exports go to non-democratic regimes notorious for gross human rights abuses against not only their own citizenry but people of other countries as well. In 1999, of the forty-two conflicts in the world, thirty-nine of them made use of U.S. military equipment or technology, a whopping 92 percent rate of indirect U.S. participation in, but direct support of, war and violence. The U.S. also trains foreign military in the art of murder and torture in more than 70 countries and has troops currently stationed in nearly three out of every four countries in the world.

Sadly, the lives of 3,000 civilians from the U.S. and many other countries were lost in the September 11 attack, but where is the American outrage at the millions of deaths that the U.S. has caused, directly or covertly, in the twentieth century alone? Over 3,000 innocent Afghanis were killed in blind retaliation for terrorist attacks with which these oppressed people had nothing to do. Add hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths of mostly elderly, infants and young children in Iraq due to over ten years of extreme economic sanctions, demanded by the U.S., that prevent Iraq from importing essential medicines and disinfecting agents because of their potential for dual usage. Don't forget the 500,000 deaths in wars supported by the U.S. in Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Argentina, Haiti, Panama, and other Latin American countries over the past half century, or the hundreds of thousands more in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

The United States is just as guilty as any other nation in targeting civilian population centers -- cities such as Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo were mercilessly firebombed during World War II; atomic bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths.

Recently in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan, the United States has resurrected and implemented a new kind of nuclear warfare through the use of weapons outfitted with a depleted uranium component. Upon impact, the uranium is released in micro-sized particles that travel great distances on the wind to contaminate air, food, soil, water; in short, anything it touches. Post Gulf War soil samples tested in Basrah register an 84 times greater than normal background radiation level from uranium elements, according to studies carried out by various international organizations.

This new American-made legacy will be remembered for its long-term, continuous assault on innocent people and their environment. Studies conducted by Johns Hopkins University reveal a sevenfold increase in cancer, leukemia and birth defects in Iraq since the Gulf War. Full-term babies there are born with grotesque malformations such as having no face, no eyes or nose, twisted, fused or missing limbs, huge heads with no brains, no digestive tract, heart defects, severe ulcerations of the skin, and other abnormalities.

All this is made possible by each and every American who chooses to remain silent in the face of U.S. military atrocities against humanity. The United States is squandering both its status of most powerful nation and its potential to do some lasting good by continuing to serve the gods of greed, fear, hatred, war and violence. America should be leading the world by practicing what it preaches to other nations. The truly powerful lead by example, not by intimidation and brute force.

Placing self-righteous justification and moral superiority aside, for all involved parties seem to claim them, we need to look at war for what it really is -- murder and maiming, pure and simple. Our unquestioned faith in the use of military threats, death and destruction to deter violence and settle disagreements is an inherently flawed philosophy that has brought the world to the brink of mutually assured destruction with the United States leading the way.

The late Philip Berrigan had it right when he spoke about "the universal American fantasy that 'national security' can depend on weapons of mass destruction." These weapons we insist on amassing are instead the very cause of our mortal danger. His final words resonate as a warning to us all, "nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the Earth itself."

In this unparalleled period of danger and darkness brought about by the ignorance of mad men in their lust for power, it's time for people to awaken and do their part to transform this insane, money-making, war- mongering mentality. Imagine what a different world this could be if everyone took personal responsibility and vowed no longer to be a part of the ongoing cycle of government sponsored terrorism. Imagine if the people who build (in part or whole) bombs, guns, assault weapons and other weapons of mass destruction were suddenly to have an attack of conscience and leave their jobs, refusing to manufacture the evil that gets exported around the globe. Imagine how different the world could be if the $839 billion dollars spent yearly on military expenditures worldwide (Arias Foundation figures for FY 2001) were instead used for constructive purposes to alleviate hunger and provide decent housing, education, health care and meaningful employment for all.

I am convinced that reprioritizing the use of our vast resources from our current destructive bent towards constructive, life-affirming, humanitarian ends would be a much more successful deterrent to terrorism than our ineffective and inane faith in using "the violence to quell all violence." As the great Martin Luther King, Jr. believed, "An eye for an eye only ends up making us all blind."

Life is a series of making choices. We can choose to take the easy path by closing our eyes and remaining part of the evil of war and violence, whether it be through our line of employment that may directly or indirectly contribute to government sanctioned destruction and murder, or through the complicity of simply keeping silent in the face of inhumane policies carried out by our government. Else, we can choose the more difficult and courageous route of speaking out and working towards eliminating war and weapons of mass destruction all over the world, beginning in our own country. If we do not walk the talk of peace and disarmament, then we are, in fact, no better than the terrorists we are purporting to defeat.

The state and fate of our world and the legacy we leave for future generations all come down to the individual choices we make in our lives. As the adage from the Vietnam era significantly states, "Just imagine if they gave a war, and nobody came."


[Doreen Miller lived, studied, worked and traveled abroad for several years, and is currently a Senior Lecturer and educator of international students. She dedicates part of her time to serving the elderly and Alzheimer patients. Mother, musician and poet, she pursues an avid interest in Buddhist and Eastern philosophy. She advocates human rights, social justice, fair trade, and environmental protection. Doreen lives in the United States.]``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhat shall be our legacy?``x1042144354,67048,rasta``x``x ``xby Ras Howard

Bredren the word spirit, how did InI learn about it, what is and also the meaning of the word that was translated to today spirit.. Bredren I man know or forget most of what jesus is about, I grow up in a church that I man grandfather own in dem days in jamaica, one day I ask him if there is no black angels in heaven or else where, whereas on the walls of the church in those days were only pictures of everything white,white angels, white heaven, white clouds, white rose, nothing to represent the nigga, he give I a look that simple tell I that no one has ever ask him this question before and right away I see that he grasp somtething new even when he did not say, a lot of things that one and one claims sey the KING mention I am not saying he did not.

What I am saying is the KING expect his children to look between lines of HIS reasonings to babylon. When did christianity reach ETHIOPIA? and what did they con-vert our brothers and sisters from to christianity?

Is christianity our original ZION movement or is it a new thing forced on us by the colonizers? What did the KING con-vert from to christianity, because I don't know about you but I know sey InI never know anything about god nor jesus christ his only begotten son untill the brainwashers came to steal everything from us and replace us with their illusions.

Listen to this what a white mixed with indian told me, he said that most black people is going over a cliff on a dead end king james errand. since christianity was not original in zion. You do not realize that somebody keep throwing away the old for the new. Well I father said I must never do that, last but not least KING SELASSIE I children are thinkers. The KING tricked baby-lon letting them think he was along with them and RASTA children fi know this, the KING is the wisest trodding the EARTH dem times. I notice that bothers and sisters is been caught up in the trap that was mean't for baby-lon.

FIYAH CHIEF``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xSpirit: Love ina the house ``x1042164510,83494,rasta``x``x ``xIt is because words and actions can be misinterpreted and misrepresented, I rarely engage in private Internet reasoning or personal email exchanges with people.

I respect people's right to do as they choose in the public domain and I usually respond as I see fit.

People should quite clearly ask for assistance with their personal development if they require it. I may oblige if I am asked and if I am convinced that such help cannot be properly addressed in the public domain.

It is far to easy for words and actions to be taken out of context from a private environment and used as a weapon against others.

People should carefully weigh this before seeking a private reasoning with me.

Respectfully,
Ayinde``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xPrivate Reasonings``x1042171200,60804,views``x``x ``xPosted By: gman

This might be our last chance to collectively express our outrage and opposition to Bush's plans to possibly ignite Armageddon (and certainly kill a whole heapa innocent people).

At the last rally in DC there was 200,000+ people, let's go for a million this time...

Info about buses leaving from various cities is on the link below.

Get on the bus to stop Bush``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xProtest Bush's Oil War Jan. 18th in DC/SF``x1042327593,48032,world``x``x ``xBy Dr. David Nyekorach - Matsanga in London

What a travesty of journalism! And what has become of this world of the Queen? Is the end of the world nearing? Where will it begin? Are there any more intelligent journalists left in Britain? Democracy, good governance, public accountability, redounds positively on good journalism. But when all papers turn yellow like the editors who allow these stories to appear in Britain then we know these are the signs of a desperate nation and their devilish shoe polisher son called Satan Tsvangirai. Whatever the merits and demerits of the faked story there is a looming danger in the MDC who have been begging and pleading for more money from Britain to oust Mugabe.

A senior official in the British foreign office told us that the MDC has been told to step up the propaganda in order to receive more funding from British organisations like WFD and ZDT. Last month saw many opposition MDC MPS coming to Britain in search for money for disruption and other activities in Zimbabwe. A very reliable source at the foreign office in London was quoted as saying that "yes Baroness Amos has had a series of meetings with those MDC members of Parliament who visited London in December 2002 and January 2003". Then this explains the plethora of information that the British system has waged on Zimbabwe of late. The British divide and rule tactic is now at the centre of the so-called foreign policy. The doctored story that appeared on BBC and in several British newspapers about President Mugabe being removed by Hon. E D Mnangagwa and the Army chief General Vitalis Zvinanashe of his own party is clear example of politics of zygotes and half dead journalism whose spirit has been rejected by God and wondering free in the Queens territory. I am beginning to see the bad side of politics since embarked on this voluntary job of defending Zimbabwe abroad.

There are those surrogates of imperialism in Zimbabwe and Britain, who is too anxious to find sermons in stones, books in the running books and has unleashed terror-using journalism as weapon to kill President Mugabe and Zimbabwe. The whole UK woke up on Monday 13th January 2003 to find headlines about President Mugabe leaving power. WHAT A HOAX OF THE NEW YEAR! These reports have not only caused a mockery of the so-called British liberal press underpinned with the so called good governance but only shines with ignorance that is embedded in the minds of most British journalists. It is not only Zimbabwe that has suffered the torrent of silly accusations and silly praises.

While they are killing pluralism in Zimbabwe they are busy praising Uganda as model of Africa by the same Newspapers like The Times. Uganda has not even given the people parties like President Mugabe has done in Zimbabwe but the same GAY journalists like Robert Thomson who travel to Uganda to infect our people with HIV/AIDS are busy praising the country. What a shame to such smelly and polluted journalism coming from the brains of men who have defied the Bible creed of WOMAN marrying MAN. They go to Africa to buy sex from men who have no principles like those well-known GAYS in MDC. I have been humble in my articles in defence of Mugabe but to my readers please spare me this time I have changed my approach towards a Labour government, which has a bunch of gays whose scandals will cause mayhem to the world. How can men who defy the Bible be able to make correct judgment?

I have never witnessed such a goofed hoax and propaganda being peddled by journalists who call themselves white yet they don't know the colour of their skins. Britain has become a milling station of rumours and confusion. Indeed the poison of yellow journalism in Britain is worse than the Ricin powder that the Algerians had started manufacturing in the North of the City of London. Most of the men writing stories in British newspapers have narrow and shallow brains intellectually and these were former office messengers who were promoted to become editors of the current yellow newspapers. This explains the current onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe with stories that lack substance and are unbalanced.

The exposure of the "double standards" of Britain last week by the Herald Newspaper of Zimbabwe has forced the opposition MDC and the British MI6 to change their tactics on Zimbabwe. The source at the (I I S S) International Institute of Strategic Studies has told us that the comments on BBC by Prof. George Shire on 7th January 2003 and Africa Strategy's letter dated 6th January 2003 to the so called African affairs Minister Baroness Amos have sparked a series of a co-ordinated propaganda similar to that which was used in Yugoslavia before the fall of Melosvic from power. The enemies of Zimbabwe are attacking from two fronts. There is the official attack using the acrobatic style of British High Commission officials in Harare and organizations like ZDT and WFD, which have poured millions of British pounds to the opposition. This front is loaded with lethal weapons of propaganda machinery and a cocktail of doses of smelly substance called white man's arms twisting and creation of imaginary fever of panic in Zimbabwe. "THIS COCKTAIL IS CALLED "DIVIDE AND RULE" of the black ignorant masses.

The second flank is manned by the so-called "night dancers" who sneak into Zimbabwe under the pretext of playing golf and supported by the dirty malcontents of MDC. This so called visitors who fake their way into Zimbabwe visit the homes of the opposition supporters and interview those they claim are dying of hunger. Then these stories are beamed worldwide for the ignorant masses in Britain who believe everything their BBC or Channel 4 telecasts. The most worrying factor is that most of these so called undercover journalists are gays who hate President Mugabe. We have received evidence and information that those who appear on these so called documentary are paid huge amounts of money to appear on programmes like the ones that appeared on Channel 4 on Sunday night. It has also been revealed that most of the Opposition members are being sexually abused by these high flying undercover journalists like John Osborne who are paying up to £ 500 per night for sexual therapy that they cant have in Britain. Africa Strategy would like to join a long queue of those who will condemn the most recent reports on Zimbabwe.

These are some of the so-called distorted and imagined stories that have appeared Between December 26th 2002 and January 2003:

On Thursday 26th December 2002 a gay journalist by name Peta Thornycroft filed a story in The Daily Telegraph "Mugabe's wife selects her farm and orders the owners to leave" which was untrue.

On the same day another lesbian journalist called Alice Thomson filed a story entitled "Murderous Mugabe should be treated like bin Laden" also published by The Daily Telegraph.

On Thursday January 9th January 2003 another yellow gay journalist by name Peter Oborne files a story in the Daily Mirror the so called paper of the year 2002 "Africa's Nazis" it formed a basis of the documentary on Sunday.

Then comes the documentary that defied all intellectual rules on mass media and mass communication on Sunday 12th January 2003 by Channel 4 news that bought it for £100.000and beamed it across the European Continent. The Zimbabwean people who take part in this media sexual bonanza should know that their lives are being used as monetary conduits by the so called gay and lesbian journalists who flock Zimbabwe under Golf rituals in the best fields in the world.

On Monday 13th January 2003 the BBC reported as Breaking News "Mugabe's Party wants him to go" and this story was flashed on the front pages of the British newspapers. Those who like Zimbabwe condemn the faked story by the gay gangsters about the most loyal men in ZANU-PF and founders of the struggle against imperialism allegedly being against the founder father of the nation of Zimbabwe.

Many people who have telephoned Africa Strategy in London have wondered why only the known British gay journalists and lesbians have launched a campaign on Zimbabwe. There are concerns that President Mugabe's Public Relations PR machinery abroad has not done enough especially in Britain to change and reshape the image of the President and it appears that there is a "wait and see scenario" and a dirty syndrome of avoiding head on target with the foreign press that has not been hit so hard by the government abroad. The President's name has been damaged in Britain and yet his High Commission in London, which is near the media houses, like the BBC CNN, SKY NEWS, keeps a low profile and does not even issue or answer any of the accusations labelled on the same hand that feeds it. There is also the question of those turncoats who are feeding the yellow journalists in the Independent press of Zimbabwe to write stories about those who defend Mugabe in Europe and fill the gap. These are the most dangerous political toxins the President should get rid of quickly. There are worse than the MDC sellouts and could destroy the government of the SON of Africa.

Those whose culture is to use the media to kill the same plate that feeds them are conducting the political strangulation of the government of Zimbabwe in a coherent manner. A source very close to Africa Strategy's research team in London has revealed that the High Commission in London does not deny some of the stories appearing in the press. This goes to show how besieged the High Commission in London is or how confused the staff are or worse still one wonders whose side these sons and daughters of soil belong? One independent white PR officer in London who helped to return Libyan leader Gadaffi to the world order told Africa Strategy that it seems the staff are MDC followers because "he has never seen such an act of treachery and betrayal" he said. There are illegal demonstrators around the High Commission's premises near a British police Station and no charges or protest note has been sent out to the government of Britain about the behaviour of these narrow-minded zygotes of ZDT and MDC who want to sell their country to gay and lesbians. Our researchers went to the police near the premises to ask why they have allowed the illegal protests to take place every day near the building and to see whether those members of ZDT and MDC who gather near Zimbabwe House every evening in London have a permit to do so. Guess the answer: NO COMPLAINT LODGED by the time we went to press.

We discovered that not a single permit had been issued and the police told us that there was no complaint from the High Commission as regards that issue. How will President Mugabe defend himself when he can't travel to London to do so? Even those given the responsibility have no idea on what to do in UK? Many Observers on the Zimbabwe politics have expressed their surprise on the silence of the officials in London who are supposed to defend their President in this country of the Queen. The whole year has ended without Zimbabwe's officials in London openly defending their President in Britain like what other officials from African countries do in Britain.

Africa Strategy has decided to bring this matter to public because it seems we are entering a crucial stage of our defence of President Mugabe as such we shall be very intellectually brutal and factual in our attack on those who want to fail the President of Zimbabwe who has spearheaded an African dream. Let those who have hidden ambitions come out openly and fight some of us supporters of Mugabe in London morally or intellectually instead of strangulating the government of Zimbabwe and President Mugabe. Many people have feared to say this to the world and to the government but let Africa Strategy go on record for alerting the President and ZANU-PF that there is dubious silence in London. Africa Strategy is prepared for such a war to defend President Mugabe with the contribution of people like Mr.Mararaike, Prof George Shire and others who have filled the gap of the game of the "lost sheep". Africa Strategy has refused calls by Baroness Amos for a meeting and we are no interested in any future meetings until Zimbabwe is left alone. This the bottom line in politics and those who are armatures must quit. But in defence of President Mugabe against the bunch of gay gangsters in Britain we shall not surrender.

This brings us to the next phase of our struggle for the nation of Zimbabwe. The lesbian and Gay journalists have opened a Pandora box of death and skeletons, which we shall from now onwards, attack on the question of MORALITY and we have decided that until they stop meddling in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe we shall not rest. The whole strategy is to scare monger the cricket team from going to Zimbabwe next month as was used in Yugoslavia in the overthrow of President Melosvic. The so-called imaginary house coup in Zimbabwe is a design of the British MI6 that ZANU-PF should not listen to. BUT the party must find out those who are spreading these false reports to the Zimbabwe's so called yellow journalism? This reminds me of one Kenyan politician who kept on switching sides while President Moi was being strangled. This hand of death in Zimbabwe politics that goes on peddling malice and hatred against Hon. E D Mnangagwa and General Vitalis Zvinavashe has to be exposed soon to avoid costly remedies in future and for us who love our African Martin Luther King we are not going to hesitate to do so if the hand does not stop the Strangulation of the President of Zimbabwe. The direction of the onslaught on President Mugabe's enemies abroad must be decided now. We stand to lose an African statesman who has stopped madness in Congo, has given his people the pride by giving them back their land which the same criminals stole 200 years ago Where will you find a Castro of Africa like the one we have in Zimbabwe? The story of accusing the most honest and loyal men in ZANU-PF for plotting to remove their leader is not absurd but very idiotic in terms of those who imagine and produce such gutter journalism. Soon the people of Zimbabwe will see the true colours of the agents of British imperialism in Zimbabwe. The recent donation of £46.000 by Annabelle Hughes to the MDC boss and the payment made by Mr. Peter Oborne to the MDC officials for the fake story must be investigated by the government of Zimbabwe. Highly placed Sources have told us that ZDT official Annabele Hughes through an undercover journalist called Peter Oborne sent money to disrupt the cricket matches of next month from Account 42182002 0f Lloyds Bank of London. This is a clear testimony to the world that ZDT wants to fight the people of Zimbabwe and cause political infighting in ZANU-PF and create an imaginary power struggle.

President Mugabe and the Zimbabwean nation we thank you for your tenacity and steadfastness and assure you that the road to Jerusalem is full of temptations and trials but this is the time of UNITY of purpose for those who cherish peace. Africa Strategy will continue with its fight and we shall deal with these gangs of gays and lesbian idiots who have defied GOD'S Commandments and have brought the subject of JOURNALISM to disrepute.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThere Is No Sanity Left In British Journalism``x1042564409,57624,world``x``x ``xStaff

U.S. and UK encourage Cruise Ships to pull out of Trinidad and Tobago
The two companies, UK-based P&O Cruises and its sister company Princess Cruises, have stopped all visits until further notice citing a report from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office about the possibility of British nationals becoming victims of a terrorist attack while in Trinidad and Tobago.

Is this a reprisal for shipping gasoline to Venezuela? Patrick Manning, the Prime Minister of T&T, told a post-Cabinet news conference that he has called in the British High Commissioner, the United States Ambassador and the Brazilian Ambassador for separate meetings this morning and would make a comprehensive statement in Parliament this afternoon.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xPossible terrorist attack in Trinidad and Tobago?``x1042774698,19587,world``x``x ``xPosted By: ROOTSWOMAN
Date: Friday, 24 January 2003

Women's Role Has Never Been So Demanding, And You Can Be Proud To Answer This Call For The Betterment And Future Of Mankind"
HIM HAILE SELASSIE I

EMPRESS MENEN'S EARTHLIFE CELEBRATION

Sunday March 23rd to Tuesday March 25, 2003
Howard University, Washington DC
FREE ADMISSION

We first give thanx to the Most High, Jah Rastafari and specifically to our organizing committees, the King Alpha and Queen Omega Iyatas And Empress of Zion Collective

AGENDA:

Day One: Rastafari Women and the Arts

Rastafari Women in the music industry
Rastafari women in the media
Rastafari women in films
Reasoning with my sisters (a play by a Rastawoman, Masani Montague)
And other films and plays

Day Two: History and Spirituality

Historical Role of the Rastafari woman
Repatriation - Panel discussion·
Reparation
Historical and contemporary significance of Grande Nanny, Amy Jacques Garvey
and the Pan African Congress
Strategies for the Rastafari woman

Day Three: Health and Education
(Celebrating day of Empress Menen's Earthstrong)

Widwifery
Herbal holistics
Ital livity
Educational issues

Free admission to this conference.

Please call your local contacts for information on overnight accommodations. Ital food will be on sale for lunch and dinner. Please also be prepared to support our vendors. We look forward to having you at our historical and momentous Rastawoman conference.

Please feel free to contact Queen Mother Farika at 202 529-2616 or email queenomegacommunications@yahoo.com or empressofzion1@yahoo.com for further information or to be added to our mailing list.

Visit this thread on Rastafari Speaks for more information.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRASTAWOMAN CONFERENCE``x1043434971,85970,world``x``x ``xTrinicenter Staff
Updated 12:58PM

We may never be absolutely clear on the real motives behind the half-baked story in the Trinidad Express Newspapers in Trinidad and Tobago headlined, "Islamic group unveils secret 'chemical labs'", which was about a threat from an 'Islamic group' in Trinidad and Tobago. However we do know shoddy and sensationalistic journalism when we see it.

Unfortunately, most people in Trinidad and Tobago seem unaffected by the International opposition to the US actions following 9/11. So it was surprising to most Trinidadians that there is a group in Trinidad and Tobago that was planning to reek havoc in opposition to the US' actions. Such a group never identified themselves in the print and electronic press.

Supporters of our Websites in Trinidad and Tobago have been assisting in keeping the general public informed with alternative news and views on the 'War on Terror' and the events in Venezuela via the numerous call-in programs. We have openly demonstrated our opposition to all Terrorist actions including the present US actions and we believe if a serious group existed in Trinidad and Tobago they may have tried to contact us at some point in time, as we are very vocal on these issues. We also operate a Website (UScrusade.com) that is severely critical of the present United States' actions.

No one has ever contacted us claiming to be part of any terrorist group and we are not aware of any such group in Trinidad and Tobago.

Generally, the commercial media in Trinidad and Tobago does not facilitate informed debates on these International issues. They feed the public whatever comes from news agencies like BBC, Reuters and the Associated Press, without any analysis or evaluation of the reports.

To date, most people have not been moved to protest any of the actions following the U.S. 9/11 attacks. The country is still engulfed in political tensions, which dominate the numerous talk shows.

There are several groups that may wish to further tarnish the image of this country not least of which is the opposition party.

Following the US, UK and UN terrorism travel advisory which came soon after a shipment of gasoline left our shores for Venezuela, the idea to exacerbate the situation for political motives may have been born.

There is a group of Venezuelans in Trinidad and Tobago who opposed the shipment of gasoline to Venezuela because they saw it as support for Chavez.

We believe that the US had their eyes on this country because of the presence of an Islamic group that violently attempted to overthrow the government in 1990. They may have also been concerned following the shipment of gasoline to Venezuela during Venezuela's business shutdown.

Anyone could have been behind this threat.

Freedom of expressions does not mean that someone is allowed to walk into a crowded building and shout fire while not believing there is one.

If the Trinidad Express receives a bomb scare, even if they do not believe the threat is credible, their first response would be to contact the police and be guided by the police directives and investigation.

In a similar manner that terrorist threat should have been treated like a bomb scare. It should have been reported to the police immediately and the police investigations should have been part of the story.

Whether the Trinidad Express and the journalist in question took the threat seriously or not, their first responsibility should have been the safety of our citizens. They did not have the means to verify the threat and the responsible agencies should have been immediately notified.

In consideration for the present international climate on Terrorism they should have also known that even if most locals dismissed the report as a hoax, the international community may not be aware of the possible political agendas behind the threat and the hostile political climate in the country.

The Trinidad Express certainly demonstrated that they did not consider this a serious threat.

Most people on the streets do not take the threats seriously, believing it to be another stunt from the Opposition party (UNC) that seems unable to adjust following their defeat at the last general elections 2002. Former Prime Minister now opposition leader, Basdeo Panday, remains bitter following his defeat at the polls and Trinidad have been experiencing what seems to be politically motivated staged incidents aimed at discrediting opposing political parties.

The reporter, Darryl Heeralal, who did that shoddy bit of journalism for the Trinidad Express would not have been able to convince us at Trinicenter.com to carry that story with so many unanswered questions. We would have called the police immediately upon hearing of that threat.

To further sensationalize the story, the Trinidad Express published a picture of the blindfolded journalist in the front page of their newspapers and Internet edition and without that picture most people would not have given the story a second glance. The reporter became the central figure in the plot.

The bottles that were displayed during the Trinidad Express' Television newscast were regular drinks bottles and the powder on the tables could have been anything from dirt to baby's powder. The information the so-called terrorist gave the 'reporter' was easily available on the Internet and the 'reporter' said that the 'terrorists' refused to give him samples to verify the claims.

Why did he not insist that someone who could have verified the substances go along with them?

If the journalist really believed that a group of people did possess chemical and biological weapons or were playing around with ingredients to produce such weapons then why did he not wear some form of protective clothing? Why did he allow himself to be blindly led into such a 'dangerous' environment?

How was he convinced that these people were adhering to proper laboratory standards to ensure there was no careless contamination?

If there is a radical group bent on destruction then certainly they are not bound to established safety standards. The reporter certainly trusted the lunatics.

Are we to believe that the reporter and the editors at the Trinidad Express were unconcerned about the possibility of that reporter and photographer returning to contaminate other people in and out of their media house?

The real concern is that some one or group may actually be planning to do serious harm and when it gets reported it may be treated as another hoax. There may also be an attempt to make the story seem credible.

We may never get to the bottom of this story like the quantity of cocaine and missiles found in a water tank in the home of one of the ex-ministers.

The police are investigating the story and are searching for the possible lab.

In our opinion the Trinidad Express acted irresponsibly by not promptly notifying the police and other relevant authorities upon hearing of this threat to our nation.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xDetoxifying Trinidad's Terrorist Threat``x1043947531,99985,world``x``x ``xPosted By: IanI
2 February 2003

"from HIM come knowledge and overstanding; He has counsel stored for the Righteous, He guards those who walk honestly, protecting the paths of Justice and guarding the Way of His devout Ones." Pro 2:6

Greetings in the Name of the Almighty Most High
Jah Rastafari!

The Ancient sages were quite aware of the problems in human behaviour, and when writing evolved in some societies they wrote about it often. All Wisdom comes from deep within IanI Heart/Mind. It is easy for some to read some ancient writings and either appreciate and see or get confuse an mis-interpret. Others no have the option of ancient text or reading or writing. Does this eliminate them from Wisdom?... from Righteousness?

Of course not.

All IanI must come to overstand that Rastafari is not a 'religion' and making comparisons to 'other religions' or arguements against 'other religions' has no basis. Rastafari transends 'religion'. Rastafari transends 'culture'. Rastafari transends 'borders'. Rastafari transends 'beliefs'. All these things...religions, cultures, borders, beliefs... are fabrications of human ignorant behaviour. And all a them lead to problems when there is no foundation of Transendent Wisdom.

The Rastaman is an observer of Life and a gatherer of Wisdom. It is not an easy road. It is narrow, steep and rugged... and there are many side roads that entice and lead astray. Jah know that the road must get rough in order for IanI to stand Firm and gain strength! The Rastaman have become aware of the brainwashment placed upon IanI people for hundreds of years. Rasta know that the ancient writings of the sages have been held in the hands of the Roman conquerers and been mis-translated and mis-interpreted and preached with LIES! But IanI know that LOVE is the Creative Force an Power of Jah Kingdom and transends all lies and perversions. And it is the Higher Heights of AWARENESS that bring IanI out of the brainwashment and take IanI ever forward into the Heart/Mind of the Almighty Creator.

The guiding Force of IanI Livity is LOVE. Love of self, Love of Bredren an sistren, Love of ALL Living Creation as a wonderment of the Creator! IanI realization is that IanI have been led blindly down the wrong road by 'church an state' for them own selfish purposes from them own greediness. And so IanI Rastafari REJECT that road and turn now to the uplifting road... realizing IanI worth and value as manifestations of the Almighty LOVE FORCE... JAH!

JAH is LOVE.

Sistren and Bredren... Wisdom is a most precious thing. More precious than silver and gold. More precious than big house and car. More precious than electricity and computer. You see... all a dem things can be GONE in a huge gust a wind! WHOOSH!!... gone!
But seek Wisdom and the Almighty LOVE will bless you over and over and over.

The Rastaman is LIVING LOVE.
Anywhere and everywhere!

Seek the Ones of Wisdom, for there is the glow of the eternal Light! There is the kindly spirit. There is the One that can do all things. There is the One with the radiance of the MIGHT of JAH!

"Get Wisdom, get overstanding! Do not forget or turn aside from the words that I speak. Forsake Her not and She will preserve you; Love Her and She will safeguard you. The beginning of Wisdom is:
Get Wisdom at the cost of all you have, get overstanding!
Glorify Her and She will exalt you: She will bring you honours if you recieve Her: She will put on your HEAD a coronet: a GLORIOUS CROWN will She bestow upon you!" Pro:4:5-9


Give thanks and praises.
ONE LOVE/HEART/MIND
IanI Rastafari
Guidance and Protection ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRastafari- Gatherers of Wisdom``x1044196902,43238,views``x``x ``xby Ras Tyehimba

HAIL RASTAFARI-THE SEEKER OF TRUTH

The foundation of Christianity lies is Alkebulan (Afrika), BUT those ancients didn't call themselves Christians. InI don't consider I-self a Christian, that is a term the Pope calls himself and his horde of bloodsucking vampires. That is a European term.

InI come from Alkebulan. Christianity as proPAgated by Europeans is responsible for killing, oppressing and torturing millions of people in the name of the Gods of money and power.

Christianity is a religion, a division, a tool that was used to enslave the minds of Africans and other indigenous people. Rastafari is influenced by the foundation of Christianity (from kemet & ithiopia) not by the modern white supremacist branch. We deal with the roots, not the branches.

Rastafari transcends Christianity and other forms of petty division.
So brethren and sistren, we have no need for any black missionaries/ the white ones have don enough damage.

Christ is a title/like Heru/like Selassie GIVEN TO THOSE WHO HAVE REACHED A CERTAIN LEVEL OF PURITY TO REFELECT FULLY THE LIGHT OF THE MOST HIGH, RASTAFARI.

THIS IS THE TROD OF THE RASTAMAN, TOWARDS COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS/LOVE.
Rastaman nah come to worship flesh and blood but the ONE DIVINE SPIRIT THAT IS INNATE IN ALL CREATION.

RASTAMAN COME TO TRANSCEND SEX, RACE, DIVISION, AND CLASS.
THE FIRST FIRE HAVE TO BE THE FIRE FOR SELF/PURIFICATION OF SELF AND THEN BY EXTENT, THE ENVIROMENT WILL BE PURIFIED BY THE FIRE OF THE MOST HIGH, EMANATING FROM SELF.

ONE AFRIKAN LOVE
HOTEP
AFRIKA FOR AFRIKANS, THOSE AT HOME AND THOSE ABROAD
ONE GOD, ONE AIM, ONE DESTINY
ASE!!!
RASTAFARI!!!!!

ps: Beware of the 'house slave' who is the master's puppet and only come to divide and destroy the REVOLUTION.

EQUAL RIGHTS, AND JUSTICE STANDS FOR ALL

Share your views here``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRastafari is not equal to Christianity``x1044488669,79804,views``x``x ``xby Ayinde

The divisions among those who claim to be Rastafarians are no different to that of all other people with the little exception of a common material poverty and the symbolic dreadlocks worn by many.

Many say that one does not have to be dreadlocks in order to be a Rastafarian but outside of how one carries their hair there are no unique set of qualities that all Rastafarians agree upon in order to determine who is or who is not a Rastafarian.

So for all practical purposes I am a Rastafarian although I do not have dreadlocks as many Rastafarians who visit me have seen.

Throughout various Rastafarian Websites, the differences among Rastafarians are many and quite obvious. The minor ones about differences in interpretations I would leave, as they do not pose major obstacles. However, the big ones are relevant as they pertain to the issues of subliminal and sometimes deliberate racism.

There are those who are aware of our social degradation as a result of slavery and racism so they respect the efforts of Marcus Garvey while embracing the wider writings and teachings of Haile Selassie I. The ability to marry the two main characters in 'modern' Rastafari is born out of real experiences of oppression coupled with a general awareness of world history inclusive of African history.

Those who are conscious of our most remote history and choose a lifestyle that keeps them detached from matter knows that Rastafari is the original wisdoms realized through natural experiences. But applying these wisdoms call for a refined understanding of social interactions. The issues surrounding racism and gender discrimination are always relevant as they are the major obstacles that prevent most people from realizing these ancient wisdoms.

There is another group of people who embrace the words of Haile Selassie I and are subliminally against discussions about what Marcus Garvey tried to achieve during the earlier period of African abuses, much of which still persists today.

Marcus Garvey remains a general reminder to many in the Rastafari Movement of the African struggles and some conveniently leave him out of the picture as they seek to project their brand of Rastafarianism.

Those who conveniently omit Marcus Garvey are of two categories:

Some are Whites in economic poverty that hold on to the idea of their privileged social positions and want that to remain as they seek to pull blacks under their wings to elevate their own social prestige. Then there are Christian types of all races who were nurtured on a brand of religion that generally downplayed the role of Africans in spiritual development. They rarely ever discuss the real issues that keep most people divided in favour of popular platitudes of 'one love'. In the Christian pictorial representations of spirituality, White takes the dominant role while evil carries the weight of blackness and omitting the effects of this earlier prejudice cannot break deep-seated racist attitudes.

There is a constant struggle between those who can marry the virtues in the writings of Haile Selassie I with that of Marcus Garvey, and those who wish the blackness to be deemphasized. By playing down the blackness of our ancestors, the mindset of White superiority is constantly nurtured and the words and intensions of some White players go unchallenged because of the general unconscious acceptance of their superiority.

It is obvious to me that some are bent on keeping the Black community heavily divided and are about encouraging Blacks to congregate under their authority. Of course they will not say this but they will forever present alternatives, encouraging Blacks to break up and move to areas where they feel they have some form of control.

All of this is understandable and as people congregate and communicate it is always important to investigate and where possible to question the motives of others who do not share your unique experiences.

For who can best define the Black struggle than another Black man and woman who have risen out of the degradation of society. Who Else!

Is the oppression of Blacks over?

Has the issue of reparations been settled?

Are those who wish to repatriate mentally and physically able to do so?

Are Blacks allowed to control their own media for safeguarding their expressions?
Are the only 'good' media and forums those that are under the control of Whites (directly or indirectly)?

Are most Blacks out of economic poverty?

Are the major world powers treating non-white nations with the respect they deserve?

Are we (collectively) out of the gambits of Slavery?

Many Blacks in the bigger nations (with military might) feel that they are somehow superior to Caribbean Blacks and Blacks of other nations. What do you think is responsible for these feelings and attitudes?

We have some serious work ahead of us if we are to build as a collective and those who desire building must ensure that in this new family the foundation is solid.

Join the discussion here...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xDivisions among Rastafarians``x1045631666,54707,views``x``x ``xby William Blum

Which is the more remarkable -- that the United States can openly announce to the world its determination to invade a sovereign nation and overthrow its government in the absence of any attack or threat of attack from the intended target? Or that for an entire year the world has been striving to figure out what the superpower's real intentions are?

There are of course those who accept at face value Washington's stated motivations of "liberating" the people of Iraq from a dictatorship and bestowing upon them a full measure of democracy, freedom and other eternal joys fit for American schoolbooks. In light of a century of well-documented US foreign policy which reveals a virtually complete absence of such motivations, along with repeated opposite consequences, we can dispense with this attempt by Washington to win hearts and mindless.

Presented here are some reflections about several of the causes that make the hearts of the imperial mafia beat faster in regard to Iraq, which may be helpful in arguing the anti-war point of view:

Expansion of the American Empire: adding more military bases and communications listening stations to the Pentagon's portfolio, setting up a command post from which to better monitor, control and intimidate the rest of the Middle East.

Idealism: remaking the world in what the true believers see as America's image, with free enterprise and Judeo-Christianity as core elements; here is Michael Ledeen, former Reagan official, now at the American Enterprise Institute (one of the leading drum-beaters for attacking Iraq): "If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

Oil: the sine qua non of Middle East policy, yesterday, today and tomorrow; to be in full control of Iraq's vast reserves, with Saudi oil and Iranian oil waiting defenselessly next door; OPEC will be stripped of its independence from Washington and will no longer think about replacing the dollar with the Euro as its official currency; oil-dependent Europe may think twice next time about being so uppity.

Globalization: Once relative security over the land, people and institutions has been established, the transnational corporations will march into Iraq ready to privatize everything at fire-sale prices, followed closely by the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization and the rest of the international financial extortionists.

Arms industry: As with each of America's endless wars, military manufacturers will rake in their exorbitant profits, then deliver their generous political contributions, inspiring Washington leaders to yet further warfare, each war also being the opportunity to test new weapons.

Israel: The men driving Bush to war include long-time militant supporters of Israel, such as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Douglas Feith, who, along with the rest of the powerful Israeli lobby, have advocated smashing Iraq for years. Israel has been playing a key role in the American military buildup to the war. Besides getting rid of its arch enemy, Israel could use the opportunity to carry out its final solution to the Palestinian question -- transferring them to Jordan, (liberated) Iraq, and anywhere else that expanded US hegemony in the Middle East will allow. Iraq's abundant water could be diverted to relieve a parched Israel.


William Blum is the author of "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II" and "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower"``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhat Do the Imperial Mafia Really Want?``x1045631918,71823,world``x``x ``x[AYINDE: I am putting this up for consideration and also to highlight Tim Wise, a White anti-racist activist who 'tirelessly' lectures to White communities. He is quite generous with his views and is usually armed with researched statistics to support his claims. More of his articles are on www.raceandhistory.com ]

#######

Race, Sex and Work
Examining White Lies About Black Americans

February 12, 2003
By Tim Wise

"You wanna know what the real problem with black people is?"

So read the opening line of the first e-mail message of my day. Not a good start.

Whenever these words or their functional equivalent greet you before you've had the chance to rub the sleep from your eyes, let alone consume that first sip of coffee, you know you're in for a long and troubling morning.

Sure enough, I wasn't to be disappointed or proved wrong.

"The problem,' explained my Monday morning instigator ‘is that they can't stop having illegitimate children (especially the teenagers), and they'd rather lay around on welfare all day than work for a living."

Jesus. And to think, I could have opted to sit down with my daughter and watch Sesame Street like a responsible father; but no, I had to check my e-mail first.

Now it wasn't as if this shit was new. I've been hearing this from white folks ever since I was a child. And although I was getting it this time from someone who was well aware of my views on race, I often am regaled with such splendid intellectual mediocrity by total strangers who I meet during the course of my travels: in airplanes, restaurants, hotel bars, taxicabs, or wherever else people interact.

"White bonding," I began calling it some twelve years ago: a phenomenon that causes many if not most whites to apparently believe that every white person they meet must be just as racist as they are and will find their joke funny, their comment acceptable, and their slur pithy. The things white folks say about people of color when they aren't around give the lie to all the nonsense we pump about color-blindness, not having a racist bone in our bodies, never noticing race, having all those black friends, and so on and so forth.

But the things we say when people of color aren't in the room actually do more than expose the festering sickness of white racism; they expose the profundity of our ignorance and demonstrate just how divorced from reality so many of us are. For not only are the racist beliefs expressed above (and according to opinion polls, accepted by half or better of the white population) exaggerated stereotypes, they are in fact flatly contradicted by hard evidence.

Take the popular image of black women, particularly teens, popping out babies as fast as they can make them. This rendering of black females as the oversexed, irresponsible incubators of demographic decay has been at the heart of attacks on social welfare programs and is as commonly heard as the daily weather report: shame it's even less accurate.

In truth, the fertility rate for black women is hardly different than for white women. For every 1000 white women 15-44 there are 66.5 live births, while for every 1000 black women that age there are 71.7.

Indeed, the fertility rate for black women has fallen by more than half in the last forty years, such that the gap between black and white fertility has been slashed by nearly 80%, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The birthrate for unmarried black women--especially vilified by racist rhetoric--is at a forty-year low and the rate of babies born to black teens hasn't gone up one iota since 1920.

And speaking of teens, only six-tenths of one percent of black babies are born to women under the age of fifteen, and the birthrate for black teens 15-19 has dropped by a third since 1991. Overall, more than eight in ten black babies are born to mothers in their twenties or older, and the teen birthrate has fallen faster among black youth than any other racial group over the last decade.

The parallel belief that black women have too many children--at whatever age--and therefore can't properly care for them is equally mythical. The average number of minor children in white households and black households is identical, and for female-headed black and white households the difference is statistically insignificant. Contrary to the widespread notion that black women typically have four or five children (if not more), only one in twenty black female headed families have four or more kids.

Even for families receiving public assistance--and even before welfare "reform" bumped tens of thousands off the rolls and restricted eligibility for benefits--the typical "welfare family" of whatever race included only a mother and two children and was actually slightly smaller than the typical non-welfare family.

Of course I can hear the voices of racial apoplexy now. "What about the skyrocketing rate of out-of-wedlock births in the black community?" Doesn't that indicate the sexual irresponsibility of black females and their male compradors, one might ask?

Well no. In fact, not even close.

The reason for the increase in the share of black children born out-of-wedlock in recent decades is that two-parent black couples are having fewer children than ever, meaning that a growing share of the children who are born in the black community will be out-of-wedlock, even though sexual behavior hasn't changed, and fertility rates among single black women have been falling.

Indeed, eighty percent of the increase in out-of-wedlock childbirths in the black community is because of the falloff in children born to intact black families: a falloff that has been even steeper than the decline among single moms.

Additionally, the apparent "increase" in out-of-wedlock children in single mother homes within the black community, and generally, is the result of the Census Bureau changing the methods used for counting such families in the first place.

Whereas single moms with kids who lived in extended family settings (such as living with their own parents) were historically not counted as separate family units, since the early 1980's they have been. So even though such families may have existed for many years prior to the accounting switch, they would not have appeared in statistical data until more recently.

Putting aside the issue of just how "harmful" single-parent homes are (and evidence indicates that with the exception of the smaller income base there isn't much difference between such homes and "intact" families, and indeed children in intact families are often less confident and well-adjusted), clearly the problems for black folks in this country are not the result of childbirth patterns.

A 1997 report found that the median income of young two-parent black families had fallen by nearly half since 1973. What's more, even black women who "played by the rules," and had no kids out-of-wedlock, saw their incomes fall 32% from 1972-1989, and have been unable to regain the lost ground since.

Which brings us then to the issue of work; or rather the claim that blacks are allergic to the concept, preferring instead the "generous" benefits of the welfare state for their sustenance.

That anyone could possibly believe such a thing has always struck me as humorous to say the least. After all, African Americans have been doing work that white folks thought "beneath" us for roughly four hundred years. Were it not for their labor, in fact, the American Revolution could never have been won, since its financing came from the tobacco and cotton industries--both of which were built by the work of slaves.

Yet despite the historical record the belief persists, often put forth by people whose own forefathers tried desperately never to break a sweat doing actual work themselves.

And as with the arguments about black women as baby factories, the ruse about blacks as lazy welfare-sapping parasites is patently absurd, not to mention ironic. After all, welfare programs in this country were originally created so as to allow white widows and abandoned mothers to care for their children without having to enter the paid workforce.

Creating "dependence" was not seen as problematic, at least for white women whose "womanhood" had long been viewed as dependent on the presence of a white male husband. It was only when women of color gained access to such programs in the late 1950's and afterward that suddenly "dependence" became the great scourge to be avoided.

Yet the truth is that welfare dependence is hardly the norm--for black women or anyone else receiving public assistance. Even before the passage of punitive welfare reform, six in ten welfare families were leaving the rolls within two years, debunking the notion of long-term dependency as the norm for welfare recipients.

Indeed, two-thirds of women who receive welfare as children will never receive aid as adults and 81% whose mothers received AFDC for long periods never receive aid as adults. In other words, the notion of intergenerational welfare dependence so commonly accepted is a false one.

Instead of welfare, the poor prefer work, yet often there are not enough jobs to go around that pay wages at or above the poverty line. In Central Harlem, one study found that there were fourteen applicants for every job opening in the area.

Nationally, in times of recession, there may be as many as seven to ten people out of work for every job opening above the poverty line. And since the Federal Reserve's policy is to raise interest rates whenever unemployment drops below four percent--thereby freezing new hires--millions will be jobless, poor, and need welfare no matter their work ethic, solely because of this one monetary policy intended to keep wages and prices low.

Indeed, experience from around the country demonstrates that low-income people of color have work ethics that are no different from whites and those above the poverty line. In the early 1990's, when a handful of longshore jobs opened up in Los Angeles, 50,000 blacks and Latinos--mostly low income--showed up to apply.

In Cleveland, 15,000 unemployed welfare mothers and teenagers of color stood in the rain for four hours to get one of the minimum-wage temporary jobs cleaning up public parks.

In Chicago, 15,000 mostly low-income applicants of color applied for less than 4,000 temporary jobs.

In Baltimore, 75 openings at the Social Security Administration were met with 26,000 applications, mostly from blacks, and heavily from low-income citizens.

Far from relying on taxpayers for their livelihood, only one in ten blacks receive any form of cash welfare, and only about one in six receives food stamps. In fact, blacks who are eligible for the Food Stamp program are actually less likely than similar whites to apply for and receive such assistance.

As for black single moms, although they are twice as likely as white single moms to be in poverty, they are no more likely than white single moms to receive public assistance. What's more, three out of four single black moms have jobs, further dispelling the notion that single mothers in the black community mostly choose to "live off welfare."

Yet despite all of these simple truths, I didn't send any of them to the individual who had chosen to start off my week with such a mindless stream of e-nonsense. I knew it wouldn't matter much to him, and if anything would only detract from the time I could spend on Sesame Street, which as it turns out is a much friendlier place to be.

But I did write him back. First to thank him for serving as my muse for what would become this article; and secondly to remark upon the last paragraph of his message to me: the part that blamed black folks for "taking all the jobs" from white guys like himself.

My statement on this score was really fairly simple. In the interest of consistency, I suggested that he choose which racist drivel he would prefer to promote: either the kind that says blacks are lazy or the kind that says they are taking all the jobs. After all, both cannot be true at the same time. If one is taking all the jobs, then by definition one hardly qualifies as lazy, and if one is indeed lazy, one is not likely to take any job, let alone all of them.

And if there's anything worse than a racist, it has to be a racist who can't make up his mind.

Tim Wise is an antiracist essayist, activist and lecturer.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRace, Sex and Work``x1045704963,95645,world``x``x ``xby Ayinde

I wonder how many people have spent time meditating (providing they know how to do that) while observing all aspects of nature to understand the fullness of life.

Nature is the book of life and it provides very observable laws that allow one to realize the harmony within all aspects of life.

In my opinion if one does not realize these empirical laws then they have not really grown a "Ras" in the truest sense and as such they are out of touch with nature's wisdoms.

For in nature all the truths of life can be realized and these truths are the wisdoms that enable one to understand and achieve anything they desire.

These are the most ancient realizations upon which the word "Ras" was coined.

I understand the evolution of the word "Ras" from one's personal brain growth for realizing the wisdom of life, to the symbolic head of a nation.

Today anyone is free to claim anything so anyone can say he or she is a Rasta but when they open their mouth or their works are observed, they are not wise, but simply children searching for recognition.

In reality few people are Rastas but many hope to be.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRastafari, a way of life``x1046245005,2014,views``x``x ``xEven if the highest truth were told most people would not get it.

Let me expand on another discussion I see on the board.

There is no 1 single right Rasta way!

How do people know that?

Could it be that many have not realize the fine line of conduct and experiences that qualifies one to be Rasta? Is it because many ignorant people claim to be something that the something is transformed to suit their ignorance?

If many people claim they are birds and are forceful about that, and then another group says that elephants are birds, is it then true to say that elephants and people are Birds?

What about the lone one who would simply call all of them fools.

If enough people over time call the tail of an Ass a leg does it mean that Asses suddenly have five legs?

Is it not true to say that there is no common understanding among many about what qualifies one to be a Rasta? Or is it that Rasta is now anything and everything because people disagree on what it is?

That is the reason I say history is important and when ones disagree on a limited version of history it is possible to search the much older history for deeper meaning.

I agree that everyone will not agree on the principle and processes for realizing Rastafari but who is to say it cannot be defined. How does anyone know that there is not a single qualifying quality that determines if one is really a Rasta?

Again, I agree that in the minds of many there will be no common agreement on these matters I put forward and that is the reason for ongoing discussions.

Rasta was defined in ancient times before its Jamaican resurgence and even if many now claim to be Rastafari, it remains in essence what it always was. It is up to the real truth seekers to search and discover its essential meaning.

What was it in the beginning?

That is the question, for as it was in the beginning so shall it be in the end.

It is in the simple reasonable truths that the common bond of everything is evident.

If many now agree that there is no 1 way then what is the fuss when different people come to the table with opposing views? Why moderate? Once people agree that some conduct is unacceptable then in truth they are trying to define Rastafari.

If it is left to any interpretation then there is no reason to moderate.

I agree that it is people's right to claim anything and to share what they believe. But there is an underlying oneness in all things that leads to one way.

In my mind Rasta is definable in a manner that respects all people. But even if I see clarity in my definition many others may not, so let the discussions continue.

Post comments here``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``x1 single right Rasta way?``x1046318400,5813,views``x``x ``xPosted By: Ayinde

In Response To: Rasta faith comes from Ithiopia, but...
(Ras Mandingo Jahson.)

Rasta was the earliest form of human existence in African. Africans also first realized the processes for higher development and it is from these indigenous lifestyles true meaning can be grasped. It is in Africa especially Ethiopia the term Ras/Rasta evolved.

The modern Rastafari movement developed in Jamaica. It developed from the Jamaicans who took to the hills to escape a corrupt society. Having already witnessed the carnality in societies and through directly depending on nature for their survival they learned major aspects of the laws of nature and hence grew the inner Ras, which allows one to retain natural wisdoms.

Many others, 'mostly poor Africans' who were disenfranchised by the system tried to emulate the elders. They copied the outward form but retained their former colonial teachings. Some of them saw the simple truth of a Black Christ so while they generally stay within the colonial Christian teachings, they interpret the main characters in Christianity as Africans.

But the elders from the hills who inspired many others were following a discipline that was as old as the oldest humans in Africa, India and later on the Aborigines in Australia.

I believe the word 'Ras' evolved from the Coptic. I read a long time ago that the ancient Coptic word for wisdom was Ras or Rasti and the processes the Coptic used for developing this Ras/Wisdom ability was the same as the lifestyle practiced by the elders who took to the hills in Jamaica. It is the same lifestyle of many indigenous people who depend on nature for their survival. Ras evolved to mean head/ruler in Eithopia. So in truth Ras Tafari is a legitimate head of a people having gained that title from a recognized process at the time. In many parts of Africa the leader was also considered to be the divine head/ruler/Saviour/KRST. This shifted in Egypt, which evolved two leaders, one spiritual and one political.

If you chat with IanI who reasons on this board, he is similar to the ancient Rasta. However, many others on the forum are the offshoots of colonial mental and material poverty and the diverse conducts and confusion are manifestations of that.

They all have some form of legitimacy but in ignorance people think the whole universe fits into their limited understanding and fail to grasp that their limited understanding is just a small part of the Whole. So they remain polarized.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRasta faith comes from Ithiopia, but...``x1046323314,96013,views``x``x ``xPosted By: livelyup
26 February 2003

Greetings Ayinde,

I am in total agreement with what you have said in your post, but have a question for you, and for anyone else who wishes to respond. You describe rasta as being a product of early African livity, and of its subsequent re-kindling through the natural livity of the elders in Jamaica. The constant factor would seem to be a life that is in touch with the natural world on a fairly constant basis. This is not the only important thing in achieving overstanding, but it seems to be a very important part of the path.

My question is, do you believe that the world had more 'enlightened' people in it in the past, when this connection to nature was more widespread than it is today?

love and life
paul

Response: Ayinde

There were many enlightened people in the past because people back then existed in a more natural state but most people in those environments were unconscious and that is the reason many were easily deceived.

One can be enlightened and still be very gullible because one does not appreciate the negative aspect of many things. To be conscious is to know the full spectrum of both 'good' and 'bad'.

In the past the population was way smaller and the full cycle of human degradation was not realized. People could not become fully conscious because of limited experiences and choices.

There are many more enlightened people today and far more ignorant ones because of the size of the population.

The up side is, today people have the opportunity to increase their consciousness way above what existed in the past as there is a wider spectrum of recognizable 'good' and 'bad' to choose from.

More views here``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xIn touch with the natural world``x1046459293,32369,views``x``x ``xPosted: By Ras Tyehimba
Saturday, 1 March 2003

Media and Its Impact on the Psyche on Afrikan People

Until the Lion has a historian of its own the tale of the hunt will continuously glorify the hunter and extol his bravery.

With the accelerated use and development of technology, the role of media in shaping how people think and act, has become a very powerful one. Who controls the bulk of mainstream programming as it relates to TV, Internet and radio and what are the implications of the information/disinformation that is propagated? The engine of globalization is humming and the tentacles of Hollywood are traversing the globe injecting the minds of people with its neo colonial venom. What is the impact of this on our children, what is the implication of this for following generation? What is the role of InI is this era where homosexuality is becoming as prevalent as toxic fast food. From America/Hollywood that brought us the fast food fad laced with carcinogenic toxins comes another western promoted fad: homosexuality. What is the effect of the promotion of this, especially on our young children who turn on the TV and are bombarded by images of two men in bed? Homosexual behavior is currently being shown on TV and promoted as being normal. And its about to get much worse because MTV is planning to open a new station targeted at gay audiences.

The continuous images of white people and the bombardment of these images on the psyche of non-white people are very damaging especially to children who are at a very tender stage of development. These images by their very nature perpetuate an inferiority syndrome that is very pervasive in some Afrikan people. This inferiority syndrome is one of the main reasons for the Afro phobic mentality often displayed by the recipients of this brainwashing. They see the white world as portrayed by the silver screen as the epitome of civilization and thus they want to be white. To be white is good to be black is to be evil. In this craze to whitewash themselves they ruthlessly pursue the American dream, only to discover that the American dream doesn't include them.

Among young people entertainment through movies and music videos are very popular, with Bet and Mtv being the prime stations. Analysis of the content of these is enough to make one retch with disgust as these stations are deeding the public with a steady diet of promiscuous sex, drugs, homosexuality, and carnal gratification. It is the peak of unconstructive and destructive entertainment. The rap artists do quite a lot of damage, spewing images of fast cars, 'bling bling' jewelry, brand name clothing, half nude women, and alcohol. This image that these things are the aim of life, and are the requirements for a good life is one of the most damaging images perpetuated on black people second only to the image of the white Jesus. These black rappers are just pawns, controlled by the American system to spread the word of American supremacy global. It is highly symbolic and significant that these rappers proudly call themselves 'niggers'

Only ignorant people would address themselves in such a self-demeaning manner.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRastafari Media- Fire for BET/MTV/CNN/BBC``x1046544979,7430,views``x``x ``xPosted By: IanI, Rasta Guidance

Irie Greetings!

Ras Mandingo, you original question puts a serious limitation pon the overstanding of Rastafari. Cause Rasta a not no 'organized religious faith' like some church denomination. Seen.

As Ayinde explain so nicely, Rastafari a come from the 'beginning'. Seen. Him is entirely correct in him saying that many retain them colonial teachment mentality and since this teachment is very limited and distorted, is difficult for them to FORWARD past them teachment without getting to the NATURAL Livity. Them a remain within the limitations and no go no further. Me see it here all the while.

Rastafari has it's discipline, but that discipline is within the NATURAL LAWS of NATURE... which is the covenant of the Almighty Creator placed right here in front of IanI and just needs to be seen!

But many de go stick them face in a book of man and ignore the book of the Almighty, written in the wind and the tree and the flow a the river and the FLASH a the lightening!! And so them overstanding is limited by them mental as well as physical seperation from the Laws of the CREATOR.

And when the Rastaman a say "The WORD is written!!", many de think that that means it is written in a book or on a piece of stone or on papyrus. Well, Wisdoms a there fe true... but where did those Wisdoms come from?

AH!!
The Rastaman a KNOW where...
and read the Wisdoms everyday!

IanI Rastafari a ONE with the NATURAL!!
There is no seperation or segregation!!

JAH de speaking all the while...
to everyone!
Everywhere!
Without limitation...
is just for Ones to choose the RIGHTEOUS ROAD and LIVE LOVE.
LIVE LIFE.

Give Thanks and Praises fe the LIFE!
Faith is a WAY, not a denomination.
Everyone got the ability to live faith-fully.
IanI Rastafari a SEE the good and the bad and CHOOSE...
GOODNESS
RIGHTEOUSNESS!!

Rastafari is geographic... but why limit JAH geographically??
You see?
If me de stand pon the part a the Earth IanI call I-thiopia... IanI a SEE JAH!!
And if IanI stand pon the part a the Earth called Brooklyn, or South Africa, or China... IanI a SEE JAH!!

No limit youself man!
Learn de Laws a the Covenant and just LIVE!

LOVE a the Almighty Creation FORCE and POWER!!
LIVE IT...
everywhere!!

Thanks and Praise
Thanks and Praise

ONE LOVE/HEART/MIND
IanI Rastafari
Guidance

Share Your View Here...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xYes I... a clearer overstanding``x1046656525,67496,views``x``x ``xFebruary 23, 2003
by Corey Gilkes

Carnival is colour, no doubt about that. Carnival is revelry, gay abandon a period when sexual inhibitions are lowered, all this is true. The "Mas" has also become very much a world festival: a period where the creative genius of people no matter what ethnic background, can be showcased for the entire world to admire, but Carnival as a forum for resistance to oppression? Many people familiar with the Carnival celebrations of Trinidad, Cuba, Brazil, New Orleans, Labour Day celebrations in the US and other places know about a wild, colourful, celebration just prior to Ash Wednesday. What is not so well known is that this colourful festival also served as a medium for resistance to white domination, particularly when one considers that the ways in which the British imposed their authority and "superiority" was [sometimes] much more sophisticated and subtle than the blatant thuggery that characterised North American racism. What is even more obscure is the actual origin of this festival.

I wish to highlight the history of the African in this part of the Caribbean and their passive [and sometimes active] struggles by highlighting the festival and the musical tradition Trinidad is most famous for – Carnival and calypso, since the history of our struggle is incomplete without an inclusion of these two traditions. Continue...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xTrinidad Carnival: Afri-Caribbean Resistance``x1046758084,85814,world``x``x ``x[I regularly get emails with questions about Whites and Rastafari so I am posting this response.]

Name and email address withheld

I am White. Can I be a Rasta?
___________________________________

Response: from Ayinde

You can be anything you want and you can call yourself anything.

Most people who call themselves Rasta say this from the position of having dreadlocks and liking Reggae music.

In my view few are real Rastas but many are hoping to become.

It is ignorance and laziness that causes many to hold on to the outward forms of Rasta and not do the groundwork.

The pursuit of Rastafari is a discipline that allows one to develop the ability to work within the laws of nature and to realize that this blissful state only exists in the essence of life.

Many believe that by simply growing a dreadlocks and saying Haile Selassie they are automatically transforms into something new. This may give them new friends but certainly does not transform them from their follies.

In some of my other articles I gave a historical overview of Rastafari and I suggest if you are genuinely interested, that you chat with an elder 'IanI' whose email address is on RASTA GUIDANCE and get some of the foundation overstanding.

The values and expressions within the evolution of the understanding of Rastafari are rooted in the experiences of African people/culture. (See: A SKETCH OF RASTAFARI HISTORY and you can also read: RASTAFARI IN TRANSITION by Ikael Tafari) It is best to study world history, including what you may not have been taught about African people and culture, in order to remove some of the layers of prejudices that blocks people from seeing simple truths.

The Poem, Slavery Brainwashing by EMPRESS SARAI, gives a good overstanding of how popular concepts about Rastafari developed.

Once you respect everyone's right to their views although you may disagree and you are courageous enough to share your own views, you should not have a problem.

Discuss it on : Rastafari Speaks Message Board

Regards.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xI am White. Can I be a Rasta?``x1046818607,27271,views``x``x ``xby Susan James

Dr. Florence Wambugu, a Kenyan scientist, who worked with others to develop Kenya's first genetically engineered sweet potato during the 1990s, has contributed to the recent debate on genetically engineered (GE) food. She is quoted as saying "Europeans can afford to debate. They are arguing from the comfort of a food surplus. Hungry people want something to eat today."

The implication of this statement is that anyone who would deny a hungry person a meal today, even a GE one, is complacent, unfeeling, unable to imagine the cruelty that is starvation. So we should feed the hungry with GE food now.

But why GE food?

Why should we dump unwanted GE products on those who have limited freedom of choice as it is?

Why should the vulnerable be expected to take risks over food that we in the rich Northern hemisphere are unwilling to take ourselves, and against which no insurance company anywhere is willing to insure?

Why should the Governments of Developing Countries run the risk that, if they accept GE aid, they will later find it politically difficult to oppose the corporate take-over of their agricultural economies (as suggested by Devinder Sharma)?

We in the North, who have so much, should be giving of our best to those less fortunate that we are. Where it is needed urgently, we should send non-GE food that we would be prepared to eat ourselves. Or we should send money to buy some of the surplus non-GE food that is already available. And, in the long term, we should be changing global attitudes and systems so that hunger is eradicated completely.

Why GE food aid? I cannot think of a good reason. Continue...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xGenetically Engineered Food Who Needs It?``x1046912006,27405,world``x``x ``xMarch 4, 2003
An Interview With William Blum
by Jon Elmer and William Blum

CBS has reported that barely five hours after the attacks on Washington and New York, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is quoted shorthand by aides saying, in reference to Saddam Hussein, "Judge whether good enough to hit S.H. at same time. Not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]. Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not." ("Plan for Iraq Attack Began on 9/11", CBS Washington, 4 September 2002) If it weren't for September 11, would we be marching to war in Iraq today?

They may have found another excuse; they have wanted to do this for some time. 9/11 gave them the excuse to do many things: Afghanistan, Iraq, the crackdown on civil liberties at home, the crackdown on the Freedom of Information Act – all kinds of things, at home and abroad. They would have found some other pretext if it wasn't for 9/11 – and that isn't even a pretext in the case of Iraq. With Afghanistan, on the surface at least, it could be used as a pretext because there was some connection there, supposedly, but with Iraq there is no connection whatsoever with 9/11.

Do you suggest the war in Afghanistan would have happened at some time or another regardless of September 11?

It might have. The US government had been negotiating with the Taliban up until six months or so before 9/11 to arrange for the safeguarding of oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan and Pakistan into the Indian Ocean. US oil companies were involved in that – and that was not getting as far as the US-side wanted it to, so they were looking for some other way to alter the government's position in Afghanistan. So the motive was always there, again, they just needed the pretext – and 9/11 is a pretext that has served many functions.

Canadian speechwriter for President Bush David Frum wrote in his memoir, The Right Man, that he came up with the "axis of evil" while reading Franklin Roosevelt's reaction to Japan's attack at Pearl Harbor. Frum's "radical memo" to Bush drew on the parallels between the Toyko-Rome-Berlin axis powers of WWII and the menace of terror organizations like al Qaeda allied with the so-called terror-states today: Iraq-Iran-North Korea (Frum, "My Radical Memo on Iraq", National Post, 8 Jan 2003). So as Pearl Harbor was to the larger threat of the Nazi's in WWII, so is al Qaeda to the larger threat of Iraq –the one nation on earth most like the axis powers of WWII, according to Frum. Is there any possible way that this can be taken seriously?

If you're a speechwriter for George Bush it can be taken very seriously, yes. I can see from his point of view, it fits nicely into what he wanted to find. But a rational human being would have a hard time finding any credence in all that; a rational human being would ask for some evidence [of the link between Iraq and al Qaeda] – as the world has been asking for evidence of it for a full year now. We have been asking and there has been no evidence forthcoming. So I don't think that by now anybody believes it.

Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Policy casts it as inevitable that two-thirds of the US oil supply will have to be imported by 2020. Iraq has the world's second largest oil reserves. Just how significant is oil in the conflict in Iraq?

It's a sine qua non –it is not the only reason, but it certainly is one that has to be there, without that the other reasons might not be important enough. The oil has other aspects to it as well: The official currency of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) for all oil transactions has been the Dollar. A year and a half ago or so, Iraq switched to the Euro, which apparently upset the US powers-that-be greatly, and they're afraid that OPEC may change to the Euro officially. From what I've read from economists, that would be a great blow to the US financially, and it would have to be stopped by the US – that's very important for them. If they were in charge of Iraq as they have openly admitted is their plan, they could easily switch Iraq's decision, and I think Saudi Arabia and the others would be in a very tenuous position if they wanted to buck the United States on this issue. They would have to go along with keeping the Dollar as the official currency.

The Pentagon has recently confirmed that the war plan is called "Shock & Awe" and involves 3000 missiles in 48-hours, 800 of them Cruise Missiles, in order to provide the "Hiroshima effect" – psychologically destroying the enemies will to fight. One Pentagon official called the plan ‘unprecedented'. In the face of the lengthy docket of "shock and awe" saturation bombings of, say, Southeast Asia or the fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, for example, is it really unprecedented?

Well, in terms of firepower, it could be [as powerful]. They certainly have the means to top what they did in Afghanistan or Iraq [in 1991], or Serbia or even Hiroshima. They have the means to double Hiroshima or ten times that – it's up to them how much they're going to use. Simply in terms of tonnage of bombs or explosive power, however that is measured, it could be unprecedented – but this is not really an important issue: whether it is equal to Hiroshima or twice Hiroshima, it's still going to be total devastation for the people of Iraq, and I think this report was issued as one more way of frightening the people in Iraq and frightening their government. It's psychological warfare.

After the first Gulf War, George Herbert Walker Bush said "the specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula" (U.S. Armed Forces Radio March 2, 1991). What effect has the Vietnam Syndrome – the idea of a war carrying on too long allowing the solidification of popular opposition – played in the American Empire's tactics of expansion?

Well one of the main effects of that is in the media. The Pentagon has learned that if you show the American public too many pictures of dead peasants and children, if the pictures are too bloody and too gruesome day after day, you will certainly help to build up antagonism to the war. Ever since Vietnam they have slowly but surely limited the media access to the battlefield –it gets less and less with each war. It is all staged now; they allow the media to see only what they want them to see. That is one effect of Vietnam.

As far of the length of the war, they bombed Serbia, day and night, for 78 days – that's a long time. They will bomb until they get a certain effect, either surrender or total devastation. They prefer to do it quickly, but not too quickly because they always have a number of experiments to carry out. These wars are done partly to carry out experiments with the newest weapons, and so they have to have time for that as well. The US will take as long as it wants. The Empire will do what it wants. You and I can just follow behind and comment about this and that, but the Empire will do what it wants.

Regarding the plan for urban warfare within the metropolis of Baghdad (pop. 5 million), is this a potential disaster for the American propaganda effort, considering it will be much easier for journalists to gain access to the cities, compared to the isolation of Desert Storm in 1991, where many of the massacres took place in the desert, like the so-called Highway of Death between Basra and Baghdad?

Normally what they would do is just bomb the cities until all possible resistance was snuffed out and then they would send in forces on the ground, who would then meet the minimum resistance. But they now want to at the same time avoid the torching of the oil wells – and other things like maybe chemical and biological weapons – which will pollute the air and harm the American soldiers. So to prevent this, I have heard that they may introduce ground forces even before the bombing has run its course – but who can say what is going to happen. But it won't be as simple as in the past.

On the topic of the United Nations, after the US attacked Grenada in 1983 (pop. 101,000) despite overwhelming UN-disapproval, President Ronald Reagan said, "One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come before them, where we're involved, and it didn't upset my breakfast at all." What role does the UN play in the plans of the American Empire?

Even Empires, even dictators want to be loved, want to appear to be legitimate. General Pinochet in Chile was in power 17 years as a dictator, but he longed to be loved as well. He held a referendum certain that he would win, and he lost and was forced to leave office. The US Empire can do what it wants from a military point of view, but it also wants to appear to be somewhat legitimate. The US uses the UN for that purpose, if it can. It has been done pretty much that way in the past and it is making the attempt now. The Empire thought it could go ahead and do what it wanted in Iraq with UN support, and the whole world's support, but it was surprised by a huge outburst of opposition – so much so that it was forced to play the UN game, and so far it hasn't won that game. What will happen will be fascinating to observe, but I can't predict it.

Do you think then that the second resolution the US is presenting on [Monday February 24, 2003] will have any impact on the conflict, or will they just go it alone if they can't get Security Council approval?

Well they've said they will [go it alone]. I just read an interview with [defense advisor] Richard Perle speaking about France. He said, even if they veto our resolution we will still invade Iraq. But this has been going back and forth for almost a year, and there is a lot of psychological warfare involved. They want to frighten Iraq, they want to appear as tough as can be, they refuse to admit any weakening of their resolve – it's all show.

Now speaking to the broader region of the Middle East, Israeli human rights groups like B'Tselem and several respected correspondents in the region – Justin Huggler of the Independent (UK) and Amira Hass of Ha'aretz have warned that Israel is stepping up military activities and land seizures in the Occupied Territories while the world's media focuses on Iraq. Hass went so far as to say that an Iraqi missile attack on Israel or Palestinian support for Saddam Hussein could precipitate the mass expulsion of Palestinians (Hass: "Threat of Mass Expulsion" la Monde Diplomatique 19 Feb 2003, Huggler: "As the World Focuses on Iraq, The Bodies Pile Up in Gaza" Independent (UK) 22 Feb 2003). What do you think the impact of a war on Iraq will be for Palestinians?

There is a good chance of Israel using this as a pretext for so-called "transfer", which is otherwise called ethnic cleansing – moving the Palestinians en masse to Jordan, to newly liberated Iraq, and who knows where else. They certainly want that, whether they can get away with it only time will tell. The war would be a good pretext, a good cover for that [expulsion of the Palestinian population].

This interview is being conducted from Halifax, the most important naval port-city in Canada. On Monday [February 24, 2003] the first of two Canadian Naval destroyers are leaving for the Arabian Sea to provide "escort" and surveillance functions for billion dollar American aircraft carriers. What role does Canada play in the expansion of the American Empire?

It's a fig leaf. The US government obviously doesn't need anyone's help to overwhelm anyone else in the world militarily, but it gets back to the need to be loved and the need to appear somewhat legitimate. For those purposes they do need the support of Canada and Britain and anyone who can offer it. It's a fig leaf. In some cases, these nations offer a certain amount of military help which makes the war a bit easier for Washington, but that's not vital; they could have taken out Iraq completely, a few months ago, without all this [troop] build up.

You mentioned that the Empire does what it wants. On February 15th tens of millions of people worldwide rose up in united opposition to this war on Iraq. The next day, President Bush said that the protest affected him none, that it would be like shaping policy based on "a focus group". Does this type of opposition – the largest ever – really have no discernible impact on policy?

Well it may not stop the war, but I tell you that if the US carries out the war in the face of worldwide opposition it may very well be the beginning of the end for the Empire. And I hope it is.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

William Blum worked for the State Department until 1967, when his disgust with the Vietnam War forced him to abandon his aspiration to become a Foreign Service Officer. He is the author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (Common Courage, 1995) and Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (Common Courage, 2000).

Jon Elmer is a journalist in Halifax whose activism and writing against the war in Iraq has rendered his status as a student of philosophy at Dalhousie University little more than a formality of registration. jelmer@dal.ca

This interview was originally aired on CKDU's Guerrilla Radio in Halifax, Nova Scotia. (www.bethechange.ca/radio)``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Empire Does What It Wants``x1046954762,1754,world``x``x ``xPosted By: Ras Mandingo Jahson.
Date: Thursday, 6 March 2003, at 2:08 p.m.

Greetings to ALL,

Reading the posts regarding color of the skin, I remembered the King's words on the topic:

"Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior, is finally and permanently, discredited and abandoned, until there's no longer first class and second class citizens of any nations, until the color of a man's skin is of no more importance than the color of his eyes, everywhere is WAR. WAR IN THE EAST, WAR IN THE WEST, WAR UP NORTH, WAR DOWN SOUTH, it's war and rumors of war..."

HOW do ONES see that?

I know black man who hates everything related to black. I know black man who hurt black man. I know that until we judge a man by the way he looks and not by his ways, we gonna get confused and confusion. We gonna be divided and we gonna have war.

What about One God, One Aim, One Destiny???

In Humbleness, seeking to learn love and raspect,
Ras Mandingo Jahson - Brasil.

_____________________________________________________________

Posted By: ROOTSWOMAN
Date: Thursday, 6 March 2003, at 3:18 p.m.

Greetings Ras,

Let us look at the last words of that speech:

AND UNTIL THAT DAY…WE AFRIKANS WILL FIGHT... FOR WE FIND IT NECESSARY... AND ARE CONFIDENT IN THE VICTORY OF GOOD OVER EVIL.

Has "that day" (equal rights and justice) come yet for the Afrikan?

Then our utopian "can't we just all get along" thang must be put aside until THAT DAY.

Give thanks Ras for the post.
ROOTS
_____________________________________________________________

Posted By: Iyabinghi Ashanti Zebulun
Date: Thursday, 6 March 2003, at 3:21 p.m.
Well HIM used the operative word here and that is "until". Until that philosophy persists the "dream of lasting peace will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued and never attained".

The question is whose problem is it to put an end to this philosophy? Certainly not the black race. Because as all this war continues, "we Afrikans will (only) fight if necessary, and we know we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil".

So with all the war up north and down south and rumours of war, HIM as charged us to fight only when it is necessary. So the Afrikan has no business in a race war because we are not proving to be a superior race in the physical sense. That has always been the consensus of the Caucasian man. He has set himself up to be superior so he has to continually fight to ensure that position.

However we will fight if necessary to preserve our well-being and our culture/way of life, that is our right as Afrikans at home and abroad. This message does not dispel the issues of race or tells us that it is not about black or white. In fact it does reinforce the existence of inequality amongst the races and that we as Afrikans should be mindful of this at all times. Now when "it is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned" then we might find peace, world citizenship and the rule of international morality.

Blessed Love

Continue this reasoning here``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xH.I.M. on Color of the Skin ``x1046980600,30078,views``x``x ``xBy Firas Al-Atraqchi, yellowtimes

The U.S. administration suffered a debilitating diplomatic defeat today when UNMOVIC head Hans Blix said that Iraq was showing substantial signs of proactive disarmament. Blix scrutinized U.S. intelligence reports.

IAEA chief Mohammed Al Baradei said his team had conclusive evidence that information alleging aluminum tubes were destined for nuclear projects was unfounded. He gave his strongest show of support to date concerning Iraqi cooperation.

The U.S. and U.K. U.N. representatives, nevertheless, put forward a March 17 deadline for Iraq's full disarmament. No details were given as to who would verify disarmament by that date.

In a sign that the U.S. is ignoring its allies and friends in the region, prized CNN field journalist Barbara Starr today reported that the U.S. administration is intending to divide Iraq into three sections, with each section administered by a different U.S. authority. The north and south of Iraq will be administered by two different retired U.S. Army generals, while the central portion, Baghdad and the surrounding areas, will be run by a woman, Barbara Bodine, former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen. (Bodine was ambassador to Yemen when the U.S.S. Cole was struck in 2000.)

Sources in the Arab League, who were informed of the U.S. post-Saddam plans, are outraged. The Arab League had secretly proposed a mixed-Arab type commitment to maintaining security in Iraq.

The U.S. ignored Arab pleas and opted to name an American woman to run Baghdad.

This is sure to ignite the Iraqis.

"Are they crazy? They want to bomb us, kill us, and now they insult us by putting a woman to rule over our heads?" asked Abdullah Azawi, an Iraqi cab driver in Toronto.

"Iraqis will never stand for it. Never!"

While Iraq is a secular state, with Iraqi women afforded full rights of participation in all levels of society, the installing of a government run by a non-Arab, non-Muslim woman will definitely wound Iraqi pride. To have their country sectioned off is one thing; to have their lives run by an American woman is another. Indeed, Iraq is fully modernized but tribal customs still run deep. A woman, representing the country that devastated Iraq with 12 years of sanctions and inflicted countless casualties, telling Iraqis how to run their lives will be an intolerable insult.

Carnage will ensue.

It remains to be seen who devised the plan that does not take into account Iraqi cultural, historical, and religious sensitivities.

[Firas Al-Atraqchi, B.Sc (Physics), M.A. (Journalism and Communications), is a Canadian journalist with eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry.] ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xHas the U.S. administration gone mad?``x1047009600,44661,world``x``x ``xBy Davy de Verteuil

The UNHQ (United Nations Headquarters) should be relocated to another country including its functionaries and responsibilities.

The UN is too heavily dependant on/in the United States and as such has lost its appeal as a serious just and protective broker and a guarantor for the function and obligations towards its member states and officials.

Diplomats and heads of government (legitimate officials) belonging to the world body are subjects in a federal US government office that conditionally offers US stipulated guarantee of safety freedom and independence that are meaningless under the Geneva accords.

While the bugging of foreign diplomats at the UN is permissible under the US Foreign Intelligence Services Act, it is a breach of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

1: The Malaysian Prime Minister's Plane was boarded in commando fashion during which diplomats and security personnel were dis-armed searched and put to lie face down, in the melee the Prime Minister was verbally abused while gun-totting federal and security officers held guns at the Malaysian officials heads.

In another incident the Malaysian foreign and Deputy Prime Minister was searched and forced to remove their shoes, shoe laces and waste belt in body searches by airport security guards, both incidents occurred while they were on the way to attend United Nations business.

2: The United States said the two men based at the Iraqi mission to the United Nations in New York, Two Iraqi diplomats have been given 72 hours to leave the United States. In an earlier incident a journalist from the official Iraqi News Agency working at the United Nations, was expelled from the United States.

3: Chile's ambassador to Britain Mariano Fernández told The Observer: "We cannot understand why the United States was spying on Chile. We were very surprised." He said that the position of the Chilean mission to the UN was published in regular diplomatic bulletins, which were public documents openly available.

4: Unnamed "senior administration officials" told the Post they had eavesdropped on French and Russian conversations during negotiations last fall that led to the adoption of Resolution 1441.

5: Irked over Russia's decision to block a UN Security Council resolution authorizing use of military force against Iraq, the United States has warned that Moscow's stand may jeopardize its bid to join WTO.

6: AUSTRALIA has moved closer to war with Iraq after John Howard yesterday dismissed the need for a second UN resolution despite growing international dissent over US determination to topple Saddam Hussein.

7: The report in the Observer, headlined, "US Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War," charges that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been intercepting conversations on both home and office telephones, as well as e-mail messages sent by delegates to their governments. Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, reportedly ordered the intensified surveillance operation.

8: More than a decade ago, Hassan Turabi at the time a senior Sudanese government official was accosted and seriously beaten in the presence of ex CIA director William Cassey and other US officials, he was invited to a the low level US government briefing where the actual incident occurred, Mr. Turabi was hospitalized for more than a month.

The vicinity of the UN compound and surroundings have become and intimidating journey to most developing Nations leaders and diplomats and the pointed lack of security seems to be to well disorganized not to raise suspicion as the victims of these mysterious breaches are forever they who are/were on the wrong side of a US sponsored vote or resolution.

Note: Fleischer: "I haven't seen the story. And you already have the answer, about what this will be decided on. But think about the implications of what you're saying. You're saying that the leaders of other nations are buyable. And that is not an acceptable proposition." (Laughter)

The assaults on the UN and its legitimacy by the US, Australia, Britain and Spain in the pursuit for Blood and Oil is all too reminiscent of the need for a reformed world body as the break away fraction clearly highlight the irrelevance of the UN in regard to their interest.

One need only to recall Australia refusal to recognized the systematic extermination of its Aborigines as genocide and open racism. Australia openly implemented its first ever all white policy in the subsequent dismantling of apartheid, which went against the UN Human rights charter, a policy which is still in place today.

John Howard government continue to illegally imprison genuine (non-white) refugees in Australia's no-mans-land desert while others are made to languish out at sea in un-seaworthy vessels.

India have ignored UN resolutions on Kashmir as we speak, Kashmir is like a battle ground fresh out of victory for victorious Indian soldiers where raping of women subsequent beatings and killing of young men and disappearances occurs on an hourly basis. The butchery is sickening and the only incomparable horror to that of those in Palestine is the use of more sophisticated weapons used in the systematic slaughter of these two peoples.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xIt's about time the UNHQ be relocated``x1047268800,94709,world``x``x ``xPosted By: gman
Date: Tuesday, 11 March 2003

First of all let me point out that there are Chinese, East Indian, Native American, Hawaiian, Japanese, Maori Rasta. So it's not only about Black and white anyway.

Now I wonder if a few simple points could calm the controversy.
Ha Ha, of course not. But here goes anyway:
THINGS I FEEL BLACKS, WHITES AND OTHERS SHOULD OVERSTAND ABOUT RASTAFARI

(1) Rastafari is Black. Rastafari emerges from the African experience(s) in the so-called New World. Rastafari interprets and makes sense of this experience and seeks the way forward for African people. This is not to say Rasta doesn't seek the way forward for ALL people. But PRIMARILY, Rasta is dealing with the African people. However, Rasta raises the consciousness of the African people to the extent that IanI see our struggle as tied in with the struggle of ALL downpressed people, and even of the other life forms that share the planet with us. Rasta realizes that, as the Native Americans would say, we are all relations. Which leads to point number

(2) Rasta is not "racist". I put "racist" in quotes cos I feel it's quite a stretch to call ANY Black person a "racist" when it comes to their feelings about whites, given all that whites have done and are continuing to do to us. Anyway, Rasta is not about "all white people are devils" and suchlike thinking. Rasta recognizes that as simplistic and simply UNTRUE. It's unproductive for African people, or anyone, to act on the basis of something that is UNTRUE. Rasta deals with reality, not mythology.

(3) Rasta has no one leader. No one person can speak for all of Rastafari (other than H.I.M. Haile Selassie I, of course; and even so, Rastas interpret HIM words differently). So there's no one who is really qualified to say whether or not (for example) whites can be Rasta. The closest we could get to a voice of authority on this would be the elders. Well, some say yes, some say no.

(4) Black people whether Rastas or not have a right to be angry about the state of the world today, and in particular the position of Black people in that world. I might even go so far as to say, we have a DUTY to be angry about it. Once that anger is going to serve as an impetus to do something about it, and not become a self-destructive cancer in the gut.

I feel that if Black and white (and other) ones keep these points in mind, and listen to one another with an open mind and without knee-jerk defensiveness, maybe they could progress further than the current morass of name-calling and back-and-forth accusations and one-upmanship.

Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong.
_______________________________________________

Posted By: Ayinde
Date: Tuesday, 11 March 2003

Most of what you said seems pretty clear, however, I would like to add a few points from my perspective.

"(3) Rasta has no one leader. No one person can speak for all of Rastafari (other than H.I.M. Haile Selassie I, of course; and even so, Rastas interpret HIM words differently)."

H.I.M. Haile Selassie I do not speak for me. I admire much of what he said and attempted to achieve and I do share much of his views but I and I alone speak for myself.

Some people interpret "following someone" differently to myself. They interpret it as literally doing as someone says even if they do not agree or understand the reasons. I never accepted or practice this.

I follow the best example of H.I.M. Haile Selassie I, which is learning broadly and engaging the world from an informed position. I think this is the best of HIM that is worth EMULATING. Haile Selassie I also read a lot and was able to synthesize many ideas.

I accept Rastafari in its most indigenous form with the definitions I expound on this board.

I spent much time in the forest when I was younger and observed and learnt much there. I used to go back from time to time to get my bearings. It was there I felt at home. Today, anywhere I am, mentally I am still in the forest environment as I interpret everything from that perspective.

On another note:

In my view many were not fully able to grasp the reason Marcus Garvey felt strongly against Africans accepting another person as their saviour. Garvey may have understood the danger in 'blind fellowship'. He may have felt that Africans would be returning to another state of dependency and not actually doing enough to help themselves.

Marcus Garvey and H.I.M. Haile Selassie I operated from two sides of the same coin.

Garvey operated from the West as is symbolized in the logo to the top of the board, trying to get Africans back to Africa and to accept themselves as worthy people. Haile Selassie I started his reign from East Africa as symbolized in the logo, where asserting Blackness would not have been a priority as the people he was directly leading were already in Africa and around mostly Black Africans.

On the point of White people, I actually know a few very spiritual White people. I started treating with them with my usual distrust and over time saw that they were able to draw very similar conclusions after learning more about themselves. The few I know, willingly contribute to the development of African institutions but they have felt no desire to try to set up or own any African organization. They usually spend their energies trying to educate others who gravitate to them because of their color or perceived social position. None of them claim to have the level of consciousness that gives them some superior advantage. But they are quite spiritual. They are few in numbers and are the exception to the general conduct of most Whites but certainly in my mind I know that anyone can develop the essence of Rastafari (weather they choose to call it Rastafari or not).

I also know people of other races who live in relative harmony with nature and do fair by all manner of people. There are highly 'spiritual' people in all races although few in numbers.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xBlack and White``x1047372108,97123,views``x``x ``xPosted By: Ayinde
Date: Tuesday, 11 March 2003

They have nothing to contribute if their understanding is limited to Bob Marley and the 1930s.

In the context of human development, all types of people have contributed either directly or indirectly.

While Rastafari is, in part, the liberation struggle of Africans and in my opinion it was derived from a more indigenous way of living, few people today have added to the understanding Rastafari. For many it still remains the liberation struggle born in the 1930s. Few appreciated the works of the elders who remained in the hills far removed from pop culture.

In my view many gravitated to pop-Rastafari from the viewpoint of its slightly altered Christian teachings, which was easy to accept. For many, Rastafari offered the illusion of a new type of people that would play down the issues of Race and Gender inequities whilst pacifying those in economic poverty. Both Blacks and Whites could simply say brother, Jah Rastafari and one love often enough to gloss over the real experiences of many.

Today many (Blacks, Whites and all in between) are simply not mentally equipped to treat with Rastafari in a global context much more a Universal context. People take aspects that allow them to feel better in relation to their own social dynamics and run with it.

Many claim Rastafari, without paying attention to its much older foundation, which offers meaning to all people. The much older root shows that the Jamaican elders in the hills were identifying with a natural process of development. Some Whites, Indians, Chinese, etc. have done this but they did not call it Rastafari.

This natural living in the forest offers a window to many about how to grasp the essence of higher development. The work does not start or end in the forest and ones must learn to apply the wisdoms and values gained to all aspects of living, in the forest or in the concrete jungle among diverse people.

In my opinion, few people (Black White and all in between) can develop these natural abilities without returning to the 'forest'. Most will have to continue fighting over little things while gaining little pieces of truth under duress as they trek this earth.

The few with a more developed common sense (sense of reason) can learn and refine truths from their own experiences alongside the experiences of others.

Continue reasoning here...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhat do White people have to add to Rastafari``x1047372901,75117,views``x``x ``xA very humorous and revealing story is told about a group of white people who were fed up with African Americans, so they joined together and wish themselves away. They passed through a deep dark tunnel and emerged in sort of a twilight zone where there is an America without black people.

At first these white people breathed a sigh of relief. At last, they say, no more crime, drugs, violence and welfare. All of the blacks have gone!!

Then suddenly, reality sets in. The "NEW AMERICA" is not America at all only a barren land! There are very few crops that have flourished because the nation was built on a slave-supported system.

There are no cities with tall skyscrapers because Alexander Mils, a black man, invented the Elevator, and without it one finds great difficulty reaching high floors.

There are few if any cars because Richard Spikes, a black man, invented the Automatic Gear Shift. Joseph Gammell, also black, invented the Super Charge System for Internal Combustion Engines, and Garrett A. Morgan invented the Traffic Signals. Furthermore, one could not use the Rapid Transit System because its precursor was the electric trolley, which was invented by another black man by the name of Elbert R. Robinson.

Even if there were streets on which cars and a rapid transit system could operate, they were cluttered with paper because an African American, Charles Brooks, invented the Street Sweeper.

There were few if any newspapers, magazines and books because John Love invented the Pencil Sharpener, William Purvis invented the Fountain Pen, Lee Burridge invented the Type Writing Machine and W. A. Lovette invented the Advanced Printing Press. They were all, you guessed it, black. Even if Americans could write their letters, articles and books, they would not have been transported by mail because William Barry invented the Postmarking and Canceling Machine, William Purvis invented the Hand Stamp and Phillip Downing invented the Letter Drop.

The lawns were brown and wilted because Joseph Smith invented the Lawn Sprinkler and John Burr the Lawn Mower. When they entered their homes, they found them to be poorly ventilated and poorly heated. You see, Frederick Jones invented the Air Conditioner and Alice Parker the Heating Furnace.

Their homes were also dim. But of course, Lewis Latimer invented the Electric Lamp; Michael Harvey invented the Lantern and Granville T. Woods invented the Automatic Cut-off Switch.

Their homes were also filthy because Thomas W. Steward invented the Mop and Lloyd P. Ray, the Dust Pan.

Their children met them at the door barefooted, shabby, motley and unkempt. But what could one expect? Jan E. Matzelinger invented the Shoe Lacing Machine, Walter Sammons invented the Comb, Sarah Boone invented the Ironing Board and George T. Samon invented the Clothes Dryer.

Finally, they were resigned to at least have dinner amidst all of this turmoil. But here again, the food had spoiled because another black man, John Standard, invented the refrigerator.

Now, isn't that something? What would this world be like without the contributions of Black people?

Martin Luther King, Jr. said "that by the time we leave for work we have been dependent on half the world & modern America is created by dependencies on the inventions from the minds of Black folks".

Black history includes more than just slavery, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Dubois.

http://www.tanserve.com/links/tribute.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xA Tribute to the forgotten men``x1047607845,97369,world``x``x ``xRas Mandingo jahson

Greetings Idrens and Sistrens,

I was wondering about the word "reasoning". That's something I feel happy I can exercise here. I was trying to find a word in Portuguese, and ended up building one, as I couldn't find one that I felt really represented this feeling. When we translate, we actually make an interpretation, looking for ideas that can be compared.

Reason (razão in Portuguese), the capacity that we all have to FEEL when something is right. We get to clearly SEE something that someone tells us, and we can confirm this in the very inside of our conscience.

Reasoning, the action of being able to use one's reason. I thought about arazãonamento, in Portuguese, which doesn't really exist as a word. You do have arazoamento; this is the word in classic Portuguese, even though I don't FEEL it really transmits ALL I FEEL in the word reasoning.

Yes, reasoning is an art. Art is articulation, and so is reasoning.

I guess one thing necessary for a person to be able to reason is that the person is humble, is striving to be free, free from mental bondages and slavery. This is a powerful exercise for the mind. Our mind gets stronger with that and as a result, we get to be able to RELATE to other people, strengthen the intimacy and the human relation with everybody.

I guess, this is one of the greatest treasures in Rasta Livity: Reasoning Process. Sometimes there are some fiery feelings, but, if the intention is of brotherhood, the differences can be exercised and the similarities can be strengthened.

I give thanks and blessed love for the possibility of being here, daily (and nightly), virtually and still reality, reasoning and learning and growing and clarifying and demystifying...

Yes RASTAFARI, NYABINGI I, EARTH RIGHTFUL RULER, Blessed be the power of revelation by Information and Inity.

Ras Mandingo Jahson

_________________________________________________


From Ayinde

Reasoning is a discussion in pursuit of higher meaning. It is supposed to be the same as an intense dialogue. Most of these important words are abused today.

To reason on an issue, parties must have some familiarity with the subject matter and are prepared to re-evaluate their views and opinions when a higher truth is presented.

The problem with most people is their false sense of self (ego) gets in the way. They are usually playing for an audience or are deliberately saying things that they do not genuinely believe in order to distort or distract.

Reasoning is a very sacred thing as what is being said must be the truth, as the speakers understand it. It involves the exchanges of meaning and not simply repeating words that both parties interpret differently.

Reasoning is not easy; it involves the ongoing search for more truths to ACT upon.

In ancient times parties in disagreement would have special meetings where they would smoke herbs or drink java before engaging the issues. They would first spend time stating their ancestral lineage to realize their most ancient connections before tackling the problem. This allowed them to rekindle their humanity/common relations so they could reason as part of a larger family. What they agreed upon in that state is what would be acted upon. Today sensible people do not have to smoke or drink to do this but still most people do not rekindle their common bonds before engaging serious discussions.

Think of the difference this would make to the Israeli/Palestinian issue if before they started talking about their disagreements they use the current historical and scientific information to rekindle awareness of their common humanity. With that information refreshed in their minds they could then go about discussing the issues.

Reason (the pursuit of the highest truth) is the meaning of life.

Continue this reasoning here...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Meaning of Reasoning``x1047677439,82598,views``x``x ``xAznar's Courtship of Bush Regarding Iraq Could Cost Spain the Fruit of its Return to Latin America

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's total dedication to President Bush's imperious strategy regarding Iraq could cost Spain dearly in Latin America. In racing to keep up with the U.S. and British-generated Iraqi policy, the Spanish prime minister has turned his back on Latin America, as well as most of his country's traditional, continental allies for the uncertain reward of being pictured in photo-ops with President Bush and Britain's Prime Minister Blair, and in being invited to the presidential ranch.
But Aznar's celebrity status has cost his nation and Latin America dearly. Nor will this Sunday's hastily called meeting on Iraq in the Azores with Bush and Blair be likely to change his domestic isolation.

Spain's position on the UN's dealings with Iraq equates to Aznar stabbing Chile and Mexico in the back and leaving these two UN Security Council Members vulnerable to retaliation from Washington-if they continue to thwart U.S. policy by refusing to sanction an early military attack without allowing additional time for inspections.
Rather than publicly insist that whatever the outcome, the two governments' decisions should be respected, Aznar instead has dutifully aped the language uttered by White House speechwriters. On the surface, Spain would seem to have very little to gain from Aznar's unabashed assumption of Washington's position aside from some modest U.S. handouts and encouraging words about the need to fight Basque terrorists. However, Spain may lose considerably more than it ever had to gain. Firstly, Aznar has triggered what could become the worst crisis in the Ibero-American Summit since its founding. This essentially sentimental rather than functional organization has had as its two European representatives, the very conservative leaders of Portugal and Spain. Both men are woefully out of sync with the present populist direction in which Latin America is now heading. However, Aznar and his Portuguese counterpart have truly failed to take advantage of, or even acknowledge, this powerful and growing trend. Aznar has gone a long way toward undermining Spain's strong identification with the tough human rights and anti-dictatorial standards championed by former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzales and King Juan Carlos. The effort of Gonzales and the King allowed Spain to "return" to Latin America in spite of its bitter heritage of conquest and cruelty afflicted on the region during the period of colonial rule.

Aznar's Flawed Past

Aznar's choice to back the U.S. rather than the kindred nations of Chile and Mexico deserves to be viewed as no less than an act of treachery. It is but the latest chapter in Aznar's misbegotten tour of government that has included the botched salvage effort of an oil tanker in November 2002 (leading to a huge oil spill and causing irreparable damage to the Spanish coastline), his attempts to hobble the efforts of a Spanish judge seeking to extradite General Pinochet from Great Britain for human rights derelictions, and an unseemly squabble with Fidel Castro that he ignited at an Ibero-American Summit gathering.

Two years ago, Aznar exhibited his ego and his lust for self-importance by exclaiming to the International Herald Tribune, that Spain is "one of the big guys now," proffering his belief that he has led his country to equal standing with continental giants France and Germany. On its path to international recognition, Spain surpassed the United States as the largest foreign investor in Latin America, even though in recent months, aid to the region has dropped significantly. Aznar made a concerted effort to push his paternalistic sentiments onto needy Central and South America, hoping to become the leading advocate for the Western Hemisphere's 400 million Spanish-speakers. It is this newfound camaraderie that is now in jeopardy and could come to a crashing end as both Spain and Latin America choose sides in the Iraq crisis.

Friendship on the Hoof

President George W. Bush could not have found a more eager or vocal ally in continental Europe than Spain's Aznar. A longtime buddy of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Aznar has been unfailing in his support for Bush's plans to disarm Iraq, forcibly if need be, and with or without the UN's imprimatur. This is a surprising level of harmony from a man who originally felt snubbed by Bush when the newly elected U.S. president butchered his name during a formal television interview, referring to him as "Anzar." Equally at risk is the chilled distance that now fills the void previously warmed by Bush's former rapport with Mexican President Vicente Fox. The new Mexican leader had found his U.S. counterpart so engaging that their personal and political futures appeared inseparable-Fox even brought Bush home to meet his mother. The burgeoning friendship has now been stunted, with Fox canceling a visit to President Bush's Texas ranch because of Bush's outright refusal to stay the execution of a Mexican national. As Bush turned east and west for allies in his War on Terror, he has all but ignored his friends in Latin and South America, replacing them with Blair and Aznar. Bush has also successively named two right-wing ideologues-Otto Reich and Roger Noriega-to be Assistant Secretaries of State for Latin America. As for the visit to the ranch, Fox's designated, but declined, bedroom was now assigned to Aznar.

Mexico Resists the Spanish Temptation

The once promising Bush relationship Bush with Latin America has all but disappeared, as U.S. diplomats sadly discovered that Mexico and Chile, in spite of subtle and not so subtle badgering, would not provide the "easy votes" needed for the U.S. president's UN resolution on Iraq. Spain's vote, however, has been cost-free, despite the barrage of anti-war and anti-U.S. protests that Aznar faces daily. Staunchly anti-war, nearly 80 percent of Spaniards are against joining the U.S. in a non-UN-sanctioned conflict with Iraq. Aznar, however, has chosen not to bow to public opinion by continuing his unflagging support for the U.S. Fox, on the other hand, has remained somewhat steadfast in his call for a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis, although conceivably he might finally buckle out of a sense of pragmatism. On his way to a powwow at Bush's Crawford, TX ranch, Aznar made a crucial stop in Mexico. Perhaps Washington was hoping that Aznar's fluent language skills might be more convincing than Bush's much-touted, yet significantly inferior Spanish. While his visit did nothing to bring Mexico closer to supporting Spain's pro-war position on Iraq, Aznar left Fox claiming he would not dream of attempting to extort Fox or twist his arm into agreement, "President Fox would not tolerate such pressure, as would be natural, nor would it ever occur to me" to employ such strong-arm tactics.

Demonstrations in Venezuela

Mexicans have shown themselves to be adamantly opposed to a military conflict in Iraq. Protest marches have been staged in downtown Mexico City, at the U.S. Embassy, in addition to Mexicans gathering outside the Spanish Embassy to protest Aznar's arrival. The demonstrators held signs saying, "Aznar is not welcome in Mexico" or labeling Aznar as the "European Judas." Fox and the Mexicans are not alone. Throughout Latin America, protests have been staged. Even in embattled Venezuela, where the country appears to be ripping apart over domestic issues, citizens of all political hues have managed to muster a significant anti-war voice. Entangled in anti-Chavez protests, violent strikes, and political upheaval, Venezuelans marched on February 16 in favor of peace. Venezuelan Congressman Dario Vivas participated in the downtown Caracas protest, where he commented, "This is the support for a people that need solidarity." Many Venezuelans are all too aware of what "regime change" means; the U.S. was strongly implicated in the attempt to depose President Hugo Chavez in the failed April 2002 coup attempt. If the U.S. would support the regime change of a democratically-elected, albeit now unpopular, president, what wouldn't the U.S. think to rain down upon an entrenched and madden anti-U.S. dictator? Clearly, Venezuela's show of support is not for the person of Saddam Hussein, rather it is a demonstration of solidarity for the people of Iraq.

Instead of playing the supportive role he has claimed for backing Latin American democratization, Aznar was barely lukewarm in his congratulations to Chavez on regaining executive power. Neither was he outspoken in denouncing the deposition of Chavez in the first place. It appears that Venezuela under Chavez and Spain under Aznar will never be close; too much hostility has been generated by Spain's diplomatic snubbing of Chavez and Venezuela's prickly attitude towards the extradition of resident ETA members whose refuge in Venezuela was negotiated at the time of the Felipe Gonzalez government.

The Rest of Latin America Weighs In

Despite hefty American influence and tight economic ties, Puerto Rican Islanders gathered en masse to protest a U.S.-led war on Iraq. They raised placards calling the United States "the most terrorist country," and waived banners reading "No War for Oil!" Puerto Rico, more than other Latin American countries, has a vested interest in any U.S.-Iraq conflict. As a U.S. commonwealth, the island's National Guard is subject to a U.S. military call-up-the Associated Press reports over 40 percent of the Guard complement has already been called up to serve in the Persian Gulf.

Large anti-U.S. protests occurred in the more industrialized regional nations of Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Nearly 5,000 Brazilians protested on the Copacabana beach and in Sao Paolo. About 8,000 Argentines marched through Buenos Aires up to the gates of the U.S. Embassy on February 15. Chile continues to nurse sore wounds. The Sunday Times reported one Chilean official as saying, "We know very well in Latin America that if the Americans want a regime change, they can do it without resorting to bombing cities." Perhaps the proposed regime change in Iraq is too close for comfort when recalling the U.S.-partially-scripted coup d'etat that deposed democratically-elected Salvador Allende. In his stead, U.S.-backed Augusto Pinochet was installed and went on to become a human rights abuser of such nefarious rank that his reign was in the same league as that of Saddam Hussein. Needless to say, Chile is skeptical of any U.S.-led military confrontation that doesn't have the sanction of the UN. Subsequently, that skepticism would largely color the budding relationship that Spain had hoped to nurture with Chile.

Will Economic Ties Keep Them Bound or Rip Them Apart?

Not even a year ago, Aznar and Latin American leaders met in Madrid, at the EU summit of Latin America and the Caribbean, where they helped to plan new economic developments aimed at strengthening bilateral ties. Commissioner of Economic Affairs for the EU, Pedro Solbes, warned that prompt debt repayments and fiscal discipline were crucial to better trade relations. Mexico's Fox claimed "our relationship with Europe has unlimited potential."

Aznar may have encouraged Spanish business to invest in Latin America, highlighting the investors' protection from bankruptcy. Yet, it was noted at the time that Aznar didn't show comparable zeal in being concerned with the depth of the region's debt problem or that European agricultural subsidies were hurting Latin America's exports to the region. Now the major investor, Spain has a vested interest in keeping the region as stable and prosperous as possible. Because of that vested interest, it is perplexing that Spain is now supporting a military conflict in Iraq, the fall-out of which could threaten the economic and political stability of the region.


This Press Memorandum was prepared by Larry Birns, Director, and Julie Mumford, Research Associate at the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs. Additional research assistance was contributed by Manuel Rueda.

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization. It has been described on the Senate floor as being "one of our nations' most respected bodies of scholars and policy makers."``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWar On Iraq Could Cost Spain``x1047677511,2455,world``x``x ``xby Corey Gilkes, March 18, 2003

It has been said almost like a mantra since talk surfaced about the US plans to invade Iraq that Bush was after one thing, Iraqi oil. Many also argue that a lot of the present rhetoric is fuelled by the profound influence Israel has over Washington. All this is alarming enough. But there is another aspect that is even more disturbing and needs to be seriously looked at. On Thursday 6th March I read on MSN an article on Bush and his intense religious beliefs. It explored in some detail the extent to which he relies on his (fundamentalist?) Christian beliefs to guide him in virtually every major decision, including his intentions with regard to Iraq. After reading it I was convinced that I was justified in arguing that in its Western interpretation, religion and matters of faith have no business whatsoever in politics or other matters involving the state. It is chilling how relevant the works of Diop, Marimba Ani and Frances Cress Welsing are today.

This MSN article – a clumsy attempt at propaganda – spoke at length about his daily routine, which begins with a reading of evangelical mini-sermons; his turn to religion after a destructive drinking habit; his winning over of the religiously conservative voters of the South by striking their religious chords and his fervent belief that he and the country he leads is "called" by a higher force to make the world a safer place.

Now it is bad enough that the United States, as its European model before it, arrogantly and openly flouts international laws and treaties. But to do so spurred on by religious dictates and have access to nuclear weapons is really cause for alarm. Indeed, the ghosts of Europe’s own expansionist ventures come back in a not so different context. Now while it is quite clear that "Dubya" is making full use of a post Sept 11 world and a farcical "War on Terror" to further geo-political ideologies, the idea that all this present instability and tension has largely to do with Biblical readings is enough to make this writer head for the backyard with a shovel and start digging a bomb shelter.

History is very clear about the way religion has been used by Europeans to incite people into supporting and participating in military actions that were almost always extensions of nationalistic and idealistic policies. This campaign and the religious content in Bush’s speeches are cut from the same cloth of European nationalism that gave us the Crusades, the wars of conquest and enslavement; the colonisation of other people’s land in service of the metropole, the imposition of Euro-centred ideologies and the setting up of infrastructure that would ensure perpetual dependency syndromes among former colonies. It is common knowledge that the Xian thought in particular has been one of the strongest supportive mechanisms in maintaining the European/Euro-American image of themselves [patrons, saviours] and others [children, savages, irrational, despotic]

What I have always found disquieting about religious types is the sincerity with which they believe in the superiority of their particular faith and the need to undermine and win over devotees of other faiths, particularly when these faiths are not Christian. In other words they are sincere in their bigotry. This religiously bigoted outlook has grown over the last few years – spurred on in no small way by the approach of the 21st Gregorian century and the onset of a so-called new millennium – as the religious forces have become more fundamentalist and yoked to political reaction, ethnocentrism and an apocalyptic outlook. For someone of Bush’s stature to be making decisions based on a belief of the inerracy of the bible, then we need to be very concerned about how he views such things as the Apocalypse and how he can hasten the so-called Second Coming. This is not just wild speculation; there is actually historical precedent for this. During the formative years of Xianity the Roman authorities had to contend with pious Xian mobs committing acts of arson so as to speed up the return of the Christ. What differentiates that period and this one is that now we got cyberspace and some nukes, stupidity itself knows no time frame. Much of this stems from the romanticised way most people viewed Xianity as well as the failure or refusal by Xian clerics, pastors and the like to enlighten their followers about the many twists, turns, political and historical accidents over the last two millennia that shaped Western Xianity to what it is. Xian faith is known but Xian history is not.

It is amazing how often and how easily the "War on Terror" has been painted as a mission of God. In fact, many of his speeches are loaded with words and phrases that evoke images of this farcical "war" as being a crusade, a classic case of the struggle between the forces of Light and Darkness with the US as the principal agent of Light and Bush as the agent of Good. Historically, this is a recurring theme, the identifying of the military, missionary and exploratory expeditions of Europeans/Euro-Americans as a "Crusade" or an expedition undertaken at god’s behest. We can also see here strains of ancient Greece – long held as the model for most European and Euro-centred nations – which viewed other peoples and cultures as barbaric, "irrational", in need of conquest and guidance by the "rational" cultures.

So in order to make sense of all this, it is important that the impetus for his actions be taken apart and carefully studied. In other words, Xianity as most of us know it to be, regardless of denomination, must be examined to understand what is unfolding before our eyes. It is beyond the scope of this work but this writer hopes that by highlighting this aspect of Eurocentric geo-politics, others can throw more light on this and perhaps change the direction the world seems to be heading.

To do this I continue to utilise as a working paradigm the Two-Cradle analysis of Cheikh Anta Diop. As examined in my previous essays, particularly "Orthodox" Christianity and the Birth of European Nationalism" Dr Diop divided the ancient world into two zones, the frigid Northern Cradle, Europe/Eurasia and the tropical Southern Cradle of Africa and southern Asia. Diop argued that the extremely frigid climate of the north in primordial times gave rise to certain patterns of behaviour among the nomadic tribes necessary for survival. Among the behavioural traits that arose out of this ecological condition were xenophobia, despotism and a type of perpetual siege mentality.

We must examine closely this xenophobic behaviour of these cultures and how fear of outsiders played a profound role in shaping the psyche and religious beliefs of the early Indo-Aryan inhabitants of Europe – and by extension, European-centred societies today. Since primordial times the inhabitants of the Eurasian steppes came to fear and view with suspicion the presence of strangers. Given what we know about the scarcity of food in those times this outlook was essential for the survival of the mostly nomadic communities. Hunter-gatherer tribes across the frigid steppes competed against each other for precious food stocks and grazing land for animals. Clans were on the constant lookout for the appearance of another tribe and fighting, deception and theft became valued traits in the male of the clan. Another by-product of this nomadic, warrior-oriented culture was the emergence of a singular, usually patriarchal, figure who was often the strongest, most aggressive person in the clan. This of course was also reflected in the belief systems and it was out of the Northern Cradle the concept of the single, malevolent, warlike male deity came into being. One of these malevolent deities, Marduk, served as the model for the Hebrew Yahweh. Unlike the cultures to the south that had a monarch who essentially, was a figurehead and who made decisions only after consulting with the Queen Mother, priests and the council-of-elders, in the northern Cradle there could only be one figure of authority whose word was law.

Now how does this become relevant to Bush and Xianity? After all, as is often argued, Xianity, purportedly a religion of peace and love, tempers this aggressive outlook. This argument holds no water because overlooked is the fact that all religions are shaped by the secular cultures that existed around them and Xianity – barring its Egyptian birth and influence – was most certainly shaped by the Roman and Greek influence, among others. The same central hierchical figure and outlook that was present in secular Eurasian life from primordial times diffused into many Xian sects. Indeed, for the first three hundred years there were violent disagreements over who and what constituted the Divine and which church would be the Mother Church. The religious intolerance for which it became known was spliced into the culture from the very earliest days. This only came to an end under Constantine who ascended the throne in 312 CE. Constantine, seeking complete political unification of the Roman Empire set about bringing the various religious, ethnic and linguistic groups that lived under Roman rule. He accomplished this by instilling in Roman citizens a common sense of brotherhood, namely by identifying common enemies of the state. He also halted religious persecution, issuing his Edict of Milan in 313. Ironically, the same year he was doing this he was preparing to stamp out religious diversity within Xianity. In keeping with his instructions, his prefect in Africa moved against a schismatic Xian sect called the Donatists.

Having decided that this new faith would be his spiritual tool in bringing together his empire so as better to conquer new territory, there could be no diversity or difference of opinion in Xianity. He had the various bishops convene at Nicea to decide what would become "orthodoxy". That there was no element of piety in any of these decrees; the ecclesiastical decisions made by the bishops who sat at that conference were to conform to his dreams of political unification. There was to be only one approved form of jurisprudence, government and faith. Thus from that pivotal year of 325 CE Xianity was shaped to reflect the expansionist and militarist ethic of monarchs. And as was shown in "Orthodox" Christianity the ecclesiastical authorities, who had agendas of their own, decided on the doctrine of a bodily resurrection of their avatar because of the immense political weight such a doctrine carried.

By the time communities came or were forced together and became urban centres, this "siege" outlook had become firmly embedded into their collective psyche. One had to adopt a warlike disposition or else one would not enjoy liberty. According to Germanic custom, a stranger was an object without a master. Insofar as he was not protected, either by a powerful figure, or by inter-tribal treaty, he could be killed, his property scattered and his murderers could not be punished. When Germanic hordes overran Rome and the Roman Empire mutated into the Germanic Holy Roman Empire, their cultural traditions took firm hold of the Xian faith [not that it wasn’t already part of Xianity]. Individuals came to live in fear of being so identified. To be marginalised was to be excluded and one of the new symbols of this was the church; by the Middle Ages, there were great city churches, designed to hold entire urban communities. Sermons exhorting Christian solidarity were blasted from these pulpits to their massed congregation. To stand outside the consensus was to literally stand outside the church walls itself.

If one looks at the way most European states came into being, one would notice that it was usually the coming together of tribes based on the need to defeat a common enemy. Much of this unification had to do with the efforts of ecclesiastical authorities. The pope’s impulse was to unite the warring princes and the divided Church against a common enemy outside Christendom. This was a replay of Constantine’s efforts to unify the divided Roman Empire by identifying and condemning its common enemies. In like manner the Medieval Church came to define itself by opposition to other faiths and cultures. If the historically conscious person listens to the words used in Bush’s speeches as he exhorts people of the "free world" to support him in his campaign, one cannot escape the parallels with former leaders and their exhortations. Recall the Crusades as well as the genocidal exploitation of the so-called New World, the expulsion of the Jews from Catholic Spain and other parts of Europe, the enslavement and colonisation of Africa, India, Australia and Ethiopia [like the one launched in 1935 with the blessings of the pope]. These are all signposts. At the root of all of them lay a religious assumption and all of them involved a process in which a separate and adversarial Other was identified and labelled. During the first Crusades the Church tapped into a feeling of prejudice that labelled the Muslim [Saracen] as an infidel and at the onset of the colonial period, the Church and its Protestant spin-offs, was conditioned and was conditioning others to see unbaptised strangers as less than human.

Further, beginning with the Crusades of the 10th century, the biblical Jerusalem took on an elusive mystical aura in the Eurocentric thought process. In England, captured by William Blake and sung in the Gothic chapels of British public schools, Jerusalem became re-invented and recast as a way of praising and venerating not God but England. Thus Jerusalem would feed the fantasies of the Pilgrims in the Americas. When John Winthorp decreed in 1630, from the deck of a ship in what later became Boston harbour, "that wee shall be as a city upon a Hill, the eies of all people are upon us", he was envisioning [anticipating, if you will] the American self-image as a new Jerusalem. Even before them Columbus was envisioning his expedition to the west [the first of which may have actually been to locate a safe haven for expelled Jews, Moors and heretics] as a quest to found the new Jerusalem. By the early 20th century the United States took on the mantle of the "Crusader State". It is no coincidence that Dwight Eisenhower’s memoir of WWII was entitled "Crusade in Europe".

Now many apologists would counter that what this writer had outlined above was only Catholicism. "True" Xianity – the denominations that stemmed from Luther and the other Reformers – is about living one’s daily life strictly according to the teachings of the "Word". It is into this category that Bush falls. But this argument holds many fallacies. Xianity is by no means a "book" religion as say Islam; there is no such thing as true Xianity because no such period existed [remember the early Xian world was as divided as it is now] and most importantly, Luther and the other reformers were only trying to get rid of the vice and excesses of the Church, not found a new religion. In the process the bible – the same one compiled, edited, excised and forged by the Roman Church – replaced the pope as infallible. So now it was the bible, not the pope, that eventually became an idolatrous object. Biblical fundamentalism is a manifestation of this. Even more serious is the fact that the patriarchal hierarchical cultural outlook of secular Europe diffused to the Protestant faiths in much the same way as it diffused to the Roman Church before it.

What is also noteworthy at this stage is the immense psychological boost in the Western world, particularly in Xianity, of the German ancestry myth. Many scholars believe that US and British culture and ancestry are of Anglo-Saxon origin. In fact, many Europeans proudly claim that their way of life began in the forests of primordial Germany. These German forbears were said to be honourable, courageous and proud. The inhabitants of the German forests were and are painted as part of the pinnacle of European high-cultures. For a while this obsession with Germanic ancestry was so great that it was even tied into mythical biblical genealogy; it was widely believed that all European people were descended from Japheth. No less than Martin Luther claimed in the early 16th century a German ancestor for the Ashkenazim. This obsession was to intensify as a wave of nationalism swept Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Now others dispute such claims but the fact that almost everyone from the English to the French claimed the ancient Germanic people as their ancestors speaks volumes. That such a wide cross-section of Europeans believed that the ancient Germanic peoples were their ancestors meant that they actively or unconsciously sought to replicate the qualities of this ancient culture, including their aggressive temperament and conquering nature. Herein lies the psychological power behind the Eurocentric self-image: the Aryan myth.

This "noble" Aryan has been given a very revealing description by Edward Gibbon [1737-1794] in his famous work "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". All emphasis is mine:

The care of the house and family, the management of the land anc cattle, were delegated to the old and the infirm, to women and slaves. The lazy warrior, destitute of every art that might employ his leisure hours, consumed his days and nights in the animal gratifications of sleep and food. And yet ...they detest tranquility. [W]ar and danger were the only amusements adequate to [his] fierce temper. The sound that summoned the German to arms was grateful to his ear... In the dull intervals of peace, these barbarians were immoderately addicted to deep gaming and excessive drinking; both of which, by different means, the one by inflaming their passions, the other by extinguishing their reason, alike relieved them from the pain of thinking…..[N]or did they endeavour to procure by industry the materials of an advantageous commerce. To solicit by labour what might be ravished by arms was esteemed unworthy of the German spirit.

Remember, this is the model people that stirred up feelings of pride.

The point this writer is trying to make is that in the Eurocentric ethic that Bush exudes, there is no real element of god here in the spiritual sense, the identifying with nature sense. The "god" and "good" fervently worshipped in the Eurocentric interpretation is that of the warrior, the conqueror who is never fulfilled. The mysteries of nature exist only to be tapped into, harnessed and exploited. For the Euro an institution, be it feudalism, Xianity, "democracy", is only valid as long as it ensures their hold on world affairs remain.

Let us look at a few of Dubya’s choice words. The following was taken from the same article:

Speech to congress Sept 20 2001

"Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them."

West Point commencement June 1, 2001

"We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name."

Context: Bush's references to "good" and "evil," on the upswing since 9-11, imply the Biblical clash between Christ and Satan.

State of the Union Address, Jan 29 2003

"There's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people."

Context: "Power, wonder-working power" is a direct quote from one of the oldest evangelical gospel songs.

State of the Union, Jan 29 2003

"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity."

Context: This statement is not found in Scripture, but harks back to the writings of French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville. It raised a red flag for supporters of separation of church and state.

It is easy to see how such pontificating can take hold in the mind of the average religious type, who is blissfully ignorant of other faiths and interpretations of the divine as s/he is about his own. Most laypersons retain the same beliefs they were given as children complete with the dreaded coming of the Apocalypse and the struggle against the Antichrist. Now here we clearly have a tangible "Other" who is diametrically opposed to our freedom-loving way of life. The view that god is not neutral forces the simple religious mind to think that there are two clearly defined sides and one can only identify with the side that is "good". Since Xianity is the religion that preaches peace and love and brotherhood, it is a no-brainer that all right thinking people must come over on the side of the gentle Lamb of God. It is Xians and Xianity that freed the slave of Rome; it is Xians and Xianity that liberated women and gave them equality; it is Xians and Xianity that loosened the shackles of African enslavement, tamed the Americas and brought "culture" to far-flung places.

But the "civilised" way, the European way, is to bring laws, however forcibly, and the instruments of European [American] control to those whom Europeans have little or no respect. Western Xianity is above all else an institution designed to bring about order in the individual and the society under its influence. This by itself would not have been a bad thing were it not for the fact that Xianity has been shaped by the militaristic values of the northern Cradle. This "ordering" is only to ensure unchallenged conformity. The United States’ nationalism is the extreme example of this warrior culture of "Old" Europe. George W Bush is as much a creature of the ethnocentric, racist, secular, colonising empire builders who preceded him in history as he is of the religion into which he was born [and Born Again].

US nationalism, like the religions that have contributed heavily to its development, involves the idea that elements of the "American way" should be adopted universally. That the beginnings of this country was through the values of Protestant Xians is particularly informative; hounded out of Europe because of their interpretation of Western Xianity, they quickly set about creating a state that reflected the values, interests and principles of their religious outlook. In the process they became every bit as dictatorial and intolerant as the people who ran them out of Europe. Steeped in the culture of their former persecutors, the Pilgrims cared little about understanding the ways and cultures of the Native Americans [who many times saved them from starvation]. Instead, they set about bringing them into the "Xian fold" – so as better to subjugate them – and, failing that, sought to exterminate them. The Native American, in the eyes of the Pilgrims, were children, savages and needed the firm guidance of the superior Xian propagators of the "Word" to save them from damnation. This theme was to be replayed over and over wherever Europeans went. This feeling of superiority has been internalised to such an extent that to this day Euros see the world outside of their sphere of influence [when they see it at all], as places needing their parental care and guidance. Any resistance to such a notion is often met with shock and dismay, recall the colonial period and the attitude among the British as their subjects were clamouring for independence, "How could they be like this?" "Is this the gratitude we get for bringing them into civilisation?".

The Euro’s image of self makes it almost impossible to see the "Other" as anything other than a charge, a child, and a savage. The language has hardly changed in the last 500 years; back then explorers and conquerors went over the world to claim new lands for their patrons, meet new people and "make them know God" "compel them "to see the light of Christianity". Today the only difference is that the word "Christianity" has been replaced with "democracy" [which is little more than voting every five years or so]. In the Eurocentric scheme of things, the only sacred gospel is the Western gospel of "progress", i.e. the taking and exploiting of natural resources for the benefit of Europeans and Euro-Americans. Europe has always been poorly deficient in the resources needed for its survival, but only they have the intellectual skill, the expertise and the maturity to develop these resources. This is the message constantly stressed whenever one opens a history book, or analyses the economic and political decisions made by Europeans and the US in relation to non-Europeans.

Charles Kingsley, writing in the 19th century called the British "Teutons" who had a universal mission: "The welfare of the Teuton race is the welfare of the world". Lord MacCaulay boasted that the history of England "is emphatically the history of progress". The British "have become the greatest and most highly civilised people the world ever saw". Numerous European nationalists throughout the 19th century reiterated this. Former US President Woodrow Wilson planned to make the world safe for "democracy", as did Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan after him. From Hume to Kipling to Theodore Roosevelt to our very own "Dubya", the mandate Euros arrogated unto themselves to direct the affairs of the world around them has not changed. And why? Because God gave Adam dominion over the Garden of Eden! In the Eurocentric ethic, the world is the Garden.

We must understand that this Eurocentric ethic does not merely commit atrocities or flout laws and treaties and then rationalise them as "self defence" or with nationalistic expressions; this ethic is based on an assumption that one is obligated to act this way – Bush and Blair [and Chirac, if France did not have oil companies dealing with Iraq at present] – are compelled to make up the mind of Hussein for him, it is the logical extension of the Western Christian mission to go forth into the world and spread the gospel. The hallmark of the Eurocentric outlook, fed by the capitalist ethic, is the rights of contract and property. The most successful capitalist can do anything to rob and exploit whatever meagre resources occupies their interests as long as what he does is "legal".

This is why, in this writer’s opinion, many of the anti-war protests are nothing but hypocritical twaddle. They are only protesting the method by which Bush wants to bring about "regime change" to the various "axes of evil". They would have preferred the more acceptable way of propaganda, clamours for human rights and gender equality [but only in the Eurocentric interpretation of these things] cultural imperialism and so on. But it was they who helped set the stage for Bush’s campaign of regime change.

That some of them actually believe that they are doing good and that their missions of mercy in the so-called Third World are just that, makes them just as dangerous as the sincerely religious type for they have believed their own self-delusion. Indeed, the sincere, unknowing missionary is perhaps the most dangerous of them all. Ignorant about the true beginnings of Xianity and the extent to which it has been manipulated to reflect the expansionist outlook of nascent Europe they are, what Lenin once dubbed "useful fools". Many of them now recoil in horror at the rhetoric from the Bush camp not realising that their Xian "humanitarianism" was itself skilfully manipulated and has set the stage for what is about to take place.

All this is well fed by the average US citizen’s ignorance of the world around them; by the culture of the United States, reflected in their action movies, of an unending string of hero figures defending the "American way" against the unending string of negative, adversarial Others, who opposes the "American way of life". The US, like the Xian Church of the Holy Roman Empire has come to define itself in opposition to those that do not share its views. "Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them" "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists".

The Romans had a saying "If you want peace, prepare for war". Looks like someone is.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xBush, Religion and Eurocentric Geo-Politics``x1048015143,95163,world``x``x ``xFrom: Ayinde and Trinicenter Staff

As the United States of America embarks on another unjust invasion, let us all remember that civilians will loose their lives in the name of greed. It is the underlying racism in most people that allows them to tolerate these wars. It is always about killing people whom they believe are less human than them.

This war is about demonstrating 'White Power', which started a long time ago with its scourge on indigenous Indians and Africans. Today many know that 'White Power' is based on greed fueled by the belief that White Males are superior to all other people. These ideas were ingrained in both whites and non-whites alike through reinforcing fear together with Judeo-Christian symbolisms. Although many Whites are rejecting this today as they realize it never really benefited them, like most other people, they are still locked into the capitalist system that is governed by these false values. This drive is usually about a few already materially wealthy white males and their desire for more money and 'power'/influence. These excesses can only be sustained through lies and brute force.

No one is safe from these lying, brutal colonial misleaders.

It is sobering to know that many around the world do not support this invasion not because they support Saddam but because they know that the U.S.' motives are disingenuous. They are now witnessing what many Africans have been speaking about for generations.

Lies are the beginning of all wars and because of Bush's 'war and terror' more people today are aware of the manipulations of the U.S. government and the weakness of governments in their own countries. Many are also aware of the dangers of mass media concentrated in the hands of a few who are tied to the politics of the dominant.

Many people will have to take responsibility for this dangerous situation for placing weak, immoral people in leadership roles. They will have to re-evaluate the criterion used for selecting representatives. This lack of responsible leadership allows some 'mis-leaders' to align themselves with Bush and his war party although the majority of people in their countries do not support this war. This certainly is not what democracy is supposed to be about. As a matter of fact, we never had government by the people and for the people during Western 'development'. There is no real democracy anywhere.

The build-up to this war should remind all about the fragility of laws developed during conquest and colonial domination. They were developed to suppress the masses while protecting the affluent (or should I say effluent). The laws that they imposed on the majority were not for they themselves to abide by.

When they loose while playing their own game they rush to change the game and the rules. Conquest and domination are all they understand. This is the reason so much taxed resources go towards producing weapons. Their ever-consuming greed cannot be sustained through legitimate means. Lies and Wars sustain the economic imbalances.

The attempted overthrow of the democratically elected president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez, clearly demonstrated this again.

People have to become conscious of their spending power and continually find ways to stop racist, corrupt misleaders from getting access to more money. These misleaders would like us to believe that Slavery is freedom, their wars bring peace, and democracy exists.

They carry on this charade through their control of the mainstream media.

More people are becoming aware of the need for ordinary people to develop and control media outlets that allows them to put their own agendas on the table. It is important that ordinary people control the mediums for their expressions and continually work to ensure that it has global reaches. It is through this exercise views that are usually neglected get considered. It is through developing these alternative avenues we may one day have democracy.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWe totally oppose this war``x1048046400,88632,world``x``x ``xAn Interview With Daniel Ellsberg
tompaine.com

Daniel Ellsberg is best-known as the former marine who gave the "Pentagon Papers" -- or secret Vietnam War plans and assessment of that conflict -- to The New York Times in the 1960s, precipitating popular opposition to that war. He has since been an outspoken anti-war opponent and was interviewed by TomPaine.com's Steven Rosenfeld about the current invasion of Iraq.

TomPaine.com: People who have opposed this preemptive war for diplomatic, political and moral reasons now find themselves watching as the invasion begins. And many people, moderates in the Democratic Party and others who are running for president, are saying it's time to stand with the president and stand with the troops. What do you say to that?

Daniel Ellsberg: Well, I'm encouraged by the fact that there is enormous opposition, both abroad and in this country. In fact, I'm proud of the Americans who have been opposing this war as actively as they have in the last couple of months, which includes a small minority of the people in Congress.

So, I would say, that the task before us -- and there clearly are a lot of Americans who are ready to do this -- the task is for us to change this imperial policy with its dangers and its wrongness.

TP.c: Where can legitimate criticisms begin, where political traction can be made?

Ellsberg: I don't think legitimate criticism ever ends. Of course, in a way, that's almost a truism. If it's legitimate, it should be expressed. They're not concealing the fact that we are going to war this time, but the reasons for going to war are totally deceitful now. And I don't think there should be any moratorium on raising those questions and challenging the government opinion on that.

For example, there's every reason to believe that an effect of this war, even if it were as successful as the administration hopes, will be an increase in the strength of Al Qaeda and their freedom from effective police and intelligence collaboration against them worldwide. In other words, there will be a price in innocent American lives as well as in innocent Iraqi lives. Those will be very closely related. It will be terror for terror. And that point is simply being ignored, virtually, by the administration and the media has not focused on it nearly to the extent they should have.

TP.c: What kind of anti-war criticism or focus do you think would be most effective right now?

Ellsberg: Well I think that point, to begin with: This is a war that increases our danger at home. But there are, by the way, still horrors that could prevented by sufficient public awareness and protest, even if the war itself can't be stopped.

Very specifically, I think the question should be raised now -- right now and very forcefully -- that we should not use nuclear weapons under any circumstances whatever. And very specifically, if weapons of mass destruction in the form of biological or chemical weapons are used against our troops -- which would be a war crime by Iraq -- that war crime should not be answered by a massive crime against humanity in the form of nuclear retaliation.

The administration has specifically threatened their willingness to initiate the use of nuclear weapons in a number of circumstances, including the use of gas or chemical weapons. I hope that Bush is wrong in saying they have effective gas or biological weapons. But if he isn't, I think there should be a U.N. resolution and congressional resolution that we would not use nuclear weapons.

So, I think there is a point where public protest should not wait until, as Bush keeps putting it, until the evidence of our intent is a mushroom cloud.

TP.c: Suppose the invasion is relatively short and George Bush emerges as a victorious American war president. Do you have concerns or fears that this will license or sanction this new doctrine of preemption?

Ellsberg: Whether it's "successful" or not, the longer-term thing that we can focus on today is the fact that we Americans, including our military, are now in the position of witnessing our government -- this country that I love -- carrying out a massive crime against the peace. That we are in the process of a clearly blatantly illegal war, and that's true for the first time in my lifetime and one could even say in this century, I think.

[Former Presidents Abraham] Lincoln and U.S. Grant denounced the Mexican War as an aggressive war, an illegal war, which it undoubtedly was. But you have to go back for that. In this century, we haven't seen any democracy, let alone our own, start a war so clearly illegal and aggressive as this.

TP.c: What do you mean by an illegal war for the first time in a century?

Ellsberg: We are the aggressors in this. That's terrible. Now Bush is proposing that the law be changed. He can't change it just by violating it, as he's doing. But he is proposing that the old law against initiating war be modified to allow this country, at least, and perhaps other countries, unilaterally, to decide for themselves when to initiate war without authorization from the United Nations and without being under attack.

I think we have to confront that challenge by Bush and oppose it and expose it. That would make the world a much more dangerous place. It would increase our dangers, as many, many Americans see, including military men, like Gen. Schwartzkopf, or Maj. Gen. Zinni, or Gen. Wesley Clark. They are not only worried about the uncertainties of this, but they're not applauding the idea of not becoming the policeman of the world, but self-appointed vigilantes of the world. That's a very dangerous change.

Meanwhile, the law not having changed, we are violating it. And when we violate the U.N. Charter, when the president violates the U.N. Charter, he's violating a law -- international law, a treaty that we've ratified, which ranks with the highest law of the land, along with the Constitution -- a ratified treaty, above statute law. And he's directly violating his oath of office, which is to uphold the law and the Constitution.

I think it's not going to happen, but he certainly earned impeachment as a result of this. But, more seriously, in a way, he is clearly indictable -- and all of his subordinates who are cooperating with him, including, whatever his private opinions, Secretary of State Powell, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. They have engaged and they are in a conspiracy to wage aggressive war for which people were convicted at [the Nazi war crime tribunals at] Nuremberg. I could say people were hanged at Nuremberg.

But my concern is not to see anybody hanged or even tried. My concern is to get off, get out of this situation, and for them, it's a little too late now. It's not that they are going to be tried. But I now see in a new perspective why this administration backed off ratifying the International Criminal Court [treaty]. I have little doubt now that when they did that, which was odd at the time, they had this invasion of Iraq in mind - knowing, by the way, that they might well not have U.N. authorization for it.

It's not that they feared being tried. That's inconceivable, as a practical matter. But they didn't want to be indicted. They didn't want people to point out in the world that they should be tried. And the fact is American troops now have been put in a tragic dilemma, whether to obey orders, which they undoubtedly will do, at whatever cost. Or, to refuse to obey a blatantly illegal order, which is what they are receiving right now.

The order to participate in this war is, I think to anybody who has looked at the context critically, must be extremely excruciating. They must know that in the absence of U.N. authorization and the refusal of that by most nations in the world, that the orders they are getting to participate in this war are blatantly illegal.

Many of them don't know that, undoubtedly. But the ones who do are confronted with a challenge that American troops -- and I identify with those as a former marine officer. They have never had to face that before.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAmerica's Illegal War``x1048132800,48145,world``x``x ``xby Ben Roberts

Any chance George Bush gets he describes himself, Tony Blair, and the Spanish leader as 'A Coalition of the Willing.' I beg to differ. A more appropriate designation is 'A Coalition of the Villains.' Less than forty-eight hours ago the President of the United States told his citizens, and the world, that United States forces would attack Iraq 'at a time of its choosing.' He went on to demand that the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, and his sons, leave that country in forty-eight hours. Bush statements, which boil down to a declaration of war, has effectively ushered in a new era in how nations deal with each other. It is called preemptive strike doctrine, and is based on the premise that if you suspect someone might attack you, you can attack them first. This is nothing short of absolute madness.

Such a scenario is the equivalent of a police officer accosting a citizen, suspecting that the individual is a real or imagined threat who might attack and, resorting to deadly force, kills the individual. The brutal death of Amadu Diallo in New York by police officers as he was harmlessly producing his drivers license is a sad real life example of such a situation. On the other side, an individual accosted by the police might fear the use of deadly force and attack the officer in an effort of self preservation. A sure fire prescription for chaos, lawlessness, and villainous behavior. Now we have an update to this scenario. The United States has attacked Iraq. In other words, we now have the first scenario, with the police officer attacking the citizen. Simply put, the United States and Britain have become the villains and rogues. They are violating the wishes of their respective communities, of the world community, and of the world body duly authorized to maintain law and order, and ensure peace and security.

One might take exception to the use of the term 'villains,' and are entitled to do so. But let us consider the behavior of someone who is regarded as a villain. They lie, cheat, steal, deceive and kill. Surely Blair and Bush, respectable leaders in their blue suits, are far removed from such a despicable designation. Think so? Think again. British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, blatantly deceived and lied to us in an effort to implement his war crusade against Iraq when he plagiarized a student paper, and used it almost word for word, telling us it was an up to date top secret intelligence document of Iraqi military capability. This amounts to stealing of intellectual property and deliberately deceiving the public. The perpetrator of such illegal behavior usually ends up in front of a judge, might be required to do jail time, and provide restitution to the injured party.

Now onto George Bush. Early on in his jihad against Iraq, Bush at the United Nations showed 'pictures' of Iraqi sites of weapons of mass destruction. Hans Blix, top UN investigator, countered immediately that the sites were no such thing, but rather old sites that he and his team had investigated and shut down. Do I need to explain to anyone that he is calling Bush a liar? Bush said that Iraq had been attempting to produce, and had in its possession nuclear weapons. ElBaradei, the premier investigator for the international nuclear regulatory body, the IAEA, declared that Iraq possessed no nuclear weapons, and their acquisition of aluminum tubes was not in keeping with nuclear weapons production. Is he not calling Bush a liar? Even more recently ElBaradei angrily assailed the Bush Administration, accusing them of presenting his agency with fake documents that supposedly detailed Iraqi purchases of nuclear material from Niger. If this is not lying and deception then I don't know what is. We know how the Bush Administration intercepted the Iraqi inventory document submitted to the UN, and removed 8,000 pages before anyone else got to see it. This document was the property of the UN. Is this not stealing and deception, and do we not warn our children against such undesirable and despicable behavior?

Then last night, American F-117A Stealth bombers and cruise missiles hit Iraq, attempting to kill Saddam Hussein and his top leadership. We are told that in the process there has been injuries and at least one fatality. This is attempted murder, and in the case of the fatality, murder. George Bush signed off on this action to kill Iraqis. But that is not strange. Recently, he signed off on an action that had a drone over Yemen unleash a missile that took the life of an American in that country who was guilty of no crime. No court. No innocent until proven guilty. Just the action of one man with a propensity to lie and deceive, and who has decided that he is judge and jury, with the power over life and death.

A small observation is in order here. In this so called 'Coalition of the Willing,' Ukraine has a small contingent of troops along with American and British forces at the Kuwait Iraqi border. They are supposedly primarily involved in chemical warfare. However, just three months ago The Washington Post carried an article in its Friday, December 20, 2002 issue detailing that the US was imposing sanctions on that nation for money laundering that facilitated terrorism. This week media reports revealed that they had also sold a radar system to Iraq that was capable of detecting stealth technology. In other words, the Stealth bomber. Now they are in the front lines assisting America after being paid by Iraq. How can this be? Not long ago they were despicable persona non grata slated for US sanctions. Now they are part of a supposed rock hard 'Coalition of the Willing.' My question in this instance is who bribed, threatened and blackmailed who? 'Coalition of the Willing?' What a joke. This is a villainous lot who would make Ali Baba and his band of cutthroat thieves look like a harmless Boy Scout team.


Ben Roberts is a newsletter editor, freelance writer and published author. His book, Jackals of Samarra, was published in January 2001.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xA Coalition of the Villains``x1048219200,12492,world``x``x ``xBy Bukka Rennie
March 22, 2003

War on TV! What war? The US/ British invasion of Iraq is not a war. War presupposes an equal element of danger to both sides. This surely is not the case. When the weaponry available to either side is compared it would seem that America and Iraq are centuries apart. When one considers the smart-bombs and guided missiles in the armoury of the US, Saddam might as well have had "bows and arrows".

If this so-called war continues it will be tantamount to a massacre. As said before in this space, the US will virtually be "swatting flies". And the whole world will be there sitting before TV sets looking at this "war", as if it were some movie, with a surrealist plot, only in this case real blood will flow and men, women and children will be decimated.

There comes a sickness to the stomach watching all these news outfits and anchor newscasters producing these "action slots", interviewing generals and colonel-this and colonel-that talking about "strategy". What strategy, when you have the advantage that allows you to simply march and roll straight in and kill everybody?

It would be good comedy, mind you, if human beings were not at the receiving end, watching all these various analysts and experts, dressed up in their lounge suits and ties, speculating about this and that, trying their best to appear knowledgeable and intelligent answering rather idiotic, nonsensical, repetitious questions.

And these infernal reporters out there wanting most of all to impress on viewers the sense of impending danger to wit they have subjected themselves to bring the news, in fact their heroics, all the while also answering stupid questions such as: "So what do you see now", put to them by anchors.

If these reporters happen to die there they will be given posthumous awards, much like the Hollywood scenario. The blurring of perspective is what makes it so painful. And the fact that this production will cost US$70 billion while in much of the world people are starving.

But how is all this justified? The US and Britain have fabricated all kinds of evidence to prove that Iraq possesses "weapons of mass destruction", particularly of a chemical and biological nature and therefore given Saddam's propensity for evil, they conclude that Iraq is a serious threat to the US and the world.

Ashton Brereton's commentary, "Lies, damn lies, stats and fabrications", in the Guardian of March 20, is recommended reading in this context. In that article he shows clearly how the fabrication of evidence against Iraq was manufactured by Bush, Blair, Colin Powell et al even to the point of "forged documents" that the FBI has been asked to investigate.

Electronic mapping has provided these 21st century warmongers with the capacity to see every move in Iraq and yet no hard, definite evidence has been presented. What threat can Iraq be when the US can see every move and anticipate Saddam's intentions. That is why 75 per cent of the world's population cannot accept this "war" as justified.

What was most telling to me, however, was the appearance again of none other that Zibignew Brezinski. How I remember this "hawk"! Zibig, a long standing member of the think-tanks - the Trilateral Commission and the Brookings Institute - that cut across Republican and Democratic Party lines, have for decades been helping to chart US foreign policy, US view of the world and its exaggerated sense of imperialist empire. Zibig was on the TV saying to the world that America has never won a war; "we lost in Korea, we lost in Vietnam", he said and then went on to insinuate that it is time that America wins a war.

In other words go and kick somebody's arse, but win, in order to boost the American psyche. He did not attach much significance to their "victory" in Grenada.

Those people who pose that America has been the greatest contributor to humanitarian causes and to world development and wish us to see the invasion of Iraq as an extension of America's philanthropy need to understand that there is no free aid, that every dollar of aid that comes in to the peripheral undeveloped areas of the world facilitates the expropriation of approximately $10 back to the epicentres, and such people should listen carefully to the likes of Zibignew Brezinski who are the policy formulators behind the throne of power.

The balance of power in the world and the control of the key resources of the world are what these empire hawks are about, everything else is secondary or a means to that end. And they amass superior weapons and fight wars because that is the nature of empire building, that is the objective and subjective nature of all industrial-military complexes.

What does a country do with $800 billion worth of weaponry? And if its economy is fired by such production, how does it recharge its economic batteries? Replacement is equivalent to recharge in this context. War is the mechanism.

It is the lack of morality displayed by the Big Powers that forces insecure countries to want to arm themselves. One cannot expect equal treatment across the board. Saddam was alright and his ambitions were facilitated when he was attacking Iran. The whole western world turned a blind eye then to his development of chemical and biological weapons. In the same way every atrocity committed by Israel in its zeal for expansion from 1948 onwards was overlooked until Palestine as a country was no more.

Every attempt by the UN to sanction Israel over the years has been vetoed by the US. And we can go on and on showing examples of this logic that "my kith and kin can do anything, but others dare not" and "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".

There are only two positives that can be derived from this war :

1. The rise of the EU with its federal co-ordination of sovereign States as an opposing counter-power to the US which in fact will trigger the final burial of any further concept of super power and the eventual strengthening of the UN structure.

2. It may serve to pull the entire Arab region kicking and screaming into the modern world, since all of them are as thuggish as Saddam's regime, given their hybrid mix of monarchal-theocracy - royal families and religious fundamentalism - and give rise to real Parliamentary democracy as limited as this may be.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xResponse to war``x1048360130,57400,world``x``x ``xby Firas Al-Atraqchi, YellowTimes.org

Remember all those "intelligence sources" who promised that Iraqis would be cheering as the U.S. and U.K. armies rolled into Basra or Nasiriyah or any major town in southern Iraq? Apparently, in day 7 of the invasion of Iraq, these intelligence sources and their data are proving to be fallible.

Unfortunately, the North American public is not told who the intelligence sources are. No, they aren't CIA, NSA, or the FBI. They aren't MI-5 or the SAS. They aren't even spies working in Iraq.

They are members of the Iraqi National Congress(INC), an Iraqi opposition group made up of millionaires and businessmen, former Ba'athist henchmen, and generals who aided Saddam in his formative years but felt threatened by him and defected. Most of the INC's ruling hierarchy is comprised of people who have not set foot in Iraq in more than 30 years. Some have never set foot in Iraq. And yet they claim to be experts.

Many members of the INC have personal vendettas against Saddam himself; former aides or accomplices who would believe they should be in his place. The INC has long believed that they can never wrestle control from Saddam (because no one in Iraq much cares for them and considers them charlatans) and must rely on outside help - the U.S. Consequently, the INC launched a massive public relations gambit to convince the U.S. that it should intervene in Iraq.

(Earlier in March, the CIA admitted that an invaluable document linking Niger with Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium had been forged - a claim initially made by IAEA head Mohammed Al Baradei. The CIA said that the document had been forged by a third party. Guess who? No, not Israel. The INC.)

They met with members of the neo-conservative lobby (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, etc) and gave them exactly the type of information everyone was waiting to hear. "Enter Iraq with a formidable army, and the people will greet you with open arms and cheers."

No one stopped to question whether the INC was really telling the truth or whether 13 years of sanctions, which have crippled Iraqi society, may have played a role in slightly altering this view.

So, with a valiant cheer letting loose the bastard dogs of war, the U.S. administration took the INC advice, sold the U.S. public on the idea and ignored the advice of most of the senior military brass warning that an invasion would not be a cake-walk.

Iraq scoffed at the notion of Iraqis embracing the invading armies and promised hell instead.

That may yet prove true.

In the first few hours of the war, Iraqis in Baghdad hinted to this writer that some would welcome U.S. forces. However, the night of "shock and awe" changed all that. Iraqi sources inside Iraq are now saying the bombing campaigns shocked the Iraqis to the spectre of annihilation as poorly equipped hospitals began to quickly fill up with civilian casualties and fatalities.

Iraqi doctors were awed by the lack of medicine and proper facilities to treat the wounded as U.N. sanctions have crippled the Iraqi health care system.

U.S. media, largely CNN, dedicated nearly 0.5 percent of their airtime to the civilian toll in Iraq. Instead, they showed us interviews with "Iraqis" living in the U.S. who were cheering the war. I recently asked a prominent Iraqi exile what he thought of the statements made by these Iraqis. He advised me to look at how long they have been outside Iraq and reminded me that bombs weren't falling on them.

Furthermore, what do you expect an Iraqi in the U.S. to say after hearing that the FBI was inviting some 11,000 U.S. based Iraqis to 'voluntary' interviews (MSNBC reports that the FBI has already interviewed 5,000 Iraqis in the U.S.) and that some Iraqis have been held for visa violations? As an Iraqi living in the U.S., a country about to invade your former country and sustain casualties, would you dare to say you oppose the war? Would you dare to say what you really felt in the post-9/11 frame of mind towards Muslims and Arabs?

No. You will tell them exactly what you know they want to hear, just like the INC, because you would fear for your future status in the U.S.

Another bit of misinformation that circulated is that once coalition forces 'liberate' southern Iraq, they would find the local populace taking up arms and fighting Saddam's loyalist forces. This couldn't be further from the truth. After their defeat in Kuwait in 1991, Saddam's forces launched a bloody campaign against what they termed "Iraqi traitors and insurgents" in the south of Iraq. Any Iraqi rebel forces that survived that onslaught either fled to Saudi Arabia and ultimately for other destinations, or to Iran. In Iran, most were given sanctuary and some joined armed Iraqi forces there. One such force is the Badr Brigade, which is currently in the north of Iraq and vowing to fight Saddam loyalists in their own private war.

Other survivors of the 1991 backlash flooded the U.K. and the U.S. where they have been ever since. So who remains to 'rise up'?

The people of Basra, say the INC.

Let me get this straight: the same people of Basra that were denied clean water facilities because the U.S. barred Iraq from importing vital water filtration systems for the past 13 years? The same Basra where the effects of depleted uranium used by coalition forces in the last Gulf war have been documented by dozens of investigative medical organizations as causing cancer, disease, and other deformities? The same Basra where typhoid and cholera have become rampant because of the U.S.-supported U.N. sanctions? The same Basra where U.S. and U.K. fighter jets have struck in the past 12 years of the no-fly zone and inflicted heavy civilian casualties?

Or is it the Basra where civilian casualties number in the hundreds in this current war? The same Basra where an Iraqi father carried the limp body of his daughter, her right foot, barely identifiable, shattered and barely attached by a piece of dangling flesh (picture published in Globe and Mail - March 24, 2003)? That Basra?

Or is it the Basra where the local Iraqis have been without water and electricity for the past three days and are facing a humanitarian crisis?

Iraqis want a regime change? Yes, possibly, but the better question is, do they want it imposed from the outside with set rules and regulations dictated terms? Then the picture gets a bit hazy.

Tell the Iraqis that it is the U.S., the country they have been led to believe is the cause of all their travesty and suffering, that is coming to liberate them, and the picture becomes even more blurry.

The millionaires of the INC didn't care to provide the coalition with the real picture of events and conditions in Iraq. They wanted a war at all costs.

Today, the U.K. military forces near Basra have reported that the city is witnessing a civil uprising. Within hours, an Al Jazeera reporter reporting from the heart of Basra refuted these claims. So did Iraqi TV.

At press time, Iraqi TV and all telecommunications facilities in Baghdad were targeted and claimed to have been knocked off the air. Ninety minutes later, Iraqi TV was back on the air and showed footage of a downed Predator drone in Basra.


Firas Al-Atraqchi, B.Sc (Physics), M.A. (Journalism and Communications), is a Canadian journalist with eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhat You Aren't Being Told About Iraq``x1048756577,55426,world``x``x ``xby Tim Wise

Iraqis must think the American definition of liberation a strange one.

First, we destroy all of the key government buildings that we can find in a search for Saddam Hussein.

Then we relentlessly attack the Iraqi military, which of course counts among its troops, members of tens of thousands of Iraqi families.

Then we launch a cruise missile that destroys an urban market in Baghdad, claiming that it was intended to hit a battery of rocket launchers placed in the area by the Hussein regime.

In all, coalition forces have most likely killed a few hundred civilians, and injured hundreds more.

And all of this, after twelve years of painful sanctions that have reduced the nation's life expectancy dramatically, helped boost malnutrition, and contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens. Although some would seek to blame those conditions on Saddam himself, the fact remains that before sanctions were imposed, Iraq was a vibrant nation economically, and the citizens of the country--though certainly subject to repression of a vicious nature--were not by and large starving, or unable to attain medical care. Saddam didn't change after 1991; what changed were the external forces affecting the well-being of the Iraqi people.

Yet Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld and the bunch expect not only Americans, but more importantly the Arab world (and Iraqis themselves) to accept the assurances of our benign intent; to believe that this has nothing to do with oil (as if we would wage war to oust a dictator in a nation whose main economic export were pomegranates); to believe that we care only for the freedom of Iraq, despite having long financed, armed and stood by the very same dictator we now hope to destroy.

They expect the Iraqi people to welcome U.S. and British troops as liberators, and cheer the war effort, despite the fact that it was the U.S. and Great Britain who sold this "monster" the very materials that we now insist he must no longer possess, and stood by while he gassed Kurds and Iranians, even lying about the latter to make it seem as if the Iranians had been the ones doing the gassing.

Only a profound disrespect for the intelligence of the Iraqi people and the Arab and Muslim worlds could possibly lead one to believe such a scenario is likely. To believe that they can forgive and forget the history of which they are acutely aware. A history that includes U.S. support for the cruel Baath party, dating back even to before the ascent of Hussein to power; a support we offered because they were so efficient at slaughtering the progressive and democratic forces in that nation--forces that were also nominally socialist and thus a danger to be crushed.

Only a belief that the rest of the world sees us the way we see ourselves--a view so out of touch with reality that it simply boggles the mind--could lead one to believe that Iraqis will welcome U.S. domination of the Gulf region, or the U.S. administering a provisional government there until truly free elections can be held. They can, after all, look at what we have done in Afghanistan, which is destroy a tyrannical regime, devastate a nation with bombs, install a leader who was not the choice of the people, and then abandon the country as usual, so that areas outside of the capitol are now being run by fanatical warlords, rapists, murderers and Taliban-throw backs. Quite the liberation that, they must be thinking.

Oh sure, most Iraqis will welcome the demise of Saddam Hussein. But there is a difference between welcoming regime change and cheering the forces that imposed that change by force. Even now, according to a report in USA Today, Iraqis in neighboring Arab states are returning home to fight Americans. Though they insist they despise Hussein, they are also clear about the desire to fight the invaders and fight for their country, which they see as being destroyed, not saved. A few days ago, news reports noted that Iraqis in Basra were smiling and cheering as American troops came marching in, but that as soon as the troops got out of sight, they would just as quickly turn to the reporters on the scene and curse the Americans, and praise Saddam.

Even worse, Middle East experts are almost uniformly expressing the opinion that this war is proving to be the best recruiting tool al-Qaeda has had in years, meaning that even if the Iraqi people viewed the bombing as a form of liberation--albeit a loud, destructive and painful one--to the extent this view is rejected by most of the Arab and Muslim world, our actions may yet provoke one, two, many 9/11's.

It's all really very simple. People generally don't like to see their homelands invaded or bombed. We certainly wouldn't, after all. As much as Americans badmouth our government and its politicians, there is a tendency to put aside that anger and criticism when faced with war. In the U.S. this is happening even though we are not the ones being attacked. Imagine then what facing bombings would tend to do for American public opinion. Surely it would tend to rally most of us behind the leaders of the country, even those not particularly popular with many folks. So too in Iraq or anywhere else on Earth.

But the arrogance of the powerful makes it impossible to see all that. It is the same arrogance that prompted whites to view the genocide of Indian peoples as progress, and a civilizing mission (for those we didn't kill), and a mission for which the savages should have been grateful.

The same arrogance that allowed the belief that we were doing Africans a favor by enslaving them, and "bringing them to Christ."

The same arrogance that inspired the notion of "destroying the village in order to save it," in Vietnam.

The same arrogance, and fundamentally the same racist and supremacist mindset that forever and always inspires the masters of the universe to believe their own hype and expect everyone else to be so gullible, unintelligent and child-like as to accept it too.

The same arrogance that allows us to believe that we and we alone have the right to dictate who will and will not have weapons of mass destruction; who will and will not have to follow United Nations resolutions; who will and will not be able to launch "preventative war."

The same arrogance that allows Donald Rumsfeld to shriek hysterically at the violations of the Geneva Conventions by the Iraqis for merely showing American POW's on film and thereby "humiliating them," but which allows him and others to think nothing of the far more serious violations of the same Geneva Conventions evidenced by intentional U.S. bombing of Iraqi water and power stations during the first Gulf War: a certifiable war crime according to Article 54 of those Conventions.

The same arrogance that ultimately explains the widespread hatred of the U.S. throughout much of the Arab and Muslim world.

The same arrogance that puts not only Iraqi lives at risk, but ultimately our own.

Liberation indeed.

Tim Wise is a writer, anti-racism activist and father.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xOf Lies, Liberation and American Self-Delusion``x1048811795,13136,world``x``x ``xThe Black Commentator, 2003-04-06

"They are not really capitalists in the 'normal' sense, at all. They 'invest' in elections to seize control of state mechanisms to facilitate domestic crimes with impunity and terrorize the world militarily."

"The initial data available so far reveals the dirtiness of U.S.-British warmongers, the fakeness of their claims about a clean war, as well as their indifference to the lives of innocent, unarmed Iraqi civilians." The indictment comes, not from Baghdad or Kuala Lumpur, but from the Foreign Minister of Switzerland. Micheline Calmy Rey, of the ruling Socialist Democratic Party, explained that her country has an obligation to document war crimes as "a founder and a sponsor of the Geneva Convention."

The entire globe is recoiling from the United States, a planetary phenomenon that will characterize the historical period we have now entered - if humanity survives it. In declaring war against international order, the Pirates at the helm of the Hyper-Power have profoundly frightened every economic and social sector of every nation on the globe. In self-defense, the world will be forced to reorganize itself, to create new mechanisms of trade and security in place of the institutions that the Bush men are deliberately savaging. The Americans will be left out of these arrangements.

The realization dawns on the assaulted consciousness of humanity that the would-be rulers and their society are worse than monstrously destructive - they are delusional, a danger to civilized endeavor, untrustworthy in any agreement, contemptuous of law and reason. A nation and people to be avoided, circumvented, conspired against for safety and survival's sake.

These are the first days of the inevitable and soon to become dramatic decline of the United States. In what will be viewed as a supreme irony of history, the dream of a glorious and bloody leap to global omnipotence will collapse in incompetence and self-mutilation - not this year or the next, and not in time to save millions from death, disease, impoverishment and national humiliation. But it will happen, because the nations and peoples of the world will see no choice available to themselves but to make it happen.

It need not have been so. With the role of protector against an extinct Soviet Union long redundant, the United States' favored position in the world is based on the size of its economy and the unique role of the dollar as the sole denominator of oil prices - an artificial support. Over time, the growing strength of the European euro currency would have provided alternatives to banks and national treasuries that sought to diversify their holdings. The dollar's value would have shrunken, gradually, but without great drama. America's share of fossil fuel consumption could have been brought under control in collaboration with developed and developing nations, to guard against undue harm to the economies of all while alternative energy sources were brought on line - to the profit of innovative capital in the most developed nations such as the United States.

But this was not to be. The Pirate class personified by Bush, Dick Cheney and Richard Perle has no stake in the domestic economy of the United States or the stabilizing institutions of the world. They war against order, to transform the American military machine into a pirate armada to amass wealth through plunder. They are not really cafffæy Q>м5¼`àE@ɱ@}*¾Ñ^É]@â ª-P ÄÁüÍŠ6P ¬¿¹y capitalists in the "normal" sense, at all. They "invest" in elections to seize control of state mechanisms to facilitate domestic crimes with impunity and terrorize the world militarily. And they award themselves contracts for that, too.

The Pirates operate within and are the products of a society made delusional through centuries of racist plunder. The most afflicted products of this society cannot recognize facts at variance with thehey are effectively blind to the humanity of others. Objectively incompetent at analysis of non-whites and only imagining the characteristics of foreign whites, they launch wars against "enemies" whom they cannot properly assess, with a cavalier cruelty that the civilized world reserves for animals. They have no sense of guilt because in their worldview they are the embodiment of good. Their wealth and power appear to confirm their self-assessment.

When frustrated by actual facts and peoples they escalate with fury and bewilderment, like an armed sleepwalker awakening in a crowd. They do great damage and feel harmed by their victims. But they cannot win in any protracted struggle, because they truly do not understand their surroundings or the people they have made antagonists - or even the Swiss, who are said to love order and prosperity most of all.

A wired world is taking note of every pathological tick in the twisted American face. Even now, a myriad of plans are evolving to sidestep the dangerous, delusional United States as mankind goes about its collective business. A kind of international redlining will increasingly make itself felt, but not seen. The Bush men believe they are willing into existence a New American Century, while in reality they are creating an America-phobic planet in which the U.S. has earned an invisible but powerfully consequential non-favored nation status. Having invented the concept of globalism, the United States will be consigned to pariah status - and shrink, until it learns to live by human norms and scales.

The Black Commentator``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRacist War & Pirate Plunder``x1049741849,71830,world``x``x ``xby Charley Reese, reese.king-online.com

Now that our president has embedded us in the Middle East for an indefinite future, you might as well start trying to educate yourself about the area and its conflicts. As one can say about so many problems in this world, it all began with the British Empire.

When you look at a map of the Middle East, you are looking at a map drawn by two Europeans by the names of Sykes and Picot. This map represents the betrayal of the Arabs and the Kurds. Before this map was drawn, the area had been part of the Ottoman Empire. (That's Turkey, for those of you who hate history and geography.)

The British, with their usual perfidy, had promised everything to everybody. Help us overthrow the Turks, they said to the Arabs, and you can have an independent Arab nation afterward. Help us overthrow the Turks, they said to the Kurds, and you will get an independent Kurdistan. And for some reason historians still argue about, they also promised European Zionists that they (the Brits) would establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. They betrayed them, too, because what they did was establish the Palestine mandate — or, in plain language, British occupation of Palestine.

Britain and France divided the Middle East between themselves, and this basic fact set off the conflicts we are still dealing with. The problem with establishing a Jewish state was that Arabs already occupied the area chosen. While they initially had no quarrel with Jews who wanted to immigrate to Palestine (the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has nothing to do with religion and never has), as soon as they figured out that European Jews were not coming to be Palestinians but to take their land away from them, the Arabs revolted. The British crushed this.

It wasn't too long, however, before Jews became impatient with British occupation and so, to drive out the British, did what Palestinians are doing today — used terror. Two of the premier Jewish terrorists — Menachem Begin, who led the Irgun, and Yitzhak Shamir, who led the Stern Gang — would later become prime ministers of Israel. It is the political parties these terrorists started that rule Israel today. Begin is famous for blowing up the King David Hotel, Shamir for reputedly ordering the assassination of Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotte, who had been sent on a peace mission by the United Nations. Both of their groups joined forces to commit one of the most infamous massacres in history at the little village of Deir Yassin, where more than 200 men, women and children were slaughtered. Much of modern terrorist methods were pioneered by Begin. You should read his book "The Revolt."

Sometime in 1947, the British had had enough of Palestine and announced they were going to end the mandate the following year and dump the problem in the lap of the United Nations. The Zionists fiercely lobbied both Harry Truman and Joe Stalin. The deal was to get a vote to partition Palestine. The Jews would immediately proclaim the state of Israel, and, as preplanned, the United States and the Soviet Union would instantly recognize it. This was the first instance of the United States using a combination of threats and bribery to round up votes at the United Nations.

Jews and Palestinians were already fighting, and in the course of that fighting, the better-organized Zionists decided to expand beyond the boundaries set by the partition resolution and to do a little ethnic cleansing, since Arabs still outnumbered Jewish residents 2-1. Despite some volunteers coming in from other Arab countries, the Zionists had accomplished both goals by the cease-fire in 1948. In a 1967 war, the Zionists took the rest of Palestine, and Palestinians, who stubbornly insist on self-determination (once, but no longer, an American value), are fighting them the best way they can.

With the United States loading the Israelis down with both modern arms and billions of dollars, however, the Palestinians are having a hard time. This issue has made the United States hated in the region and the king of hypocrites because we have vetoed 35 U.N. resolutions to prevent the international community from giving any justice or help to the Palestinians.

Now, our president has included Palestinian organizations that are not international terrorists (Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah) on our list of enemies. Originally, they were just aiming their attacks at Israel, but I suppose this might change since George Bush has become the puppet of the Israeli government.

Hang on to your hats, folks. You're in for a violent next 50 years or so.

© 2003 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAmericans might as well get to know the Middle East``x1049860800,32404,world``x``x ``xby Ayinde, Apr 9th, 2003

Free people think well because they have no attachment to matter and allow ideas to roam freely in their mind without trying to possess them.

Real thinking is done when one is not fixating on anything so that what is important in the moment can rise to the surface of one's mind. However this comes after extensive work on oneself until one is free from the fetters of day-to-day follies and can 'WORK'.

Real work is different from a regular job or remedial task. Real work is only the things one does to the best of his or her ability. But that too is not as simple as it sounds as to work well one must be able to drop physical and mental distractions to focus on the task/s at hand.

Working with plants help in this area but one must learn to live in this peaceful state in any environment so one is always in touch with the inner higher self. In this state one is always thinking although one is not focused on anything. In this state one is always peaceful and thoughtful.
_________________________________________

Response by IanI

Ah yes, Ayinde!

To find the state of peacefullness and thoughtfullness!
Truely not an easy thing to accomplish.
But certainly the most important thing to strive for.
Physical and mental distractions abound... and I see it more and more in a world where the television and the radio are a constant.
Noise is another distraction that many no realize. Just noise from things like electronic instruments such as refridgerator or AC unit. And also from motorcar and airplane and lawnmower and all them things that many take for granted. Them a used to the noise and do not realize the distraction. but it a there.
For many 'real thinking' is too much trouble. Too much of a task. Is easier to just repeat what them hear pon TV or radio and not have to study or examine on their own.
And to meditate and shut off the constant babble is also too much of a task. So many give up.
I usually suggest that those that wish to be in touch with them inner higher self find a natural place with quietness. And once them get in touch and learn to be in touch... then go into the world and one will stay in touch. For some I know this is impossible... so the task will be a bit more difficult. But to surround youself with plants and find the time everyday to watch the sky...
these things help ones attain that state of peacefullness and thoughtfullness.
Real thinking...
yes I.

ONE LOVE/HEART/MIND
IanI Rastafari
Guidance and protection

Continue this reasoning here...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThinking is not easy``x1049860800,84754,views``x``x ``xWide-angeled photo of the 'cheering Iraqis'
This wide-angled photo shows that the 'cheering Iraqis'
television footage may have been staged.
The photo shows the US tank pulling down the statue of Saddam.
Note the amount of people around this event. Remember the television
reports did not show a wide-angled shot of this event. MORE

by Ayinde

Last week, North Korea's foreign ministry logically spelt out the global lesson from this fraudulent invasion. They said, "The Iraqi war shows that to allow disarmament through inspections does not help avert a war, but rather sparks it", they further added "only a tremendous military deterrent force" can prevent attacks on states the U.S. dislikes.

In spite of this obvious lesson, everywhere I turn today people are talking about how happy the Iraqis are to see the back of Saddam. They are all caught-up in the television coverage of 'Iraqi jubilation' and are dismissing the lessons of history.

How else do they expect some people who have been traumatized for twenty-one days to react? The U.S. worked with the opposition militias in Iraq to get a few people to parade for this television footage. After America bombed the daylights out of the people what do they expect.

Iraqis who survived the fury of America's Weapons of Mass Destruction and distraction, and witnessed the decimation of their country will not now show defiance to these brutal occupying forces. They know that opposition members and militias would be too eager to slaughter them. Some may jump extra high to demonstrate that they are on the side of the victors in the hope that their lives would be spared. This scenario has repeated itself so often in history that it should be expected. It is also expected that the Bush administration would use this footage for its own propaganda purposes.

Those Iraqis who had some courage took up arms and fought. The rest were ordinary people who were fearful of both Saddam and the U.S. Iraqis have suffered for decades at the hands of European and American powers together with the tyranny of Saddam. One must remember that it is these colonial powers that armed Saddam and aided him in suppressing the Iraqi people. The colonizing powers were not interested in the people then and the excuse about liberation only came up as a last resort after failing to prove that Saddam had 'illegal' Weapons of Mass Destruction. That is how much they cared for the Iraqi people.

Of course there would be Iraqis who would be genuinely happy to see the end of Saddam Hussein's rule. But I am sure that some in that small crowd of 'jubilant Iraqis' lost family and friends, and saw others maimed during the U.S. and U.K. bombings. So how happy can Iraqis really be. Remember that the CIA was also in Baghdad killing off those who opposed this US/UK invasion.

If Bush is tossed out of the Presidency, we will see people worldwide dancing in the streets. Would this mean that Americans are being liberated? This also holds true for Blair in England; how many Britons would like to see him leave office. What about Howard in Australia and many other European misleaders? Who are they to speak of corrupt and brutal regimes with weapons of mass destruction when this invasion was another crime against humanity done with their weapons of mass destruction?

When Europeans invaded Africa, some Africans cooperated with them and sold out family and friends in the hope that their lives would be spared. There were Jews who cooperated with Hitler out of fear. In the many countries Hitler invaded people came out in the streets and cheered. This is the classic conduct of repressed people. All these colonizing forces did was destroy food and water supplies and then bring in supplies to receive the cheers. Of course they ensured that their embedded reporters and media outlets carried this in their prime time coverage. This conduct started the long spell of mental enslavement in Africa where children were taught to suppress their feelings about these colonizing Europeans and to publicly smile and say what they would like to hear.

Iraqis would now be entering another phase with attempts to mentally enslave them. They are expected to believe that opening up their country to the many U.S. vices, manipulative media and commercial exploitation is freedom for them. Many will not be allowed to express their disgust at any new puppet regime under the American style of 'democracy'. This is history repeating itself only this time the language will change while the conduct continues.

Sure, the United States of America and Britain is winning this battle but by their very actions they have guaranteed that the cycle of violence will continue. They have done much to ensure that Iraq will be another Palestine. They have placed more British and American lives at risk and I hope they don't expect some Arabs who may come seeking revenge to discern between the actions of the U.S. government and its citizens. They will have to continually monitor and assassinate those who try to get them out of Iraq. And as Iraqi factions fight among themselves, The U.S. and other European countries would be negotiating away their oil. This is not new to U.S. foreign policy; this is the history of the United States of America. Today they are more brazen as they believe that no court can convict them and no military force can deter them while they rampage under the disguise of fighting terrorism.

One must remember that certain U.S. and other European companies financially profit from wars. They sell arms to all sides. They need wars to test their equipment and to clear out old stocks while keeping their weapon industries commercially viable. The American economy depends on conflict and fear. Hell, there is no way they can stop now as they know without suppressing victims of their aggressions they will one day have to pay.

But as the laws of nature have it, they will pay. They will pay when more people are armed with the facts of their history and start building closer ties with people who have historically suffered from such aggression. They will be standing on a moral high ground when their battle is waged from the awareness of what caused the decimation of African and other indigenous societies.

Addressing the legacy of the Arab involvement in Slavery, which continues in several Arab and African nations, is a place to start. Addressing racism through a better appraisal of world history will build long lasting ties.

Just remember, many Africans have been continually fighting both Arab and European racism and terrorism. We are survivors with a wealth of lessons for all sides.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xMedia Distortions vs. 'The Big Picture'``x1049989172,34902,views``x``x ``xFrom: RasIene, Apr 10th, 2003

I and I know that we need to start build economic ties within our community. Just as the Hasidic Jews are doing and have done.

We need to encourage our children to gain rapid entrance through economics and business management, vital services in housing and health care too.

We have to start charting our government now. Where are the Rasta Lawyer, Doctor, Teacher and most of all where is our school? Let me hear Idrens and Sistren talk about this. We cannot be moving to Ethiopia and don’t have these things in place. We need economic power, business power, and enterprise power. Yes man, let us show the world that Rastas is no foolish philosophy feeding off bible pages and reciting reggae beats only. Let cramp and paralyze babylon with our industry and our economic will.

Blessed all RasIene.
___________________________________________

Response: Ayinde, Apr 12th, 2003

You have honorable intentions.

I know Rastafarians in prominent positions like lawyers and teachers and some in well-established financial institutions, but some of them alienate themselves from the grassroots. There are a few I know who are building and doing great things, for example, the owner of Frontline Distributions who remains in touch with our common struggle. He does quite a lot within the Rastafarian community.

People who have not reached that place of peace and harmony with themselves have split loyalties. They try to serve themselves while being slaves to matter. It is not possible for such people to build economic and other instructions void of the corruptions and temptations that plague the flesh. Their earthbound ties will generally overrule their underdeveloped selves and lead to other cycles of degradation.

For most people the learning continues until they can reach the heights of consciousness where they are so comfortable in their spiritual and physical domain that they can easily build with others of a similar nature.

All of this is easier said than done as few people have attained that state of harmony. So the work continues to assist others to reach similar states.

Meanwhile each must share and learn as best they can and put into practice the truths, as they understand it. They may not be right all the time but they will be honest to themselves, which leaves them open to learning bigger truths.

It is understandable that many are looking for big institutional development to rival that on the ignorant world. But wisdom suggests that in enlightening others these houses of development can be built without the display of opulence. They are being built so quietly that the world of ignorance cannot disturb these processes.

Those bent on ignorance will not know of them therefore they cannot come to corrupt and or distract. These new houses are guarded by the intelligence of the inner higher self (JAH), through the wisdom that comes to all who have attained that unity.

It will be interesting to see other views on this.

Continue this reasoning here...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xTime for Rastas to get economics``x1050144663,86112,views``x``x ``xThe rush to justify the devastation

by William Blum

When you wage a war that is strongly opposed by the great majority of those on the planet who are aware of such things, when your own people are becoming increasingly militant against your unilateral waging of that war, when you know well that your war is palpably and embarrassingly illegal, immoral, illogical and unjust, when you can't admit the real reasons for the war ... then you have a consuming need to find a moral-sounding and credible selling point -- "Regime change", to remove the evil Saddam, the Iraqi people will welcome us with flowers and music!

Thus was it mortifying for the warmongers that for more than the first two weeks of the war the Iraqi images shown to the world were largely of the dead, the wounded, the grief-stricken, the immense piles of rubble, the bombing-produced homeless, those bitterly angry at the US. How could it be otherwise? What kind of people like their loved ones torn apart by missiles, their children without a limb, their homes, hospitals, schools and jobs destroyed?

The US military told its cannon fodder and its embedded media that any negative reaction, or lack of a positive one, was all because the people were afraid of Saddam, as if one of his agents was standing behind each Iraqi citizen. Why did a million people fight and resist to the death instead of surrendering, defecting, anything to show their gratitude for their "liberation"?

Now, any teenager flashing a victory sign or anyone climbing upon a toppled statue of Saddam is an American media star. But what portion of the Iraqi people are happy about the invasion -- happy about all its effects? What are they happy about other than the removal of Saddam? And many Iraqis supported him. Of those "celebrating", how many have been touched by the death and destruction? How many even know about it? The US bombed Iraqi and Arabic TV off the air fairly early on for much of the country. Much of the telephone system was another early victim.

As an American, I might also celebrate if the cruel and ignorant tyrant occupying the White House were overthrown. But not if my house were demolished and my city were bombed. In any event, I'd keep most of my joy in reserve until I saw who and what replaced the tyrant. Like in Iraq, it would likely be a conservative Republican.

However, I'm being light here. No changes in Iraq justify the American onslaught. What kind of world would we have if any country could invade any other country because it didn't like the leader of that country? And in this case, the United States was not motivated at all by Saddam Hussein, or his evilness, or his alleged weapons of mass destruction, or his alleged threat to the US.

http://www.trinicenter.com/index1.php``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xOur vulnerable warmongers``x1050378254,83787,world``x``x ``xPosted By Ayinde on: Apr 13th, 2003, 5:22pm

We try to keep discussions about who contributes and how they contribute towards these services away from these reasonings because misconceptions based on another false sense of superiority and inferiority can arise. This can also distract some from focusing on the merit or lack thereof of certain views in discussions.

Attempts to identify persons behind usernames and who owns and does what should be pursued privately and away from these forums. People should respect the privacy of others and leave it to them to share as much as they wish.

People who feel the urge to do more should privately discuss this with whosoever they wish and not publicize these gestures on the forums. These 'public offerings' can place a strain on others who may wish to participate in discussions but are financially strapped.

Remember that these discussions are primarily about facilitating others who may be less fortunate than ourselves, sometimes not because of their own inabilities but often because the systems in all countries disenfranchises the best people.

People's ability or inability to support financially or otherwise is not a real measurement of their intelligence or worthiness.

Who can do more should do so, but quietly please.

_________________________________________________

Reply By Jeff on: Apr 14th, 2003, 1:42am

Greets

I overstand the issue raised, and apologize for any misunderstandings.

Ayinde, if you could email me, I would whole-heartedly appreciate it.

JA------@aol.com

Peace All
Nemaste
Jeff

_________________________________________________

Reply By Ayinde on: Apr 14th, 2003, 4:36pm

Let me see if I can explain why I prefer not to email you.

If I make similar comments to you like I did in the past it may not be assessed on the merit of what I am presenting as was recently proven. This is the reason I previously choose to stop responding to you.

I backed down on the older board not because I felt I was wrong but because I knew I held the advantage so I had to back down. The place has since evolved to allow for a better exchange where we both don’t have the final say on how members’ boards are moderated. My participation, where moderation is concerned, is quite limited to the storage board and we should not reason together on that board.

Having said all of this, if you wish to discuss any of my past comments or conduct then I will oblige those exchanges on the General Board. I will oblige at this time only because we are familiar with the moderators and they are ‘neutral’ parties to these exchanges.

However, until the history is clear I prefer our discussions remain in the public domain where everyone can weigh the merits or lack thereof of any arguments presented.

_________________________________________________

Reply By Jeff on: Apr 14th, 2003, 9:15pm

Ayinde

Didn't want to bring up any past reasonings...just wanted to make peace man, that's all. No problem...you go your way and I'll go mine.

Peace
JAH LOVE
Jeff

_________________________________________________

Reply By Ayinde on: Apr 15th, 2003, 6:35am

A disagreement is no reason to assume that people are at war. I have very valid reasons for not wanting a private discussion with many people. It simply means I do not trust them and prefer an open medium for us to work out differences. This must not be confused with war, hate or grudge.

Apparently some people do not understand the power of history. It is impossible to reason without reflection and anyone who believes that a dispute can be resolved, or peace can be had without revisiting the history of disagreements, is simply ignorant of the lessons of past and recent conflicts. In some people's idea of peace they are mixing up a relationship based on tolerance with true friendship. I only tolerate until the conditions are right to resolve differences but in no way am I confused about these important differences.

Your comment about dissing unresolved reasonings is equivalent to saying that people should forget the unresolved legacy of slavery and racism and lets all be friends. That is advocating amnesia. While I do not hold anger or grudges as these qualities dull the senses, I see no reason to forget. Remembering is how we do not repeat errors.

If disagreements are not reasonably resolved then what looks like peace and friendship is usually tolerance.

People tolerate rats and mosquitoes until they find a way to kill them. In the same way most people tolerate each other and when one side gets the bigger weapon then they bring up all the unresolved issues as an excuse to wipe out the other.

Relationships remain extremely volatile when people simply tolerate each other.

People will always disagree but they should set the conditions for reasoned discourses and not simply tolerate each other while being hypocrites.

Today, Rastafari could set a better example especially as it is Rastafari that placed reasoning as the highest medium for interacting, where illusions could give way to clarity through reasonable discourses. I am not a hypocrite and I would not pretend that someone is my friend when I know that the conditions have not been met for friendship.

If someone is not my friend it only means that we have not worked out our commonalities and reasoned through our differences. That does not mean we hate each other or we are at war. It simply means that I do not trust them.

It is because I define terms like friendship and acquaintances somewhat differently to many people I do not go around giving people the false impression that we can automatically be friends. I wait for reasoning to take place and I observe actions over time.

I usually respect people's rights, assist when I can and wish them well although they are not my friends. If we have mutual interest then the friendship/peace can be worked out over time but this is an ongoing process and not a done deal.

No one can dictate the terms and conditions for peace or resolving real or imagined discords. Even the places, terms and conditions for such meetings should be reasoned out.

Continue this reasoning here...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xReasoning a disagreement``x1050404331,71096,views``x``x ``xPosted by warriorPrincess
on: Apr 19th, 2003, 10:20pm

Religion: Belief in a reverence for a supernatural power accepted as the creator and govenor of the universe. A specific unified system of this expression 'the Buddhist religion'. The spiritual or emotional attitude of one who recognizes the exhistance of superhuman powers. An objective pursued with fervor or conscientious devotion.
~websters dictionary~

I sis have pondered this often as I find miself pondering many things of this nature. Being raised a Christian and being subjected to the typical hypocrisies of "the church"...I have for a long time been turned off by the "system" of organized religion, and reject it's institutional like harness on the minds of free thinking people to think for themselves without some kind of mediator between I self and God..using fear and guilt as a tactical means to keep it's people mentally and spiritually conditioned and bound for it's own self(ish) interests.

question: Is this a "religion" I reject? Or the mindset of a cultural institution?

For I yolk and bind with the "MIND" of Christ...just not "the church"...or at least not the "Christian church"..

Yet, I find a deep and profound respect for any and all who seek the face of God through any means of true righteous principles and precepts...and certainly one would agree...that throughout all religions...basically the fundamentals are the same and eventually lead to the same (?) ...truth is truth and stands on it's own...we all are endowed with the Holy Spirit to sight truth and discern it when we hear it. Most religions seem to have this at their core...it's just the man-made ways of achieving the various "righteous paths" is what seems to differ ..which then brings up various cultural roots that seem to birth the various religions.. are we bound by our culture, based upon our heritage?...How do religions now transcend their origins? Is Rastafari a religion?...if not...how does it differ?..is it birthed out of the culture of Ethiopia/Africa?
...must one believe in Haile Selassie as the Christ/spiritual figure head in order to be Rastafari?...How did the vows of Rastafari originate...and exactly what are they today?

So many questions...the water has certainly broken the dam...
I finally feel free to express here....smile...thanks be!

I have danced circles around Rastafari...it keeps calling to my heart, soul, and mind.. many times I have walked away
..feeling like I didn't belong...I cannot claim Ethiopia or Africa as my heritage...i have not suffered the struggles of my black brethren and sistren..repatriation to Africa is not an issue for me...I know little of Haile Selassie, Ethiopia, and the true relation to Rastafari...yet still it calls...above and beyond, and blows any other religion out of the water fe me....why??
...what is this profound connection??...what is this power of Rastafari over I?...and how does it call to many people like I self outside of the culture??...

Can we truly/rightfully be a part of it's sacred precepts in spite of?

please help a searching sis out

(forgive I fe droning on)

thanks be for fruitful reasonings and sightful loving bredren and sistren!
___________________________________________________________

Posted by Ayinde
on: Apr 20th, 2003, 1:45pm

There are many points in your post worth developing so I will address a few at this time.

Although the dictionary gives a 'modern' definition of religion I prefer to go back to the 'root' of the word as it shows other points worth considering.

The term religion comes from two Latin words.

"RE" which means "BACK" and "LIGON" which means "to hold, to link, to bind."

In essence religion is the process of linking back, specifically, linking back to our original source.

Culture is all the things that bind people together and as such religion is intertwined with culture. However, the process for reconciling to the original source may not be part of the culture of a people and as history has demonstrated, this process was only realized by a few.

In the search for specific aspects of culture to apply appropriately to realize this goal, people should reject being forced to accept anything. They should also consider that trekking to the heavens is something they can do here and now while in this physical body.

Our greater ancestors knew, and some people today know themselves living in the heavens while on earth. Therefore transcending the limitations of the material world is achievable while on earth and in this human body.
___________________________________________________________

Posted by warriorPrincess
on: Apr 20th, 2003, 6:40pm

Blessed reasonings Ayinde,

So then...with regards to religion..all roads eventually lead to the same destination/realization..as it is a path/way back to the original source of our creation...religion being a means to take you there..at least that is it's core premise...
hmmmm..
and yet, culture is SO interwoven into religious practices, which therefore leads me to think that religion "technically" speaking, is something created of "man"... his ways and means to seek the face of the Almighty through the various practices and sacrements within the context of his culture...

...culture also being a means that binds people together through geographical root and livity...therefore it cannot be helped but to be mixed in with the practices of any particular religion...especially now as we experiance globilization...and religions now taking on many diverse cultural influences

though "spiritually"...religion could be considered a path to realize truth...and could therefore transcend a culture that gave rise to some of the practices associated...(?)

Can man be religious without being a part of any religion?...finding his own pathway to enlightenment?

Is Rastafari a religion?

blessed reasonings
___________________________________________________________

Posted by Ayinde
on: Apr 20th, 2003, 7:34pm

These are my views on this subject. Others may hold different views.

No, all roads do not lead to the 'same' destination. (I'll expand on this a bit later) Some paths are good for exploration and realizing many more questions in the search for answers. This in itself is good. But many parts if not trekked carefully can lead to great disillusionment and dangerous conduct.

People have to ask the right questions as they traverse this earth and be prepared to act on the highest truths as they understand them in order that they be lead back to the original path from whence we came, only this time conscious of ourselves.

People can be very religious and not be part of any one concept of religion. Actually, I do not know anyone who have or can make this auspicious journey while holding on to any one of those mainstream 'religions'.

In this regard, Rasta is about living within the laws of nature and wisdoms derived from such a perilous search for one's divinity. I must add that this divinity should start from a search within that should lead to the inner higher divinity. Rasta is about consciously living in that interconnected state with oneself. It is a way of living rather than a blind belief system.

The journey to the highest state of Rasta encompasses a search for our divinity by traversing time and space through our ancestry of which the highest divinity is the essence of all of life.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xIs religion born out of culture?``x1050893030,67474,views``x``x ``xPosted By: gman
Date: Saturday, 19 April 2003, at 11:54 a.m.

I wonder if ones out there could give me insight on this...
How ya deal with people who, while they also have many good qualities, are also self-centered, disrespectful (not necessarily intentionally), and inconsiderate?
I talking about people who profess to be your "friends".
I'm of two minds about this: part of me wants to take the "high road" and ignore the lil vibes I getting and the lack of respect inherent in asking someone to do a favor for them, but being apparently unwilling to do the simplest most basic favor in return.... and just give out positive vibes and try to look at things from their side and give them the benefit of the doubt as far as intentions...
And the other side of me wants to give them the mother of all verbal cut-rasses and really put them in their place.
Then again I have to think of the ways in which I am far from a perfect person and have treated people close to me rather shabbily on occasion. So who am I to throw stones?
What y'all think?

_______________________________________________________


Posted By: Ayinde
Date: Saturday, 19 April 2003, at 7:42 p.m.

Very interesting topic.

I will have to give some of my definitions in order to share some of my views.

All people no matter how foolish they behave have some good qualities so limited qualities are not sufficient to work with. Someone may have very little good qualities and is a better candidate for improvement than someone with much more good qualities. (I could always elaborate on this if necessary)

Also, you use the term self-centred and I suspect it was written to convey the regular interpretation. But if someone were truly self-centred then they would be anchored in their goodness and thus exhibit good qualities. I usually say 'false sense of self-centred' to convey the meaning that the person is not anchored in their self. Most people who are not truly self-centred exhibit varying degrees of poor characteristics.

Very often the judgments made could be very subjective. For example, someone may come over arrogant but if what he or she is saying is correct, what appears to be arrogance could in reality be confidence. Given the fact that most people will not see a truth at the same time, a very confident person could be considered arrogant to fools and an arrogant person could also be considered to be confident to fools. All of this depends on subjective evaluations when you are looking for the answers from many people. Now, lets say most people agree on certain characteristic then that is not sufficient to work with, as truth is not a democracy. Most people could be wrong.

People could call me their friend but that does not necessarily mean that I consider them that way. I am clear on the qualities I look for in someone before I consider him or her anything more than a casual acquaintance.

The only objective evaluation is if people study the values that they feel are fair to all people and live by them. If they do this then they can consider only the people who live by similar values as friends. Individuals have to work this out with their own conscience while reasoning with others.

Friendship is not a final agreement anyhow; it is a work in progress.

There are values that I follow and based on those values I can choose whom to consider a friend. Many people have been cultured in extremes, so they feel if someone is not their friend then that person is an enemy. People who adopt values different to my own are simply acquaintances or 'strangers' and they deserve the same amount of respect I would give to a friend. (Stranger means someone with whom I had no direct interaction)

The subtle difference is that I would not trust or make certain jokes with a casual acquaintance or a 'stranger' but I would trust a friend, and given the high standards used for cultivating real friendship then I am reasonably assured of their confidence. I would share secrets with friends but not with an acquaintance or 'stranger'.

I remember years ago, certain policemen would come in my place and when they wanted to get things for free they would tell me that I am their friend. When people do this I usually put up my guards, as I know they are trying to get something for free.

In short, I choose my friends and do not have friendship imposed. This leaves me without being able to call many people my friends however, I waste less time and don't have all the headaches other people have. I will say how I think and or feel without the expectation that I am supposed to protect wrongdoing under the disguise of friendship.

If I find my friend is inconsiderate, I would tell him or her and this may trigger an interesting reasoning. I may learn that I was wrong and they had a valid reason for their conduct or they may learn something and improve. I may do the same with other people but I am under no illusion when doing so. They may respond the same way as a friend or they may be very hostile. If they are angry about it I will just go my way if I am in the public domain. If the person were in my place I would ask them to leave.

Anyway you look at it, no one should be a hypocrite. The difference being, a real friend understands this and casual acquaintances/strangers may not.

I really do not consider anyone my enemy. If I do I may have to seek ways to destroy them. I may have to behave like Osama and Bush.

_______________________________________________________


Posted By: gman
Date: Saturday, 19 April 2003, at 8:12 p.m.

Give thanks for all the responses.
Ayinde, I will reason more on some of the issues you brought up later when I have time- specifically the enemy thing.
Having let off some steam from my burning cauldron of anger and resentment by walking around mumbling to myself and thinking up various vicious verbal cutdowns... I now feel better and able to deal reasonably with the person next time we talk. Cos cutting people down doesn't achieve much except maybe making you feel better temporarily.
Perhaps I'll just write a rap about it... with no names named.
Another thing is, looking at it a little more objectively than when I was really steaming, I wonder how much of my resentment is a projection of a certain amount of guilt at the way I have treated certain people in the past.
I know I didn't ever mean to hurt these people really, I was just "false self-centered" and nuff times how they might feel about my actions or lack thereof never crossed my mind.
So I will give this person the benefit of the doubt and assume the same applies for them.
Raspeck Peace and Love to all who helped I out on this issue! It really helped, trust. Especially being a bipolar-diagnosed person as I am, a lot of anger and resentment building up is very unhealthy.
Blessed
_______________________________________________________

Posted By: Ayinde
Date: Sunday, 20 April 2003, at 3:23 p.m.

Many people conceptualise extreme states of either passiveness in regards to tolerance or rage in regards to enemy.

People should be tolerant if they do not know how to treat with a disturbance while researching long lasting solutions. Once they realize the solution then they should work to resolve it. But to remain tolerant of something that disturbs while understanding a better way is not good. The better has to be shared and the responses observed and assessed.

If you go in the bush without your repellent then the mosquitoes would be foolish to assume that because you tolerate them biting you it is acceptable. The first time you get some means to kill them you would. People operate in either position in this scenario, although they could do better.

For the most part people should be tolerant until they realize a better way other than the use of violence to resolve disputes but they should not remain tolerant if/when they understand better. The other party might also be tolerating you and may not be so enlightened and as such may wipe you out if or when they get the upper hand instead of reasoning with you.

People can reason things out although for the most part this is an underdeveloped and under-utilised ability.

I have two questions for general consideration and comments:

Why is the ability to reason out disputes instead of resorting to violence not utilized?

What is necessary to allow reasoned discourses to resolve disputes?

_______________________________________________________


Posted By: IanI
Date: Monday, 21 April 2003, at 9:59 a.m.

Greetings, Greetings,

Ayinde... first I will reason pon you last question.
"what is necessary to allow reasoned discourses to resolve disputes?"

Hmmm. Alot of people in alot of places could certainly use the answer to this question these days, eh? You know... ones must be in sincere agreement that them wish to "re-solve", and then and only then can reasoning be effective. If ones no have that desire, then them could go on talk all day and nobody not going to get no where. One side just make them point and the other side make them point and neither no really hear the other. If you no want to forward, if you belief is that you get it down pat and your way is the best way and there is no better way... than... what you gonna hear?

Now... how does one achieve the desire to "re-solve'. This certainly takes a bit of maturity. Ones must have developed consciously to the point of receptiveness. To the ability to hear and see other opinions and ideas than just your own. To the overstanding that every situation and experience has a lesson in it and you must be receptive enough to learn that lesson. Even if it is destroying you ego and hurting you feelings. To the point where you overstand that others may have more experience and knowledge than you and be willing to hear them out.

And if you are the one with the more experience and knowledge, you must be able to realize that the one you a reasoning with can be taught and can learn from the things that you can show them. Even if it is not today... perhaps the reasoning will have its effect at a later date... when something happen to them and they say, "ah! now me know what them a sayin that day!!" And them may be able to teach the I a thing or two as well, so no never think you are the only one "teaching"... you better be learning as well!

Now...
"why is the ability to reason out disputes instead of resorting to violence not utilized?

This is a complicated question that goes deep into the cultures, the education, the belief systems of many people. In many cultures violence has come to be seen as heroic, valiant, courageous... masculine. Reasoning is seen as weak, soft, feeble, simple... feminine. And these "ways of thinking" are imbedded into the minds of the youth from very, very early on. Often through organized religions and governments.

So even when it gets to a simple matter of dealing with just one other human being these traits are already deeply ingrained into ones psyche. And it takes long, serious meditations to overcome these patterns of behaviour. And then, knowing how to deal with ones that have not broken these patterns is another long and serious meditation!

There are certain behaviours than I will tolerate and certain other behaviours that I absolutely will NOT tolerate. I do not make "friends" with those whose behaviours I find intolerable. And I do not reason with those that do not have the ability to hear. I am too old and have too much less time for that! haha!
If a bredren or sistren has disapointed me in some way, I will ALWAYS let them know... right then and there. "You are seriously disapointing me man. Why you go on like that?"
If I have mis-judged them... well, I am the one that must decide how much, if any, of my precious time will be devoted to them.
Seen.
I may not see them as "foe", but my time is precious and they may not be deserving of it. I make that decision.

Give thanks for irie reasonings pon use-full and enlightening issues.
Thanks and Praise!

ONE LOVE/HEART/MIND
IanI Rastafari
Guidance and Protection

_______________________________________________________


Posted By: Ayinde
Date: Sunday, 22 April 2003, at 7:10 a.m.

It takes honesty to reason.

Too many people lack integrity and it is dishonesty that keeps them from being able to reason out issues.

People don't even need academic education to reason well; all they need is honesty. This general lack of integrity is the hindrance to learning about and from oneself and reasoning to resolve disputes.

Continue this reasoning here...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThin Line between Friend and Foe``x1051010353,7260,views``x``x ``xThe world has been whipped up into hysteria over terrorist attacks and 'weapons of mass destruction'. Governments want to ban the publication of sensitive scientific research results, and a group of major life sciences editors and authors has concurred. Some even suggest an international body to police research and publication. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho looks at the current SARS epidemic and argues why all of those measures to control bio- terrorism are misplaced, and what's really needed.

The SARS episode

In the weeks that the 'allied forces' were wreaking destruction and death in Iraq to hunt down Saddam Hussein and his elusive 'weapons of mass destruction', a SARS epidemic has been criss-crossing continents carried by air-passengers and spreading like molecular cluster bombs that explode to liberate further millions of infectious particles soon after a target is struck.

SARS – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome – is a completely new infectious disease spread by human contact, and kills about four percent of the victims. The epidemic originated in Guangdong Province, South China. The Chinese authority has admitted mishandling the crisis and to have been slow to inform its citizens.

The disease first struck last November. In March, Liu Jianlin, 64 year-old medical professor who was involved in treating patients, went from Guangdong to Hong Kong to attend a wedding. He was taken ill soon after arrival and admitted to hospital. He asked to be put into quarantine, but was ignored; nor did the hospital warn his contacts. As a result, nine guests in the hotel where he stayed caught the disease and carried it to Singapore, Canada, Vietnam and other hospitals in Hong Kong.

On 10 February, news of the disease was posted on ProMed, an international e-mail notification service for infectious diseases outbreaks. The next day, China informed the World Health Organisation (WHO), but refused to let the WHO team into Guangdong until early April. By 8 April, there were 2671 confirmed cases of SARS in 19 countries and 103 deaths.

A palpable sense of panic has gripped the health authorities around the world. "Mother nature is the ultimate terrorist," says an editorial in the journal Nature. "Powerless to stop the spread", says New Scientist magazine, whose editor decries the lack of international control when it comes to disease epidemics: "The international community has weapons inspectors poised to force entry into a country at the first hint that it may possess chemical weapons. But when it comes to disease, we have no international body empowered to take charge, even though the disease may be vastly more dangerous." (italics added)

Eleven laboratories around the world participated in the hunt for the disease agent, a collaborative effort organised via teleconferencing, since March 17, by virologist Klaus Stöhr at the WHO headquarters in Geneva.

The journal Science says that Malik Pieris of the University of Hong Kong was the first to identify coronavirus (which causes colds and pneumonia) just four days later. This finding was replicated in other laboratories. The virus and antibodies against the virus were detected in many, though not all infected patients, but were not found in more than 800 healthy controls tested.

The New Scientist says it was the death of Carlo Urbani, the WHO doctor who first recognized SARS as a new disease that led to the discovery of coronavirus. It was isolated from his lungs and sent to Joe DiRisi in University of California at San Francisco who made the identification. The virus has since been named after Urbani.

There is some remaining doubt, however, whether the coronavirus is the complete story. John Tam, director of virology at Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong, found another virus, the human metapneumovirus in 25 out of 53 SARS patients, as have laboratories in Canada and Germany. Metapneumoviru belongs to the family Paramyxoviridae, which includes viruses responsible for parainfluenza, mumps and measles, as well as the Nipah and Hendra viruses in recent outbreaks.

Coronavirus showed up in only 30 patients tested while the bacterium Chlamydia has been identified in all samples in Hong Kong, though that strain of Chlamydia is not known to cause disease.

Could it be that both viruses are bystanders of the disease while an as yet unidentified virus could be responsible for SARS?

The coronavirus was atypical. It rapidly infected cells in culture dishes, something that other human coronaviruses do not do. Viruses from the lung tissue in Toronto patients readily infected monkey kidney cells, and no known human coronavirus infects that cell line.

DiRisi's laboratory has a virus detector chip capable of screening for 1 200 viruses all at once. When samples sent from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention in the United States (CDC) were screened, several species of coronaviruses lit up, the strongest spots – indicating the closest identity - were the avian bronchities virus and a bovine coronavirus. This appears to fit China's statement that the earliest cases were in bird handlers.

However, more detailed analysis using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) by two groups who just published their results online in the New England Journal of Medicine indicate that the new virus is not closely related to any known virus at all, human, mouse, bovine, cat, pig, bird, notwithstanding.

Furthermore, the virus was isolated from cell cultures only, and not from the tissues of patients. The PCR fragments of the new coronavirus were not detected in any healthy subject tested so far. But not all patients with SARS tested positive for one of the PCR fragments. Where did this new virus come from?

Genetic engineering super-viruses

While the epidemic has still to run its course, a report appeared in the Journal of Virology, describing a method for introducing desired mutations into coronavirus in order to create new viruses. A key feature of the procedure is to make interspecific chimera recombinant viruses. It involves replacing part of the spike protein gene in the feline infectious peritonitis virus (FIPV) - which causes invariably fatal infections in cats - with that of the mouse hepatitis virus. The recombinant mFIPV will no longer infect cat cells, but will infect mouse cells instead, and multiply rapidly in them.

These and other experiments in manipulating viral genomes are now routine. It shows how easy it is to create new viruses that jump host species in the laboratory, in the course of apparently legitimate experiments in genetic engineering. Similar experiments could be happening in nature when no one is looking, as the SARS and many other epidemics amply demonstrate.

It is not even necessary to intentionally create lethal viruses, if one so wishes. It is actually much faster and much more effective to let random recombination and mutation take place in the test tube. Using a technique called "molecular breeding" (see "Death by DNA shuffling", this series), millions of recombinants can be generated in a matter of minutes. These can be screen for improved function in the case of enzymes, or increased virulence, in the case of viruses and bacteria.

In other words, geneticists can now greatly speed up evolution in the laboratory to create viruses and bacteria that have never existed in all the billions of years of evolution on earth.

Controlling bio-terrorism

John Steinbruner, University of Maryland arms control expert, has been calling for mandatory international oversight of inherently dangerous areas of biomedical research, specifically, an international body of scientists and public representatives to authorize such research.

He has taken the proposal to meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the World Medical Association in recent months, and in April 2003, to a London bio-terrorism meeting, sponsored by the Royal Society of Medicine and the New York Academy of Medicine.

The oversight system would be mandatory and would operate before potentially dangerous experiments are conducted. Access to results could also be limited to those who pass muster.

Requiring scientists, institutions and even experiments to be licensed "would have a devastating chilling impact on biomedical research," said American Society for Microbiology (ASM) president Ronald M. Atlas. His answer is self-regulation, already in line with ethical requirements to prevent the destructive uses of biology.

The ASM orchestrated and supports a statement released February 15 by a group of major life sciences editors and authors, acknowledging the need to block publication of research results that could help terrorists.

Critics say even the self-censorship espoused by the journal editors and authors group is an impediment to the rapid progress of science, which is the best way to defuse the lethal potential of some biological research. But Steinbruner fears that self-regulation does not go far enough to head off terrorists.

Both Steinbruner and Atlas agree, however, that any effort to keep good science out of the hands of ill-intentioned people must be international to be effective. And both point to existing efforts to push a treaty making bio-terrorism an international crime, one long espoused by Harvard University microbiologist Mathew Meselson and chemist Julian Robinson of the University of Sussex.

Steinbruner and his critics, and the critics of his critics are all missing an important point. They have yet to acknowledge that genetic engineering experiments are inherently dangerous, as first pointed out by the pioneers of genetic engineering themselves in the Asilomar Declaration in the mid 1970s, and as we have been reminding the public and policy-makers more recently.

Who needs bio-terrorists when we've got genetic engineers?

But what caught the attention of the mainstream media was the report in January 2001 of how researchers in Australia 'accidentally' created a deadly virus that killed all its victims in the course of manipulating a harmless virus. "Disaster in the making: An engineered mouse virus leaves us one step away from the ultimate bioweapon", was the headline in the New Scientist article. The editorial showed even less restraint: "The genie is out, biotech has just sprung a nasty surprise. Next time, it could be catastrophic."

The SARS episode should serve as a reminder of some simple facts about genetic engineering.

In the first place, genetic engineering involves the rampant recombination of genetic material from widely diverse sources that would otherwise have very little opportunity to mix and recombine in nature. And, as said earlier, some newer techniques will create in the matter of minutes millions of new recombinants in the laboratory that have never existed in billions of years of evolution.

In the second place, disease-causing viruses and bacteria and their genetic material are the predominant materials and tools of genetic engineering, as much as for the intentional creation of bio-weapons.

And finally, the artificial constructs created by genetic engineering are designed to cross species barriers and to jump into genomes, ie, to further enhance and speed up horizontal gene transfer and recombination, now acknowledged to be the major route to creating new disease agents, possibly much more important than point mutations which change isolated bases in the DNA.

With genetic engineered constructs and organisms routinely released into the environment, we hardly need the help of terrorists. That may be why we are coming up against new epidemics of viral and bacterial diseases with increasing regularity. Mother nature is not the ultimate terrorist, we are.

What needs to be done instead?

It is pointless to control the publication of sensitive scientific results because there is nothing special about the recombination techniques, they are already well known. "The only way we'll ever understand these natural outbreaks is by first-rate science and getting it published," says Lynn Enquist, editor of the Journal of Virology, referring to the creation of a coronavirus that crosses from cat to mouse that's a routine part of a genetic engineering technique.

Open publication is only half of the story. The other half is the importance of biosafety. An international instrument for regulating biosafety already exists, it is the Cartegena Biosafety Protocol agreed in January 2000, now signed by 43 countries including the European Union; though efforts to undermine it has continued unabated, principally by the United States and allies and the biotech industry. All we need to do is to strengthen the Biosafety Protocol both in scope and in substance.

There is also an urgent need for democratic input into the broad areas of scientific research that are to be supported by the public purse. Every sector of civil society has been called upon to be 'accountable', even corporations; so why not scientists?

We have drafted a discussion document, Towards a Convention on Knowledge, which contains some key ideas on how scientists could be socially responsible and accountable.

A long list of sources and references for this article is posted on ISIS Members' website. Details here.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xBio-Terrorism & SARS``x1051395665,24365,world``x``x ``xBy David Williams

The world changed on September 11. A new point of reference for Earth Time could very well be AD S11. America's foreign policy and forked tongue had slowly been causing anti-American sentiment, especially in the Middle East, to reach a virtual boiling point. Policies that on the surface seemed to be liberating and people-oriented, but actually failed to live up to the words spoken. By whosever's hand the tragedy of so many lives lost, and so instantly, gave the American people a rude awakening to the fact that a lot of people really don't like them and their ways.

No matter how many times the then Mayor Guillani or Bush himself called upon God about just cause, America is not a Godly country. They uphold church-going and state dinners, but they are not Godly. You cannot ban prayer in schools and public places and claim closeness to God.

A conspiracy theory is that the 'powers that be' (any governmental agency) orchestrated, or were responsible for, a sequence of events leading up to September 11 so that the said 'powers' could then claim legitimacy under the guise of routing terrorism (the axis of evil) and go into foreign areas and do their thing ... looking for WMD (weapons of mass destruction).

(Note: The conflict is over militarily, yet no WMD have been found. Will they 'find a site; like how Powell 'found' the now known falsified document about WMD which he presented to Congress for the go ahead to be given. Alas, the New World Order is well on its way.)

Whether or not we want to entertain conspiracy theories (the death of Manley being another one) 9/11 gave the Bush Administration the green light to pursue pre-emptive strikes against 'old foes'. The Bush-fire was started in 1980 by the President' father.

Note: The CIA trained Bin Laden (Al Qaeda) in the late 70s. The US once supported Iraq against Iran (Ayatollah). Yet the US supported the Shah of Iran (a mass murderer like Saddam) before Ayatollah. Politics is a ting!

So the War Dogs gather and discuss war plans ... target? Iraq. Motive? Hmmmm.... Plan! Move in quickly, overwhelm, capture, liberate and win the harts and minds of the Iraqi people who have been 'suffering' for the past 30 years.
(Note: an ordinary Iraqi citizen made this remark shortly after the looting started, which quickly got out of control: "Before the war we did not have psychological stability, but at least we had stability in security.")

Yes Saddam is not a saint and the gassing of 5000 Kurds (its own people) is definitely an atrocity. But if the 'liberator's' claim they have won, they can only claim victory on the battlefield. They have failed miserably in areas that prove that they again spoke with a forked tongue and really didn't have the people's well being, heritage, culture and future security at heart...uhmm. Or was the ulterior motive oil and white domination? Elect a Government 'of the people" but control from a distance. The plot thickens.

At the beginning of the conflict the US screamed about Iraq violating the Geneva Convention Code of Conduct in wartime. (Some US POWs had been paraded unceremoniously on Iraqi television.)

(Note: Emperor Haile Selassie was instrumental in the formation of the League of Nations (Geneva) to bring to light the need for 'collective security; when an aggressor nation invades a weaker/lesser sovereign country, the collective council members rally to the cause of the nation under threat. Selassie took his cause to the League in 1936 and was ridiculed at which point he made the prophetic statement: "Today for me, tomorrow for you." The rest is history... the match which was struck in Ethiopia 'bun dung Europe/Rome - World War 11.")

The US needs to seriously take a look in the mirror, for while screaming foul about the code violations they have themselves committed a far greater violation than merely mistreating POWs. Months before the military moved their forces in Iraq, persons of authority in archaeology, collection and historians gathered from all over the world and had a meeting with the US Army heads who again, as in so many cases over the years (centuries) gave their word (forked tongue) that along with the speed of the military machine (which did overwhelm the Iraq Army) would follow just as swiftly humanitarian essentials. Water, food, shelter, medicine and most importantly, security for the Museum/Library and other important cultural and archaeological sites... the global police that they are.

They failed to do this. They failed because while calling upon God so often in their 'cause', they have allowed the destruction of God's Garden, God's History and the birthplace of one of the great Patriarchs, Abraham whose seed became all of us, like the sand of the sea shore - Muslim, Christian.

Their failure to secure these sites smacks of a systematic plan to erase a people's knowledge of their past. We have all lost common ground here, as what was lost not only recorded Iraqi history, but also the history of mankind.

People are people everywhere, and ignorance is a trait shared by all at one time or another... and we do foolish things. The people should not be blamed, and don't blame the youth. America must be blamed. Apart from giving assurances about security for cultural sites, no one can convince me that the US - what with their psy-ops Programme of psychological warfare and propaganda and the study of people' psyche - could not have foreseen the lawlessness which followed the fall of Baghdad. It happened in the 1990 Gulf War, so once bitten, twice shy.

Thirty-five years of restriction and oppression burst like a dam of emotion, spilling into the streets ransacking, looting and destroying in the frenzy of revolution. The US military stood by and watched. A concerned Iraqi citizen ran up to a command post and yelled to the Marine on duty what was happening to the Library. The Marine's response was: "Hey, this buy says they're burning some place with some history books." Americans have no ancestry of culture (unless stolen), so this Marine hasn't a clue what was realy burning.

(Note: Ever notice America is always fixing what they have broken and ever notice no Black man ever narrates a documentary about saving the Planet?)

(Note: Marcus Garvey said: "A people without the knowledge of their past are doomed to repeat it." People know thyself.

Books, manuscripts, scrolls, artifacts and priceless other treasures dating back thousands of years are ... gone! Irreplaceable! Shame, America, for your smile hideth false pretence. The destruction was premeditated and systematic. Regime change was the cover... annihilation of a people and their culture was the motive.

Plan#2... Democratize, Americanize and Westernize. TV, Soap operas, propaganda, fast foods & fashion, and all that glitters. After a while all will be caught up in this new glittery world of order brought by the US. After a while, the people will believe anything. Already they are saying: "Thank you Mr. Bush." There goes Massa again.
(Note: A lie unchallenged eventually becomes 'fact'. - Mutabaruka)

An example of slow, systematic perversion of literature to dissolve a peo0ple's thought process, is the way some new edition Bibles change the word Ethiopia for Sudan when referring to "this man and that man were born in her; Ethiopian shall stretch forth her hands unto God."

Throughout the ages, white supremacy has sought to subdue, dominate and force their 'superiority'; on other races. White people have bestowed upon themselves the distinction of being remembered in history with despots like Hitler, Mussolini and Willia Lynch. Saddam may have caused 35 years of grief, but Ame4ica did the same if not worse in a month. And they did it 'pretty'.

To the very end the Iraqi Information Minister kept a stiff upper lip with scathing remarks meted out at the invaders, even in the face of eminent defeat. A true leader in his own right. One such remark stated that the invaders' bellies would be frilled in hell by God. I would personally hope that they toss and turn at night, not ever finding rest.

(Final Note: Jah is not sleeping and it is He who is ultimately in control. No matter how much suffering is apparent, His Will, will be done and will be complete... only Him mek promise and keep. Pharaoh thought he was in control ... and so too Bush and his lackeys. They and they that fight against the Lamb will be swallowed up in the Prophecy of Time.

There will be no Peace until there is Equal Rights and Justice (Peter Tosh).

ONE LOVE

(c) D. Williams2003


Editor's Note:

While this article touches on some pertinent points it also draws on some vague assumptions that are worth reasoning out.

"Pharaoh thought he was in control."

"You cannot ban prayer in schools and public places and claim closeness to God."``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xA View Of The Iraq War``x1051597508,68805,world``x``x ``xby Ras Tyehimba

America, the so called epitome of democracy, freedom, and capitalism fought their battle against the colonial might of great Britain in 1775 and with the help of black slaves who fought as well, freed themselves and their country from the colonial tentacles of Great Britain. They won the right to self-determinism/ to chart the course of their own destiny. They drafted their Declaration of Independence that stated "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness". Yet it took America until 1865 to free their slaves from the bondage of chattel slavery.

This act of sheer hypocrisy has tainted the nation that once dreamed of being a beacon of freedom, democracy, equal rights and justice for the world. This single act of momentous hypocrisy has now proliferated into a culture of corruption, individualism, world imperialism and wanton carnal gratification. Just imagine, Thomas Jefferson, former President of USA, who helped draft the Declaration of Independence, at the time, traded slaves from his plantation for kegs of molasses.

Also, the European Americans facilitated the grand massacre of the indigenous people (misnomered Red Indians), justifying the annihilation by branding them as evil savages. These indigenous people who once roamed the wide expanse of their land (know today as America) were herded into small reservations: what was left of them that is, and forced to live a life contrary to their own traditions.

Having gained Independence from the colonial might of Britain and severing all forms of British colonial control, America embarked on a series of expansionary policies that would ensure they achieve the status of a Colonial superpower. The misleaders of that time, and even now, firmly believe in freedom for Americans (white Americans that is) but not freedom for anybody else. This white supremacist/patriarchal/ 'might is right' stance that is the foundation of the American legacy has manifested itself not only in America's policy to other mostly non white nations but also most strongly in America's internal policy to the black (non-white) people that also make up the nation of USA. It has been a legacy of blatant racism, discrimination, oppression and violent suppression of any group, organization or idea that is not congruent with the popular culture that is manipulated by the upper echelons of American society.

Black people who are termed as the minority has felt the full brunt of these oppressive policies that has sought to suppress the very essence of themselves. Blacks are the minority in society but the majority in the prisons. Blacks are targeted by the police, tortured, sodomized, killed and falsely imprisoned. How much more sickening, heart- wrenching stories of brutal torture , intimidation and slaughter by the security forces of America will we hear. The immigration policy of the USA is very deliberately structured to increase proportionately the number of white people versus the number of black people. The Educational curriculum by its very nature reinforces the degradation of the Black people in America. Blacks have less access to quality education and are forced to assimilate Euro centric standards and culture to survive.

Very integral to the success of the colonial imperialistic designs of America on the world is the whirring propaganda machines that spew American popular culture, values, products and other assorted junk. Fast food outlets pop up on every busy corner with bright signs declaring MacDonalds, KFC and Burger king. These fast food outlets sell billions of steroid laced carcinogenic products to long lines of people who are seeking a taste of the American dream. Genetically modified foods usually without any labels are consumed in great quantity. Humanitarian aid being given to Afrikan countries by the US is genetically modified. Not content with poisoning themselves.

Our youths are walking advertising boards, advertising the wide range of American products. Nike the sign says: just do it. While Nike one of the greatest symbols of American capitalism still has Asians working in terrible slavery-like sweatshop condition. The cost of producing one pair of shoes costs about $1US, while the price of a pair often crosses the $100 US mark.

Very central to America's imperialistic thrust for total global domination is the success of its media that spew a conglomeration of arrogant 'God bless America' garbage. When I was little boy I enjoyed watching Westerns with the 'brave' and 'heroic' cowboys taking on and beating the 'savage' and 'evil' native Americans (misnomered Red Indians). Years later I understood how dangerous and false this image is and how important it is in upholding the well doctored American image of being fair, righteous and just. The American materialistic value system bombards the world's consciousness along with complementary images of the all conquering American hero fighting the evil forces of the world. This arrogant pattern has permeated the offering of Hollywood (who is controlled principally by Jews), which is beamed all over the world via the high tech American satellite network. One consequence of this is that people all over the world have the perception that Hitler was the worst thing that ever happened to the human race. The atrocities committed by people like Rhodes, Ian Smith, Mussolini, King Leopold and others (who makes Hitler look like a goody-to-shoes) are whitewashed and overlooked by those who should know better. King Leopold slaughtered more than 12 million Afrikans approx twice that of the Jews killed by Hitler. To add insult to injury there is a scholarship given mostly to Afrikan people that is named the Rhode Island Scholarship*. This is equivalent to giving a prize to Jews and calling it the Adolph Hitler Scholarship.

We need to look no further than the Israel/Palestine conflict, the Venezuelan/Chavez situation, the Zimbabwe land issue or more recently the Iraq invasion to see the viciousness of American Media and understand the importance of having alternative sources of media. CNN, NBS etc serves America and American interests just like BBC serves English interests, often overlooking truth and justice. History has shown this fact so often that it has become painfully predictable.

In this era, to be overtly racist has become politically incorrect, so the nature of racism and white supremacy has ascended to new heights of subtleness. Despite of the many black people who are in positions of power within the current American system, this is just an illusion that will fool the many who are sleeping. The slave elevated to the position of slavedriver is not a statement of black power but rather just a perpetuation of white supremacy. This tokenism is done to garner the support of the respective group for activities that are often detrimental to the wellbeing of the said group.

It is expected that some people will get uncomfortable when the word white supremacy is uttered. But if the reality of the world order is not clearly and openly articulated, how are we going to progress past the illusions, patronizing attitudes, empty platitudes and self contempt that is so pervasive throughout the global landscape. As it is now, black people in and outside America will get no justice, no reparations, and no real equality under the capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist order that has produced the likes of Jefferson, Reagan and Bush(times 2). It is a system that has no regard for humanity and the sacredness and dignity of human life. It is a system that is rooted in a popular culture of death, extolling the 'virtues' of might, materialism, greed, individualism, violence, money and power to all who will listen. God bless America indeed.

* This scholarship is given by a European institution not an American one, but I included it because it is relevant within the overall framework.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAmerica: Bastion of White Supremacy``x1051707941,83633,rasta``x``x ``xPosted By: Ayinde, Rastafari Speaks Forum
Date: Thursday, 1 May 2003, at 8:24 p.m.
In Response To: Re: Can the Whiteness of Mind be Changed? (ROOTSWOMAN)

"Not to mention the FACT that bleached flour, sugar, etc is DILUTED (weakened) from its original, natural (and healthier) BROWN/RAW beginnings...and cannot be reversed."

I suspect that you were speaking metaphorically and I am adding this in case it is not understood.

These products don't have a will and the ability to choose for themselves. But I hope other Whites can show they are different to mindless products that cannot change on their own.

Speaking for myself, I am not writing people off without giving them the opportunity to reason out our differences. I cannot form a hard line position on all Whites because I know a few who are making great strides (although too few and they still have a way to go). But I do see many come on these forums and use the words 'one love' and 'Respect' hoping all would be well by the repetition of those words. That is why I try to keep away from those words unless I am sure the person to whom I am using it really deserves it.

####

Why would more Whites, and some who feel they are White, not want to engage a reasoning on a Rasta setting to acknowledge that racism exist and to tell us if they see it as a serious problem worth addressing?

Is it not a problem for them?

How can they embrace Rastafari, in and amongst Black people and not want us to seriously address this issue?

How could people speak about ‘one love', Respect, and all the other nice sounding words and not want to put this respect and love to the test?

Could it be that some would like to get involved but are afraid?

Could it be that they really have never given it serious thought?

Could it be that they have taken the position that it cannot be resolved therefore there is no reason to discuss it?

Do they expect Africans to embrace them with 'one love' without proof that 'one love' this time does not mean enslavement, exploitation and another marketing strategy?

Should we conclude that most Whites amongst us are simply not interested in the concerns of the more informed Africans?

Or is it that an issue is only relevant when Whites feel to put it on the table?

Should we all stop the race talk and only listen to reggae music and smoke weed, while some white are using Rastafari to build businesses and promote hypocrisy?

____________________________________________________


Posted By: ROOTSWOMAN, Rastafari Speaks Forum
Date: Friday, 2 May 2003, at 4:24 p.m.

"Why would more Whites, and some who feel they are White, not want to engage a reasoning on a Rasta setting to acknowledge that racism exist and to tell us if they see it as a serious problem worth addressing? Is it not a problem for them?"

How can one truly OVERSTAND something without direct EXPERIENCE? One may sympathize...one may empathize...but unless you walk in the shoes of another, you'll never really overstand to a FULLNESS what that other person's DAILY experience/reality is. When you are part of a collective who, generally speaking, receives "carte blanche" (white card) or WHITE SKIN PRIVILEDGE, how can one be expected to overstand the AFRIKAN EXPERIENCE of oppression under that collective system/order/culture?

"How can they embrace Rastafari, in and amongst Black people and not want us to seriously address this issue?"

Because it forces them to look deeeeeeep within the very recesses of their MENTAL DNA, psyche, natures and historical patterns, which are but a reflection of their cultural "ASILI" (seed). It is often too horrific to have to look in the mirror and realize you represent the very image of a people who have historically proven to act in very BEASTLY fashion (as opposed to GODLY). It is often much easier to bury your head in the sand, while repeating the "mantra" ONE LOVE...ONE LOVE...ONE LOVE...and not being part of a people who experience the opposite of "one love" on a daily basis. Their "one love" concept is an ANESTHETIC they use to prevent from FEELING the deeds of their ancestors, as well as to keep us mentally enslaved and "in our place".

"How could people speak about ‘one love', Respect, and all the other nice sounding words and not want to put this respect and love to the test?"

Coz its easier to pontificate than to come forward with ACTION.

"Could it be that some would like to get involved but are afraid?"

Fear is a negative concept. It is FEAR of genetic annialation, which is the essence of their New World Order and historical pattern. Fear of the "wrath of God" for the wicked deeds imposed on ALL OTHER PEOPLES OF THE EARTH. Fear of Judgment from the Creator for the abuse of His/Her Creation and Children.

FEAR is the root of RACISM!

"Could it be that they really have never given it serious thought?"

Perhaps...but what is thought without action? It is nothing by intellectual masturbation.

"Could it be that they have taken the position that it cannot be resolved therefore there is no reason to discuss it?"

How does one begin to take out tiny grains of sand imbedded in sand?

"Do they expect Africans to embrace them with 'one love' without proof that 'one love' this time does not mean enslavement, exploitation and another marketing strategy?"

YES. History speaks for itself.

"Should we conclude that most Whites amongst us are simply not interested in the concerns of the more informed Africans?"

We can never really make blanket statements or generalizations, but based upon HISTORICAL PATTERN and the present day order.... I would say that the "concerns of more informed Africans" FORCES them to look within (and their past/ancestors), which is most uncomfortable and difficult for many (not all)

"Or is it that an issue is only relevant when Whites feel to put it on the table?"

Again, history speaks for itself. If whites present it...it must be "right". If "the more informed Africans" present it...it is "angry and militant". This addresses the issue of PSHYCHOLOGICAL racism imbedded DEEPLY in the minds of many. If its white...its right. If it's brown, don't' stick around. If its Black...STAY BACK.

"Should we all stop the race talk and only listen to reggae music and smoke weed, while some white are using Rastafari to build businesses and promote hypocrisy?"

Perhaps this is the "master plan" disguised behind ASSIMILATION? Behind all the "one love", "can't we all just get along" thing, hasn't Europe proven to us that under all his talk of "universal" love is ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION? Some Africans say, 'The white missionaries came. They gave us the Bible, but they took our land.'"

Brothah Ayinde, give thanks for the questions/reasonings. Let me reiterate that I am speaking in GENERAL terms and not making blanket statements. But I must repeat this again and again. When we are discussing the European psyche/nature/history, we are addressing the COLLECTIVE deeds, not the individual.

ROOTS ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhite 'Rastas' should reason on racism``x1051923012,490,views``x``x ``xPosted By: Ayinde
Date: Saturday, 3 May 2003, at 6:26 p.m.

The reason I am staying with this issue is because there is much Rasta could do but it is limited because of the distrust among all those who claim Rastafari.

I always feel that if different people have to interact and reason well, then underlying prejudices should first be addressed. Without addressing them, then there is no reason to try to become friends or anything more with those who are not interested in working through deep-seated prejudices. There is no use keeping a relationship with people whom you continually distrust except for the purpose of working out those differences (i.e. Racism and Gender ignorance) Mind you, it is the same hypocrites who continually try to chide Africans for generalizations as if a generalization amounts to the experiences of Racism.

The real issue is integrity or lack thereof.

It is not as if people do not understand that these issues should be resolved before we can build as a collective. It is like some people feel things are already in their favour so there is no need to 'rock the boat'. (More illusions)

I am seeing a new argument about Rastafari being a spiritual journey and not a Black movement. Who told that person that Black issues are not an integral part of spiritual development? Dealing with prejudices are part of character building and that is the most important part of spiritual development.

Actually, this is a very dishonest argument because most Whites who embrace Rasta did so from the perspective of its resurgence in the 1930s, and as such they are trying to identify with Rastafari from the perspective of the Black liberation struggle.

Once White people's awareness of Rasta is limited to the 1930s onwards then they cannot identify with Rastafari in essence (spiritually). They cannot do so for the simple fact that they did not and cannot have the experiences of the Africans who felt compelled to go their own way and recapture symbols of Black leadership. They could study it as hard as they like and all they would get is an understanding but not the knowledge that comes from real/realised identification.

Identifying is bonding (spiritually) with the essential knowledge of something. This can only be attained through direct experiences or through realizing Oneself through the experiences of others. If people are trying to bond through a spiritual journey (self-realisation), then they must go through certain well-defined paces to realize similar experiences. (Not to actually go through the experiences but to realize them. I hope people get this point)

Africans can legitimately have all three relationships with Rasta at the same time. They can identify with Rasta Spiritually through self-reflection, which has its roots in Africa and Black awareness. Africans can identify with Rasta as an earthly movement because they continue to experience the same negative discriminations that gave rise to it. Africans can also identify with Rasta in a symbolic way because they can look the part after going through the legitimate processes.

Whites can only have a Spiritual and a Symbolic relationship with Rastafari. If they lack the spiritual awareness then what looks like a symbolic relationship is in reality an insincere cosmetic relationship.

It is the same with other types of relationships. There is the physical relationship (A movement), the Symbolic relationship and the Spiritual relationship. Only people with shared experiences can start a movement and those who continue to share those experiences can lead the movement with any measure of credibility. Other people can have a Spiritual relationship (bond in essence) with anything they cannot directly experience.

However, if people feel that they can dismiss the underlying reason a movement started/resurrected then they are dismissing the keys to rise in it spiritually.

Rastafari in essence is a spiritual thing, Rastafari as a movement is a Black liberation struggle and Rastafari lacking the understanding of the spiritual aspects and its earthly movement is strictly cosmetic/fashionable.

__________________________________________________________


Posted By: ras yared
Date: Saturday, 3 May 2003, at 8:35 p.m.
In Response To: Resisting Whitewash (Ayinde)

nuff words of wisdom ayinde
but i man feel it is more than a movement for back people i sight it as a movement for ALL oppressed and scattered Yisra'El ites. many are called few are chosen. Jah do the calling and the chosing seen? HIm nuh only call black people unto HIM but HIM call HIm children unto HIM that y ini sight Rastafari of all different races and cultures. Jah transcend and break all dem babylon barrier. Jah search the HEART of man nuh the skin see?
Give thanks fe the words Fari
YHVH I HAILE I SELASSIE I bless

__________________________________________________________


Posted By: Ayinde
Date: Saturday, 3 May 2003, at 9:40 p.m.
In Response To: Re: Resisting Whitewash (ras yared)

"but i man feel it is more than a movement for back people i sight it as a movement for ALL oppressed and scattered"

#

People can form any number of earthly movements based on shared experiences but the unique circumstances that gave rise to a particular movement remains the same. Whites and others can be ‘part’ of Rastafari as a movement. But they can only identify with the movement in a spiritual sense, as I explained earlier, and no one can legitimately change a movement from the reason it developed until the circumstances that gave rise to it are resolved. All attempts to change before this time are part of the original problem, which gave rise to the movement.

Rasta as a movement that resurged in the 1930s was Black people’s resistance to White domination, White symbolic misrepresentations, Racism and other forms of corruption. For Rasta as a movement to change from the original focus, the problems that Blacks experienced that gave rise to the movement must first drastically change. In other words, Racism must come to an end, the correct symbols of African ancestry must gain popular acceptance, African historical awareness must become part of mainstream societies and Whites must stop trying to dominate and control everything.

If others want to embrace Rasta as a movement then they can only legitimately do so by supporting those who fight against White domination, bogus symbols and general misinformation that allows racism and other forms of corruption to exist. They can only do so by constantly supporting Africans in their endeavours to help themselves from the African historical point of view, as that is the only legitimate view that spans to include all other people in the right order. Those who do not share the same experiences that gave rise to the movement can support but should never lead that movement.

That brings us back to the first premise, Rasta, as a movement, is a "Black movement".

__________________________________________________________


Posted By: ras yared
Date: Saturday, 3 May 2003, at 11:49 p.m.

idren i overstand that Rasta started "physically" as a movement pushed by black people against falshoods wickedness and oppression. wha i man sayin is that their are many other oppressed peoples who are not "black" wha eva that mean.their are suffarahs on all contintants from all ethnic groups. it nuh every whiteman yuh gotta worry about. ya think fallen angels cant don black skin?them shift any to any shape dem wan seen? ini are the lost children of Yisra'El connected by blood nuh skin.it nuh the wrapping thats important but the soul. the blood that run through i the same blood that run through the i seen?ini fallowers of HIM are broad and wide. Jah scattered us for a reason.

__________________________________________________________


Posted By: Ayinde
Date: Sunday, 4 May 2003, at 1:14 a.m.

"wha i man sayin is that their are many other oppressed peoples who are not "black" wha eva that mean. their are suffarahs on all contintants from all ethnic groups."

Yes, that is true and these people who have experienced sufferings are quite free to start their own movement and keep their problems on the front burner, but they are not helping anything by trying to change the course of a movement that started to address a particular set of problems that are yet to be resolved. (Mind you, the problems that Rasta addresses affect all people)

I don't think you are not getting this, and I am specifically speaking about "RASTA AS AN EARTHLY MOVEMENT". Once something starts as an earthly movement, automatically there are boundaries. The boundaries are there to allow for a concentrated focus on a set of issues. There are no boundaries on the essence (spirituality) of anything.

Often people do not check to see if the main objectives of a movement are being accomplished and this causes a shift in focus where the movement does not serve the earthly needs of anyone. Any movement that tries to be everything to everyone in its earthly trod, become nothing to anyone.

Rasta from the beginning of time can only be embraced spiritually and this is always open to all people since humans cannot claim anything in essence as their personal property; they cannot put up manmade rules to block anyone. All people are quite able to learn from the process to solve any problem. But they will not be able to LEGITIMATELY claim Rastafari as their EARTHLY MOVEMENT unless they have direct realizations/experiences with what gave birth/rebirth to this specific movement.

Unfortunately/Fortunately, this is a foundation that Whites cannot have but they can very well develop through Rasta, which allows them to draw from the Universal essence.

It is also the same with the Carib/Taino People's movement, which I also identify with spiritually and support, but the unique circumstances that brought about the decimation of that culture are open to those who continually come from that branch of history and suffer from those discriminations. Much of their circumstances are quite similar to that of Africans so we can empathize but not rush to lead their particular earthly trod or claim it as our own.

The Eskimos have a similar movement, which is quite legitimate, and although I can empathize, I cannot lead their earthly movement. I can embrace it in essence and see its connectedness to all of us. That type of embrace is part of a spiritual process that we can all do across cultural lines.

Whites developed their movement; it is called Capitalism annexed to White domination and false supremacy. That is the Earthly movement that they want all to embrace. Most Whites are still protective of the 'benefits' they get from it. Rasta as an earthly movement is a resistance to that. Africans can mimic and take the symbols of false White Supremacy but they will remain subservient to Whites in that illusion of grandeur. That is their unique trod that only allows 'privileges' to Whites.

As such Rasta should resist attempts to have these false values imposed on Rasta culture and as such the questioning and screening of others who cannot identify with the Black experiences remain important to ensure that we are not inadvertently 'sleeping' with the 'enemy'.

This does not mean that people are not free to claim anything. They are quite free to that, but to grasp the essential truth of anything, calls for a type of 'initiation', which most Whites have not gotten in Rasta only because they did not come to the table to learn. Many continually come to covertly exalt false white values and to dominate, hoping to get famous and/or make money. I personally know a few Whites who are different in varying degrees but most have not come to the understanding of how to develop relationships with people who may be different to them.

Again I am not judging everyone or telling you what you can or cannot do, I am simply reasoning the issues.

Continue on the Message Board and the Reasoning Forum``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRastafari is about resisting whitewash``x1052005115,51473,views``x``x ``xBy Devinder Sharma

It took three decades for the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to realise the gravest mistake of Green Revolution - pesticides are unnecessary. But by the time the mistake was realised, pesticides had polluted the environment, poisoned the fertile soils, contaminated the ground water and taken a heavy human toll.

Not far from where IRRI is located, rice farmers in Central Luzon province in the Philippines, had gradually got disenchanted with the indiscriminate use of pesticides. From a peak insecticide use in the mid-1980s, it is now at an historic low. Contrary to what agricultural scientists and the chemical industry had maintained all these years, the decline in insecticides use has been accompanied by an increase in productivity from an average of 2.75 tonnes to 3.25 tonnes per hectare in 2002. It also resulted in savings on an average of up to 1,000 pesos per hectare for these farmers.

Equally significant is the scientific courage with which IRRI's director general, Dr Ronald Cantrell has accepted the reality: "It shows that the mistakes of the Green Revolution - where too much emphasis was sometimes put on the use of chemicals for pest control - have clearly been recognized and corrected," adding, "because of their toxicity, insecticides really should be used by farmers as a last resort, and we are very pleased to see that farmers have realized this for many years, especially here in the Philippines." His colleagues at IRRI are now equally critical of the extent and use of pesticides. Says Gary John, an ecologist: "The simple fact is that, in the rest of Asia, most insecticide use on rice is a waste of the farmers' time and money."

The Philippines is not the only country where farmers have proved the scientists wrong. In Vietnam, almost 2 million rice growers in the Mekong Delta have been persuaded to cut back on using harmful and unnecessary farm chemicals. The campaign - which was a joint effort of a team of Philippine and Vietnamese scientists - has sharply reduced pesticide misuse, and won the collaborative effort the US$25,000 Saint Andrews' Environmental Prize for 2002. The prize money is now being used to extend the campaign to another million rice farmers in the Red River Delta.

"What we hope to learn next is why the farmers of central Luzon have learned these lessons so much more quickly than farmers elsewhere," adds Dr. John. First launched in 1994 in the Mekong Delta - long one of the great rice bowls of Asia - the research and subsequent campaign marked a milestone in rice production for two reasons. IRRI says that first it clearly identified the damage caused by insecticide overuse, which kills off friendly insects and so encourages the pests they would otherwise help control, and it also developed a completely new way of communicating important information to farmers.

The basic premise of integrated pest management (IPM) is that no single pest-control method can be successful over a long period. Therefore, a mixture of biological, physical and chemical methods must be considered and integrated into a cohesive strategy designed to sustain a pest-management system. The ultimate goal of IPM is sustainable agricultural systems with minimal or no pesticide use, says an IRRI press release. One wonders when will this new found wisdom be applied in cotton, which alone consumes more than 50 per cent of the total pesticides used.

Well, if that is true, isn't it a fact that agricultural scientists had misled farmers all these years? Isn't it a fact that because of the over-emphasis on the use of chemicals to control pests, more problems have been created rather than being addressed? Isn't it a fact that besides polluting the environment, insecticides have changed the pest profile turning many minor insect species to emerge as major pests? Does it not mean that if scientists had learnt from farmers, probably they could have found simple time-tested technologies that wouldn't have destroyed the fertile lands?

For instance, in the State of Tamil Nadu, situated in the southern part of India, more than 8,000 farmers in some 10 districts have been using herbal pest repellents. Such has been the mental conditioning that no agricultural scientist, graduating from the land grant colleges, will ever accept the efficacy and utility of such an herbal spray. The result being that while expensive and unwanted pesticides are being promoted and pushed by the scientists and extension workers, farmers are looking for safe and ecological alternatives. While Philippino researchers say one of the key factors continuing to influence Philippine farmers is the return of fish, frogs and edible snails to their farms, confirming the positive environmental impact of IPM strategies, it may take some time for Indian agricultural scientists to see the writing on the wall.

A Karikali-based group in Tamil Nadu, prides in calling itself a university with multifarious ecological roles -- Vazhviyal Multiversity. Its herbal pest repellant is based on traditional knowledge listed in the scripture -- Vriksha Ayurveda. The repellant is prepared from the leaves of five plant species that are not eaten by cattle. These can vary from a place to place, but would ideally have neem, tulsi, and datura. The leaves are collected, cut into pieces and then pounded. The biomass is then put in an earthen pot filled with cow urine. The pot is kept in a compost pit for ten days, during which period it gets fermented. Filter the fermented solution with a cotton cloth, add ten times the quantity with water, and the herbal spray is ready.

The only catch being that the herbal spray is applied before the insects appear. Such simple technologies unfortunately do not find any mention in the agriculture textbooks and curriculum. The reason is simple: there is no industry behind it.

Numerous such technologies have been in vogue. But with the advent of modern science, which began to view everything traditional as backward and sub-standard, the collective wisdom of generations of farmers was lost. Such was the massive campaign to discredit everything that was time-tested for ages that modern science, its blind adoption, and extensive application became the essential ingredient for classifying farmers as ‘progressive'. The chemical industry, which gained commercially from the surge in widespread use, very cleverly used agricultural scientists as its promoters. By the time the scientists realized, and thanks to a concerted campaign by some civil society groups and organizations, the damage and destruction had been done.

The chemical industry has meanwhile moved into life sciences. The same industry now decries pesticides and sings virtues for the new 'promising technology' - genetic engineering. Pesticides are now being replaced with genetically modified crops, which perform the same functions. The tragedy is that agricultural scientists are being once again used as promoters of a technology, the negative impact of which have not been fully studied. Once again, agricultural scientists appear more than keen to take the farming community on a faulty garden path. And like the pesticides imbroglio, it may take decades before the disastrous implications of the cutting-edge technology, as genetic engineering is fondly called, become visible.

But then, who is responsible for and should be directed to pay for the clean-up operations to restore the sustainability of the lands and environment? Why shouldn't the ‘polluter pays' principle be applied to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which governs the 16 international agricultural research centers, and of course the multi-billion dollar chemical industry to pay for the environmental damages? It is time agricultural science is made accountable. It is high time that the CGIAR is directed to cough out the real cost of the environmental destruction its technologies have wrought. Modern science cannot be allowed a free play for un-necessary experimentation that does irreparable damage to the land and water that feeds the world. A beginning has to be made, the sooner the better.


(Devinder Sharma is a New Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst. Email: dsharma@ndf.vsnl.net.in)``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xPests, Pesticides and Modern Science``x1052215459,89623,world``x``x ``xBy Ras Tyehimba

With the accelerated use and development of technology, the role of media in shaping how people think and act, has become a very powerful one. Who controls the bulk of mainstream programming as it relates to TV, Internet and radio and what are the implications of the information/disinformation that is propagated? The engine of globalization is humming and the tentacles of Hollywood are traversing the globe injecting the minds of people with its neo colonial venom. What is the impact of this on our children, what is the implication of this for following generation? What is the role of InI is this era where homosexuality is becoming as prevalent as toxic fast food. From America/Hollywood that brought us the fast food fad laced with carcinogenic toxins comes another western promoted fad: homosexuality. What is the effect of the promotion of this, especially on our young children who turn on the TV and are bombarded by images of two men in bed. Homosexual behavior is currently being shown on TV and promoted as being normal. And its about to get much worse as MTV is planning to open a new station targeted at gay audiences.

The continuous images of white people and the bombardment of these images on the psyche of non-white people is very damaging especially to children who are at a very tender stage of development. These images by their very nature perpetuate an inferiority syndrome that is very pervasive in some Afrikan people. This inferiority syndrome is one of the main reasons for the Afro phobic mentality often displayed by the recipients of this brainwashing. They see the white world as portrayed by the silver screen as the epitome of civilization and thus they want to be white. To be white is good to be black is to be bad. In this craze to whitewash themselves they ruthlessly pursue the American dream, only to discover that the American dream doesn’t include them.

Among young people entertainment through movies and music videos are very popular, with Bet and Mtv being the prime stations. Analysis of the content of these is enough to make one retch with disgust as these stations are deeding the public with a steady diet of promiscuous sex, drugs, homosexuality, and carnal gratification. It is the peak of unconstructive and destructive entertainment/pop culture. The rap artists do quite a lot of damage, spewing images of fast cars, ‘bling bling’ jewelry, brand name clothing, half nude women, and alcohol. This image that these things are the aim of life, and are the requirements for a good life is one of the most damaging images perpetuated on black people second only to the image of the white Jesus. These black rappers are just pawns, controlled by the American system to spread the word of American supremacy global. It is highly symbolic and significant that these rappers proudly call themselves ‘niggers’ Only a ignorant person would address themselves in such a self demeaning manner.

News media is very critical especially as it relates to how people view themselves and by extension their environment.(the World). The situations in Venezuela, Palestine/”Israel, Zimbabwe and Iraq has left no doubt (in the minds relatively conscious people), that the mainstream media are interested in upholding the principles of truth, justice and freedom.

There is a very urgent need for alternative sources of media especially news media, owned and controlled outside of the dictates of any neo-colonial imperial entities. If I have an argument with someone and I’m explaining it to you, whose side will I represent? Mine of course! Naturally! Until the Lion has a historian of its own the tale of the hunt will continuously glorify the hunter. How on earth can we leave our education in the hands of those who are profiting from the exploitation and suppression of so called ‘third world people’ of which the majority are non white people. The true story of the past, present and future will continue to be ignored in the mainstream media (education, radio, TV, newspapers etc) until more people become conscious of the need for alternative media. The growing prevalence of the internet across the globe is helping to offset the monopoly of mass media which entities like BBC and CNN have on the minds of the masses. There will be dire consequences if the role of western media in perpetuating the arrogant
/Eurocentric /patriachial / white supremacist attitudes that are currently imbedded in Western civilization are left to continue unchallenged.

It is imperative for the more conscious people of this time to propagate conscious ideas and alternative ways of doing things that starkly contrast how things are done in the mainstream, totally mindless of humanity. In every sphere of activity it is necessary to offer alternative means void of the biases of western civilization. In education, religion, science, business, media and entertainment it is necessary for the divine self, inherent in everyone to be held aloft and accorded its rightful place.

It is necessary to rewrite our history, using the often-ignored evidence to expose the myths of this generation. No longer must the trust of shaping our future be places in the hands of those that benefit from our continued ignorance.

In this age of (mis)information, the principles that have guided ancient indigenous people for thousands and thousands of years must be permeated into the modern consciousness. The use of modern technology must be guided by these eternal truths, emphasizing that technology was created to aid humanity not destroy it. Globalization is threatening the survival of people across the diverse landscape of this so called global village and as the stranglehold on third world countries increases, what choice is there but to continue the battle against all forms of imperialism and cultural degradation. Institutions like the IMF and the World Bank continue to be agents of modern day colonialism, with third world countries reeling under massive external debt. No mention of the wealth stolen from them for hundreds of years and used to fund the industrialization and development of the current developed countries.

In spite of the poverty, the cancer of greed, the wanton materialism, the bloodshed and the ignorance that exists today, the world is still a very beautiful piece of creation, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. In spite of the often overwhelming burden of everyday life, there is a deeper meaning to our existence that the masses are not conscious of. Every situation happens for us to learn something and so we must delve deep deep into our consciousness in order to bring about a wider change. The individual is where the impetus for change must resonate from, for there to be any significant global change. There will be no conscious progress if vital history continues to be ignored in the mainstream. It is impossible for us to move on until we’ve come to terms with ourselves as it relates to the past. I see spirituality as becoming conscious of how past events have shaped the present, and how our every action will affect the future. It is the process of extracting divine energy from ourselves/from the power of our choices. It is impossible for Afrikan people to reach the heights of this existence if we let others define who we are, what we should do, what we should eat, what we can be... Nearly every sphere of activity was/is manipulated to control us, and in the spirit of the revolution we must break the shackles in every sphere of activity especially in terms of media, education and religion. The drums of Pan Africanism must reverberate throughout this global village, waking up the many that are fast asleep, inspiring those who have inspired us and partaking in the Doctrine of the Supreme Good* as we have done for thousands and thousands of years.

* This doctrine propagated by the ancients in Alkebulan (Afrika) stating that the highest aim of this existence was to become God-like/One with God. ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Need For Alternative Sources Of Media``x1052440243,47818,rasta``x``x ``xby Ayinde

Homosexuality is a sore point among Rastafarians, especially those who try to define the standards by which all others should live. All people will not be Rastafarians and Rastafarians should not be so quick to dismiss people outright, without having clearly definable reasons.

How is their lifestyle denying Rastas the right to do anything including open businesses, getting jobs and developing spiritually?

What is the reasoning on the subject?

If some Rastas choose to dissociate from homosexuality that is their choice but the tone of the chatter on the subject is usually about "dissing" others outright, only because they do not share their sexual preferences. Certainly many homosexuals were misled and some have biological abnormalities but it is not our business to make rules for everyone.

Those who do not like it and feel to lobby Hollywood are free to so do, and those who feel it is worth promoting are always free to so do as well. Sensible people would not be looking for role models in Hollywood anyway; they would be busy developing alternative media.

Those who reason with people instead of trying to dictate to them will learn that some fair perspectives on life do come from homosexuals (both male and female). You really do not have to consider having sex with everyone you reason with; it's that simple.

It is not only homosexuals that I disagree with regards to sexuality. I also disagree with many 'regular' people's views on sexuality, but that is only worth sharing if that aspect of them becomes an integral part of our reasoning.

That does not mean that we cannot reason together or that I want them wiped out. It simply means that we have a different understanding on the functions of sex. I am cool as long as people's preferences does not infringe on my rights/freedoms.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xHomosexuality``x1052657987,82993,views``x``x ``xReply: Ayinde RastafariSpeaks Reasoning Forum
May 17th, 2003, 3:09pm

It is understandable that some Whites who are making an effort want to be seen as different from the rest. But people are not supposed to take this at face value. Such Whites should not expect automatic acceptance because of efforts. There are too many, WAY TOO MANY, Africans who are making a genuine effort to help themselves and others without recognition and without looking to be accepted by any one group.

There are Africans even on this board that are very enlightened but in their wisdom they will not try to ridicule people who are relentless in their effort to keep the African aspect of our work alive. If it were not for the efforts of many who work to keep the African focus alive, some of us will not be able to make time to address the other concerns (spiritual or otherwise).

Some whites really do feel sickened by the conduct of other whites when they see them continually come here asking silly questions and making derogatory statements. However SOME whites just stay on the side and observe the poor conduct of other whites, while they keep their focus on trying to correct the legitimate attitudes of Africans.

What would give some, who are simply making an effort, the feeling that they can understand the depth of the legitimate distrust many Africans have for whites?

Why would some expect others to suddenly accept them as different solely by their word? Making an effort is not equal to change. And no one is obligated to believe someone at his or her word. We would have to wait for a new history of improvement before these attitudes can change.

Are Africans suddenly to stop legitimately generalizing because a few are making an effort? If some know they are different in the face of widespread racism then they should not be offended by a generalization, which is still legitimate. They should understand that for many Africans the struggle is a day-to-day affair where any error in judgment about white attitudes can cost them their lives. It is safer for many Africans to maintain the distrust and not dismiss the lessons of History.

Inside many Whites, even those who are making an effort, is still the desire to tear down yet another African and many times the very Africans they would have 'learned' from. The same as most males who continually struggle to accept that a woman has all the rights she can perceive. The nuances of racism and male domination do not go away because one is making an effort.

Making an effort is part of a journey and not the destination.

Ones should take the time to reach the destination so they can truly understand the real distrust of many better-informed Africans.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xMaking an effort is not the destination``x1053144000,3861,views``x``x ``xby Ravi Grover

"Far more whites have entered the gates of the 10 most elite institutions through 'alumni preference' than the combined numbers of all the Blacks and Chicanos entering through affirmative action."
- S.F. Examiner, April 1995

"We must understand the cynicism that exists in the Black community. The kind of cynicism that is created when, for example, some in our party miss no opportunity to roundly and loudly condemn affirmative action that helped few thousand Black kids get an education, but you hardly heard a whimper from them over affirmative action for lobbyists who load our federal tax codes with preferences for special interests."
- Colin Powell at the 2000 Republican National Convention

One of many stops during Bush's 2000 campaign for the Presidency was Bob Jones University, an ill-famed school which refused to allow the entry of Black students up until 1971. Soon after admitting Blacks measures were taken in 1975 to make sure that such people didn't intermingle with whites. The school set a ban on interracial dating, citing a Biblical story which talks of God creating barriers between different peoples. During his campaign Bush didn't blink an eye or lodge any sort of moral protest against Bob Jones University. But he sure did speak passionately a few weeks after Senator Trent Lott's resignation over Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan.

To me, George Bush is symbolic of America and business as usual. Here we have a completely unintelligent and unqualified white guy who made bad grades both in high school and in college yet is somehow in a high leadership position with the support of a significant number people white and non-white. For whatever reason these people deliberately overlook his stupidity and lack of competency. His career title 'leader of the free world' requires knowledge of the international community and global affairs; yet he makes blatantly ignorant statements like "Africa is a nation that suffers from great disease" and "unrest in the Middle East causes unrest through out the region." He got into Yale not because of his intelligence (because he's obviously lacking that), but because 30% of admissions in Ivy League schools are reserved specifically for children of alumni, regardless of academic achievement. Why is it opponents of Affirmative Action never seem to criticize the discriminatory policy of legacy admissions? And no surprise that historically alumni at these schools have been majority white males, so it would then make sense that the incoming 30% will also be majority white. Bush also experimented with cocaine in his past yet avoided going to jail (and moral judgment from white America). Yet another fine example of Affirmative Action for whites: even though the majority of drug users in America are white and Blacks make up a mere 13% of drug users, somehow Blacks are 74% of the people imprisoned for possession of drugs.

Bush is also a staunch supporter of the War on Drugs as are many white parents - so long as white kids who are caught are filling up rehab clinics and not jail cells. And here is the most important aspect of Bush that resembles the structure of America: the guy goes on vacation every other week and does very little work.

Who's doing his work for him? An administration full of both men and women of color who have had to prove their intelligence (Condoleeza Rice went to Stanford and Colin Powell went to West Point) by working twice as hard as their fellow whites, who have had to struggle to get to the top instead of having power handed over to them on a silver platter, and who are in that cabinet specifically because of Affirmative Action. Yet even though it's people of color who are doing all the work behind the scenes, the under-worked, unqualified, and unintelligent white guy is praised by his supporters as exhibiting great leadership. Not to mention many people deliberately overlook the fact that maybe the idiot shouldn't be in charge.

You can see this pattern reflected in American businesses. In the agriculture industry the majority of labor is done by Latino workers who are sweating 10 hours a day in 100 degree southwest weather. Yet almost all of these companies are owned and managed by white guys. In the Information Technology, medical, and science industries a large number of the employees are Asians with Ph.D?s and Master Degrees. Again, most hospitals and computer companies are run and managed by less educated and less experienced white guys. In the sports industry where the majority of the athletes are Black virtually all teams and merchandising companies are run and owned by white guys. You look at the garment business, most of the workers are immigrant women of color, and again who runs and manages these companies? White people.

Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of qualified and hard working whites deserving of their jobs and college admissions. But if America's businesses and its education system show us anything it's that time and time again, unqualified white males are being promoted and accepted over qualified, educated, hard working people of color and white women.

Which brings me to these two questions: does Bush, a man who's received hand-outs his whole life and is on vacation half the year while getting paid a high salary, have the right to talk about discrimination? Do whites like to 'play the race card' to ensure access to opportunities? Here are some facts showing that they do:

- The Glass Ceiling Commission, headed by Republican Elizabeth Dole, reported in 1995 that even though many minority (particularly Asian) workers had higher levels of education and better work credentials than their white counterparts, lesser qualified white males were still being promoted over them. 97% of the sr. managers of the Fortune 1000 Industrial and Fortune 500 companies are white, and 95%+ are male while 57% of the work force are people of color, women, or both. Of the 5% of managers that are women, 5% of that are women of color! When polled at the workplace the majority of white workers stated that they'd rather answer to a white male boss (even if he's got the vocabulary of a 4 year old like George Bush??) over a person of color.

- In the state of Washington Blacks only make up a little over 3.8% of the college student population. This means that for every 100 students (who are majority white in Washington) only 4 students are Black. White residents felt so threatened by this ridiculously tiny FOUR PERCENT that they passed a state ballot initiative to get rid of Affirmative Action from state universities and colleges. I wonder who white parents scapegoat now when their kids don't get into college?

- Even though Canadians make up the 4th largest illegal immigrant population in the US, Irish are the 1st largest illegal population in New England, and Italians are the 2nd largest illegal population in NYC, over 95% of people stopped and/or imprisoned by the INS are people of color. The majority of Border Patrol activity occurring at the US-Mexico border. According to www.ins.gov, Mexicans only make up 30% of undocumented aliens in the US, yet are targeted the most by law enforcement. The New York Times reported that of 37 work raids conducted by the INS use of Spanish by workers was criteria for investigating people believed to be illegal.

- According to a 1997 USDA report several southeastern states took 3 times as long to grant loans to Black farmers as it did to white farmers. In 1992 94% of the committees that granted loans had no minority or females employed.

- A study by the Leadership Council on Civil Rights reported that Black youth who've committed a violent crime are 9 times more likely to be sent to prison than white youth who've committed the exact same crime.

- The Department of Justice reports that white college students are the overwhelming majority of drug users and underage drinkers in the USA. Yet Black motorists in NJ are 9 times more likely to be pulled over by cops and have their cars searched for drugs. A Boston Globe investigation found that in Massachusetts Blacks are twice as likely as whites to have their cars searched when stopped by the police. In St. Louis, IL Latinos are 1% of the population yet 40% more likely to be pulled over by cops than whites.

- Even though suburban whites consume the most resources and produce the majority of waste in America (and in the world) a United Church of Christ report found that 3 out of 5 of the largest commercial landfills garbage dumps are in Black and Latino neighborhoods. 60% of Black & Latino and 50% of Asian American & Native American neighborhoods have uncontrolled toxic sites.

- The University of Chicago and MIT studies showed that resumes with Black-sounding names were 50% more likely to be passed up then resumes with white sounding names (ironically I saw this same news story reported the same day Bush came out against Affirmative Action)

- The Fair Employment Council of Greater Washington reported that Blacks are twice as likely to be denied mortgages as whites who are making the same income and have the same qualifications

- According to an Equal Pay Day study, women earn 89 cents for every $1 earned by a man, even when women are working the same job and have the same experience

- Blacks earn 80% of whites with the same education level The President of the University of Michigan (who's a white male) has come out in support of Affirmative Action. You would think that he would be against such a policy if his school is being overrun by stupid, unintelligent minorities, right? But this isn't the case. What's also not mentioned about the white woman who is suing U of M is that white students who had lower GPA's and aptitude test scores were admitted into the school over her. So where's the lawsuit for that? Sometimes it seems like some whites have no problem looking the other way when it comes to the stupidity of other whites but get easily infuriated over the presence of imaginary 'unqualified' people of color.

It's worth noting that when I (or anyone else) write about the existence of institutional bigotry we have to present as many facts as possible just to prove our damn point to all the skeptical whites. But when whites talk about being denied jobs or not getting admitted into a school because of 'reverse' discrimination we're just supposed to automatically take their word for it even thought they have no facts to back up their claims. Why is it we never see Labor studies conducted on how large numbers of whites are unemployed because immigrants have 'stolen' their jobs? Why is it rich whites aren't funding research to publish statistics on the large number of whites across America denied education because of Affirmative Action? Why is it through the media we don't ever hear of the wide spread impact that institutional 'reverse' discrimination has on white America? Why aren't American businesses and corporations coming out against Affirmative Action by showing that all these incompetent minorities and women are bringing them down and making them lose profits? Why isn't the US military, one of the largest proponents of Affirmative Action in America speaking out against such a policy? Where is the proof that universities are admitting brainless people of color into their schools who are dumbing down the quality of education at such institutions?

If there was proof of such discrimination going on we'd see studies conducted and analytical reports issued by both government and private organizations trying to expose the suffering of whites. Instead we listen to a lot of empty rhetoric on 'reverse' discrimination (which is really insulting because it implies that it's natural to discriminate against women and people of color) . There are clearly more whites in this country with most of America's wealth concentrated in this population. Surely they can finance and produce such a study to back up their claims of this supposed rampant unfairness they are encountering. But they don't and they can't.

Why? Because there simply is no proof.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAffirmative Action for Whites``x1054169963,53297,world``x``x ``xCommencement Speech At Grinnell College
by Tim Wise, May 20, 2003, Znet

Thank you very much, to the administration, faculty, assembled guests and parents but mostly to the graduating seniors, who for some totally inexplicable reason have chosen me to give today's commencement address.

I am still convinced that there must have been some terrible, terrible mistake, perhaps some kind of vote fraud, as it is not everyday that radical activists are asked to speak at these kinds of things. Indeed, I barely made it to my own graduation, so you can imagine my surprise when I was asked to attend yours.

My first thought was, honestly, what kind of example can I possibly set for these students? I mean, I graduated thirteen years ago and have just finished paying off my student loans, like, last Wednesday or something, so I can't imagine that makes me much of a role model.

But anyway, having said all that, I will dispense with the self-deprecation, for the clock is ticking, and although you did not come here today to listen to me, I was apparently chosen to give this speech for a reason, and so I figure I'd best say something worthy of the occasion.

I mostly want to avoid saying something trite, something terribly cliché, something ordinary and pedestrian--like the kind of thing most folks say when asked to give a commencement speech. I want desperately not to say something like, "you are the future of this country," although indeed you are. And I want even more desperately not to say something about how you should, after leaving this place, "continue to learn and to search for truth," though indeed you should do both.

Because you see, trite and cliché are already far too prevalent in this culture. Meaningless platitudes are the order of the day it seems, from politicians, corporate leaders, media talking heads, you name it; and I want desperately not to be like that.

And even though meaningless platitudes often come wrapped in the best of intentions, they are rendered no less meaningless by the heartfelt decency of their authors: a truism that has become painfully obvious to me, especially in the past two years.

Ever since 9/11 in fact, trite and cliché have almost become virtues it seems, as millions of good and decent people have rushed to slap bumper stickers on their cars, which say things like "United We Stand."

United, really? Well excuse me if I'm not convinced.

You see, unity is not a state of being that can be secured by a simple act of proclamation; it does not flow like water just because one wishes it to be so. Unity is something to be created; the culmination of dedicated effort, and a condition that requires as a prerequisite something else, and that something else is justice. And not just for some, or most, but for all.

And justice in turn requires equity: true equity of opportunity and access, neither of which condition existed on 9/10 or 9/9, or 9/8 or at any time before 9/11, and neither of which condition miraculously emerged phoenix-like from the ashes on that day.

Let me suggest to you that so long as the poverty rates for people of color in this country are two to three times the rates for whites, that we are anything but united.

So long as 42 million people go without health care, and millions live just a layoff or major illness away from destitution, and even homelessness, we are anything but united.

So long as there are a million black children living in families with less than $7000 in annual income--a 50% increase in the number of such kids in extreme poverty in just the past three years--we are anything but united.

So long as there are, according to federal data, roughly 3 million cases of housing discrimination against people of color each year in this country, we are anything but united.

So long as my Arab and Muslim brothers and sisters are being profiled as likely terrorists, in ways that no white men were in the wake of Oklahoma City, we are anything but united.

So long as hundreds of thousands of women continue to face glass ceilings, and worse--sexual assault--in their homes, and even at the Air Force Academy, we are anything but united.

So long as my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters can be fired just because they are gay or lesbian, or arrested in their homes for consensual sexual activity, we are anything but united, and I should add, anything but free.

As we search in vain for those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and fail to find them (even the $1.5 billion dollars worth of chemical and biological weapons that American corporations sold Saddam for all those years), let us remember that we have our own weapons of mass destruction, and I'm not talking about our bulging stockpiles of war material. Rather I refer to other kinds of weapons, weapons which kill and maim more Americans than Osama bin Laden ever has: they are weapons known as indifference, apathy, fatalism, and a sense of resignation to the way things are.

Because the fact is, none of the progress about which we as a nation like to boast came about as a result of folks being passive, or conforming, or because people accepted the system into which they were born.

And change certainly never comes about if people are too afraid to issue harsh critiques of their nation's flaws for fear that small-minded, scared little men with radio or TV talk shows or cabinet-level positions might call them unpatriotic.

Patriotism, if it is to have any value whatsoever, must mean the desire to set right the wrongs present within one's own nation; to demand justice and equity and to oppose anything and anyone that stands in the way of either.

Patriotism does not mean waving a flag, saying a pledge, chanting "USA, USA," at some jingoistic pep rally, and then ignoring everything the Constitution says your nation was supposed to be about. It does not mean nation-worship, and if it does, then God help us, patriotism has become little more than modern idolatry, and is a concept with which we can do without.

For those people of color, seeking to navigate the waters of a society still not fully committed to treating you as the equals you are, please know that you are the generation your ancestors prayed for, and you are capable of transforming this land. What's more, you are entitled to do so, seeing as how your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents have no doubt paid for it many times over.

And for whites, wondering where we fit in this struggle for racial equity and justice, I say to you that we must learn to listen, to follow, to be allies in the truest sense of the word; to challenge this society even when, and especially when, it provides to us unearned privileges because of our skin color, our history, and the inertia propelled into the present-day by that history.

And not because of some misplaced liberal guilt, but because racism diminishes us as well, and steals a part of our humanity by separating us from our brothers and sisters of color.

Now I know this can be hard to hear. It is easier, I suspect, to content oneself with the clichéd notion of personal innocence--as in, "I didn't do it, I never owned slaves, I never killed an Indian, I never discriminated against anyone"--but truly, it is a little late in the proverbial day for that.

Because you see, we inherit the legacy of what has come before. History does not start, and stop, and then start again. There is no reset button that allows us to go back to a state of innocence long after that innocence has been delivered stillborn.

So although we may not be responsible for the creation of a system of racism, among other forms of injustice, we are responsible nonetheless for doing something about that system from this point forward. To do less is to collaborate with the original sin, to make us no better than those who set things up this way.

Perhaps a story can make the point here by way of analogy.

Shortly after I graduated from college, I made the decision to move into a large house with nine other roommates. Please note, and let me spare you the experience, this is never a good idea. But we thought at the time that it would be great. It would be really cheap and we would even share grocery expenses, and take turns cooking so as to share responsibility for the group.

And one night, about two weeks into our little experiment in collective living, one of my roommates made a big pot of Gumbo, because that's what you do in New Orleans.

And when I returned from work that night, he asked if I wanted some. I said no, having already eaten; but I asked him to please save some for me and to put it in the fridge for the next day, as I might take it to work with me; and then I went upstairs to my room, watched TV and went to bed.

The next morning, I come down for my coffee before heading out the door, and what do I see but that pot of Gumbo, half-full, still sitting on the front left burner of the stove. No portion of it had been saved for me, but more to the point, a great quantity of food had gone to waste. And I was upset. Having a little time on my hands, I thought to myself, perhaps I should clean up this mess.

But then I caught myself, and I thought, "Wait a minute; I didn't make this mess; this isn't my fault, and so I'm not cleaning it up." And I took my self-righteousness out the door and went to work.

About 6 o' clock, I returned home and noticed another roommate cooking the evening's dinner on the front right burner of the stove, but on the front left burner, there was still that pot of Gumbo, getting nastier, and crustier and funkier by the minute.

And I asked roommate number two what he was doing; why was he cooking around last night's dinner; why hadn't he cleaned up first?

To which he responded that he hadn't made that mess; that it wasn't his fault; and so he shouldn't have to clean it up--logic with which I could hardly argue, as indeed I had said the same thing just a few hours earlier. So I grabbed a plate of the night's meal, went to my room, did some work and went to bed.

7 a.m. came, and I had forgotten to set my alarm, but I really didn't need one; for I assure you that when Gumbo has been sitting on a stove for thirty-six hours, the smell will extend beyond the kitchen, will travel up the stairs, down the hall, under your door and through your keyhole, and assault--in a way I cannot describe--your nostrils; and indeed that is what happened.

And now I was mad. I bolted down the stairs, glared at the pot of Gumbo, as if somehow I expected it to return the stare. I saw it sitting there, now even nastier, and funkier, and there was not a roommate in sight.

And it was at that point that I said to myself, "I might not have made this mess, this may not be my fault, but I'm going to clean it up, simply because I'm tired of living in the funk."

And you see, it is the same with human societies. When we finally become tired of living in the funk, in the residue of injustice passed down to us from previous generations we will seek to clean it up, issues of blame and guilt aside.

Not to say that it will be easy of course. Cleaning up a pot of two-day Gumbo after all is a lot easier than transforming a culture.

People will tell you that you can't change the way things are; others will ridicule you for even trying, and often times your efforts will fail. They will, in fact, likely fail more often than they succeed. But that doesn't matter, because--and please never forget it--there is redemption in struggle.

Win or lose--and don't get me wrong, we indeed fight in the hopes of winning true justice--there is something to be said for confronting the inevitable choice one must make in this life, between collaborating with or resisting injustice, and choosing the latter.

There is something to be said for knowing you did all you could to stop a war, eliminate racism, or improve your community for the good of all. There is something to be said for a good night's sleep, and the ability to wake in the morning, look in the mirror, and never doubt that if today were your last, that you would have lived a life of integrity.

For although we never know when our efforts will succeed, or even if they will at all, we do know one thing as surely as we know that the sun will rise and set each day; we know what will happen if we DON'T do the work: nothing.

And given that choice, between the certainty of defeat and the promise of justice, in which territory lies the measure of our resolve and humanity, I will gladly and without reservation opt for hope. And I'm hoping you will too.

So as James Baldwin put it: "The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in."

Thank you.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xCleaning Up The Funk``x1055025226,31753,world``x``x ``xby WarriorPrincess

A deep reflection of the Soul this day and life is good, sweet, and profound in its Divine mystery. The veil lifts sleeping eyes to reveal her sacred treasure to one's who seek in honesty and truth... sincerely, clearly, to know the essence and meaning of life. For this is a keyhole that unlocks a door that stands at the precipice of ourselves; an offering of a way to walk through, and stand firm, in the knowledge of who we are within our collective Universal Divinity.

Just what each of our journeys reveals and contributes is essential within building the greater foundation of the Whole...created part and particle we each bring completion to it from the very essence and nature of our beautiful unique Selves.

Each of our experiences lend insight, perspective, and value into helping us put all these things into some proper form of perspective...our race, our culture, our gender, our essence, all play pivotal roles in determining there value...yes value.. for who we are, and where we come from, has great meaning, purpose, and value to serve something higher and greater than ourselves...yet we must first come with ourselves...from ourselves, through ourselves, respecting ourselves.. to see our True Essential Self, and united as a Whole

A journey into Rastafari has opened a powerful door to give many this profound Spiritual insight.. allowing all to come with who they are... as they are.. where they are...and Reason. .and Reason High about all issues under the sun.. listening.. learning.. growing from all shared experiences.. Pruning.. shaking the very false foundations from which we walk under, to over, and stand deeper in the awareness from all our uniquely different and diverse perspectives/paths .. Holy children of the Most High… let us not fear to hold ourselves up High to the Light and see who we truly are.

This is my journey into Rasta...a journey into the Self...a journey that exposes my truth...a journey that waters my Spiritual Root...a journey that helps me to overstand my culture and the impact of how it relates to all other cultures.a journey as to how I can be more effective in the fullness of my feminine woman...valuable with who I am created to be in all of this, THIS DAY because thy Father's Hand doth create I to stand firm in the fullness OF Him...reflect Him. Lover and giver of Him… through Him. Rastafari is the process to revealing His Truth in ALL things Created both under and over the magnificence of the sun!

fireball love

Post comments here...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xJourney to Rasta``x1055785923,37301,views``x``x ``xPosted by: Kingston
Jun 16th, 2003

Does the truest Rasta heart belong to a Man whom has decided to wear dreadlocks?

Let Us skip the discussion about those who wear dreadlocks for fashion.

At first thought I would say no, yet upon further reasoning with a youth I aquaint with I may feel that it is so.

Naturally I am not questioning any Rasta who has a true heart and does not wear dreadlocks for there are many of Us but I look at it like this.

A true Rasta wearing locks can be likend to Jesus walking with the cross in the sense that He has chosen to walk his life with this cross, dreadlocks, upon His back.

I say this for it is the truest statement a Rasta can make. The dreadlock is the universal indicator of the Rastaman.

A dreadlocked man shuts many of Babylon's doors for Him. He is forced to live more independently because of this choice.

I leave this topic open as it stands.

Jah's humble servant,

..Kingston..

_________________________________________________________


Response: by Ayinde
Jun 19th, 2003

Rasta from the ancient point of view meant wisdom. So when our ancestors said they wished to enter the house of Rasta, they were speaking in relation to that exalted spiritual state where one attains wisdom.

The word Rasta in relation to dreadlocks is derived from the natural way people lived especially in ancient times when they deliberately returned to the forest to recapture the laws of nature. In so doing they were isolated and without grooming so the dreadlocks developed naturally. This is quite similar to when people get lost on some deserted island and are forced to survive on their own. Sometimes these people learn to embrace nature and develop the natural skills to survive in the wild. Of course, their hair becomes wild or dreaded because they are away from grooming.

In Ethiopia, the word Ras evolved to mean 'head' and since leaders then were considered to be divine, then Ras Tafari was seen as another divine leader.

In essence Rasta is about developing oneself towards self-actualization, which is the only way to attain universal wisdom.

One can do many things to symbolize that they are different. I choose to simply do my best.

Continue this reasoning here...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xA "Dreaded" question``x1056044330,56746,views``x``x ``xPosted on The Rastafari Speaks Board
By: Makeda Blake Hannah
Date: Monday, 16 June 2003, at 5:14 a.m.

'All religions have been given to mankind by the Recording Angels, who know the spiritual requirements of each class, nation, and race, and have the intelligence to give each a form of worship perfectly suited to its particular need.' This message perfectly describes the origin of I&I Rastafari faith.

Reading the messages on this Board often shows me a huge difference between Rastafari as practiced in Jamaica and the Rastafari practiced by American-based Rastas. The main difference between the two varieties of Rastafari is that Black Americans on the Board are preoccupied with several issues that do not concern Jamaican Rastas.

First and foremost is the matter of race, or racism. Black American Rastas on this Board are continually discussing racial issues, especially cussing non-Black Rastafari. Indeed, most Black American Rastas on this Board are violently opposed to the fact that the Rastafari philosophy has been embraced by people of non-Black races. I assume this arises from the fact that Black Americans live daily among racism that causes them to have an aggressive attitude to non-Black people.

Jamaican Rastafari have no such problem. The vestiges of white Racism that remain in Jamaica do not affect our daily lives in a similar manner. In fact, leaving aside the rapidly disappearing 'renta-dread' phenomenon, Jamaican Rastafari and non-Blacks have an excellent relationship. Rastafari culture is the magnet that draws most people to Jamaica and most visitors of all races and nations seek out encounters with Rastafari as a major objective of their visit. Equally, these encounters are welcomed by Rastafari with dignity and pride because I&I are confident of who we are and what our culture and faith represents to others.

In Jamaica we have Rastas of all races, mixed and pure. There are Jamaican Rastas who are Chinese/African, Euro/African, Indo/African, Arab/African, as well as those Rastas who are near-white AND white. Twelve Tribes was originally the Jamaican mansion for 'uptown brownings'. In Jamaica, Rasta is about PEACE AND LOVE especially. Whites drawn to Rastafari because of the LOVE are welcomed by the Jamaican Rasta community on the basis of the strength of their faith and the Love in their hearts. Look at Bob and Cindy! Look at their son, Damion Jr. Gong!

Another difference between Jamaican Rastas and Black American Rastas is that our self-knowledge as Africans does not require us to be experts on Egyptian history or the cultural practices of African tribes. In fact, most Jamaican Rastas would be both surprised and ignorant of most of the Afrocentric information posted on this Board. In Jamaica, Africa is discussed as modern political history and current affairs, not only a Repatriation objective.

In Jamaica, Rastafari is practiced as a pathway to God and a higher order of CHRIST-ianity. Unlike Rastas in the USA, Jamaicans become Rasta from being in and around Rastafari expressions in all aspects of daily life. Jamaican Rastafari –from the youngest ghetto youth just sprouting his dreads, to the older Rases gathered around a Kutchie – are mostly to be found discussing the spiritual pathway to Higher Heights, aspects of the Bible, the true Godhood of Selassie I or the righteous lyrics of the latest reggae psalm. Rastafari in Jamaica is practiced as a RELIGION for those seeking Eternal Life.

Rastafari in Jamaica are expected to act as religious people, holy people, people with a divine mission founded in CHRIST-ian principles. Most Jamaicans have had a strictly Christian upbringing in a country which is said to have the most churches per capita, making it easier for I&I to live Rasta as a personal effort to be as Christ-like as Selassie I, I&I example. As the Emperor has said: "Spirituality is not theology or ideology. It is simple a way of life, pure and original as was given by the most high."

From the messages on this Board, I get the idea that most Black American Rastas have developed their Black consciousness in other AfroCentric faiths such as Black Muslims, Five Percenters, Pan Africanists, etc., and therefore bring to Rasta new ideas of Black expression that they feel should be included in Rastafari philosophy and practice because they are 'Black' or 'African'. However, if some of the topics discussed on this Board were to be presented to Jamaican Rastas, such as acceptance of polygamy, there would be a howl of protest because being Rasta in Jamaica is about being CHRISTly, not merely African.

For most Jamaican Rastas, the possibility of emigrating to Africa is remote, especially without the concept of moving in a large group to establish an effective community. For all its problems, Jamaica is still the best place on earth, so the reggae artists who regularly tour Africa still head 'home' to Jamaica when their tour is over, rather than using the opportunity to settle in Africa. For Jamaicans, while Repatriation is I&I physical objective, spiritual Repatriation to I&I Heavenly Home is the overmastering desire that motivates I&I daily.

These basic differences between Black American and Jamaican Rastas make it difficult for me to overstand a lot of what goes on in this Message Board. I'd expect to see more discussion about the fundamental reason I&I are Rastas, namely the desire to live the New Christ Life revealed to I&I by Emperor Haile Selassie I. This revelation was emphasized by the Emperor's gift to the West of the Ethiopian Orthodox faith as a new overstanding of the Christ Life and a new way of worshipping. Blended with the Nyabinghi Tabernacle devotions, this is RASTAFARI as Jamaicans overstand it.

ONE LOVE
Makeda

_________________________________________________________


Response: Posted on the Rastafari Speaks Board
By: Empress Chantee
Date: Thursday, 19 June 2003, at 12:48 p.m.

Blessed heart of love My Lord and Empress,
GIVE THANX FOR THE MIGHTY LIFE GIVER HOLY EMMANUEL I KING SELASSIE I JAH RASTAFARI!!!

I initially was not going to reply to this message but after a few days of pondering over the message and replies presented I could not hold back from responding.

Empress Makeda brought up some points that really stood out in my mind. I feel as a writer the I chose some words that are very broad when speaking as an ambassador for "Jamaican Rasta". She said the main difference between the two varieties of Rastafari is that Black Americans on the Board are preoccupied with several issues that DO NOT CONCERN JAMAICAN RASTAS. Wow!

You are kind of bold to speak for the whole of Jamaican Rastas when you declared these issues do not concern Jamaican Rastas. First and foremost is the matter of race, or racism. Why wouldn't race or racism concern the Jamaican Rasta? You continued by saying most Black American Rastas on this board are VIOLENTLY opposed to the fact that Rastafari philosophy has been embraced by people of non-black races. Wow!

Violently opposed? Can you please cite references to this. I have only read Blacks on this board declaring to non-blacks that they are not going to allow them to dictate to InI on what needs to be done or how things are done. I have read commentary of non rastas and rasta cussing at each other concerning different issues. There are deterents on this board such as J23 and Hylima and their crew. This has really been the only time I read cussing and arguing violently. Besides a young bredren who claims to be a "Jamaican Rasta" who started cussing everyone, one of the names he went by was Kebra.

Are you sure you are not speaking of YOUR excellent relationship with non black folks. Most Jamaican Rastas I know do not even have any dealings with non blacks on a daily basis. They try and deal with their immediate family and their concerns, they don't interact with non-blacks until it involves money.

I am not even going to say anything further about the Bob and Cindy comment, I think that was reasoned upon already. "Another difference between Jamaican Rasta and Black American Rasta is that our self-knowledge does not require us to be experts on Egyptian history or the cultural practices of African tribes. Africa is discussed as modern political history and current affairs, not only a Repatriation objective." Sister when I come on this board I see all of these things and how they interrelate with each other. What is wrong with learning about African tribes. That does not mean you have to agree with everything or embrace it in such a way, but to know a little about them is not going harm you.

I for one am certainly not an expert on Egyptian history, but I read some of the information that ones on this board provide. I have learned a lot from this board. So you are saying the information provided on this board only is a Repatriation objective? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. How can we not talk about all of these things. Repatriation is a priority to the RASTAMAN AND THE RASTAWOMAN. It is of paramount importance, which leads me to your next comment about Jamaica still is the best place on earth. So you let InI know how you feel about Africa (with all of its problems as you so conveniently stated about Jamaica) Don't get me wrong sister I LOVE JAMAICA.

I have been all over Jamaica and I have never gone dere as a tourist, but lived in the ghettos of Flanker PA, Glendevon, Kingston, Ochie, Lucea and so on. How can you give up a continent for an Island? Okay now I just thought about how this discussion became a rivalry of whose ghetto is worse. Kamau are you boasting about the death tolls of Africans killing each other in Jamaica. We were first discussing the "Jamaican Rasta" and then somehow got on the subject of the ghetto youths. I suppose you fly the Jamaican Britain flag. The Jamaican Rasta do not get caught up in that cause when the police pull you over to get some money when you don't have none they send you to jail and when you go to court they still hail the Queen of England. I know exactly who and how things are run in JA.

I read all the Jamaican newspapers as if I was dere right now. The ghettos of America, Jamaica, Trini, Barbados, and I can go on and on are not to be braggin on about whose the toughest or whatever. It is a shame because youths are still fighting over wearing name brand clothes and shoes and playing American music while the youth are singing every word and trying to buy calling cards (minutes) from the digicel for their cell phones when there granny's house (captured land) had not been worked on since the 1960's and they got to catch water and no pressure in the shower and so on and so on. Burger King and KFC is open late night and has all the business while the little Rastaman ital store is run down. I am fully aware of what goes on in Jamaica because I have family- bredren and sisters dere. I talk to ones dere almost every week when I buy a calling card, and I know ones who are in my city who rarely even call them mother to see how they are maintaining because they know they are gonna ask for money or some kind of assistance. If Jamaica is still the best why are there so many Jamaicas all over the world and have not gone 'home' in over 10-20 years.

Okay the issue of pologamy. Most Black Americans are violently...lol opposed to pologamy, but I see it most prevalent in Jamaica, what are you talking about?

The church topic is certainly not one to brag over either. It seems as if that's the case all over the bredren in South Africa say its equivalent to the amount of bars, well here in America the same thing, every corner is an Arab or Chinese owned liquor store, beauty and barber shop and church along side it. Wow! That looks pretty organized to me.

I can agree that some of the discussions on this board are set up to stray away from His Majesty's glory, but then again they are mostly messages posted by non rasta.

But what about what Gman said why don't we examine other Rasta from other Islands too and their take on the race issues. There are Rasta all over the world besided Jamaica and America. What about those in Cuba, Brazil, South America, England etc.

I have some of my thoughts scattered about because as I type I am thinking. I am currently washing a load of clothes and I have to get ready for work, so hopefully I can continue later.

With that said InI bobo shanti EABIC focus is primarily FREEDOM, REDEMPTION, and INTERNATIONAL REPATRIATION. Jamaica no Africa yes! If you NON BLACK and you want to work with InI on these matters you are more than welcome cuz SALVATION is free to all who hear this BLACK SUPREMACY CALL! HOLY EMMANUEL I KING SELASSIE I JAH RASTAFARI!!!

EMPRESS MENEN I LOVE AND LIGHT!
Blessed heart of love,
Empress Charity Chantee
-original bobo roots dawta``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAre Jamaican Rastas Different?``x1056166861,10155,rasta``x``x ``xby Ras Benjamine

I have been wondering why and how the African politics has come to lack any modicum of morality. It has been an excruciating task because one could not come up with a simple and straight explanation. From the pedestal of visionary politics as we knew it, before the advent of the dubious Caucasians on the coasts of African continent, to that of moral bankruptcy and by extension social annihilation, cultural destruction, religious duplicity and subsequently, political charlatanism. How did we get here? What role did religion play in this sobering but anxiety-induced journey?

What History taught us is very instructive and might serve as a guide. For those who are willing to extricate themselves from the cocoon of fundamentalism, it is easier to see how Christianity and Islam have brought Africa in general to moral ruins as a prelude to social and political ruins. It is easier to see how new values that are at best hollow, have come to replace age long ones that value integrity and dignity. It is easier to see how lacks of consequence for heinous behaviours condoned by these foreign religions and their champions have ripped apart the core of our Africanness, communality and brotherhood, and turned us into adversaries.

For any student of history, not blinded by "faith" (the believe of what you cannot prove), the fact that the Christian missionaries came as the forerunners of their exploiting governments is incontestably, clear enough. It is also clear enough that the traditional African trust was exploited to prepare the ground for colonialism.

Diabolically using the bible, the white man claimed he was bringing "civilization" when indeed he was bringing exploitation. When they were found out and Africans tried to resist, the missionaries exposed the hidden gunpowder under their cassocks and took our lands.

The fact that Christianity is found in all parts of the world today is not as a result of its strength as a faith or religion. It is a religion that was spread with sword and built on blood. The followers of Christianity vindictively and mercilessly fought among themselves for several hundreds of years because they could not agree on what to believe and practice. Even, the battles over the contents of the Bible should be instructive given the diabolical use it has been put by those who strongly profess the faith.

In 771 AD Charlemagne (Charles the Great) became the sole ruler of Frankish (French) Kingdom after the death of his brother and joint ruler, Carloman. The following year, he subdued Saxony, forcefully converted it to Christianity and imposed tithes for the support of clergy, churches and the schools and reportedly the poor. A year later in 773 AD he annexed Lombard Kingdom and donated it to the Pope Hadrian I (died 795 AD). On December 25, 800 AD, Charlemagne who in 782 AD had executed 4,500 hostages at Verden was installed as the first Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III, in Rome.

That a Pope would sanction and validate a heinous crime and conscienceless criminal like this did say and still says a lot about Christianity. This murderous acts of Charlemagne in the name of the Bible and Christianity and sanctioned by the Church was a prelude to the Crusades that followed. The first Crusade (1096 -1104) started by Godfrey of Bouillon and Duke of Lorraine; the Second Crusade (1145-1147) proclaimed by Pope Eugene III; the Third Crusade (1189 - 1193) started by Richard I of England and the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) championed by Boniface of Montferrari. This last one ended with the establishment of the Latin Empire in1204 AD.

Thus when the descendants of these depraved minds visited the coasts of Nigeria in the garb of missionaries, they had no intention of saving any soul. They had no intention of bringing any "civilization" because they were savages who came to destroy our own civilizations and cultures as attested to by history. This prepared the ground for what we are all witnessing today in our social, economic, political and cultural lives.

The Christian missionaries were not doing anything different from what the Mohammedans have also being doing since the days of Prophet Mohammed. Since 628 AD when Mohammed captured Mecca, it has always been about the political control of other peoples and their lands and resources. In 632 AD when Mohammed (regarded as the first Caliph) died, Medina became the seat of the Caliph. He was succeeded by his father -in-law, Abu Bekr, who in turn was succeeded by Omar, a very close adviser to Mohammed two years later. It was Omar who advanced the frontiers of the Caliph in the name of Islam by conquering Syria, Persia and Egypt. He also defeated Heraclius ("Holy War"). It was under Omar that the Mohammedans captured Gaza in 635 AD when they move the seat of the Caliph to Damascus.

Fifteen years later in 650 AD,(that is eighteen years after the death of Mohammed himself), Caliph Othman organized, in accordance with his own personal wish and understanding, the putting together of Mohammed's teachings into 114 chapters to make the Koran, the holy book of the faithfuls of Islam. By this time the whole of Mesopotamia have fallen under the political control of the Mohammedans. So, when Uthman Dan Fodio embarked on his Jihad in 1804 in the area now known as the North West of Nigeria, where I am from, he knew exactly what he was gunning for. It was all about the political control of the land, resources and trade. It had nothing to do with saving any soul.

It was all a ruse. Uthman Dan Fodio only used religion, this time Islam, as an instrument to deceive and rally those who would follow him into battles to kill others and take over their lands and resources. For about 200 years, the effect of this lies and deceit are still ricocheting through the body politick of Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Tanzania etc. It would have been better if their real motive (which is political control) were not wrapped in the garb of having to save the souls that were never lost. There was nothing wrong in being a political warrior. But these religionists never had the candour to admit that they were carpetbaggers rather than "men of God."

What history has taught us from all these is that those behind these foreign religions are economic and political predators. They tried to convince us that our own traditional religions were inferior and should be discarded. African traditional religions were borne out of explicit practical experience unlike theirs that were based on half abstract and half experience. Our cultures were denigrated and theirs were sold as more authentic. But we now know that the reverse is the case. Now that we have local adherents of the foreign faiths they are all acting out like their dubious and diabolical masters, sponsors and their ancestors.

This is why it was easy for people like Tafawa Balewa the first prime Minister in Nigeria, who profess Islam to see nothing wrong in governing a nation into fratricidal crisis. This is why people like Ahmadu Bello who professed to Islam believes in annihilation of opposing view rather than tolerate them. It was why Mohammadu Buhari, "a man of Islamic faith" saw nothing wrong in tyranny and unjust persecution of innocents. It was why Ibrahim Babangida was able to swear falsely to Nigerians repeatedly and to his friends with the Koran and was still able to betray them without batting an eyelid. It was why Sani Abacha (The Worst dictator Nigeria ever knew) was able to get drunk endlessly, romp in a deranged manner with prostitutes and visited destruction shameless on Nigeria while praying five times a day!

It is the same reason why Yakubu Gowon (Another President in Nigeria) who claimed to be a Christian was able to deceive Nigerians repeatedly about returning the country to civil rule and deliberately mismanaged our resources without any conscience. It is the same reason why Olusegun Obasanjo (Current President) would consciencelessly engage in rigmarole to install Shehu Shagari while he claimed to be a Christian. It is why Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma would kill General Aguiyi Ironsi and Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi remorselessly and later down the line, personally supervise the murder of Mrs. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (Fela's mother) by having her thrown off the story building of her son's house, without any fear of repercussions.

Christianity and Islam have no means of punishing those who swear falsely and inflict damages on our psyche, even though they swore with Koran and the Bible. The reason for this could be traced to their origins, which had no true spiritual foundation as our traditional religions could lay claim to. But they always try to convince us that there would be some punishment for sinners in heaven (or is it hell?) that no one could empirically prove its existence. Meanwhile, they have been allowed a free reign to wreck the world and our lives for us! The purpose of Christianity and Islam was not spiritual but political and economical. This is what the history of their origin and spread has shown. It is why more and more people in here in Europe are staying off the churches while Islam continues to garner the image of murderous religion.

You would be signing your death warrant to swear falsely by Sango, Oya or Ogun in the real sense of it. These religions among several others in Yorubaland for example have no use for politics. They were and are still solely spiritual and moral, and are taken very seriously unlike the jokes that Bible and Koran have become. But the adherents of Christianity and Islam would want us to believe that our traditional religions were and still are idolatry. That they should be discarded. That Bible or Koran is it. That Ifa and others should not be listened to and should be ignored. They coined "paganism" to describe us because we do not share their lies and deceits.

Lloyd M. Graham in his DECEPTIONS AND MYTHS OF THE BIBLE wrote, "the Bible is not 'the word of God' but a steal from pagan sources. Its Eden, including Adam and Eve, were taken from the Babylonian account; its Flood and Deluge is but an epitome of some four hundred flood accounts; its Ark and Ararat have their equivalents in a score of Deluge myths; even the names of Noah's sons are copies, so also were Isaac's sacrifice, Solomon's judgement, and Samson's pillar act. Moses is fashioned after the Syrian Mises; the laws after Hammurabi's code…" And please, let us not forget how King James gathered some loyal intellectuals in Canterbury to write his own version of the Bible.

That the adherents of these faiths, Christianity and Islam, have used them to cause so much pain, misery and sadness for the entire human race is very instructive about the true intentions of their founders - to politically control others and their resources and if they resist, kill them. What their sentries in Nigeria are doing is not different whether they are Mallams, Sheiks, Imams or Reverends, Bishops or Archbishops. They keep preaching and convincing everyone to work towards the kingdom of Heaven while they all revel and enjoy the Kingdom of the world at the expense of the rest of us. They set us against each other while they help themselves to our resources and tax money. They preach that we pay tithes, so that they could concentrate on the "work of God." They ride around in mercedes benz cars while their "sheep" (yes , sheep, they never referred to their followers as "lions" or "tigers" because the sheep is a stupid animal) wander around endlessly on tired limbs. The Bishops and the Imams were never in the forefront of the struggles against want, poverty, squalor, oppression., dictatorship and tyranny. When some of them were involved, it was timidly. When they created schools, they used them as instruments of indoctrination. They used the schools to give us what Bob Marley described as "brainwash education to make us the fools." When they created hospitals, they used them only as instruments of control and dominance to force us to abandon our traditional faiths and ways of life.

Could anyone have imagined the leader of Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs in Nigeria, the Emir of Sokoto during the June 12 crisis, Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki calling the annulment "an act of God"? Where is the morality in that? This is in no way different from the roles played by the Papacy during the Hitleric years when Jews were slaughtered like goats. It only confirms what one has been trying to put across that those religions have no spiritual basis hence their lacking in morality. Christianity and Islam have always been about political control of others and their resources. They have always been about worldly materials and not heavenly gifts. They have never been about right and wrong. Neither have they seriously ever been about any kingdom in heaven because they all know it is non- existent. This is why Peter Tosh sang the tune "everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die." Not even the Imams and the Archbishops who preach endlessly about it.

The only two religions that ever traded in human beings were Christianity and Islam. They only became abolition champions when slave trade became unprofitable. Christians and Muslims are the ones who traded in human beings across tribes, across continents. Look at those who fled Europe for religious persecution to come to North America. Look at how they killed the American Indians mercilessly as they were dispossessed of their land. Look at the Christians who imposed themselves on South Africa. Recall how they mercilessly and repeatedly killed harmless Africans who sought to be human beings. Recall how they exploited the people. Yet these are the people who claim superior civilisation based on Christian religion. If they considered themselves savages and acted as such what would the world have been like? Mere imagining such possibilities could drive anyone insane!

The point here is that time has come for people to think outside the box if they have any intention of not being spectators in this world. Yes, life is short. Yes, we all would die one day. But this is not enough reason why we should live our lives in want and misery while the so-called religious leaders help themselves to our wealth and resources. It does not explain why the Christian and Muslim leaders should be allowed to continue to collaborate with our oppressors to help themselves to our resources and politically manipulate and control us. We cannot continue to knock our heads against the grounds in the mosques and churches in the name of prayer while our lives and the future of our children are being mortgaged to the dubious Christian and Muslim leaders in league with our exploiters. It has to be realised that we have this world that we are very certain of, to live before it would be the turn of a heaven that could not be guaranteed.

Since 1999, Obasanjo (President of Nigeria) has been shouting on the rooftops that he is a "born again." This indeed should arouse more suspicion than trust and confidence. It seemed that there is a functional relationship between these religions professed by our rulers in Africa and the social, economic and political ruins they have brought to bear on our people and country. Those who instituted bribery in our culture are Muslims and Christians. It is their mosques and churches that take donations from these rogues. It is their churches and mosques that validate their crimes. It is their churches and mosques that provide sanctuary for these criminals. May be it is time to resort to basics, go back to our roots and begin to rely on our indigenous culture. Through, that, we may be able to find our lost ways and bring sanity to bear on our polity for the sake of posterity.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xDifference between a Sheep and a Lion``x1056686400,72812,rasta``x``x ``xby Ayinde

Some people choose to associate on the basis of material wealth (insecurity); others associate because of social poverty and its related insecurities which helps drive a type of artificial racial bonding. Some choose to align themselves in other ways.

I call the bonding solely on the basis of race an artificial one because the same people often look for special characteristics in people when choosing friends. Many Blacks will not align themselves with Black bandits the same as many Whites will not align themselves with White rapists. So it is not as if every White person will accept other Whites and every Black will accept other Blacks. It all comes down to character and awareness, which can be discerned through reasoning and the observation of conduct.

These race associations and discussions allow us to examine racism and its effects. It is also a guide to the psychological/historical experiences of people. It allows all sides to check their conduct and to make necessary corrections.

There is no such thing as a pure race. For something to be pure then it has to be stable and cannot be changed. Given the fact that all people evolved from a common family then it is easy to see that there is no pure race as racial features can change.

This explanation is not to discount the effects of early European pseudo science that tried to impute such. The effects of this ignorance are real and have done great damage to all sides.

But I make this point to emphasize that the underlying reason for addressing racial issues is to discern the character of people. It is also to open doors for revisiting a wider span of World history with its common African human beginnings. This facilitates forging alliances with people who are committed to stamping out racism and its effects while offering redress where applicable.

In this exercise, some will choose to focus on helping Black people or White people and some can deal with racism within a broader social network.

For example, I have good relations with many Africans, Indians and a few Whites. I address this issue from all these cultural viewpoints as they are all deeply connected.

I have experienced racism from Whites and Indians and I have experienced the effects of the African ignorance in very brutal ways. All of this did not make me hate humanity, it taught me to refine and define how I align myself with people. It sharpened discerning skills.

I deal with people on the basis of their character first. Assessing character is a very dynamic thing and it is for this purpose I engage much reasoning and observations before I choose to call someone a friend.

A person with integrity may not have much information but they remain receptive to acting on truths as they realize them. They are always willing to evaluate and change their conduct. For me, this is very important. A person's willingness to learn and adjust is far more important than how much they actually know, and this takes precedence over racial considerations.

It will take integrity to defeat not only racism but also all other forms of negative discrimination.

Reasoning on Race or Integrity First``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRace or Integrity First``x1057087944,17136,views``x``x ``xby Ras Benjamine

Many people who browse this website rastafarispeaks may be amazed by the regular contribution of certain people to this forum. The underlying reason is Not profit or Ego related but a need to fill a gap and awaken the sleepers(Africans) and those in search of knowledge heading in the wrong direction. To those who regularly contribute please continue to do so as energy given always comes back to us in time. Babylon constantly reminds us through advertising that we need to consume, take, spend and be profit driven. But for InI we are wise and discerning to know that this should not be the case.

Philosophers such as Adam Smith claim:

"But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his Bredrens, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self love in his favour and show them that it is for their own good to do for him what he requires of them" (equals deceit and guile).

Capitalism is eating fast the soul of man and we, as Africans need to overstand it.

A life full of work but without any spiritual aim is of no avail. The physical body would swing in the rhythm of creation but the spirit would stand still. And if the spirit does not simultaneously swing in the Jah-will rhythm of creation, then the body that does swing in it will not be maintained and strengthened through its work, but become worn out and exhausted, because it does not receive the spiritual strength which it needs through the soul. The stagnation of the spirit hampers the full development of the body.

This law of creation (only in giving can there really be right receiving) and cannot be violated without consequence. With a likkle observation it is not difficult to recognise it and learn from it. This extends not only to the conscious and willed thinking and doing of InI, or to our work in various professions, but also to all processes which are looked upon as self evident, and to which to a certain degree takes place automatically. In exhaling man gives! Something that is of benefit to creation, to name only carbon, which is needed to nourish plant. Reciprocally, he is strengthened and is in a position to breathe in again with pleasure.

So it is within our community as Africans, many are the truly educated Africans who occupy high positions and have refused to give of self. The day of reckoning is soon, what is the reason for this selfishness? There are those Africans in the America, Europe and "developed world" who are greatly afflicted by direct racism at their work, schools, home, and even nations etc but refuse to bring the subject to the surface and correct things, suffering and smiling. The factor of fear and ignorance plays a big role. There are many of our brothers and sisters in Africa aiding the European to rape Africa of its resources continually for the benefit of the West, where is the wisdom in this? Why does Africa continue to sustain the West without duly receiving? Can this great law of creation continue to be violated without consequence? The answer is no.

As it is with physical things so it is with spiritual process. If a spirit wishes to draw, thus to receive, it must pass on transformed what it has received. The transforming or forming before the passing on strengthens and steels the spirit, which in this strengthening becomes capable of receiving ever more and still more valuable things, after it has made room for this through the passing on, be it by word, writing or in action.

Only passing on is the spirit lightened, otherwise it would be weighed down, would constantly be made uneasy or restless, and might finally even be completely overcome. Only through giving, that is, through passing on, can the spirit in turn receive anew. Whoever receives must pass on, otherwise congestion and disturbances, which are harmful and can become destructive will ensue, because it is against the automatically- operating law of creation. There is no creature that does not receive.

The onus of freeing Africa completely from the shackles of mental slavery and realising our dream of an equal race can only be achieved by creating a generation of educated warriors. Young warriors who observe the laws of creation and are not hampered in their outlook on life by Europeanized education, which is very one-sided! - The over cultivation of the frontal brain Intellect is the highest of what is earthly, and is meant to be the steering element through life on earth, whereas the driving power is the intuitive perception, which originates in the spiritual world. The basis of the intellect therefore is the physical body, but the basis of the intuitive perception is the spirit. There are only a few people, particularly in the West, today whose receptive portion of the brain co-operates harmoniously at least to some extent with the frontal brain. Without the harmonious co-operation of that portion of the brain meant to receive spiritual impressions, the frontal brain is like a lamp without oil. And here you will find a lot of academics and politicians to whom we entrust a great part of our life!

Africans and those with very little formal education are known to be more intuitive perceptive compared to their highly cerebral counterparts in the west. Reaching a harmonious function of the two parts of the brain should be the goal.

The spirits of our African elders are steadily weakening and needs to be strengthened by giving to the youths, knowledge, and wisdom and understanding, this should be the sacred duty of older ones. Failing this our young ones do not have the right foundation to start off from and have nothing to inherit. Knowledge is power and our biggest enemy in Africa is ignorance.

And the greatest ignorance of all is the mistaken belief that we can ever receive more than we truly earn. Sooner or later, there will be an accounting. Everyday, for good or bad, we're throwing the boomerang. And just as the punishment always seems to be greater than the offence, the rewards are also out of all proportion to our honest efforts.

To those who believe they are the privileged (white) and have the sagacity to keep raping Africa of its natural resources the time is drawing close for accountability.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xOnly In Giving Can We Really Receive``x1057291200,60556,rasta``x``x ``xby Ras Benjamine

In September 2003 the World Trade Organisation looks set to ratify yet more laws, and fishing rights in favour of the West. Sub-Saharan Africa, so rich in human and natural resources, remains the economically poorest region of the world. Half of our people live in poverty, and in many African countries economic conditions have been getting worse for the last 20 years or more.

We all know that a free market is not a fair market particularly when Africa is involved. America and Europe policy on trade and investment needs to be ratify by Africans. Africans leaders need to understand that the third world is sustaining the economy of the West! Around the world, tariff controls, subsidies and export taxes are overwhelming our farmers in Africa making international competition impossible. In Mali, small-scale cotton growers are undercut by American behemoths; in Kenya, flower farmers have been deadheaded by Dutch import charges; in Senegal (West Africa), it is cheaper for a farmer to buy rice from South-East Asia than Senegalese rich from 10km down the road. In countries like Senegal, we have onions farmers who are working twice as hard for half the reward because Dutch onions are cheaper and forced upon the local natives. Up to 80 per cent of the Senegalese nation lives off their produce and now our people are struggling now because the international community will rather dump cheap imports on us than see Africans trade themselves out of poverty and debt! Much of the debt accumulated by African countries was built up during the 1970s, a time of reckless lending by banks and international agencies, and was agreed to by undemocratic governments. In many cases, the population of the borrowing country realized little benefit from the loans as the money disappeared in failed infrastructure projects, corrupt schemes, or unwise investments. The debt has continued to grow since then as governments take out new loans to pay off old ones.

The general consensus amongst many African economists is that external debt of African countries is clearly odious, illegitimate and immoral. It is a tool that the West are not prepared to relinquish. It is a tool used as an instrument to perpetuate their control and domination of the economies of Africa and reduce international competition and gain world domination. Debt has a racist dimension because of its impact on the people of Africa. It is estimated that about 19,000 children per annum in most African countries die of preventable diseases. This is a direct consequence of the deterioration of the health systems for lack of public investments crowded out by debt service. This would never be tolerated in Europe or America, but the lives of people in Africa are clearly considered to be less important than those in the North.

Some Solutions:
-Raise mass consciousness that debt is a fraud
-Build a grassroots global movement against paying so called debt
-Develop an alternative to Structural Adjustment as a precondition for any mandate to run a government in Africa and the developing world
-Given that women produce 80% of Africa's food, head 60% of Africa's households and do similar work in the rest of the developing world, the Campaign will advance the aims of Global Women's Strike and fight for its realisation.

Africa and the rest of the former colonies don't owe western banks and governments anything. Why should the hardest working people in the world beg for debt 'relief' while the IMF and World Bank are organising the robbery of their every resource, forcing us to work even harder?``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xDebt and its racist dimension in Africa``x1057432614,33520,world``x``x ``xby Bantu Kelani

My reaction to this speech is shocked and awed!

Imagine a President who could speak these words and his actions and his policy does not contradict these words.

This speech contradicts Bush stance against AA and many other things. He did not invite any members of the Black Caucus on this trip with him. The speech was obviously written by someone with a whole different mindset from Bush.

Not only was and is Amerikkka a prison for Black men and women but now Prisons have been built inside the Prison that house more men and women than any nation on the earth.

I'm certain Bush did not listen to the likes of Malcolm but the writer of this speech sure did!

Kelani-

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THE PRESIDENT'S REMARKS FOR YOUR REFERENCE

President Bush Speaks at Goree Island in Senegal
Remarks by the President on Goree Island
Goree Island, Senegal


11:47 A.M. (Local)

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. President and Madam First Lady, distinguished guests and residents of Goree Island, citizens of Senegal, I'm honored to begin my visit to Africa in your beautiful country.

For hundreds of years on this island peoples of different continents met in fear and cruelty. Today we gather in respect and friendship, mindful of past wrongs and dedicated to the advance of human liberty.

At this place, liberty and life were stolen and sold. Human beings were delivered and sorted, and weighed, and branded with the marks of commercial enterprises, and loaded as cargo on a voyage without return. One of the largest migrations of history was also one of the greatest crimes of history.

Below the decks, the middle passage was a hot, narrow, sunless nightmare; weeks and months of confinement and abuse and confusion on a strange and lonely sea. Some refused to eat, preferring death to any future their captors might prepare for them. Some who were sick were thrown over the side. Some rose up in violent rebellion, delivering the closest thing to justice on a slave ship. Many acts of defiance and bravery are recorded. Countless others, we will never know.

Those who lived to see land again were displayed, examined, and sold at auctions across nations in the Western Hemisphere. They entered societies indifferent to their anguish and made prosperous by their unpaid labor. There was a time in my country's history when one in every seven human beings was the property of another. In law, they were regarded only as articles of commerce, having no right to travel, or to marry, or to own possessions. Because families were often separated, many denied even the comfort of suffering together.

For 250 years the captives endured an assault on their culture and their dignity. The spirit of Africans in America did not break. Yet the spirit of their captors was corrupted. Small men took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience. Christian men and women became blind to the clearest commands of their faith and added hypocrisy to injustice. A republic founded on equality for all became a prison for millions. And yet in the words of the African proverb, "no fist is big enough to hide the sky." All the generations of oppression under the laws of man could not crush the hope of freedom and defeat the purposes of God.

In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom. Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering Savior and found he was more like themselves than their masters. Enslaved Africans heard the ringing promises of the Declaration of Independence and asked the self-evident question, then why not me?

In the year of America's founding, a man named Olaudah Equiano was taken in bondage to the New World. He witnessed all of slavery's cruelties, the ruthless and the petty. He also saw beyond the slave-holding piety of the time to a higher standard of humanity. "God tells us," wrote Equiano, "that the oppressor and the oppressed are both in His hands. And if these are not the poor, the broken-hearted, the blind, the captive, the bruised which our Savior speaks of, who are they?"

Down through the years, African Americans have upheld the ideals of America by exposing laws and habits contradicting those ideals. The rights of African Americans were not the gift of those in authority. Those rights were granted by the Author of Life, and regained by the persistence and courage of African Americans, themselves.

Among those Americans was Phyllis Wheatley, who was dragged from her home here in West Africa in 1761, at the age of seven. In my country, she became a poet, and the first noted black author in our nation's history. Phyllis Wheatley said, "In every human breast, God has implanted a principle which we call love of freedom. It is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance."

That deliverance was demanded by escaped slaves named Frederick Douglas and Sojourner Truth, educators named Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, and ministers of the Gospel named Leon Sullivan and Martin Luther King, Jr. At every turn, the struggle for equality was resisted by many of the powerful. And some have said we should not judge their failures by the standards of a later time. Yet, in every time, there were men and women who clearly saw this sin and called it by name.

We can fairly judge the past by the standards of President John Adams, who called slavery "an evil of callosal magnitude." We can discern eternal standards in the deeds of William Wilberforce and John Quincy Adams, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln. These men and women, black and white, burned with a zeal for freedom, and they left behind a different and better nation. Their moral vision caused Americans to examine our hearts, to correct our Constitution, and to teach our children the dignity and equality of every person of every race. By a plan known only to Providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free.

My nation's journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over. The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all.

In the struggle of the centuries, America learned that freedom is not the possession of one race. We know with equal certainty that freedom is not the possession of one nation. This belief in the natural rights of man, this conviction that justice should reach wherever the sun passes leads America into the world.

With the power and resources given to us, the United States seeks to bring peace where there is conflict, hope where there is suffering, and liberty where there is tyranny. And these commitments bring me and other distinguished leaders of my government across the Atlantic to Africa.

African peoples are now writing your own story of liberty. Africans have overcome the arrogance of colonial powers, overturned the cruelties of apartheid, and made it clear that dictatorship is not the future of any nation on this continent. In the process, Africa has produced heroes of liberation -- leaders like Mandela, Senghor, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Selassie and Sadat. And many visionary African leaders, such as my friend, have grasped the power of economic and political freedom to lift whole nations and put forth bold plans for Africa's development.

Because Africans and Americans share a belief in the values of liberty and dignity, we must share in the labor of advancing those values. In a time of growing commerce across the globe, we will ensure that the nations of Africa are full partners in the trade and prosperity of the world. Against the waste and violence of civil war, we will stand together for peace. Against the merciless terrorists who threaten every nation, we will wage an unrelenting campaign of justice. Confronted with desperate hunger, we will answer with human compassion and the tools of human technology. In the face of spreading disease, we will join with you in turning the tide against AIDS in Africa.

We know that these challenges can be overcome, because history moves in the direction of justice. The evils of slavery were accepted and unchanged for centuries. Yet, eventually, the human heart would not abide them. There is a voice of conscience and hope in every man and woman that will not be silenced -- what Martin Luther King called a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. That flame could not be extinguished at the Birmingham jail. It could not be stamped out at Robben Island Prison. It was seen in the darkness here at Goree Island, where no chain could bind the soul. This untamed fire of justice continues to burn in the affairs of man, and it lights the way before us.

May God bless you all. (Applause.)

END 11:55 A.M. (Local)``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xBush Speech in Africa``x1058155200,81080,world``x``x ``xBy Monica Moorehead

The Bush administration has sent a military team of 32 Marines and specialists to Liberia to assess whether the U.S. should send more troops to this impoverished West African country. The reason given is that they may be necessary to end the civil war that has plagued this country for more than a decade. The real reason is oil.

President George W. Bush has repeatedly said that he will accept nothing less than the departure of the elected president of Liberia, Charles Taylor.

On July 6 Taylor met with the president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, at the airport outside the Liberian capital of Monrovia, where an agreement was made to provide Taylor temporary asylum in Nigeria if he leaves.

Taylor helped to lead a rebellion against the previous Liberian president, Samuel Doe. The rebellion lasted from the late 1980s until the mid 1990s, even though Doe was assassinated in 1990. Taylor was elected president in 1997 and has faced armed opposition to his presidency since 1999.

The real prospect that U.S. troops will be sent to Liberia comes at a time when Bush is on his first trip to Africa. He plans to visit five countries within five days: Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria. South Africa and Botswana are among the countries in the world with the highest percentages of people living with the HIV virus and AIDS.

Bush is using the carrot and stick maneuver, offering billions of dollars in aid to pressure each country to open its markets to U.S. imports and its military and police to collaboration with the U.S. in the so-called war against terrorism. Washington heavily subsidizes U.S. agribusinesses. If African countries were to change their agricultural policies and allow in unlimited quantities of cheap U.S. agricultural products, local farmers would be destroyed.

The U.S. military presence in Africa is more ominous than ever. Rapid deployment troops and semi-permanent forces from the Army, Air Force and Marines are now stationed or will be stationed in the Horn of Africa as well as countries in North and West Africa. A command base with 2,000 troops was established in Djibouti in May.

Lisa Hoffman of Scripps Howard News Service wrote on June 13: "Little noticed among the Pentagon's plans to radically reshape the U.S. military presence overseas is the groundbreaking possibility of basing thousands of American troops in or around West Africa.

"Under discussion: everything from positioning a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group off Africa's vast west coast to establishing one or more forward operating bases in Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Equatorial Guinea or the tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe.

"The spurs for what may prove an unprecedented U.S. military beachhead in sub-Saharan Africa are the region's instability, potential attractiveness to terrorists and, most pivotal, its rich oil resources, Pentagon officials and Africa experts say.

"As much as 15 percent of America's oil now comes from West Africa--about the amount imported from Saudi Arabia. By next year, the West African portion is expected to jump to 20 percent."

The U.S. seeks to overtake its European imperialist rivals as the dominant power in areas of Africa where oil is plentiful, like Nigeria.

Nigeria is home to one-fourth of the people living in sub-Saharan Africa. It also has one of the world's largest oil reserves.

The Nigerian people do not control the oil wealth of their country. Big oil conglomerates such as Chevron-Texaco and Shell make tremendous profits exporting millions of barrels of oil from Nigeria to other parts of the world while the Nigerian masses remain extremely poor. The average annual per capita income of Nigeria is only $290.

The Nigerian Labor Congress just organized a powerful general strike against the skyrocketing price of gasoline, which lasted several days before the government offered a compromise.

U.S. and Liberian relations

Liberia's population is less than 4 million people. According to UNICEF August 2002 statistics, the poverty rate is 85 percent and the extreme poverty rate is 55 percent. Per capita income is less than $100 per person.

News accounts say a sector of the Liberian masses look to foreign intervention, including U.S. troops, to help bring an end to the bloodshed and bring economic relief to their country. Some of this hope may be rooted in what some perceive as long-time close relations between Liberia and the U.S.

The U.S. history books and the big business press claim that Liberia was founded in 1822 by freed slaves who migrated from the U.S. But that theory is disputed. There is evidence to show that the American Colonization Society, a group of whites including slaveowners, bought land in Liberia in 1817 for next to nothing.

One of the most prominent of these slave owners was Francis Scott Key, credited with writing the words of the Star Spangled Banner, the U.S. national anthem. Another slaveowning member of the ACS was William Thornton, an amateur architect who designed the U.S. Capitol. It was mainly slaves who built that historic building and others in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia.

Former slaves were encouraged to emigrate to Liberia by the ACS, not to escape the horrors of slavery but to keep them from fighting for the right to jobs, education and political representation that whites on the whole had won. In other words, the ACS, seeing that the days of their slavocracy were numbered, mapped out this strategy in order to undermine the potential that former slaves might win democratic rights, including receiving 40 acres and a mule from the federal government.

In the 1920s the Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. got a 99-year lease for 1 million acres of Liberian land at 6 cents per acre per year. Its Liberian rubber plantation became the company's main source of profit while Liberia sunk deeper into poverty.

Untapped oil reserves in Gulf of Guinea

Bush and the Pentagon claim that the only motive for sending U.S. troops into Liberia would be to help bring about "stability and democracy" for the war-weary Liberian people. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real truth lies in the U.S. wanting to control the most important world resource--oil.

Liberia could be a jumping-off place for U.S. troops to control the nearby Gulf of Guinea. Vast untapped oil reserves were recently discovered there. Whatever imperialist power controls this strategically oil-rich region will be in the position to dramatically increase its oil markets. For the U.S., this could mean a 25-percent increase in oil imports from Africa.

Nigeria and the former Portuguese col ony of Sao Tome and Principe are located on the Gulf of Guinea. So is Ivory Coast, which is in the midst of a civil war instigated by its former French oppressors.

Kayode Fayemi, the leader of the Center for Democracy and Development based in Lagos, Nigeria, stated, "The focus on oil in the Gulf of Guinea would probably ensure that the United States looks the other way when it comes to human rights, account ability and transparency. In Nigeria, the example of that would be how does the United States respond to campaigns from local communities for equitable and local management of resources." (NY Times, July 6)

The U.S. government certainly did not offer any support over a year ago for the justifiable takeovers of oil facilities in the Niger Delta organized by defiant Nigerian women, who demanded that the oil conglomerates fund jobs and educational opportunities for their sons. A Nigerian paper, This Day, reported that the U.S. may be deploying troops to the Niger Delta to "protect" oil facilities there.

Bush's quest for endless war cannot be separated from what is going on in Liberia, Nigeria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Bush is accusing Taylor of instigating war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, but it is Bush who is the biggest war criminal of all.

Bush envisions himself as a modern-day emperor, similar to the rulers of the vicious Roman empire, and the majority of the world as an appendage of U.S. corporations.


Reprinted from the July 17, issue of Workers World newspaper
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via email: ww@wwpublish.com.)``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhy Bush wants troops in Liberia``x1058307826,16303,world``x``x ``xwww.blackcommentator.com

"Our policy with respect to the continent of Africa at best has been a policy that is inconsistent and incoherent," said NAACP Executive Director Kweisi Mfume, in Miami Beach last weekend for the organization's annual convention. "We've looked away in many instances because Africa was not politically correct or politically cute."

Mr. Mfume is wrong. United States policy towards sub-Saharan Africa has been consistent since August of 1960, when President Eisenhower ordered his national security team to arrange the assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. Congo had been nominally independent from Belgium for only two months, yet Eisenhower, far from looking away from Africa during his last months in office, was already embarked on a relentless policy of continental destabilization, one that has been fundamentally adhered to by every U.S. President that followed.

U.S. policy in Africa is anything but "incoherent." Rather, too many of us have "looked away" from the clear pattern of U.S. behavior and intent – a ferocious, bipartisan determination to arrest African development at every opportunity and by all possible means – including the death of millions.

War on African civil society

Belgians murdered Prime Minister Lumumba on January 17, 1961, no doubt with the collaboration of Eisenhower's men. Lumumba presented a danger to European and American domination of post-colonial Africa precisely because he was not a tribal figure, but a thoroughly Congolese politician, a man who sought to harness power through popular structures. As such, Lumumba personified the threat of an awakened African civil society – the prerequisite for true independence and social development.

A popular and long held belief among Africans and African Americans is that the prospect of continental (or even global) African "unity" is what terrifies Washington, London and Paris. We wish that were true. However, the neocolonial powers know they have nothing to worry about on that score, having begun the era of "independence" with a clear understanding among themselves that conditions for meaningful unity would not be allowed to develop. African civil society itself would be stunted, hounded, impoverished – rendered so fundamentally insecure that, even should "leaders" of African countries band together under banners of "unity," few could speak with the voice of the people. Only leaders of intact civil societies can unite with one another to any meaningful effect – all else is bombast, and frightens no one.

Tribalism is, indeed, a problem in Africa. For Americans and Europeans, it is an obsession – the game they have played since the Portuguese planted their first outposts at the mouths of African rivers in the 1400s. However, there are limits to the effectiveness of tribal manipulation. Many "tribes" are very large – nations, actually. Setting one tribal group against the other, while suppressing the social development of each, is a tricky business. The colonizer must not to allow the "favored" group to accrue, through privilege, sufficient social space to aspire to nationhood. In that event, the formerly favored group must be crushed by the colonizer's own military force – a brutish and costly business.

These are generalities, and Africa is a big place. Numerous colonial powers at different times employed the full mix of coercion, manipulation, favoritism, and raw (including genocidal) force.

After World War Two, and for a host of reasons, the colonial arrangement had become untenable. Europeans would continue to engage in tribal manipulation in the new political environment, while the U.S. preferred bullets and bribes as it assumed overlord status among the imperialists. However, it was clear to the old masters – and especially to Washington – that the formal structures of independence would inevitably lead to the growth of dynamic civil societies that could impede the operations of multinational extraction corporations and agribusiness. Civil societies can become quite raucous and demanding, even in countries in which there are tribal divisions. Therefore, the process of African civil development had to be interrupted, not only in those new states that were economically valuable to Europe and the U.S., but in all of Africa, so that no healthy civil model might emerge. If this could be achieved, there would be no need to fear the actions of assembled heads of African states – an irrelevant gaggle of uniforms and suits, standing in for nations, but representing no coherent social force.

Assignment: crush the people

To thwart the growth of civil society in newly independent Africa, the imperialists turned to the Strong Men. It is probably more accurate to say that the imperialists invented the African Strong Man. Although both the neocolonial masters and the Strong Men themselves make a great fuss about indigenousness – albeit for somewhat different reasons – these characters arise from the twisted structures of colonialism. Their function is to smother civil society, to render the people helpless.

Joseph Desire Mobutu is the model of the African Strong Man. He was an American invention whose career is the purest expression of U.S. policy in Africa. With all due respect to the NAACP's Kweisi Mfume, there was nothing "inconsistent and incoherent" about Mobutu's nearly four decades of service to the United States. From the day in August, 1960 when Eisenhower ordered the death of Lumumba (Mobutu, Lumumba's treasonous chief of the army, deposed his Prime Minister the next month and collaborated directly in the murder) to his death from cancer in 1997, U.S. African policy was inextricably bound to the billionaire thief. It can be reasonably said that Mobutuism is U.S. African policy.

Mobutu and nine U.S. Presidents (Eisenhower through Clinton) utterly and mercilessly poisoned Africa, sending crippling convulsions through the continent, from which Africa may never recover. With borders on Angola, Zambia, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Congo (Brazzaville), and a land mass as large as the U.S. east of the Mississippi, Mobutu's Zaire was an incubator of never ending war, subversion, disease, corruption and, ultimately, social disruption so horrific as to challenge the Arab and European slave trade in destructive intensity.

Mobutu's reign began in the heyday of European soldiers of fortune, allies of his like "Mad Mike" Hoare. By the time of his death, more than 100 mercenary outfits operated in sub-Saharan Africa, safeguarding multinational corporations from the chaos that Mobutu and his American handlers labored so mightily to foment. So integral have mercenaries become to Africa, a number of Black governments depend on them for their own security, forsaking any real claim to national sovereignty. This, too, is the legacy of U.S. African policy. (American mercenary corporations garner an ever-increasing share of the business.)

Millions died in Zaire-Congo and neighboring states as a direct or indirect result of policies hatched in Washington and executed by Mobutu – and this, before the genocidal explosion in Rwanda in 1994, leading to an "African World War" fought on Congolese soil that has so far claimed at least 3 million more lives, belated victims of the policies dutifully carried out by America's African Strong Man.

Bush cultivates more Mobutus

For 43 years U.S. governments have empowered Strong Men to do their bidding in Africa. The geography and riches of Congo-Zaire allowed Mobutu to wreak continent-wide havoc on Washington's behalf, while growing fabulously rich. However, many lesser clients have been nurtured by successive U.S. governments, their names and crimes too numerous for this essay. They and Mobutu's outrages are the logical product of the neocolonialist program. The actors come and go, but the underlying design remains the same: to prevent the emergence of strong civil societies in Black Africa.

The Strong Man's job is to create weak civil societies. Weak and demoralized societies, supporting fragile states hitched to the fortunes of the Strong Man and his circle of pecking persons, pose little threat to foreign capital.

The African Strong Man model suits the purposes of European imperialists and the United States, perfectly. Their overarching concern– especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union – is for the multinational mineral and petroleum-extracting corporations – what Europeans and Americans are actually referring to when they speak of their "national interests" on the continent. Representing himself and a small base of supporters/dependents, the Strong Man can be counted on to bully civil society into steadily narrowing spaces, snuffing out all independent social formations, while at the same time stripping the society of the means to protect itself outside of his own, capricious machinery. The nation itself atrophies, or is stillborn, as in Congo. Where nations have not had the chance to take full root or have been deliberately stunted, the Strong Man wraps the thin reeds of sovereignty around himself, denying the people their means of connectedness to one another, except through him. The state is a private apparatus and – from the standpoint of civil society – there appears to be no nation, at all. The people act, accordingly – that is, they do not act as citizens of a nation.

Thus, the Strong Man's most valuable service to the foreign master is to retard and negate nationhood through constant assaults on civil society.

What is commonly described as American "neglect" of Africa is nothing of the kind. Over the course of the decades since the end of formal colonialism, the governments of the corporate headquarters countries have arrived at a consensus that a chaotic Africa, barely governed at all, in which civil societies are perpetually insecure, incapable of defending themselves much less the nation, is the least troublesome environment for Western purposes. The extraction corporations in Africa feel most secure when the people of Africa are insecure.

In Congo and Liberia-Sierra Leone, this unspoken but operative policy has plunged whole populations into Hell on Earth. African Americans typically criticize the U.S. for failing to treat Black lives as valuable – in other words, Washington is accused of neglecting the carnage in Central and West Africa because of racism. The reality is far worse than that. American policy is designed to place Africans at the extremes of insecurity, in order to foreclose the possibility of civil societies taking root. This policy has always resulted in mass death. Moreover, the U.S. did not simply sit idly by while genocide swept Rwanda and "World War" wracked Congo. Instead, the American government initially thwarted a world response to the Rwandan holocaust, and has prolonged the carnage in Congo through its two client states, Uganda and Rwanda, which have methodically looted the wealth of the northeastern Congo while claiming – falsely, according to a report to the UN Security Council – to be protecting their own borders. Uganda's list of "proxy" Congolese ethnic armies reaches into every corner of Ituri province, where "combatants…have slaughtered some five thousand civilians in the last year because of their ethnic affiliation," according to a Human Rights Watch report. "But the combatants are armed and often directed by the governments of the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo], Rwanda and Uganda." ("Ituri: Bloodiest Corner of the Congo," July 8.)

Zimbabwean officers have also plundered the country, but have been involved in far less killing in their role as protectors of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government. Angola and Namibia also went to the Kinshasa regime's aid. The United Nations and African countries labored for five years to untangle the mix of belligerents – with only the most pro forma cooperation of the United States.

Prolonging "Africa's World War"

Had the U.S. wanted to end or at least scale down "Africa's World War," there is no doubt that Washington could have reined in Rwanda and Uganda, who received a steady stream of American military and economic assistance during the conflict. The Congolese (DRC) government, on the other hand, has suffered under severe sanctions from both the U.S. and the European Union.

It would have cost Washington far less than a billion dollars in bribes to quarantine "Africa's World War" – slush money for a super-power, and a fraction of the bribes Washington was willing to pay for favorable votes on Iraq at the UN. Instead, the U.S. provided aid to key combatants. That's not a lack of policy, nor is it indifference. In the larger scheme of things, Washington believed that prolonging a war that weakened and debased Africa was in its "national interest."

Uganda and Rwanda have reciprocated, shamelessly. "Recently Uganda publicly backed the U.S.-led attack on Iraq, defying the African position to endorse a UN-sanctioned war," reads the current message of the official State House website of President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni's government, in Kampala.

Rwanda's Ambassador to the U.S., Zac Nsenga, was even more obsequious when presenting his credentials at the U.S. State Department, May 8:

"The Rwandan Government reaffirms its commitment to join forces with the United States and the free world to combat acts of terrorism wherever it rears its ugly head. The events of the 1994 Genocide and September 11th has taught us that we have to stand together as Nations to defeat these evil acts against humanity. For this very reason President Kagame stood firmly in support of the U.S. led attack on Iraq, not only to root out a terrorist dictator but also to free the people of Iraq."

Three million dead in Congo mean nothing when compared to two eager clients in the heart of Africa, who are more than willing to both defy "the African position" on Iraq and help keep Central Africa chaotic – Mobutu's old job.

As for Charles Taylor, the Liberian Strong Man responsible for the death, dismemberment and displacement of hundreds of thousands in his own country and neighboring Sierra Leone – at the time of this writing, Bush was still playing games over whether Taylor should leave for Nigerian exile before or after an African peace keeping force arrives to secure the capital, Monrovia.

Concerned American progressives debate what their positions should be if Bush sends significant U.S. forces to help pacify the country. He will not. If history is any judge, U.S. involvement on the ground in Liberia will be token, if any, and brief – just enough to show the flag. Had Washington desired stability for Liberia and its neighbors Sierra Leone, Guinea and the Ivory Coast, it would have eliminated Taylor years ago. He was allowed to live because he served U.S. policy, whether he knew that or not. Eternal warfare is the most effective way to smother civil society.

Americans may also one day learn this horrible lesson.

Reproduced from:
http://www.blackcommentator.com/50/50_cover_africa_pf.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Real U.S. Policy for Africa``x1058639985,12195,world``x``x ``xby Bantu Kelani

In light of brother Ayinde thread on "Integrity or Race first" .. After studying his teachings, I took the TIME to think about them from a new perspective. I would like to address this idea of Integrity again from another frame of mind...

Depression, pain, suffering, and PRIDE destroy the LOVE we SHOULD have for one another and are our worst enemy, as each of us mistakenly assume that the physical world and bad things are the only reality, the ultimate Truth.

We make mistakes and misjudge one another's intentions. Without a Cosmic consciousness or VIRTUE we are wrong and inevitably hurt ourselves. Without integrity, we seriously compromise and sin to the extent of offending another person without dealing with that person and their behavior, continuing confrontation without resolving our own trauma and emotions. In doing so we are destroying something BEAUTIFUL, which could be maintained with HONESTY, HUMILITY and more focus.

We live to learn and I have learnt. Now I think, even if the HURT is too deep we have to be willing and take the time to HEAL ourselves first! Our Hope should be to take care of others as brothers and friends in general following the laws of the cosmic mind, the life force spirit of wisdom and Intellect. To reach out is MAAT, to repair is always MAAT, a better day for tomorrow. So many things need to be done, like promoting Black collective freedom and by extension other citizens and people Freedom also by making some SERIOUS plans and going out into the community and volunteering to make a difference for the future... If there is a man or a woman then there is Power and Capacity at the right time. So if there is Power and capacity at the right time, then truly this man or woman demeanor and actions should be properly conducted and Integrity should never be compromise no matter how the TEST.

Integrity should never be called into question. In my instance I confess to often get carried away with Emotion. But I TRY to do better in the future and honor the Afrikan principles of MAAT and TRUTH instead of discrediting it. We should not be swayed by emotions in moments of Trauma, but defeat our lower self (greed, ignorance, deceit, anger, egoism) to indulge in our higher self (cosmic consciousness, persistence, focus, and WISDOM).``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xConcerning INTEGRITY``x1060142400,17179,views``x``x ``xby Rootsie, www.rootsie.com

What happens when you approach life itself with a sense of entitlement, rather than a sense of awe?

You get all the relationships wrong.
With the natural world: its forces, its cycles, its creatures.
With other people, places, and things.
With your own self.

Since you feel you are entitled to all good things you can imagine,
you are constantly functioning with lesser or greater levels of disappointment. You do not treasure what you have, but always crave more.

Since you are probably aware of the comparative deprivation of many,
even if you make no conscious connection between their situation and yours, the natural injustice does affect you. You can make many choices here, from engaging in 'charity', to indulging hedonistically in things that stimulate your pleasure centers so you don't have to think. Diversions and distractions keep you from focusing on the truth of our situation.

In terms of natural law, ignorance is not an excuse. Just because you exist in the condition of privilege does not mean you exist outside of natural laws. Causes have effects, whether you are aware of them or not.

You may engage in rationalizations or justifications which all boil down to this: you are privileged, we are, because we deserve it, while others do not. Whether you bring forth religious justifications, nationalistic ones, historical ones that paint your people in a positive light as opposed to 'them', this engagement with illusion contaminates any efforts you may make to develop yourself, spiritually or otherwise.

In the realms of love and romance, your fantasy probably swirls around some variation of 'happily ever after', since this is what your sense of entitlement leads you to expect. If difficulties arise, you are unwilling to engage them. In fact, all efforts requiring time and patience are equally elusive: most often you want what you want and you want it now. This is the message being constantly beamed at you by the various media. All you desire is available to you. Now.

You are tied to matter, and this leaves you ignorant of the subtle treasures of heart and soul that lie beyond the realms of matter. Your things become idols. You covet them more and love them more than the truth. You comfort and console yourself with them, for the state of misery you are in is real, and unbearable otherwise.

You expect to be welcomed with open arms wherever you go, and you react with surprise and anger when this is not so. You believe that if you just say something, that makes it true. 'I am not a racist.' 'I am black on the inside, where it counts.' 'Race does not matter.' 'I have many black friends, so I know what it means to be black.'

You may believe that racial inequality is a thing of the past, and that the evils whites committed in the past have nothing to do with you now, or you may cite your own personal ancestry, and point out that your people had nothing to do with the past 500 years of slavery and oppression.

But injustice for many is injustice for all: it cuts both ways. You did not choose to be white and to live in the West. You do not want this privilege, and yet it is yours. You are aware that in the present equation, pleasures for you mean pain for others. Well, no matter how you feel about it, until you move to do something about it, real happiness will elude you. It doesn't matter if this seems fair to you; this is simply how it is.

Further, it is impossible for you to be truly happy living with excess while others try to live without enough. You have to give it back. And not in the form of pity or mercy or charity, which are evil things as long as vast systems persist which maintain inequality. Charity is simply another one of those diversions that makes you feel good for a second but does nothing to address the disease in the long-run.

The way to give it back is not to run screaming away from the land of plenty and play poor in 'the third world' either. Another illusion, and simply dishonest.

The only thing to do is to devote your excess beyond what you need to live to activities which will dismantle this system of privilege. It is unnatural for people to work against their own interests, but white privilege is not in anybody's interest. If the purpose of life were to accumulate material possessions in such excess that others literally die so that you may possess them, that would be one thing. But no one really thinks that is our purpose here.

Our prevailing religion entreats us to 'love another.' It does not teach that we should love some more and others less. There is a profound personal price to be paid for hypocrisy. And thus agrees that same religion.

To benefit, willingly or not, from an immoral system of privilege taints everything in your life with immorality. This is monstrous, but it is true.

This is a society of addiction, of violence, of abuse, of grotesque consumption. It maims and mangles everyone in it. Appearance becomes reality, because reality is unbearable for most.

www.rootsie.com``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe moral degradation of white privilege``x1060142400,59784,world``x``x ``xby Susan Edwards
Trinidad and Tobago

It is said that a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

But what of the minds that are not awake!

Another season of Emancipation lectures and radio programs began and the selection of topics to empower Africans is once again lucid, logical and legitimate. However, one cannot help but question the veracity of "Some" of those Vessels who conveyed messages of freedom.

Messages that says to us "There is no race", we should "Forget History" because we cannot change it. "Black people are their own worst enemies.". Invitation to "Eat a meal for about $300. while exchanging sentences and sentiments that never filters down to the grassroots. Hypocritical mockers who never merge, communicate or listen to the views of the ordinary citizens.

It was dreadfully disturbing to see watered down human elements of oppression decorated in sacred African garments shadowing our tribal vibrations when their hearts were not singing the same song. Ordinary people should develop their minds to a level of "Uncompromising Consciousness." Too often we feel honoured by what was programmed to appear dignified in our eyes. It is this counterfeit dignity that drains the true essence of our connection. Deliberate tools dressed to defeat the truth of our focus.

Spiritual rebirth must first begin with the mind. This would be evident by the conscious choices we make and the quality of respect we exchange with each other. Black people after struggling so hard for so long should leave no space in their brain for foolishness. The celebration of emancipation should be complimented with an understanding of the evolution of the human mind. Our people would do well to remember that the genius within cannot be motivated by foolishness.

We should be firm in our pursuits never contributing to ignorance or systems of oppression. Like a rock, you should be aware of those things that are put in place to manipulate your consciousness.

It is decidedly insulting to the blood of our ancestors when we take respect, honour and appreciation away from those who were... and those who are still the live wires of our struggle... and give it to certain vampires in section VIP. I long to see the day when we truly honour our common people in section VIP. What about the Drummers, Singers, and dancers from Laventille, Morvant, Belmont and Tobago. Some of the people honoured as VIP in our various celebrations and those we often patronize financially would not invite an ordinary African to eat with their dog. Why do we constantly honour those who never extend to us invitations to their functions? Ordinary Africans are never significantly important enough to be given a back seat.

African people must learn the importance of respecting each other with the same quality of respect we show to others. Less emphasis should be placed on paying tribute to the unconscious speeches of dead minds and more wisdom should be applied in showing appreciation to the many living sacrifices still among us.

As African people it is imperative that we pay close attention to who or what influences our decisions. In celebrating our liberation more honour should be given to the common people who kept the vision alive, without their participation our villages would be like graveyards. Dare us to discern the difference between illusion and reality in consecrating thanks to those who gave us their best.

The Emancipation Support Committee should solicit assistance to establish "African Gardens of Remembrance" in every County in Trinidad and Tobago. Where each Month every District would have the responsibility of honouring its citizens living and deceased in a style and setting similar to that at "The Lidj Yasu Omowala Village". Where, our VIP sections would be filled with the ordinary people who we know kept the culture active and sacrificed to build our communities. In so doing we would be keeping the vibration alive all through the year commemorating our struggle, constantly learning of our history and untying ourselves from the many pettiness that so often beset us, at the same time proving the sincerity of those who pretend their affiliation to African Culture once a year. With the Grand annual gathering at the Lidj Yasu Omowala Village, Queens Park Savannah. Positively mastering our journey towards excellence.

To the youths who must carry the cords of consciousness forward I say... it is your mind that would take you where you want to be. Develop your mental focus... be strong. Always honour the 'Truth'.

It is not only important to positively define your own destiny. You should develop your mind and refine your character, that your life will influence the destiny of the world.

http://www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/Susan.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xEmancipation: Dead Men Talking``x1060291748,6533,rasta``x``x ``xby Cheikh Anta Diop

A racial classification is given to a group of individuals who share a certain number of anthropological traits, which is necessary so that they not be confused with others. There are two aspects which must be distinguished, the phenotypical and genotypical. I have frequently elaborated on these two aspects.

If we speak only of the genotype, I can find a black who, at the level of his chromosomes, is closer to a Swede than Peter Botha is. But what counts in reality is the phenotype. It is the physical appearance which counts. This black, even if on the level of his cells he is closer than Peter Botha, when he is in South Africa he will live in Soweto. Throughout history, it has always been the phenotype which has been at issue; we mustn't lose sight of this fact. The phenotype is a reality, physical appearance is a reality.

Now, every time these relationships are not favorable to the Western cultures, an effort is made to undermine the cultural consciousness of Africans by telling them, `We don't even know what a race is.' What that means is, they do know what a yellow man is, they do know what a white man is. Despite the fact that the white race and the yellow race are derivatives of the black which, itself, was the first to exist as a human race, now we do not want know what it is. If Africans fall into that trap, they'll be going around in circles. They must understand the trap, understand the stakes.

It is the phenotype which as given us so much difficulty throughout history, so it is this which must be considered in these relations. It exists, is a reality and cannot be repudiated.

SOURCES:
African Origin of Civilization by Cheikh Anta Diop
Civilization or Barbarism by Cheikh Anta Diop
_____________________________________________________________________

by Ayinde

This is a serious point worth developing.

There are light skinned people who are also Africans but they do not admit that they benefit from white privileges, however, when it is not given to them they usually demand it.

Anyone can claim to be African (genetically, culturally or spiritually) but if they are not dark-skinned Black, then they do not really experience the depths of racism and the heights of their ability to discern.

One can read, get some understanding and associate with Africans but still never experience the depths of racism as it affects dark-skinned Blacks. As a dark-skinned Black man, I had to see that it was not dark-skinned Black men who experience the worst forms of racism, but it is dark-skinned Black women who it affects the most. When a dark-skinned Black woman is armed with her history she gets a whole different view on life based on real day-to-day experiences. I developed a very close association with a really informed dark-skinned Black woman and I saw that the real receptors of racism were informed dark-skinned Black women more so than the men. (There are other levels to this reasoning which I don't mind expanding on later)

Uninformed Black people do not challenge the white supremist status quo; they are simply slaves and digits in the system although they suffer greatly. The system tries to put pressure on informed Black men, but the most pressures are placed on informed dark-skinned Black African women who live in the west.

In my view all courtesies and support should first go to those most affected by the Racist system. We should not only deal with being African in a general context as this often takes precedence over dark-skinned Black Africans who are affected the most in the system.

This entire corrupt world revolves around white privilege, which plays down through the many shades of skin tones to mostly affect dark-skinned Blacks on the 'bottom'.

I will not associate with anyone of a lighter shade who tries to deface, devalue or slander, the works of a dark-skinned Black person and especially dark-skinned Black Women who in the face of all obstacles walk that fine line of truth and integrity.

All others who think they know what racism is should really get a view from the most informed dark-skinned Black woman they can find, as the truths that pour from that perspective shows the shallowness of many that play down the importance of understanding white privilege and racism.

Everyone can make the claim to being African today especially because it is an indisputable fact that we all share a common African heritage, but it is dark-skinned Black Africans who have to deal with the worst effects of racism on a day-to-day basis even if many are ignorant of this fact.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRacial Classification``x1060833600,73706,rasta``x``x ``xby Ayinde

I am speaking here about all Black Earth-Based Movements including the Rastafari Movement.

White people or persons of a light complexion can never be real leaders in a Black based movement. This is the simple fact. Titles of leadership, eldership and control must always be in the hands of real Black people in a Black movement. They are not allowed to help decide for the Black masses whom they should follow and they should not be allowed to be the spokespeople for Blacks.

A Black movement is about correcting earthly imbalances, which start with all symbols and ultimately who is in control. Its first obligation is the ongoing drive to dismantle White superiority on Earth. So any White person/Light skinned person who is trying to be a leader in a Black Earth-Based movement is being doubly dishonest and twice as oppressive. First they try to conceal from the masses that they are already privileged in the earthly western-based systems whether they want these privileges or not, and secondly because of that dishonesty which is the hallmark of the ongoing White superiority complex, they then try to demand privileges through vying for positions of leadership and eldership in Black movements.

They come to the movement dishonest as whites and until they change they remain dishonest in the Black movement, and that is being the Ultimate oppressive white /light-skinned person, even if they are unaware of it.

I see it and I know it and any honest person would admit it.

Ignorant white males/Light-skinned people who operate with this double denial in a Black movement can only exist with one conduct and that is the domineering and distracting attitudes of white male arrogance. (the hallmark of White superiority) They cannot operate any other way, as they are always dishonest in the system even if they are unconscious of it. Their constant vying for Black attention demonstrates this daily.

Their constant belittling of Blacks (even ignorant ones) whom they cannot understand is also another characteristic of this. They operate within underground networks of contacts forever seeking to undermine any Black person whom they feel can clearly articulate the way forward and show up their illegitimacy. The first trick is to try to portray to others an impression of their closeness to informed Blacks so they can feed and trade on that illusion. Then they surround themselves with the symbols and rhetoric of Blackness.

A real white person or anyone who looks white, who is first honest with themselves will not try to become a leader in any aspect of a Black Earth-Based Movement as they cannot experience what it is to be Black on Earth. They can only learn from Black experiences and develop spiritually.

Their ongoing conscious and unconscious drive for popular recognition within Black movements if allowed unchecked knows no bounds and as one door closes they will push for another. They want to be seen in the ultimate positions of leadership in all sectors of this physical world. They simply cannot have it in a Black Earth-Based Movement.

When they do not acknowledge this and act on this fact, then they cannot operate any other way other than through the conduct of White Male arrogance (be they males of females) and for this they are the ultimate thieves and deceivers in a Black movement. Any White person/fair-skinned mixed race person who does not first acknowledge this and leave Blacks to lead in all areas of a Black Earth-Based movement are the worst enemies of Black people.

Another role for really enlightened Whites in a Black movement today is to expose these truths and help uproot and expose other Whites or fair skinned people who try to usurp the legitimate authority or bring more division and distractions to a Black Earth-Based movement. This is the truth of conduct that continually demonstrates their understanding of right order and spiritual growth. They work towards the restoration of truth and justice on earth.

Justice dictates that right order and respect must always be given in the right order. A Black Earth-Based Movement is to restore on earth Legitimate Black Leaders and Elders in all sectors of control and Earth-Based power.

No white or light-skinned person can ever be a legitimate leader in a Black Earth-Based Movement irrespective of how enlightened they are. A Black Earth-Based Movement's first responsibility is to elevate its original Black symbols and real informed Black people to positions of legitimate leadership in all areas of the earth-based movement.

Whites can only get blessings through developing in the spiritual aspects of a Black movement, as only in essence all things remain equal. There can be no other way until there is a full restoration of equal opportunity on the entire earth.

This point often heard from ignorant ones about Rastafari being a separate movement that is fair and equal to all, can only exist in realizing its spirituality but in a material/physical sense this is an illusion. Any Black Movement including Rastafari is first about restoring and returning all that was stolen and or corrupted to its legitimate place. This means symbols as well as real Black people should be in control of their own movement and destiny and this should not be dictated to Blacks by any White/ Light skinned person even if they genuinely embrace Africanness. Pan-Africanism is also a Black Struggle that should be only lead by real Black people and not any white person's definition of who are suitable Blacks.

Response: Double Denial by Rootsie``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhite Supremacy in Black Movements``x1061006400,97767,rasta``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
August 18, 2003

All things exist in three basic dimensions, the spiritual/historical aspect, the symbolic aspect and the Earth Movement.

The Spiritual aspect is what the ancients called entering the house of Rasta. This is the metaphysical/spiritual aspect of things. It is this realm all people can enter Rasta irrespective of race, color and social standing, but there is a way to enter that is well defined in our histories (that is for another reasoning another time).

The symbolic aspect is to look the part. In the case of Rasta it is mostly the dreadlocks. Whites, Blacks and all in between can look the part.

The Earth-based Movement is for addressing the issues that fueled the resurgence of Rasta as a movement. The issues which gave rise to the Rasta Movement were Capitalism, Miseducation, Racism/White Privilege and heightened Gender discrimination. Of course, many other abuses spawned from that. How these issues impacted on Black people is what gave rise to the movement in the first place. These issues have not been resolved so the focus should not change.

As I said in an earlier reasoning, Whites can be symbolic Rastas as they can grow dreadlocks and repeat the words. Whites can also reflect on history, adopt the best values and develop spiritually towards entering the spiritual house of Rasta. Whites did not experience Black African sufferings during and after slavery. Therefore Whites cannot directly identify with the Earth movement but they can support, develop in the spirituality and participate. Only Black people who had similar experiences at the hands of the White system in this present lifetime can really identify with the nuances and subtleties that gave rise to the movement in the first place. The Movement was about addressing Black people's experiences at the hands of a White system.

Many are confusing spirituality and symbolism with the mechanics of an Earth Movement, which was developed to address specific issues. Only certain Black people can directly identify with what started the Rasta Earth Movement because the same conditions exist for most dark-skinned Blacks. Therefore dark-skinned Black people, who institutionalized racism impacts on the most, can directly identify with all three dimensions of Rasta at the same time. They can develop in the spiritual aspect, they can look the part (symbolically) and they can directly identify with the sufferings that started the Movement.

When a person says in order to be a Rasta one has to identify with Blackness, this is true for all people of all races in a metaphorical sense. This is dealing with spirituality. Anyone of any race can do the work to identify with anything in a spiritual sense.

This brings us to the part about Meritocracy:

Meritocracy is about selecting the most suitable person for a position.

I set out to address Racism, White Superiority and Gender discrimination which are major issues affecting Africans in and out this Movement.

People of all races can research and learn about the sufferings of others and of course many can recall their own personal sufferings and get some understanding of others. But only Black people have experienced the worst sufferings as blacks under the Racist system. If we are speaking about the people with the most experiences of both institutionalized racism and gender prejudices in this White world system then the people are obviously dark-skinned Black Women.

If such people were armed with the historical information then they would have both the information and the direct experiences to speak on all these issues.

Now tell me, can a White/light-skinned person or any light-skinned mixed race person ever directly experience the same ongoing lifelong racial and gender abuses as a dark-skinned Black person? No, they cannot. They can talk about their experiences as Whites or Light skinned mixed and in some cases they get abused badly. However, they cannot experience what it is to be a dark-skinned Black person in the system, growing up being told they were worthless and ugly, then having teachers disregard them etc. They cannot experience what it is to watch television and all the images are nothing like them. They cannot experience these things and much more. What I am saying is they will lack the deeper direct experiences that reaches to the soul.

So on the basis of Merit in a Black Earth Movement that is supposed to address these issues, we should all be looking at helping the worst victims get better informed and then helping them to come forward and advance the cause (once they are interested) as they are suitably qualified, armed with both the experiences and information which is widely accessible today.

In a Black movement, only really informed/enlightened dark-skinned Black people are best qualified to speak powerfully on the issues of racism and gender discrimination.

If there are exceptions where White-skinned people can have the dark-skinned Black people's experiences of Racism and gender discrimination then explain how this is possible.

If the Rasta movement was focused on helping those most affected by the system then we would have much more powerful speakers in the frontline engaging the politics and all other areas. But today too much attention is paid to people who are not the worst victims of the system. Too much chatter and showboating, and too few people with real experiences are coming forward or are being helped forward.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xNo Colorless Rasta Movement``x1061179200,79034,rasta``x``x ``xExtract: Rastafari Speaks Message Board
September 04 2003

by Yan

"Black supremacy is racism and a dead end"

"And do not tell me, you have no money to fly to Africa! Then sell the computer in front of you!
And stop to think in colour!"

"When a white person becomes a Rasta he is wiped clean of all whitness meaning way of thinking and accepts the truth about himself that yes he is from Africa"

That is the very reason we say that racism is something that needs to be FULLY reasoned on and understood. Those lacking the necessary experience with racism and the issues confronting Africans everywhere are ill-equipped to truly understand and lead black movements. And yes! Rastafari is a BLACK MOVEMENT this is not to say that it, or any other black movement, religious or otherwise excludes non blacks, but their primary motivation always has been to bring about the liberation of African people at home and in the Diaspora.

Where does this then leave whites or others who wish to assist or be a part of the movement? They need to first properly reason and confront their own privilege before any contribution they FEEL they are making is anything more than lip service. It is convenient for many whites to hold on to the spiritual/religious aspect of Rastafari because it is in this aspect that they can ignore many hard-core socio -political issues that fester in our society precisely because many choose to ignore them.

Furthermore I find the tone of the above posts that you have highlighted to be offensive and insulting. With all due respect, and to quote sister Kelani you do not go to the hosts home and insult him / her, by the same token do not come into a black movement and then attempt to determine the way black people deal with their own issues. In all things there is an order. There is a wealth of posts on this board that have dealt with issues such as these; I suggest that ones who wish to really learn about their own privilege investigate them.

The key to reasoning is REASON! Examine what you are thinking critically from the point of your own privilege in whatever way it manifests itself. White's and near whites have their own role to play and they MUST come to the table as who they are legitimately and not as hippie types paying lip service to real issues by stating glibly that we are all African anyway. As you rightly claimed Babylon soldiers ARE seeing colour, as are many in our own ranks. To claim that colour or race does not matter in A BLACK MOVEMENT is a plainly dishonest assertion lacking in integrity.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xBlack supremacy is racism?``x1062721785,53348,views``x``x ``xBy Rootsie

It was as if I had been struck by a lightning-bolt when I first heard the music of Bob Marley in 1976. I was overwhelmed by the power of the music and the potency of the words.. Here was music of revolution: a biting political message, a cry for justice and freedom, and a deep conviction of the possibility that there can be reconciliation, even in the face of a monstrous history. But perhaps what struck me most was that from among the poorest of the poor on this planet, I sensed a powerful joy. I myself was in despair about the world, at the tender age of 19. I was aware that I was one of the privileged ones--:white, American, college student... so how could these people radiate such joy? I wanted that. I wanted to know what gave these people such joy in the face of such suffering, so much greater than my own. And so, I learned all I could about Rastafari. I have been led along through these years from one question for study and meditation to another, reasoning with many Rastas along the way.

What I write here then is the result of those years. I am attempting to define Rastafari for no one, but I feel it is important to give words to the elements of Rastafari which have been so powerful for me.

What can be said about Rastafari that would be true for all Rastas?

Some Rastas interpret the Bible literally.
Some interpret the Bible metaphorically.
Some reject the Bible altogether.
Some study various spiritual and religious traditions.
Others think this is blasphemy.
Some Rastas worship Haile Selassie as JAH, as God.
Some worship Jesus Christ, or see these two as having a single identity.
Some worship neither.
Some Rastas embrace Selassie's Christianity
Others are not so comfortable.
Some Rastas see the roots of Rasta in African spirituality.
Some know nothing about African spirituality.
Some Rastas are Garveyites.
Some are pan-African activists.
Some Rastas are other sorts of political activists.
Some say activism is a waste of time in Babylon.
Some Rastas believe in a Rasta priesthood and Rasta churches.
Some do not.
Some Rastas believe in physical repatriation to Ethiopia, seeing it as Zion as described in the Bible.
Some do not.
Some Rastas view ganja as a sacrament.
Some do not.
Some Rastas wear dreadlocks.
Some do not.
Some Rastas adhere to a strict dress-code.
Some do not.
Some Rastas belong to specific orders, like Bobo Ashanti, Nyabinghi, Twelve Tribes of Israel.
Some do not.
Some Rastas reject the idea of whites claiming Rasta.
Some do not.
Some Rastas believe women are lesser beings and have special rules for their behavior and participation.
Some do not.

I am sure others could add to this list. So the question is, obviously, what is Rastafari and what is a Rasta?

Rastafari as a movement began in one of the poorest, blackest, places in the world, in Jamaica, inspired by Marcus Garvey as a call for Black unity, Black identity, and Black empowerment. It drew on the imagery and worldview of Christianity, which is the prevalent religious orientation in Jamaica, and viewed social and political revolution in terms of the Christian revelation.. Some of the first Rastas saw in Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia the final return of Jesus Christ to usher in a New Heaven and New Earth, to break the chains of racism, injustice, oppression. To "set the captives free."

The Rasta 'trod' in life is very often described in terms of the Exodus out of Egypt, the return from Babylon, the return to Zion, the return home. What is envisioned is a restoration of the original intention of creation, just as the Bible describes.

Some interpret this literally as a return to Ethiopia, Selassie's home, the world's oldest Christian kingdom. Others see this 'repatriation' as an internal process of reconcilement, the breaking of the bonds of 'mental slavery' so that one's true self can be revealed, one's true vision restored. So in Rastafari you have existing side by side mystics, who see man/woman and God as one, and 'stricter 'ones who seek to adhere to the letter of Hebrew law and read the Bible literally. Now it is quite an achievement that Rastas of such radically different orientations can tolerate one another.

I think that this tolerance exists because the real battle is the battle against the forces of white supremacy and global domination. These are the forces against which the first Rastas asserted Black identity and Black unity.

And here is why so many whites, ironically, are attracted to Rastafari. It is a way of expressing their own resistance to the 'Babylon system', even though they were born into it and partake, willing or not, of its privileges. As much as Rasta gives Blacks a way to deal with the historical pain of being born black, it offers Whites a way to deal with the pain of being born white. It offers a vision of unity, in which blacks and whites together can work to dismantle systems of global 'downpression'. Rastafari also offers whites a way to reconcile with their own heritage, to be Jewish or Christian, to return to a religious ideology many felt had to be rejected because of the way it has been used as an instrument of oppression against nonwhites. Rastas speak of being the 'real Jews', the 'real Christians' of this time, feeling that they have gotten to the heart of the Bible's teachings about justice, unity, and love.

The concept of "I and I", which is so central to Rastafari, reflects a radical identification of man in God, God in man, and the unity of all beings: "One Love". From "I and I", it is not far to travel to "I am God". In the same way that Selassie (and Jesus) is both man and God, so may I be, with the proper conduct in my life, the true livity. And this reconciliation of humans and God, of spirit and flesh, takes place here, in history.

History: Biblical history, the history of Africa, and of Black slavery, are central concerns of many Rastas. As is remembrance-"Do you remember the days of slavery?" (Burning Spear) The reconciliation and redemption that Rastas envision is to take place here, on earth. "We sick and tired of their ism schism game/ die and go to heaven in Jesus name,/ we know when we understand/ almighty God is a living man." ---Marley and Tosh

As Rasta has developed, and as individuals develop spiritually through Rasta, questions arise for many. Is the religion forced upon Blacks by the slavemasters really the appropriate road back to their true identities as Africans? This question has led many Rastas to look closely at African spirituality, which always found its expression in the slaves' interpretation of Christianity anyway. Caribbean Christianity and American Black Christianity contain strong elements of far older African traditions. Voudon (or Santeria or Candomble) is a striking example of the wedding of indigenous black spirituality with Christian imagery. In the Yoruba tradition of West Africa, which so many slaves brought across the ocean with them, the gods, or orishas, are close to humans, and it is possible to 'call them down' to inhabit human bodies. This belief in some ways could not be more opposed to the Christian rejection of the flesh, but then, one could say that Jesus the man was 'ridden' by YHWH in the same way an orisha 'rides' his or her human 'horse', called down to physical incarnation by drum and by dance.

The Rasta/African preoccupation with history and ancestors also led many back naturally to the Egyptian and Ethiopian Kushite traditions. What is being discovered by many, including even white scholars, threatens to turn some of the original assumptions of Rastafari on their ear. The oldest human statement of the god-man idea, the I and I, is found in the "Book of Coming Forth by Day", The Egyptian Book of the Dead. The importance of human conduct in revealing to a person his/her true identity of oneness with God is at the heart of these Egyptian texts.

As the 20th century proceeded, and much forgotten or distorted history was unearthed, and as archaeologists discovered more, a far different view of the world has emerged than the one which was so prevalent in the 1930's. when Rastafari as a modern movement first began. A compelling case has been made by many scholars that the source of Judeo-Christian mythology and theology (not to mention Hindu and Buddhist), and the Greek Civilization, Europe's mother-culture, is indeed African to a large degree. It is easy to see that the vast achievement of the Egyptian civilization in particular accounts for the dissemination of African values throughout the world. More and more scholars agree that the monolithic cultures of Northern Europe (which are found on the sea-coast of the Atlantic) and South and Central America must be attributed to the influence of sea-going ancient Africans.

And even further, most geneticists and archaeologists now agree that we are all African in origin, every human being, and that every human being lived in Africa as little as 40.000-60.000 years ago. "The whole world is Africa". (Black Uhuru)

These discoveries have shaken the world as we know it, and the full implications have yet to be felt. More and more Rastas are rejecting the Judeo-Christian worldview in favor of their own, indeed of our own, far-older, and in most cases, far more subtle and refined, indigenous African traditions.

Rastas learn that the 'ras', the crown of uncombed locks, was seen as a sign of wisdom by that ancient Egyptians. The Pharoahs even wore wigs of ras to symbolize their recognition of the wisdom gained by those who went into the wilderness seeking wisdom, and came out with matted, long hair. The Hindu 'saddhus' retain the tradition to this day.

Some Rastas still remain in the 'strict interpretation' camp, adhering to the Bible, while others are exploring the ways in which all spiritual/religious expression on the earth is one, and springs from a single source, which is Africa. I think it is inevitable that more and more Rastas will allow themselves to come around to this worldview, especially since the most fervent Rasta call is for global One Love and unity. In African history we have a striking confirmation of the possibility that all humankind can come together as one in a recognition of our common 'roots.'

The idea of 'Roots' has always been an essential component of Rasta, roots as in original humans living in a natural state of oneness with each other and the earth, roots as in history, roots as in the oneness of all under JAH in creation. This idea of the rediscovery of one's roots in terms of Blackness, in terms of history, as a way to break the chains of 400 years of physical and mental slavery, has naturally led Rastas back to Africa with new eyes, and has transformed Rasta itself.

Many Afrocentric Rastas find themselves in a different relation with the figure of 'Selassie I' than when they first began their Rasta journey. Worshiping Selassie as the One God either becomes impossible for them, or they view this metaphorically, or they engage in vigorous rationalizations and mental acrobatics, for the sake of Rasta unity. It is possible that the symbol of Selassie will fade away altogether from Rasta, viewed as something that made sense for its time, but is no longer helpful. There are many reasons why Rastas may come to the view that the worship of Selassie is outmoded.

He was orthodox Christian, and many Rastas have come to reject Christianity. He was a king, and Rasta for many addresses the upliftment of the poor people of the earth, and thus reverence for him may seem to some contradictory. Some Rastas see the symbol of Selassie as emblematic of the 'I and I' idea, which is that man/woman, and God are of one identity, and if this one man can be seen as God, so all can be seen so.

Looking at Rastafari inspires ones to question the ultimate purpose of all religious thought. Some religions teach that the fleshly world is depraved, fallen, and illusory, and that true unity and reconciliation can only come after death, or at the end of history, when God returns to intervene. In many ways, Christianity teaches this, and though it may draw strongly on Judeo-Christian images and conceptions. Rasta has always absolutely rejected this idea. Rastafari looks to reconciliation and unity and the rule of justice right here on earth, and in this time.

Rastas are for the most part not revolutionary in the activist sense, but rather view revolution as a process that first takes place within, a turning over of conceptions that people, particularly Blacks, hold that oppress them, ideas, of their inferiority and lack of personal power to move to transform the outer world according to spiritual principles of love, unity, and right conduct.

It seems that through Rasta, many have been inspired to look beyond religions to the underlying natural principles that govern all human movement from birth to death and beyond. Perhaps in this time of crisis in human history the true purpose of religion is revealed. Maybe the purpose of religion is to take humans beyond religion. to a common recognition of the one Divine Energy, which moves and informs everything and everyone, from which we have life and love and the power to create a world more and more of us are convinced is our birthright.

In the African worldview, the ancestral worldview of all humans, everything is marvelously alive. The entire earth is a sacred place, of one essence, to which all refers and will in time return. This is the One Love and One Inity of the Rasta. It is the same expression.

I think now we can return to question of what is powerful and abiding about Rastafari as a movement. There are things upon which I believe all Rasta can agree.

There are many sects and denominations of Rasta, but most Rasta do not affiliate with any of them. I think I have shown some of the widely-diverse worldviews that exist in what is still able to be called 'Rasta.' One thing that is unique and powerful about Rasta is in part this very diversity, and the way Rasta resists attempts to congeal into just another religion, with a single set of doctrines and rules.

I believe that what unites all Rasta is a common concern for justice in this world, and the importance of personal conduct in bringing that justice about.

Rastafari presents a unique vision of global transformation through personal spiritual transformation. Rastas speak of livity, which is defined as personal lifestyles and personal habits that reflect the sort of world they believe is possible for all.

Most Rastas reject the idea that Rasta is religion. Instead they say it is a way of life, a livity. This again reflects an African worldview, which is in fact our common indigenous worldview, as we all came from there. There is no division between spirit and flesh, and the whole world is sacred.

Rastas also have a common understanding of the enemy, which they call Babylon. Babylon is conceived as the global systems of racism and oppression,

"A vampire....sucking the blood of the sufferers...building church and university...deceiving the people continually." --Marley

And as Bob Marley sings in "Babylon System", truth is the ultimate weapon. "Tell the children the truth"...the truth of history, the truth of the results of history on bloody display all around us, and the truth of our purpose here on this earth.

I remember feeling so relieved when I first encountered Rasta, because here at last were people unafraid to call wickedness wickedness.

All Rastas embrace the unitarian values of Rasta: One Love, Unity, and moral conduct.. They embrace a vision of a just world, a peaceful world, and freedom for all without regard to race, culture, or economics. They see that the unity of humankind will come as people embrace spiritual values and see that our common purpose here is to live harmoniously, joyfully, and well.

Rastafari is now a global movement that originated as a call for black unity out of the heart of the African diaspora. That nonblacks have taken up the call is not surprising, but it is not possible to have a "colourless Rasta movement." Any nonblack person who embraces Rastafari must embrace Africa, which is after all, the Motherland of all human beings, and indeed the Mother of all life. Burning Spear asks, "Have you ever seen an African woman nipples run dry/ Because she has no food?"

Well, we refuse to see her at our own peril, for the condition of our Mother speaks to the health of the whole world. That is what Rastas know, what they say, what they sing. If she run dry, then how will we be fed?

So, have I answered the question I began with? How, out of one of the worst ghettos in the world, does there arise such joy? For myself, yes I have. I see that the joy comes because "we know we're going and we know where we from."Through the knowledge of history we find that we are in fact, One.

And with that knowledge humans can call upon all the powers of creation to build a world that reflects that One, One Love.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRastafari``x1063339200,28830,rasta``x``x ``xby Paul Street

I'll always remember the day I tried to engage in that silly exercise called "speaking truth to power." It was early December of 2001. My topic was American policymakers' decision to place nearly a million black people behind bars and to mark more than one in three black males with a felony record. As a member of a Chicago-based council of advisers working to help ex-offenders "reintegrate" into the "free world," I was invited to a pleasant conference room to give my thoughts on these matters to Matt Bettenhausen, Illinois' "Deputy Governor for Criminal Justice and Public Safety." Along with eight other council members, I presented facts and reflections on the vicious circle of racially disparate mass incarceration. Among other things, I noted that there were nearly 20,000 more black males in the Illinois state prison system than the number of black males enrolled in the state's public universities. There were more black males in the state's correctional facilities just on drug charges, I added, than the total number of black males enrolled as undergraduates in Illinois state universities.

Bettenhausen, who hails from a local family of accomplished racecar drivers, arrived in time only for the last talk. He apologized for his lateness, explaining that he had been meeting with the state's Attorney General to discuss the "War On Terrorism." His eyes beamed with pride as he told us how much busier he had become since his appointment as the state's "first-ever Homeland Security Coordinator." With an American flag pin prominently displayed on his lapel, he regaled us with the latest reports on the United States military campaign in Afghanistan. He was clearly relishing his new supposed importance in the battle between planetary good and evil. "Wow," a fellow presenter muttered, "he watches CNN."

After thus communicating the relative insignificance of our issue at this moment of sweeping global consequence, Bettenshausen told us that then Illinois governor George Ryan would not be reversing his recent decision to eliminate higher education and vocational training for prisoners from the state's budget. These cuts, he claimed, were compelled by the "post-September economic downturn" – a dubious dating of an overdue correction in the capitalist business cycle.

Tires squealing, he apologized for racing off to another meeting related to "the war on terror." I was instantly reminded of James Madison's comment that "the fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad." Another phrase also came to mind: plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same).

"Everything Changed"

According to a great national myth propagated by the in-power right wing War Party and its allies and enablers in the dominant state-corporate media, "everything changed" on September 11, 2001. Before 9/11, this authoritarian narrative runs, Americans lived in peaceful division, pleasantly but naively stuck in their own little prosperous domestic spheres. We were cheerfully but innocently blind to the dangers of a still-precarious world and to the related greatness and vulnerability of our nation. We were too preoccupied with our busy little lives to grasp our creeping moral decline, epitomized by the sexual transgressions and lies of Bill Clinton.

Thanks to 9/11, we have lost our innocence and awakened to our national magnificence and the related threats we face from bad people who hate and envy our freedom and prosperity. United We Stand: we have transcended old divisions in shared allegiance to the "war on terrorism" – a new crusade against a new semi-permanent Evil Other that is the true replacement for Cold War predecessors in Moscow and Beijing. We have been morally, politically, and spiritually toughened, unified, and regenerated by violence: our own and that of our "freedom"-hating enemies.

Racially Disparate Residential Neo-liberalism

How curious, then, to pick up the "Metro" section of a recent (August 6th) issue of my leading local newspaper – The Chicago Tribune. The front page contains a photograph of 15 well-dressed white people relaxing in a plush and very predominantly Caucasian North Side neighborhood (Lincoln Park). They are positioned to permit a photographer to re-create George Seurat's late 19th century painting, titled "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte."

It's a perfect image of bourgeois calm and oblivious, self-satisfied, imperial repose. The photograph, the Tribune reports, will be used for a "recruitment poster" by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which does not seem terribly interested in attracting student's from the city and metropolitan area's large African-American population.

Things are a bit more stressful in another, blacker part of town. Further down on the same page of the same section, we can read the results of a recent research report on 1,587 African-Americans living in the decrepit Ida B. Wells housing project on the city's South Side. More than half of the households there have incomes less than $5,000. Less than a fourth of the heads of those households are employed. According to the Urban Institute, 1,000 people living at Wells may end up homeless as a result of the city's imminent demolition of the project. There's an endemic shortage, the Institute notes, of affordable housing for the project's residents and indeed for poor people throughout the city. Only a small number of the displaced will qualify to live in the "mixed income" dwellings the city will build where the facility used to sit.

This is terrible, but it's an old story. Since the early- and mid-90s, public authorities have been demolishing public housing projects with only minimal attention to the needs and limited resources of predominantly black public housing residents. The Chicago version is called the "Chicago Housing Authority Transformation Plan," a local monument to the market worshipping, privilege-friendly philosophy of global corporate neo-liberalism. Pushing disadvantaged inner-city residents and the idea of social justice to the remote margins of public concern, that philosophy holds that markets make the best decisions, that social action to improve your situation is self-defeating and silly, and that the best and only way to succeed in life is as a sovereign individual consumer and investor in a "free market society." Its triumph was proclaimed "inevitable" ("there is no alternative") by leading architects of American policy and opinion long before lunatics from a distant US-protected oil sheikdom turned flying gasoline-filled symbols (and agents) of petroleum-addicted corporate globalization into weapons of mass destruction.

As researchers and activists pointed out long before the jetliner attacks "changed everything," the available stock of such housing in Chicago is insufficient to absorb the displaced public housing population. That population is "free" to be homeless, thanks to the working of economic forces that carry social costs of secondary concern to local policymakers. Those policymakers, including the Mayor, are beholden to commercial and real estate property developers seeking to remove poor black inner city residents from choice urban investment locations. Those locations are slated for predominantly white professionals, who want to live and shop in proximity to their offices in downtown Chicago, a leading headquarters for heavily state-subsidized and global corporations like the Boeing Corporation, which equips such marvelous adventures in democratic free-market progress as the terrorist occupation of Palestine (1948 to the present) and the bombings of Baghdad (both pre- and post-9/11) and (pre-9/11) Belgrade.

Correctional Continuities

Another story on the exact same Tribune page also indicates that some situations remain "normal" in the post-September 11 era. It notes that seven inmates, mostly black, were recently beaten with pool cues by guards at the city's giant Cook County Jail. How pre-9/11: this is the third such high-profile incident reported in the last four years at Cook County. The latest revelations come just days after Cook County States' Attorney Richard Devine – notorious in the black community for his habit of putting innocent African-Americans on death row – announced that he would not file charges in connection with the beating of five shackled Cook County inmates in July 2000. Meanwhile, federal investigators are conducting a civil-rights violation investigation into an alleged mass beating involving 40 guards at the same jail in 1999.

Last July, the Chicago public was momentarily shocked – these things pass, as the media moves on – to learn of a terrible accident on Interstate 57, south of Chicago. Several blacks and Hispanics were critically injured and two died when a van rolled over while carrying 18 Chicagoans to visit loved ones warehoused in racially disparate mass penitentiaries located in the southern part of Illinois. Terrible, but not new: on January 26th of 2001, almost 9 months before "everything changed," a Salvation Army van carrying eleven people on Interstate 55 south of Chicago collided with a tractor-trailer, killing all ten of the van's passengers and its driver. Ten of the dead were Black and one was Hispanic. The van was part of a regular service that took people from Chicago's predominantly black West Side to visit relatives and mates doing time in state prison.

After both crashes, nobody in the local media or politics had much to say about the relationship between the victims' race and the nature of the van's destination. There were no connections made between the tragedy and the state's policy decision to dramatically increase the number of prisoners in Illinois – mostly black and from the Chicago area – from 27,000 in 1990 to nearly 47,000 in 2000 (even as crime fell) and its related building of 11 new mass correctional facilities in Illinois during the same period; massive job-programs for de-industrialized downstate whites that are placed at increasingly vast distances from the "offenders'" home communities (See Paul Street, The Vicious Circle: Race, Prison, Jobs and Community in Chicago, Illinois, and the Nation, Chicago: Chicago Urban League, October 2002).

Last Hired, First Fired

Speaking of jobs, an excellent recent front-page article in the Tribune notes that mass lay-offs enacted during the curiously "jobless" Bush "recovery" have hit Chicago's black population especially hard. Blacks "feel frozen out of the work world," as local activist Eddie Read told the Tribune. The feeling among black workers and job applicants, the paper explains, is very different from the late 1990s, when increased labor demand significantly cut black unemployment, even among lesser-skilled inner city workers. It is worth noting, however, that the black unemployment rate (18.2 percent) was more than four times higher than the white unemployment rate (less than 5 percent) even at the peak of the "Clinton boom" – which "lifted more yachts than rowboats" as the Tribune noted last year. Also meriting mention is the fact that Chicago area job growth in the booming 90s was dramatically higher in white communities than in black communities (see The Color of Job Growth, a 2002 report of the Chicago Urban League). Here we are dealing with continuities that go back much further than 9/11. They reach back further than the Great Depression, when blacks were the "last hired and first hired" for neither the first nor the last time in American history.

Ghetto Lives

To more directly sense the rich continuities of racial homeland inequality in Chicago before and after "everything changed," you don't need to read newspapers or studies. You can drive west out of the city's downtown on Madison Avenue, past the stadium that Michael Jordan built (the United Center) and into the heart of desperately impoverished West Side neighborhoods like North Lawndale and West and East Garfield. A large number of teen and younger adult males gather on street corners. Most of them are part of the city's large and very disproportionately black concentration – estimated at 97,000 strong in 2001 by the Center for Labor Market Studies (Northeastern University) – of "disconnected youth," 16- to 24-years olds who are both out of school and out of work. Many of them are clearly enrolled in gang organizations and engaged in the narcotics trade. Many of them have already served or will soon serve as raw material for the aforementioned "downstate" prison industry. Older unemployed males, many unrecorded in the nation's official unemployment statistics (their "discouraged" status means they are no longer actively participating in the labor force), congregate around liquor stores and missions. The endemic stress, disappointment, and danger of inner-city life is etched on their faces.

Equally evident is the relative absence of retail facilities, services, and institutions that are standard in richer, whiter neighborhoods: full-service modern grocery stores, drugstores, bookstores, restaurants, doctors, dentists, lawyers, dry-cleaners, banks, personal investment and family insurance stores, boutiques, coffee shops, and much more. Businesses and homes are visibly dilapidated, with many of the former relying on hand-painted signs to advertise their wares. Local business owners, many of whom are Arab, protect their enterprises from burglary with bars and gated shutters. Pawnshops and barebones storefront churches are widely visible, as are liquor stores and currency exchanges advertising super-exploitive Payday loans. Taxicabs are scarce and those that do serve the neighborhoods are generally low-budget, fly-by-night "jitney" firms.

The small number of whites seen in these neighborhoods and their South Side counterparts are males working in traditional working-class "jobs that pay" – street and sewer repair, construction trades, firemen, and the like – that appear to be unavailable to black males.

Police cars cruise warily, their occupants donning bullet-proof vests deemed necessary in waging the war on drugs in neighborhoods where people with felony records outnumber legitimate jobs.

This is pretty much how these neighborhoods looked and felt before 9/11. Truth be told, they look a lot like they did in the 1960s, even before the riots that are supposed to have taken away their vitality, actually stolen by a process of disinvestment that was already well underway.

Accelerated Continuity

How have things changed since 9/11 in these neighborhoods? Simply put, the core continuities of human suffering and hopelessness have been accelerated. Things have gotten worse at a quickened pace, thanks in large part to the racially disparate joblessness of the current recovery. Also part of the unpleasant equation is 9/11 itself, or more accurately the official, right-led public and media response to the terror attacks. September 11th gave the radical-right Bush junta – falsely labeled conservative – a precious opportunity to divert public attention away from the causes and consequences of urban inequality, to starve, cripple, and pre-empt programs that might alleviate the suffering caused by racism and related socioeconomic inequality, and to conflate dissent with treason. These masters of war at home and abroad have seized on the opportunity with all deliberate speed, consistent with the timeworn conduct of concentrated power, before and since "everything changed." Empire abroad has always been and remains both reflection and agent of inequality and repression at home.

Paul Street is an urban social policy researcher in Chicago, Illinois. His book Empire Abroad, Inequality at Home: Essays on America and the World Since 9/11 (Paradigm Publishers) will be available next year.

Originally published on:
http://www.blackcommentator.com/55/55_think_street.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xInequality Before and After 9/11``x1063439418,60118,world``x``x ``xby Ayinde

My involvement in Rastafari was at the request of several persons one of whom was Ras Forever. He sighted I as a Rasta and knew the reason that I refused to grow a dreadlocks. I made it absolutely clear to him many years ago that I do not accept the absolute divinity of Haile Selassie although I sight him as one of our esteemed ancestors.

I always knew I was Rasta and that was also long before I paid any attention to what many claim to be Rastafari (Hailing Selassie I as absolute divinity).

I never accepted his absolute divinity for several reasons.

a) I did not agree with many decisions he made and still feel strongly that he made too many errors in regards to his attempt to unite Eithopia, which disfranchised many Ethiopian groups.

b) In my opinion, if one understands absolute divinity then one imparts a definitive process that allows people to attain that cosmic reunion. Nowhere in his writings have I seen any of the definitive processes that I know (have experienced) and have demonstrated many times even to people I never met physically.

c) I read much of his writings and have gotten nothing that I did not already know. So from my perspective he imparted nothing new to advance me. However, I do agree that many can learn from his writings, especially those who are unfamiliar with many other sources for such information.

On this basis I cannot and do not consider him anything other than one of our ancestors who played his part and is held in high regards similarly to many other esteemed historians and elders.

Rastafari as a movement is about addressing the same issues as most other Black Movements. Rasta by the definition I gave is what I am about. And there would be no Rastafari without the concept of Rasta.

I know many Rastas (including dreadlock Rastas) who do not accept Haile Selassie as anything more than another esteemed leader. The term Rasta was around before the 1930s long before people started Hailing Selassie as their leader.

My involvement in Rastafari is that of a Rasta, an African, as someone who assists many Black Movements and also having been involved in schools and other grassroots work that also cater to underprivileged youths many of whom are 'Rastafarians'.

It does not matter much to me whom others wish to follow, or claim is their saviour as long as in their doing so they do not infringe on my rights.

Part of my work is to help those who wish to become Rastas, but only if they ask, are able to engage the process and if I feel comfortable working with them. I do know several other people whose personal essence interacts with (some are connected to) the Universal essence and they too are quite in order to claim Rasta. I have been working over the years to get more Rastas on the Internet to assist in sharing from deeper personal experiences with those who are interested.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xMy Involvement in Rastafari``x1063774827,51881,rasta``x``x ``xby Pianke Nubiyang

I realize there are many people in Rastafari who are not aware of the core and roots of Rastafari on the level that Haile Selassie would have dealt with it, or how our ancestors dealt with it.

We must understand that religion in African tradition is a way of life, not a ceremony that takes place on Sundays. Music and dancing, worship, recognition of ancestors, recognition of elemental forces, the study of the planets (as in Dogon religion) the initiation of males and females, the practice of dance and martial arts (like when the Brazilians practice capoeira or the Dogon do the Sigle dance to mimic the path of the Sirius star and its system): these are practices that are filled with sacred meaning.

Yet, we must also realize that nature in its wisdom, and the Divine Mind of the Universe, is about positivity. It is said that survival is for the "fittest"; however, nature and God programmed survival to be for the smartest as well as those who can endure.

If we look at economics or a just society in general in the United States, what do we see? We see conditions arising that lead to genocide of Black folk: AIDS, confinement, divorce, voilence, family breakups, intermarriage, gentrification, homelessness, lack of employment, and being pushed aside by other more aggressive groups of people. Imagine, people who used to be veterans in wars have become the weakest of Americans becaue of not having that type of power and strength that is within us and needs to be used at all times. In order to use that power to ensure our survival, we must seek knowledge, seek the truth and apply it for our benefit.

Hence, we are in our right to recognize and worship, but we must also realize that we are living on planet Earth and we are no longer slaves. The slavemaster told us to forget about living a decent life on earth and instead work on his plantation, be obedient, accept poverty, and we shall all go to heaven. Meanwhile, the slavemaster continues to enslave us and has us working for him/her as beasts of burden.

Believe me, this trickery is also found in other types of religion where oppression of Blacks is the core of the practices at the highest levels of these religions. Take a look at the June Issue of National Geographic about India's Dalits or "Untouchables," or better yet, read A History of Racism and Terrorism, Rebellion and Overcoming pub. by www.xlibris.com or The Black Untouchables of India by V.T. Rajshekar www.claritypress.com

If we sit back and do not use our intelligence to help elevate, protect and save our people by teaching them survival skills as well as spiritual and other benefits, we are not going to survive to carry on our mission. One cannot expect to be effective when one is struggling to survive. Hence, one has to know one's true history.

That history will show that in order to survive there must be a strong economic, educational and political foundation. If one looks at Judaism, Christianity or the Khemite/Egyptian religions before, one will notice that they were the strongest institutions in the cultures in which they existed. The Egyptians and Nubians were strong scholars; they were the first People of the Book and they studied. The Jews and Christians continued this tradition.

To promote the African point of view in Rastafari is the way to go as far as I am concerned. I have read on Buddhism, Hinduism and Shinto as well as Judiasm, Islam and Christianity. All these religions have at their core the recognition and practice of their native cultures. So what's wrong with returning Rastafari to the African core? There is of course the spiritual aspect and there is the cultural aspect. The cultural aspect is ancient and modern African culture and civilization. The countries of origin are Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia and since most of us in the Americas are of the Mende-Kongo linguistic and cultural group of Africa, recognizing that part of our being is also very important.

We are not being complelte if we simply are applying only a small piece of all we can be. Is there a system of temple building with an African style of architecture for Rastafari temples?

Is there a system of meditation and spiritualism making use of the mystic powers that the original seers used?

What about our sacred texts? There are many of course, including the Kebra Negashi. Shouldn't we be working to revive the cultural and moral benefits that come out of African culture and help return them to the people in a time when we are being bombarded with filth all over the air and when the enemies of Black people/Africans and people of good will are spreading some of the most vile and racist propaganda against Blacks since the Nazi era?

We should have control of media to include radio and television stations so we can spread a message of unity and upliftment on both the spiritual and secular basis.

http://community.webtv.net/paulnubiaempire``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhy a Singular Focus for Rasta?``x1063944000,91340,views``x``x ``xby Peter Hardie, www.blackcommentator.com

A recent editorial chastised African Americans for being "stuck" and "isolated", "not part of the global village." The writer was reviewing the recent events in Liberia, and the lukewarm attention of the African American community. Liberia is not the only thing about which we are lukewarm. We are lukewarm about political parties, though perhaps for good cause. We are lukewarm about the neoliberal debate. We are lukewarm about other people of color. We are lukewarm in our embrace of the critique of economic globalization. We are lukewarm about all of Africa.

In our defense, we continue to confront some of the worst conditions forced upon citizens of this country. I need not go into detail. Our level of mobilization around our immediate concerns underwhelms at times, especially at the national level. We have seen too much death, and we are tired of crying, tired of dying.

As chronic as the treatment of African Americans has been in this nation, the cry for internationalism has been as consistent. It is that cry that got Malcolm and Martin killed, Robeson blacklisted, Garvey destroyed, DuBois' right to travel revoked. In a Zen way, it may be that we are inspired to our greatest clarity, unity and level of organization by looking outward, de-focusing on our own concerns, and remembering our true place, globally and historically.

African Americans have historic connection and partnership with the nations of Africa. From DuBois who helped initiate the first five Pan-African Congresses beginning at the turn of the century, through leaders like Garvey and Malcolm X, we have recognized that we are one people, separated only by a few hundred years of kidnapping and slavery. Our historic connection to the cause of African liberation and the linkages of our leaders to leaders on that continent helped forge us as a political force in the U.S. We understood liberation, we understood land as a political goal, and we understood the sharp analogies between slavery and colonialism, between sharecropping and neocolonialism.

Understanding the political arena as a global one is the best solution to the ongoing plight of African Americans today. We will not solve our employment problem until we understand labor as a global phenomenon, employers as global actors, and much of the wealth in our country (and the world) as the plunder of corporate thieves, rinsed in the blood of Africans and other indigenous peoples. The ability of the corporate agenda to dominate the American landscape is directly dependent on their strength as global competitors. Depressed wages, the increased gap between rich and poor, the sale of the public domain (schools, water and utilities, roads, prisons) to privateers, the lack of political challenge to the two headed beast we call a democracy—all these are features of the tableau before us. As corporate wealth and power grow unfettered, Africans throughout the world share a special place of exploitation, regardless of their nationality. African Americans need a much greater presence in the growing movement against corporate globalization; that movement could use some color. We need better and deeper connections to popular movements and organizations in other countries. And there are many such opportunities.

In the fall of 2002, Jubilee South Africa and the Khulumani Support Group filed suit in US circuit court for damages suffered by plaintiffs during the apartheid period in South Africa. Jubilee South Africa is a part of the growing global movement for economic justice, particularly focused on issues of debt relief. The Khulumani Group is a support group, made up of victims and the family members of victims of murder, torture, disfigurement, and disability—the signatures of apartheid rule.

The lawsuit is part of a broad campaign that combines trade union federations, land reform activists, anti-privatization forces, churches, and civic and other non-governmental organizations. Their basic principle is that all who benefited from apartheid should pay. This includes business, foreign and local, and foreign governments who supported apartheid and business activity in contravention of sanctions.

The resolution of apartheid, like the resolution of colonialism in the rest of Africa, was not completed when the government changed hands. Indeed, US and European complicity and interference in the post-colonial affairs of African states grew worse. Independence has been costly for Africans, presaged when a newly free Haiti was saddled with compensation debts to their former slaveholders two centuries ago. In largely all cases, the ownership of the land, the operations of corporations, and the location of wealth changed little. The abandonment of colonialism in the face of popular resistance did not prevent the imperialists from using political and military means to ensure an economic status quo favorable to business. Indeed, as Egyptian economist Samir Amin has researched, much of the so-called developing world has been kept at the margins of the global market to allow manipulation of the local governments and economies in the interests of the stronger global trading entities.

During the transitional negotiations for control of the state, the African National Congress (ANC) made a tactical decision to avoid naked confrontation with the forces of national and international capital. The current chaos in Zimbabwe and the international vilification of Mugabe gives the neoliberals/pro-corporate sector in the ANC comfort; they can point to Mugabe's current plight, and argue that South Africa could have been Zimbabwe. This is quite possibly the best example of a Pyrrhic victory.


Apart from the reins of government, little of the wealth of South Africa changed hands; articles in the national South African press suggest that the gap between rich and poor has increased. Social forces in South Africa are beginning to see the severe downside of the "peaceful accommodation" with capital: minimal land reform, growing poverty and joblessness, the privatization of national resources such as water and electricity, and constricting social services. It is a tale told many times over around the world. Imperial manipulation has changed its modus operandi, but not its ultimate end: the theft of resources, the exploitation and cheapening of labor.

Corporations with large economic stake continued to do business in South Africa after the imposition of sanctions, and continued to do business with the apartheid government. Oil, automotive, banking – multi-national industries had too much at stake, and as the president of a large Swiss bank said in 1960, apartheid was very good for business. As well, the apartheid government needed capital: they needed armored vehicles, they needed arms, they needed oil and petroleum products, and they needed financing to stay afloat.

For the people of South Africa, the struggle against apartheid is not yet over. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission completed its monumental task this spring, and recommended the payment of reparations to the acknowledged victims of apartheid. The government, in a transparent nod to international finance capital, ignored the findings of the Commission, and announced vastly reduced payments of R30,000 to only 19,000 victims (in a population of more than 35 million non-whites). Consider losing your son or father or sister, or your ancestral land, or years of your primary and secondary education, and being offered the equivalent of US$4000 in compensation.

The lawsuit argues that the most egregious supporters of apartheid, foreign multinationals who closed their eyes to the crimes of apartheid, have a debt to pay to the people whose lives they damaged. The profits made during that time were illegal. The financial support they provided to an illegal and immoral regime was illegal and immoral. And while the people of South Africa continue to struggle to own land, to find work, to find solace at the loss of loved ones, the cold-blooded capitalists get richer off the theft of labor and resources.

While the domestic battle for distribution of the nation's wealth belongs to the people of South Africa, the complicity of corporations with which you and I do business, in which you and I invest our savings, and which you and I patronize for goods and services – that complicity is our business.

Our efforts here during the colonial era of the recent century did not go unnoticed; a recent visitor to South Africa was asked what became of the support of African Americans for liberation in Africa. It is not only the South Africans who need us; it is we who need them. By standing up to their enemies, to their plunderers and murderers, we may have a clearer understanding of our own struggle.


Peter Hardie is Vice-President for Campaigns and Labor Affairs for TransAfrica Forum. He is father of three, husband, errant poet and sailor, with a history of activism in labor, public education, community advocacy, and the issues of youth.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/57/57_guest_apartheid.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xApartheid Still Matters``x1064721142,17160,world``x``x ``xBy Asmerom Kidane, www.biddho.com
Visiting Professor of Econometrics
University of Dar es Salaam
Posted: October 05, 2003

1. Introduction

Every country, nation or nationality is expected to have a history of its own. We have been repetitively told that we can all learn from history-emulate or replicate the positive aspects and making sure that the negative components are either rectified or not repeated. We learn from our or other's history provided that the sequences of historical events are correctly recorded and objectively analyzed. I happen to be an applied statistician by profession; in this field we have a sub discipline which we call Time Series Analysis. This discipline is nothing but an empirical analysis of historical data. For example one may wish to study past growth of GDP or aggregate income; the historical data are plotted on a graph in order to detect past patterns of growth or decline. Next the investigator tries to objectively identify the reasons or causes for the past growth or decline. This approach presupposes that to the best of the statistician's ability, the historical data is recorded with minimum errors or biases. Otherwise what ever conclusion the statistician makes could not only be misleading but he may be offering wrong income policy prescriptions. The same analogy should apply when scholars study and interpret a country's or peoples or event history. It goes without saying that historians bear a burden of heavy responsibility when documenting events of historical significance and it is incumbent upon them to interpret their findings as objectively as possible.

When one reads or cruises over the various books and narratives written on Ethiopia's past by Ethiopian scholars, one may conclude that there is a lot to be desired. Not only are Ethiopian scholars subjective and selective but also their interpretation of historical events and personalities seems to be highly flawed. They fail to foresee the undesirable consequences of their flawed narratives on the future unity and sovereignty of their country. They may have to take joint responsibility for the sad state of affairs that Ethiopia is in.

In this exercise an attempt will be made to show how Ethiopian scholar/historians viewed their leaders over the past century and half (1855-2003). During this extended period, Ethiopia was ruled by four emperors, one colonel and the ones currently in power-the Weyanes. There were also three other leaders, Teklegiorgis, Eyasu and Zewditu but these were of little consequence - either their reign was brief or they were simply sidelined-. Ethiopian historians have made heroes out of the four so called emperors and Colonel Mengistu. Their verdict on the status of the Weyane leadership is not out yet. We will summarize the deeds/misdeeds of the four emperors along with the other two and check whether they deserve to be declared as heroes.

2. The Reign of Theodros (1855-1868)

Theodros ascended to power in 1855 at the age 33. He is believed to be from humble background and Ethiopian scholars credit him for uniting Ethiopia from the era of principalities (Mesafintis) without ever mentioning the means he followed to reach to the top. European travellers who were in and around Gondar during his reign have documented that Theodros was selfish and quick tempered.. Alan Morehead, in his book 'The Blue Nile' describes Theodros as '... a mad dog set loose...' in reaction of his treatment of both Ethiopians and foreigners.

Few months after he took power and after claiming that he had liquidated potential pretenders to the throne, the country begins to disintegrate again and moves towards anarchy. It is believed that Theodros spent most of his 13 years reign moving from one place to the other, killing most of his enemies and many of his friends. The way he was committing crimes against humanity is simply horrendous.- putting hundreds of would be conspirators in thatched huts, locking and then setting them on fire, throwing hundreds of prisoners and opponents into the deep precipice of Magdela, burning towns such as Gonder, imprisoning his brothers, relatives, foreign travellers and emissaries, looting and vandalizing villages. In the end he ended up being so unpopular and paranoid; he feared for his life and with his few remaining followers fortified and confined himself to the mountain top of Magdala. Finally he ended his life while resisting capture by Napier's British expedition. Theodros was succeeded by Teklegiorghis whose reign did not even last three years.
This is the personality of Theodros. One finds it difficult to comprehend why Ethiopian scholars admire, adore, glorify and make a hero out of such character. This is nothing but a flawed interpretation of history.

3. The reign of Yohannes (1871-1889)

Yohannes defeats Tekleghiorghis his brother in law (husband of his sister) captures him and literally blinds him by inserting a hot iron bar into his eyes! (What a moronic character!). This is not an allegation; it is simply the truth as it appears in a standard Ethiopian historical text authored by non other than Tekletsadik Mekuria, the so called Ethiopian historian. (In a later edition of the book the author withdraws the above allegation probably after protests and intimidations by the Yohannes royal house.) It should be noted that Yohannes victory over Tekleghiorgis was due to the fact that his army was equipped with modern weaponry; he was rewarded with armaments by the British Napier expedition for his anti Ethiopian services and for his treasonous activities against Theodros.

Once Yohannes ascends to power in 1871 he gives Ethiopian Moslems an ultimatum-either convert to Christianity or else. Many brave Ethiopian Moslems defied the edict; as a result thousands were massacred, disfigured and were forced to out-migrate to safe heavens such as Eritrea and Sudan. During the emperor's regime there was a rebellion in Gojjam region-Yohannes and his army march to the province, plunder and ravage the country side and leave the place completely ransacked. In the end Yohannes was defeated and beheaded in the battle of Metema while fighting the Mahdists of Sudan (1889). It is widely believed that the Ethiopian Moslems who were forced to leave their homeland because they did not wish to succumb to the Emperor's wild edict were responsible for his humiliating defeat. It is the Yohannes type misfits that the present day Ethiopian scholars admire and revere. They have named streets, airports and schools after them. This should not have been the case and that is why one can safely conclude that the Ethiopian history books are highly flawed.

4. The reign of Menelik

When Yohannes passes Menelik comes into the picture (1889-1913). Like Yohannes, Menelik came to power through treacherous and treasonable activities. He 'stabbed Yohanees in the back' by aligning himself with the Italians; at that time the latter were arch enemies of Yohannes; Menelik also failed to support Yohannes's bid to 'defend' Ethiopia from the Mahdists. He was probably praying that Yohannes would die in the battle field so that he will take over... and that is exactly what happened. Treason number one for Menelik. Current Ethiopian scholars and politicians regard Menelik as the architect of modern Ethiopia. This is not true; the stark reality is that, Menelik was a typical colonizer and an active participant in the scramble for Africa. He forcibly subdued the Oromos, the Welaitas, Kembatas, Afars, Somalis, Aderes and many other nations and nationalities in the South, Southwest and East of present day Ethiopia. He imposed an archaic Menz type culture on these otherwise proud people. He forced them to change their religion, values cultures and in some instances their truly democratic traditions (such as the Gada system). He treated the vanquished as slaves ready to be sold in an auction like market.

It should be noted that Menelik's conquest of the South was not a 'walk in'; he did encounter stiff resistance especially from the Welaitas, Arssi Oromos and the Aderes of Harar. He was able to defeat them using the relatively modern weapons he acquired from the Italians via Asseb. After defeating the southern nations and nationalities, he appointed his own native Amharas to be the warlords. Any historian with a slight semblance of objectivity cannot label Menelik as a hero. He is not – pure and simple. On the contrary many Ethiopian scholars admire this so called hero to the extent of almost worshiping him. This is nothing but a deliberate distortion of historical facts. Given this attitude, there is no way for the present day Ethiopian scholars to gain respect and credibility from the Oromos, Kambatas, and other oppressed nationalities.

5. The Reign of Haile Selassie

The next 'major' emperor of the Ethiopian empire is Teferi Mekonnen alias Haile Selassie (his imperial name is almost one km. long!). The real heir apparent to Menelik's throne was his grand son Eyasu. He was 17 years old when he became a national leader (what a shame) and only stayed in power for three years (1913-1916). As expected he was ousted by Teferi in the usual Abyssinian approach - through treason. This time Teferi's pretext for overthrowing Eyasu was his Islamic lineage and tendency as well as the fact that he was not a Shoan Menz par excellence! Once in power (1916-1930 as a regent 1931-1974 as an emperor) Teferi made a dummy out of Zewditu - the new empress - by sidelining her on the archaic pretext that she is a woman; he put his children and relatives in high places and placed behind the bars any would be opponent. Four years after he was crowned as emperor, Ethiopia was invaded by Fascist Italy. Instead of undertaking a protracted warfare, Haile selassie briefly appeared in Maichew battlefield not to fight but for a photo show; he abandoned his rug tag army and immediately returned to Addis; few days later he fled to Britain by a royal cruiser liner that was waiting him in Djiboutti. With him he took his family, relatives and what ever was available in the treasury.

Haile Selassie was residing in Bath, Britain waiting and praying for a miracle to happen... and... BINGO!!... miracle did happen. Italy along with Germany declared war on Britain. With the assistance of the British, Haile selassie was on his way to Ethiopia via Sudan after five years of seclusion.

Ethiopian scholars/historians declared Haile selassie as the liberator. Again this is far from the truth. The plain fact is that Italians in Ethiopia were defeated by the British not by Haile selassie and his forces. By the time he arrived in Khartoum in 1941 he did not have a credible army; he just assembled few hundred recruits from among the Ethiopian refugees in the Sudan and hired a military adviser in the name of Colonel Wingate (a weird character).

Before Haile Selassie crossed the Ethio Sudan border via Gojjam (he was scared to use Gonder as an entry point because there were many patriots waiting to capture him... remember Blata Takkele!!!... ) the British had already occupied most of Ethiopia by attacking Italian lines from the North that is from Sudan, via Eritrea... to Ethiopia and from the South, via Kenya and British Somali land to Ethiopia. In other words by the time Haile Selassie crossed into Ethiopia, he did not face any resistance. Every thing was 'ready made' for him. When Haile Selassie arrived in Debre Marcos, General Cunningham's British army had already occupied the capital Addis Abeba. The British officers instructed and warned Haile Selassie to stay in Debre Marcos and not move south to Addis. The British military were about to declare Ethiopia as a conquered enemy territory thereby establishing a colonial administration. Haile Selassie was believed to be in a state of depression. It was only through Churchill's instruction and the sympathy the British had for the Ethiopians that Haile Selassie was finally allowed to proceed to Addis Abeba and hoist the Ethiopian flag. Even then Ethiopia was still under British domination until 1944.

Contrary to what Ethiopian scholars lead us to believe Haile selassie cannot be a hero... this is another one of a series of making a hero out of a villains. As of late Ethiopian scholars also seem to be divided on whether Haile Selassie was a hero or not. Those who were active during hid reign label him as a hero; Mengistu and his intellectual followers call him a villain; Weyane and their sympasizers don't even know how to label him.

6. Mengistu and the Weyanes

We have two more 'villains' to go before we reach the twenty first century. This time I will try to be brief as many people know who Mengistu is and who the Weyanes are. One of the most vicious tyrants of the twentieth century is Mengistu (1974-1991). It will be time and energy consuming to narrate the atrocities and misdeeds of this psychopath. As usual he climbed to power through treason and deception by demystifying the invincibility of Ethiopian emperors; he simply murdered Haile selassie, massacred his grand children and relatives, his ministers and generals - one by one. He assassinated thousands of Ethiopians including many of the products of Ethiopia's flawed history. He launched the so called 'red terror' whereby thousands of children, adults and elders were massacred in broad day light; he charged a fee for parents who wish to take their dead relatives. In the end his half a million Ethiopian army was decimated by the gallant freedom fighters of Eritrea. Without showing any resistance he fled to Zimbabwe with his children and relatives. Mengistu is probably the most coward among Ethiopia's so called heroes.

Last and least we have the current leaders of Ethiopia-the Weyanes-. Fortunately they are not yet declared as heroes by the Ethiopian scholars. The ethnic group where the Weyane hail from constitute only 5% of the Ethiopian population making them unfit to lead a country of 65 million. Setting this aside for the moment, the Weyanes are the worst pathological liars of their kind. Because of this built - in habit, whatever they utter today is forgotten or denied the next day (witness Seyoum Mesfin's statements following the border ruling and afterwards). The Weyanes claim to have given Ethiopian ethnic groups their right to self rule and yet they arrest, torture and kill their best leaders; they claim that they are for free press and yet they are very brutal against journalists, they claim that the Ethiopian economy has shown magnificent progress and yet they have 14 million people on the verge of starvation and death, they claim that they have introduced a free market and yet they have depleted the Ethiopian treasury through capital flight to Tigrai and abroad. They claim that they stand for peace in the region and yet they opened war on a neighbor (Eritrea) whereby more than 100 000 mostly non Tigrean Ethiopians are believed to have been perished. They claim that they will abide by the decision of the boundary commission and yet they refuse to go along in the demarcation process. More can be said, has been said and will be said about the current misfits running the country. As usual they came to power through treason and deception. Chances are that they may not stay there much longer. It is every body's hope that, this may be the right time for Ethiopians to change leadership through democratic and peaceful means. Unfortunately this is doubtful.

7. Conclusion

We have gone over the true activities of six so called leaders that led Ethiopia down the drain over the past 148 years (1855-2003). They include four self styled emperors, one military dictator and the Weyanes. From their actions and reactions they cannot be declared as heroes. If at all there is anything to learn from them it is not to be or act like them and if possible not to remember them. One wishes that this tendency of 'wrong hero worship' should be put to a close. To the contrary this is not what the so called Ethiopian scholars and historians are propagating. It appears that there is little one can do because these same scholars are the product of Ethiopian flawed history. Because of this 'wrong hero worship' Ethiopian scholars, historians and their followers claim to be proud that they are Ethiopians. Surely they can be proud of Ethiopia's good climate, the hospitality of the people, its ethnic mosaic and her other positive attributes. To be proud of their villain leaders is simply an act of irresponsibility with symptoms of Fascism and Nazism.

Unless this 'wrong hero worship' is checked, unless the products of Ethiopia's flawed history come to their senses, unless they have a South African type truce and reconciliation, unless Ethiopian chauvinists atone, recant and publicly apologize for their ancestors' misdeeds Ethiopia will be there for more trouble. If the Ethiopians scholars - both within the country and in the Diaspora - do not return to their senses they will continue to be a problem, not only for Ethiopia but also for its neighbours. Their recent postings and utterances suggest that they are unlikely to return back to sanity. In my next posting I will try to summarize current activities of the so called Ethiopian scholars cum historians. God Bless.

Reproduced with permission from:
Asmerom Kidane, www.biddho.com``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xEthiopian Scholars: Products of Flawed History``x1065356373,69746,world``x``x ``xBy Nsaka Sesepkekiu
Student of African and Asian Studies
Faculty of Humanities
University of the West Indies
Trinidad and Tobago

Whenever we hear the term "Chinese" we often associate the word with short slanted eyed people who can fight kung fu. With the recent celebration of establishment of the People's Republic of China, I wish not only to congratulate them but also to add some insight into their history.

The original, first, native, primitive inhabitants of China were black Africans who arrived there about 100,000 years ago and dominated the region until a few thousand years ago when the Mongol advance into that region began. These Africans who fled the Mongol onslaught can still be found in South East Asia and the Pacific Islands misnomered Nigritos or "small black men." The Agta of the Philippines is one such example. Indeed archeology, forensic and otherwise confirm that China's first two dynasties, the Xia and the Ch'ang/Sh'ang, were largely Black African with an Australoid, called "Madras Indian" or "Chamar" in Trinidad, present in small percentages. These Africans would carry an art of fighting developed in the Horn of Africa into China which today we call martial arts: Tai Chi, Kung fu and Tae Kwon Do. Even the oracle of the I-Ching came with a later African group, the Akkadians of Babylon.

Around 500 BCE an African living in India called Gautama would establish a religion called Buddhism which would come to dominate Chinese thought. Any one who is in doubt should consult Geoffrey Higgins's Anacalypsis, Albert Churchward's Origin and development of Religions, Gerald Massey's Egypt the Light of the World, Riunoko Rashidi's African Presence in Early Asia and J A Roger's Sex and Race Vol 1. Many Africans survived the Mongol invasion into the twentieth century only to be exterminated by Chairman Mao's programme of Cultural cleansing. Under this programme millions of Africans and Afro-Asians were killed from 1951-1956. Contribute we still did, giving the People's Republic of China its first Chief Minister in the name of Eugene Chen, a Trinidadian of George Street, Port-of-Spain, who was of an African mother and a Chinese father.

For further reading on this individual one should consult J A Rogers' World's Great Men of Colour Vol I. So next time the word China or Chinese is mentioned remember that Africans played a pivotal role in launching what is called Chinese civilisation, if such a thing exists.

Also Visit:
THE FIRST CHINESE WERE BLACK``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAfricans launched Chinese civilisation``x1065666826,39123,world``x``x ``xby Tim Wise, www.blackcommentator.com

Some things just aren't funny, and some ways of making money are pathetic. Both of these truisms apply to the entrepreneurial "humor" of David Chang, a Taiwanese immigrant who apparently gets his kicks making fun of poor folks in urban America in order to make a quick buck.

Chang's business, as it were, is producing patently offensive board games, which deliberately traffic in racist and classist stereotypes. His first creation is "GHETTOPOLY," wherein players try and "buy stolen properties, pimp hoes, build crack houses and projects," and avoid getting carjacked.

With more than a few references to Malt Liquor addiction, loansharking, and other things that Chang apparently believes typify "ghetto culture," GHETTOPOLY promises hours of entertainment for people who, naturally, neither live in a ghetto nor have ever visited one, but who can now get off making fun of something they know nothing about.

Only in America. Somehow I doubt that Chang's father left Taiwan so his son could profit off the misery of people trapped in desperate poverty, but who knows?

Chang insists that his game, which is available both online and in not-so-fine stores everywhere, is not meant to be degrading, but instead to "bring people together in laughter." But which people is he speaking of? Certainly not those who live in the places he has decided to objectify. He surely knows that his game isn't likely to sell too well in public housing projects after all, though by glancing at the "feedback" section on his website, it does seem to be a big hit with college kids. Nice: children of privilege having a laugh at the expense of those without--how utterly typical.

Chang claims, "If we can't laugh at ourselves and how we each utilize the various stereotypes, then we'll continue to live in blame and bitterness." But of course he isn't challenging the absurdity of those stereotypes, and he isn't laughing at himself. There is no anti-Asian humor here, after all. No plans for "Kung-FuOPOLY," or FORTUNECOOKIEOPOLY, not that that would be any funnier. He is laughing at others, thus not only GHETTOPOLY, which involves almost exclusively negative references to blacks, or what Chang perceives to be black urban culture, but also the upcoming offerings, HOODOPOLY, HIPHOPOPOLY, THUGOPOLY, and REDNECKOPOLY.

That the last of these makes fun of whites – but only the poorest whites of course (since he wouldn't want to offend the suburban consumer demographic) – hardly redeems Chang's venture. It only indicates that bashing low income people, of whatever race, is considered fair game. Whereas the original MONOPOLY venerates the wealthy and encourages us to be like them, Chang's rip-offs (for which Hasbro/Milton Bradley should sue his happy ass with a quickness) do not actually encourage players to identify with people who live in ghettos, or trailer parks, or whatever.

Chang's bio notes that he graduated from one of the "most prestigious private high schools in the U.S." (there's a surprise), and received a degree from the University of Rochester, both of which naturally gave him a deep understanding of the subject matter covered in his games.

Whatever details Chang may have failed to learn about "the hood" in prep school he made up for by - and these are his words, I am not making this up – "watching TV and studying the lyrics of rap and hip-hop music."

And if that proved insufficient for the purposes of research, Chang had a fallback source of wisdom. As he puts it in a press release: "Video games provided him insight into the culture of the ghetto."

That someone could graduate from a prestigious high school and a good college, while believing that images on video games produced by people who do not live in the places depicted, could somehow provide cultural insight into those places is shocking. His alma maters should ask for their degrees back.

Actually if one wants to understand "the ghetto" and the people who live there one has to spend time in such places. Even then, one's understanding will remain limited compared to those who actually live there every day, navigating the waters of the communities that David Chang and others think it is alright to parody.

If one spends any amount of time at all in such places, one immediately notices that although there are things about poor urban communities that fit the stereotypical imagery, there are also lots of things about the places and the people who live in "ghettos," which didn't make it into this game, but which are also typical and not the least bit funny.

Like mothers trying to work two jobs to support their kids, without child care, without adequate health care, having to choose between buying them clothes for school or paying a heating bill.

Like kids who persevere against all odds, going to schools to learn and finding not enough textbooks, or buildings that are crumbling, and yet they still show up every day, hoping to fill their minds with knowledge.

Like elderly women in public housing who look out for everyone's children, whether or not they are their own, because they see them as a treasure and vital resource in the community.

Like ministers who run day care programs, and job training programs, and whose churches are involved in rehabilitating housing for low income families.

Like families that still pray, despite an environment that would make the most devout wonder if there was a God at all, let alone one who still cared about us.

Chang's biggest offense is in reinforcing the notion of the ghetto as a free-standing entity, with an inherent culture, separate from the rest of the society. But in truth, the ghettos of this nation are the product of deliberate decisions made by political and economic elites. Whatever culture springs up in such places is not some intrinsic pathology unique to the urban poor, but largely the consequence of institutional racism and economic oppression.

Chang's game allows us to continue ignoring the most important issue: namely, how did the ghetto become the ghetto in the first place? Answers are easy to find, though apparently Chang wasn't interested in discovering them, seeing as how doing so might have cut into his video game playing and MTV viewing schedule.

Fact is, during the first "great migration" of blacks from the south, zoning laws (not to mention overt violence) tightly restricted where people of color were allowed to live. As a result of limitations on black residential mobility, families often had to double-up in small apartments, which were rarely taken care of by landlords who had little incentive to improve their properties, since they knew there was nowhere else for black tenants to turn.

Then in the 1930s, the government began offering low-interest, taxpayer-guaranteed loans through the Federal Housing Administration. Millions of families took part in the new program, and the American middle-class was born. Over a thirty-year period, over $100 billion in home equity was loaned through these initiatives, but it was almost exclusively a white middle-class created by these policies.

FHA lending guidelines made it clear that loans were off-limits to persons who lived in "declining" neighborhoods (and every black neighborhood was rated as declining), and that, "If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes."

In other words, there would be few if any loans for blacks seeking to move to mostly white areas either. So blacks were restricted to the urban core at the very time that the "American dream" was being subsidized for white families.

As if this wasn't bad enough, local governments then began the process of "urban renewal," which meant the elimination of low-and-moderate-income family housing, to be replaced by office buildings, shopping centers and parking lots.

While hundreds of thousands of homes (one-fifth of all housing occupied at the time by people of color) were destroyed as part of this process, less than 10 percent of those displaced – three-fourths of whom were black – had new single-resident housing to go to afterwards, as cities rarely built new units to replace the old ones. Instead, displaced families often had to rely on crowded apartments, living with relatives, or living in run-down public housing projects.

Since then, most efforts to reduce crowding in public housing by spreading subsidized residences throughout working and middle-class neighborhoods have been blocked by those who didn't want persons from the "ghetto" living near them. So the ghetto has remained isolated, wracked by concentrated poverty and all the problems that come with it.

Those problems include higher crime rates, family dissolution, inferior health care facilities and thus, greater levels of illness, and now, apparently, the privilege of becoming the punch line in someone else's idea of a joke.

None of the above history will matter much to Chang, I'm sure, or others who think making fun of "crack whores" is the epitome of high comedy. But it should matter to us.

And so should David's phone number, which he gladly offers on his website. I think we should let him know what we think of his game, so by all means let's do so. Give him a ring at 866-444-3886, or drop him an email at davidchang@ghettopoly.com.

And then let Hasbro/Milton Bradley know about Chang's games too. You can reach them at 888-836-7025. Or e-mail Hasbro Media contact Stacey Roberts at Sroberts@hasbro.com. Let her know that this detestable game, which rips off the concept of one of their products is out there, and that as a company whose own "diversity statement" claims a corporate commitment to "respect and inclusion," surely they would want to weigh in on the use of that concept to disrespect entire communities.

Since the layout, style and feel of GHETTOPOLY is more than a little similar to the original from which the OPOLY part of the name is taken, it shouldn't take a particularly brilliant patent and trademark lawyer to shut Mr. Chang's fun down for good.

Tim Wise is an antiracist essayist, activist and father.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/59/59_guest_ghettopoly.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xGhettos are not a game``x1066138361,78127,world``x``x ``xBy Rootsie

Last night on TV I saw an advert for Deepak Chopra's 'spiritual healing center' in La Jolla California. It showed a bunch of white folks doing Tai ch'i in the beautiful green surroundings. Of course anything green in Southern California is the result of irrigation, which is draining the Colorado River, but those tranquil well-fed people with their spa and meditation retreat (and an 18-hole golf course for good measure) didn't have to worry about that. I'm sure the place provided countless modalities for self-diagnosis.

Deepak Chopra is the guru of 'spiritual development' in the US, a millionaire from his best-selling books for anxious Americans. When you are American, and your country is carving up the world like a Christmas ham, there are so many things to be anxious about: the terrorists, money, your colon, environmental toxins... and then there is the conscience, though ones are not aware of it, intent as they are upon 'self-healing' and 'self-actualization.' Maybe if they meditate long enough or ingest the right substances that annoying guilt and unease will go away and they will be truly happy, and gain true spiritual enlightenment...despite the fact that they benefit DIRECTLY from a system that murders millions for the privileges of a few.

I can think of no better example right now of the importance of HISTORY. "There is very little facts that are independent from my self.' Ones like Deepak Chopra who teaches Westerners that 'inner peace' is possible without an engagement with history and sincere efforts (NOT charity!) to dismantle their privilege are either fools or con men. Those people in their pleasure-palace are going for a quick-fix that does not exist. If history teaches us anything, it is that we and everything exists in relation. Once we activate our ancestral knowledge, we work simultaneously on all the 'levels.'

Ones who truly want to develop will stay very close to history, to their own personal history and to our shared human history. We don't cure our little diseases first before we engage with the world. We engage the great healing force, which exists in the Universe, and then all of our actions on behalf of ourselves and the world carry true power, and only then.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWesterners and 'inner peace'``x1066874180,21772,views``x``x ``xby George Alleyne, Newsday TT

It is time for an amnesty to be granted to Bernard Coard and other leaders of the coup which overthrew Grenada Prime Minister, Maurice Bishop, in October of 1983, resulting in the deaths of Bishop, several of his Ministers and associates.

In turn, the remains of Bishop, whose New Jewel Movement had overthrown the Government of Eric Gairy in 1979 in a bloodless coup to establish the English speaking Caribbean's first Marxist regime, should be allowed to receive a proper burial. Persistent reports claim that Bishop's body was removed from the precincts of Fort Rupert by United States forces, which invaded Grenada shortly after the failed counter coup by Bishop. Maurice Bishop had been killed when he led a large group of followers to Fort Rupert where arms, originally stored there, had been removed unknown to him.

Coard, former General Hutson and others have been in prison since 1983, several of them sentenced to death, subsequently, for offences arising out of the October coup. They have been punished long enough, for what flowed out of what Bishop clearly meant to be armed conflict, and the time has come for a general pardon. There had been no need for the assault on and invasion of Grenada by United States forces. Had the CARICOM leaders, who went along with American military intervention in Grenada, employed economic sanctions against the Coard-led country, as Trinidad and Tobago had begun, the Coard regime would have collapsed. For example, the then George Chambers Administration had removed CARICOM preferential treatment from Grenada imports into this country. The Grenada development should have been treated as a CARICOM issue, and CARICOM States should have moved to have it resolved by them, without third party interference. And once America's intention to employ armed force against Grenada was made known to them, they should have collectively appealed to the United Nations to seek to stop the planned US invasion.

Admittedly, as we have seen in the case of Iraq earlier this year, even the United Nations Security Council was powerless to prevent American agression against that Middle East country. But at least there would have been a united Caribbean voice raised in protest. Instead, the leaders of several English speaking Caribbean countries, for whatever reason, pretended that the US intervention had been at their request, and had been, in their collective view, necessary to avoid further bloodshed. But contrary to what CARICOM leaders had trumpeted, the military intervention by the US was not at the behest of any group of Caribbean Governments. Instead, the decision was taken by the Americans weeks before the October, 1983 coup to remove the Maurice Bishop regime. The fact that the Bernard Coard group had acted, made it easier for the US to launch a propaganda offensive aimed at conveying the impression that its sole intent was to rescue Grenada.

Early in October of 1983, 241 US Marines had been killed when a suicide bomber drove a vehicle, laden with explosives, into a US military compound at Beirut, Lebanon. The United States, experiencing a sense of anger and virtual impotence at the killing of 241 of its servicemen, ordered its warships operating in the Mediterranean Sea to shell Beirut. The US was caught between Scylla and Charybdis with respect to a powerful response to the Beirut tragedy. One option was outright war against Lebanon, which would then unmistakenly cast the US as being militarily on the side of Israel, and the consequent risk of alienating the Arab world, or at least most of it. In turn, the US could not be certain that the then Soviet Union would not view military action in Lebanon as hostile to its interests. It could not be certain as well that the Soviets would not declare specific areas of the Middle East, particularly those sharing a common border with it, as being within its sphere of influence, and indulge in pointed sabre rattling.

The invasion of Grenada presented itself as a practical alternative, and several of the warships off Beirut were ordered to Grenada, so that when some Caribbean leaders, encouraged by then American President, Ronald Reagan, to say that they had invited the US to send troops to 'rescue' Grenada, it had to be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt. Within a day or two of the invasion of Grenada, I had to leave for a certain Caribbean country, which shall remain nameless, and where I had been commissioned to do a project. A luncheon was arranged, on my advice, and purely as a public relations exercise, to which the country's Governor General, Prime Minister, leading Cabinet Ministers et cetera were invited. The Governor General could not make it. In speaking with a Minister of State, he offered that the United States had asked certain CARICOM Governments to invite it to invade Grenada. It is a fact of history worth retelling. Armed with this information I approached a Senior Government Minister and advised him, without revealing my source, I had been told that the Americans had requested CARICOM countries to invite it to invade Grenada. The gentleman, who is now Prime Minister of his country, confirmed this. The Caribbean, in light of what actually transpired, should reassess the events of October, 1983, dispassionately, and urge upon Grenada that a general pardon be granted to the players of 20 years ago. This would not be seen as making their actions any the less shameful.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xTime for Amnesty for Grenada Coup Leaders``x1066874292,55168,world``x``x ``xOctober 26, 2003
By Rootsie, www.rootsie.com

"Let us look at ourselves, if we can bear to, and see what is becoming of us. First we must face that unexpected revelation, the strip-tease of our humanism. There you can see it, quite naked, and it's not a pretty sight. It was nothing but an ideology of lies, a perfect justification for pillage; its honeyed words, its affectation of sensibility were only alibis for our aggressions. A fine sight they are too, the believers in nonviolence, saying that they are neither executioners nor victims. Very well then; if you're not victims when the government which you've voted for, when the army in which your younger brothers are serving without hesitation or remorse, have undertaken race murder, you are, without a shadow of doubt, executioners. And if you choose to be victims and to risk being put in prison for a day or two, you are simply choosing to pull your irons out of the fire. But you will not be able to pull them out; they'll have to stay there till the end."

- Jean Paul Sartre, in his Preface to Frantz Fanon's
The Wretched of the Earth

Sartre wrote this in 1961, when France was in the midst of its disaster in Algeria, but he describes well the moral predicament of the Western world after 500 years of African slavery and colonialism. Advocates for reparations for chattel slavery and genocidal African colonialism have presented a number of legal arguments to the United Nations and individual governments in the West, citing international law. My purpose here is to highlight not the legal arguments, but the moral and spiritual ones, to suggest to my fellow whites that reparations are in our own best interest.

Few but the richest among us would argue that these are great days. Much concern is voiced in Western societies about violence, particularly among our youth. Drug abuse and alcoholism and their attendant lawlessness and violence are plaguing families and communities. There is a radical fall-off in Church attendance; God just doesn't seem relevant anymore. Others of us worry about our rampant materialism, the degradation of our environment, the corruption of our governments, the stresses of our daily lives. Still others are disgusted by the proliferation of pornography, the sensational fear-mongering of the media, the flashy stupidity of 'popular culture.' Those whose eyes are turned towards the larger world are alarmed by what looks like a global corporate takeover. They are appalled by Western arrogance and aggression against the rest of the world. Still others are afraid of 'the terrorists', the dark foreign hordes of 'them' who for reasons unknown want to kill 'us.' Not great days. Indeed.

All at once it sounds hollow to hear ourselves say, "This is still the greatest country in the world." Back in 1976, we laughed at Jimmy Carter's speech about 'spiritual malaise', but if we are not in the United States a country literally ill-at-ease, I don't know what could better describe us. Shame, Karl Marx said, is a 'revolutionary sentiment,' a catalyst for change. What do we privileged ones in the West have to be ashamed of? The very sources of our privilege.

It seems that our historical chickens have come home to roost. We are ill-equipped to deal with this development, since history has never been one of our strong subjects. History is something we most often tell people to forget about. 'Forget about the past. Let bygones be bygones. That was then. This is now.' Unfortunately this is not how history works. I like to think of history as a flowing river in which we all swim. The past informs the present informs the future in an unending process. We are inevitably shaped by what has been, so much of our present identities determined by our ancestry, our personal and collective history. Marcus Garvey said that a people without the knowledge of their history is like a tree without roots. Well a tree without roots is one dead tree. Because we have forgotten or denied or distorted or chosen not to know our history, we are tossed about by forces we cannot even name, and this increases our anxiety and our attraction to diversions and distractions from our true purpose here.

But we are faced with even starker truths. White supremacy is not a thing of the past, but still mangles and maims both victim and aggressor to this very day. It is all very well for us to say, "I am not the bad guy. I am not a racist,' but if we, willingly or not, benefit from a global system of white domination, we are indeed Sartre's 'executioners,' and every move that's made by our governments and corporations to assert that domination over other human beings strips us of our humanity more surely than it does the victims. For what the slavemasters discovered was that to completely dehumanize a slave was to make him useless for work, and so the dehumanization was never complete. And because of this, because of the simmering rage of the enslaved ones, the only solution was brute force. This made our ancestors into murderers and torturers, and though we have laws against such things, they murdered and tortured with impunity. They got around basic moral law by putting dark-skinned people into another species, a sort of super-ape. Though I must say that even a man who beats a dog is looked upon with disgust. This is the white man's heritage. This is our history.

And it does us no good to say "well that's not me." Malcolm X's and Elijah Mohamed's "White Devil" is a description of a condition, and we only had to be born white to fit the bill. This is not 'fair'. But this is reality. And I do not hesitate to say that the moral disintegration of Western culture is directly attributable to our failure to honestly engage the consequences of our history of chattel slavery and colonialism.

In the United States, it is patently clear that American Blacks were never given a level playing field. The '40 acres and a mule' idea died in 1866, and Senator Charles Sumner wept and said that that day would be remembered in history as the day of destruction for America. The few Blacks who have 'made it' are the exception, and not the rule. They are a testimony to the resilience and tenacity of African people, and should not be cited in arguments about basic justice. The poorest people in the United States, the most-incarcerated, the least college-educated, the most unemployed, are Black and Native American. It was the slave-labor of Blacks and the colonial exploitation of Africa and Latin America that put the 'capital' in capitalism. Those who call for reparations are sending us a bill for services rendered, for resources consumed. We're the first ones to say in other contexts, 'there's no such thing as a free lunch.'

But my concern here is what it has cost us and continues to cost us to fail to act on a matter of basic justice. I have worked with teenagers for 15 years. I have watched them awaken with a shock to the world as it is. What they need from their elders in that moment is truth, and what they get is silence and attempts at diversion. We have abandoned our children to fend for themselves among themselves. They think us hypocrites and they are right. What's all this talk about freedom and liberty and justice for all? They are initiated by strangers into the 'adult world' of consumerism and moral chaos. And then we wonder why they are so oppositional, so 'delinquent', and so violent. They are our children. That is the answer. We, the world's war-mongers and weapons merchants and drug merchants are alarmed by and uncomprehending of the anger of our children. Our school systems, racist as are all of our institutions in the West, skirt the issues that are so crucial to the healthy development of children because truth is required, and in order to tell the children the truth we would have to admit it to ourselves. Toni Morrison's novel Beloved is a story about the angry little ghost of a murdered child, enraged because the circumstances of her death have been repressed by the mother who slit that child's throat rather than have her delivered into slavery. I have seen that little ghost again and again haunting the faces of my Black students, furious and not knowing why, victims of a denied history. This is not some romantic notion on my part. It was my experience as a teacher that taught me the power of history denied to destroy, and the power of history reclaimed to heal. The situation is no less serious for white children. In a system of injustice, oppressed and oppressor are both mangled.

Reparations for slavery and colonialism are in our self-interest for the same reasons that moral conduct is in our self-interest. For 500 years we have been trumpeting our moral superiority across the planet, a Bible in one hand, a sword in the other. I remember asking my 17 year-old-daughter why she refused to step into a church, even to hear her mother sing. Her eyes filled with angry tears. Moral conduct is not in our self-interest because it guarantees us a place in the heavenly choir. Moral conduct improves our lives, brings sense to stupidity, and order to chaos. Dealing honestly and honorably with the consequences of our history restores integrity, gives substance to our democratic ideals, and steadies us. Compensating the victims of a history of plunder from which we have benefited is the only way to close the book on that history. If we seriously believe that we can continue traveling through history with impunity for our actions, we'd best remember those planes smashing into those towers. That is just a foretaste of what is in store for us if we remain unwilling to engage history as an equal partner with everyone else on the planet.

So yes. The party's over. We have to get a whole lot more serious, and quick. There is not a little purple pill for this. It used to be that our ancestors would willingly give their lives before they would give offense to God. They knew that a life lived out of alignment with Divine Law was not a life worth living. These days in humanist circles it's more shocking and controversial to talk about God than it is to talk about the porn movie you jacked off to last night. Let's say Natural Law then, or karma, the law of cause and effect. And by the way, the guests at Deepak Chopra's new-age healing spa in La Jolla can meditate and stretch and actualize themselves till the cows come home, and as long as they are privileged whites living in America who do not use that privilege to end their privilege, it's dry bones in a dry land for them. It's La Jolla without the irrigation. Nothing they do will prosper. No happiness they think to achieve will last.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xReparations for Blacks is in White's Interest``x1067468289,48826,world``x``x ``xby Ayanna

It is important when traversing our collective and personal histories not to forget the stories of women. History has been for many of us, a collection of facts, information, dates and events. We learn it that way in school and the idea stays with us. While especially for African people as we attempt to recover much of our lost history, there has been a concerted attempt to draw from non-traditional sources for windows into our past, still too often the side of history that we get is political, public and largely associated with events. This tale of HIS-story is not so called by accident. Our views of history invariably rely on texts or oral testimonies by men, are interpreted by men and thus evoke a male perspective, a way of looking at the world.

If there can be one thing that the western feminist movement did achieve to attempt to correct this imbalance is the recognition of the uniqueness of a FEMALE PERSPECTIVE, a way that women write, women feel, what is important to them to record, what they pass on to their children and so on. While this scholarship has been largely western/ European and has often assumed the female perspective to be uniform and universal, it is the PREMISE that is valuable. The very idea that there is a whole side of history that has not been told is vital. The importance of the women that played important roles in political and military events has begun to receive more recognition within recent times. However what has not yet been widely recognized is the fact that the focus on the events and dates and politics of history negates another vital side of our collective human history, that is the feelings of an age, the emotions, the social organization, what has been retained and what has been abandoned. It is these things that are the jewels in the history that women tell. It is this that is the balancing factor in revisiting our history.

Women's narratives, the folk tales, the stories, the work, the issues and concerns that are particular to them is just as valid to our understanding of history as a knowledge of the wars, the treaties the land boundaries and the economy. Just as the male and female principles complement each other, our views of history also much combine to give a holistic view of the past. When we talk to our 'mothers' and I use this word to mean our female ancestors generally we begin to understand the time they lived in a deeper sense. If the common perception has been that it is men who have moved the wheels of history then it is women who have been the oil that greased the parts and sometimes have even been the wheels themselves. Without understanding the HER-story of women we do not know THE-story at all.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xHer-story``x1067531252,63490,views``x``x ``xby Ras Tyehimba

People are free to and have a right to believe what ever they want to believe. I will just state things as I see them. If ones think that whatever path is true, then they should just try to give their all in it.

Christianity like Islam and other mainstream religions were developed from the periphery of indigenous African traditions. Christianity, Judaism, Islam were never the highlight, were never the highpoint of African consciousness, as it contained just fragments of authentic practices but lacked the totality to provide a holistic framework for higher development. Concepts and stories from African civilizations provided the foundation for a lot of the mythology, beliefs and practices found in Christianity and the bible. The Virgin Mary and Jesus is a carbon copy of Isis (Auset) and Heru (Horus), which existed thousands of years before the alleged birth of 'Jesus the Christ'. This version of Auset and Heru, remodeled with White skin, blue eyes and blond hair has been one of the most damaging myths ever unleashed on the Black world. It upheld the notion that light/white skin is the epitome of what is best and this notion has been just another piece of the White Supremacy puzzle that has been propagated in Christianity's bloody quest to assert itself as a global religious powerhouse.

History has documented the massacres, savagery and ruthlessness of Christianity, shown by missionaries, explorers and mercenaries alike, intent on gaining money and power at all cost. The belief that God has a chosen people as put forth by the bible has also caused havoc globally, causing some maniacs in this time to claim divine authorization to invade, plunder and kill, as with the story of the Israelites plunder of Canaan where God supposedly gave the order to invade, kill and plunder a land that wasn't theirs. Added to this confusion is the inferior position that the woman is relegated to in the Bible where she is blamed for the downfall of mankind. The patriarchal nature of the bible is often taken for granted, a reflection of the wider world where Patriarchalism and the resulting implication of female discrimination is glossed over and ignored.

The story of Adam and Eve (adapted from Sumerian and other indigenous myths) can only be about 7 thousand years for the most, while mankind has been around for much longer. Yet there are a lot of people who view this as a historical fact. Manipulation of media/education to give credence to these myths has been one of the hallmarks of Global Patriarchal White Supremacy. The so-called Ten Commandments supposedly handed down to Moses on Mt Sinai are part of a larger collection of precepts, called the Precepts of Maat that predate Moses. There is much evidence far older than the bible that very clearly shows the foundation not only of The Bible and Christianity but Hinduism, Buddhism, philosophy, engineering, medicine, astrology, astronomy, Yoga, numbers, the alphabet, mathematics, physics, chemistry etc. The evidence is there, but its not highlighted in the mainstream media because those that are in control are ignorant, have their own agenda's or both. As a result they have no wish to upset the status quo of their own privileges.

I think that the bible contains some truth, and within the framework of conscious self-development, a higher understanding of the stories contained in the bible could be realized. However I don't think that it is necessary to a person's development. All the truth and keys needed to unlock the mysteries of the universe is within, and need to be directly experienced to be properly validated. It has been the shortfall of mainstream religion to think that the infinite nature of the cosmic consciousness (God) could be captured in the boundedness of a book. Even the most 'God inspired' writer can't relay the fullness of an experience with words. The experience has to be experienced for it to be properly and fully understood. There is no substitute for experience especially not (blind) faith. The experience is the ultimate evidence.

For me, its more than having a strict set of rules that says don't do this or do that. It's about providing context for one's every action and critically examining the intention behind such actions.
I think that people can discern through the truths of any religion even Christianity and evolve to higher essential truths. However it takes courage and integrity (among other things) to work through the years of social conditioning that encourages the masses to walk away from the reality of their divinity and engage blind faith. Those that imbibe this conditioning often can do no better than uphold the status quo of injustice and inequality because that is what is taught to them. They are systemically taught to blind themselves.

There is no shortcut around the hard work of constant character refinement and critical self-examination. Those that want to use the idea of a savior (other than oneself) or repentance as an excuse not to do the work necessary to reconcile with one's Higher self can do so, but natural law is accorded whether one is knowledgeable about it or not. In grasping history, reasoning, and examining every word, thought and deed, we can elevate ourselves beyond the prison of our own karmic creation.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xJesus, Christianity and 2000 yrs of Self Delusion``x1068495766,40309,views``x``x ``xby Terry Joseph

TRINI Professor Tony Martin, banned last month from addressing a Black History Month conference in London by Mayor Ken Livingstone will, in two weeks' time, address the very community denied an opportunity to hear him on October 25.

Professor of Africana Studies, Wellesley College, USA and internationally acclaimed scholar and authority on the life of Marcus Garvey, Dr. Martin was invited to speak at the London conference but later "dis-invited", Mayor Livingstone's advisor on race relations, Lee Jasper, citing Dr. Martin's presence on platforms described as habouring anti-semitic sentiments.

Jasper wrote: "Having confirmed with you that you attended and spoke at David Irving's "Real History Conference" in 2001 and the Institute for Historical Review's annual conference in 2002 and that both of these conferences included speakers known for their anti-Semitic and racist activities including Holocaust denial, the Mayor's Office had decided to withdraw its invitation to you to address the First Voice conference on Saturday 25 October."

The distance between the Mayor's office and London's black community widened after a front-page article in a Jewish newspaper headlined the October 17 issue with: "Livingstone bars 'anti-Jewish' historian from conference."

The Jewish Chronicle quoted correspondence between Louise Ellman (Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside and vice-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Council against Anti Semitism) and Jasper, saying the exchange constituted the basis both for his "prompt and appropriate action" and noted Ellman's "delight at the mayor's quick move."

A furore quickly erupted worldwide.

Trinidad and Tobago's Emancipation Support Committee joined the protest, sending a scorcher of letter to Jasper, signed by chairman Khafra Kambon, expressing abhorrence at the withdrawal of the invitation to Dr. Martin, calling it an irony in Black History Month and demanding Jasper's resignation.

Hitting back at the ban, a consortium of black-oriented organizations has invited Dr. Martin to London to speak on November 30 and December 1.

Dr. Martin advised The Express that he has accepted and will, in the first assignment, talk on the Jewish Onslaught: Exposing the Jewish role in the Black Holocaust - the very topic at which Jasper and Livingstone took offence. The talk takes place at Trini's on Rye Lane in Peckham. Also on the agenda that day is a performance of the play Anansi & King Bling.

http://www.trinicenter.com/Terryj/``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xBlack groups defy ban on Tony Martin``x1068841547,87510,world``x``x ``xby Ayanna, November 24, 2003
www.rootswomen.com/ayanna

...What was expected to happen in Venezuela

The drama that looks like a heroic public outcry for justice, freedom, and the democratic way of life takes on a sinister aspect if one is clever enough to see the puppet strings. It gets downright macabre when we see just who is the master manipulator holding the strings. In the past 24 hours, the Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze resigned from office in what the media is calling a Velvet Revolution. "Massive" demonstrations by 15,000 Georgian citizens (out of a population of 5 million) led by the opposition, stormed the palace demanding the resignation of the president, who was unable to deliver on key reform directives and quell nationwide corruption.

Here is the scene: the President gracefully tenders his resignation. The U.S. commends him for his gallantry and calls for a peaceful transition of power offering whatever assistance they can. Hmmm... Anyone seen this movie before? Sounds like a Venezuela re-run to me... One would half expect Shevardnadze to start speaking with a half-Spanish accent...

The real story behind the coup in the tiny, strategically located nation of Georgia in the former Soviet Union is clearly stamped with the trans-global imperialist politics of the United States. Georgia is located under the Caucasus Mountains linking Europe and Asia. It also happens to be the site of a massive US-funded oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey. Georgia is a nation riddled with ethnic conflicts, and a hot-bed of nationalist splinter groups in the northwest of the country. The U.S. has been sending military troops into the region since May 2002, ostensibly to help train Georgian troops fend off 'terrorist' links. Shevardnadze had been leaning more heavily on Russia's aid, the United States' competitor for control of the region. Were U.S. troops placed there as part of a grand design leading to the events of the past day? Does this sound familiar to anyone?

The apparently unrelated nations of Venezuela and Georgia have more in common than it might appear. Both are sites of intensive United States economic activity. Both have been led by Presidents with the potential to destabilize U.S. economic hegemony in their nations.Venezuelan leaders before Chavez had a history of corruption and 'toeing the line' set by the U.S., breaking regional oil treaties and agreements in favour of the U.S., and allowing them to set oil prices. President Hugo Chavez however, unlike U.S.-dominated puppets of the past, spoke out openly against the U.S. economic stranglehold and strong-arm tactics in the region. His open relations with Cuba and Russia and his Communist leanings neither endeared him to the U.S. nor to elite Venezuelan interest groups. Amidst trumped-up calls for a referendum to end his rule and media-hyped protests against his rule by what really amounted to a mere fraction of Venezuela's 24 million population, it was reported that Chavez had been ousted from power by 'thousands' of angry protesters. The mainstream media ran with the story, deliberately spreading a lie that backfired when the underground Internet media in Venezuela and other watchdog nations exposed the fraud that was the Venezuelan coup. The rest is independent media- power history.

Eduard Shevardnadze is a classic example of what happens to leaders of weaker nations who try to play by the rules of international imperialism. Sooner or later they fall out of favour with whoever is stronger at the moment, and find themselves unceremoniously ousted from the picture. Eduard Shevardnadze rose to power posing as a Marxist – Leninist in the wake of the supposedly 'anti-communist' outgoing leader Zviad Gamsakhurdia. But instead of courting the poor and seeing to the needs of a country that was still the poorest of the post USSR states, he courted the favour of elitist groups in Georgia and initially began accepting friendship from the U.S. and abandoning his former ally Russia, contending that Russia exploited secessionist groups in Georgia to force it to retain its Russian ties. He furthermore supported a plan by the U.S. to build a pipeline to channel Caspian Sea oil to the Mediterranean, bypassing Russian territory. Clearly Shevardnadze felt that with his newfound ally he could counter the Russian threat and use U.S. resources to maintain his own power. So what went wrong? It appears that somewhere along the line Shevardnadze began to grow tired of his role as political puppet and began to cozy up to Moscow once again. Well as we say in Trinidad "All skin-teeth is not a smile" One can only wonder who formed the main support of the opposition group that forced Shevardnadze's resignation. With the U.S. facing a guerilla disaster in Iraq and her allies coming under increasing attack by groups worldwide, Georgia, on the Turkish border, becomes increasingly more valuable as a military asset as well as an economic one.

The ink on the resignation papers not yet dry, the U.S's Colin Powell and Russia's Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov rushed to press their respective cases to the outgoing President and the Opposition Leader cum President. I guess Georgia will be up for grabs once again in this 'Great and Secret Show' of international politrics.

One question remains... given all the parallels between Georgia and Venezuela, why did the U.S. fail in Venezuela where it succeeded in Georgia? The most obvious answer is the power of the grassroots. Chavez made it his business to empower people who previously had had nothing to lose. He had in his corner not only the military but the mass of the poor who were willing to fight for a President to whom they were not blindly loyal, but from whom they saw tangible effort to improve their situation. This, coupled with the watchdogs of the underground Internet media who exposed the corporate media sham, led to the failure of the 'little coup that couldn't'.

Shevardnadze isolated and sold out the people who could have helped him the most - the people of Georgia. We can only wait and see how this one plays out. It is clearly business as usual in the world today where invisible hands control and manipulate our daily existences and leaders dance to the strings of the capitalist West. The show continues... keep looking for the feet poking out from behind the curtain.

http://www.rootswomen.com/ayanna/articles/24112003.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Georgian Puppet Show``x1069787875,18773,world``x``x ``xFrom the Official Howard Dean Weblog, December 7, 2003
"Restoring the American Community", delivered by Governor Howard Dean in Columbia, South Carolina.

Response by Rootsie, www.rootsie.com
December 11, 2003

Well Governor Dean, as that 'different Republican president' also said 150 years ago, "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time. But you can't fool all the people all the time."

You talk about Nixon/Reagan/Bush era politics, saying they "fracture the very soul of who we are as a country." And just what might that be, that 'soul'? The sickness in the very soul of the United States is what the Nixons, Reagans, and Bushes express. They are the mainline of U.S. History, not deviations from the norm. When was there ever racial justice here? The American Revolution itself was fought for the benefit of slave merchants. There was a hideous civil war back then fought on the frontier by poor settlers who knew this Revolution would not be of benefit to them.

When in the history of this country has the wealth NOT been 'concentrated at the very top'? You talk as if the Republicans are the sole architects and sole beneficiaries of this system. Well it takes two to tango. The gap between rich and poor opened up to unprecedented levels during the Clinton years.

But you can say anything you want really, and spin your rhetoric, because we have a broken educational system that graduates illiterates, let alone producing citizens who have some sort of grasp on their history. History. That's the thing. No one in this country wants to talk about history.

"There are no black concerns or white concerns or Hispanic concerns in America. There are only human concerns." What country do you live in? And the hundreds of millions who live 'south of the border', who also consider themselves 'Americans,' might be surprised to hear that their concerns are not Hispanic ones.

This is the way the liberals think to get around the issue of race. They talk about 'celebrating diversity' and our 'multicultural heritage', as if these pretty phrases can obscure the truth of United States history. And really, how long has corporate media North America been 'celebrating diversity' anyway? I suppose the fiends who dragged Richard Byrd along the highway a few years ago until his head was torn off don't matter in the equation of 'American progress' any more than the black children in Mississippi who are being tortured in 'training schools' as I write this. 40 years ago these stories went untold, that's true. So I suppose one could say that there has been some improvement. But to say that there is no such thing as black issues, as Native American issues, as Hispanic issues, is the worst kind of political demagoguery.

"We're going to talk about justice again in this country." Again?? When was the first time we talked about a level playing field for blacks? When was the first time we talked about restoring an iota of what was stolen from Native Americans? Whatever progress those groups have made certainly did not originate from the top. It was empowered individuals from those groups who fought and shed blood for what little justice they have received. If we find it hard to go on our merry way these days without a thought for the Richard Byrds of this world, the Leonard Peltiers, it is because of them, and not because of any reform or cry for basic justice that issued from our 'leaders.' Abraham Lincoln was a racist all his life, and anything he did for blacks was not out of love for them. The sharecropping system that replaced slavery and still exists in some places in the South today worsened the condition of blacks. At least if you own a horse, you will see to it that it stays relatively healthy.

You accuse your opponents of 'turning America into a battle of us versus them.' But Governor Dean, you are 'them'. By virtue of your skin color alone. You speak of the poor white children. I work with some of them. But I very well know there would be no political will at all to address poverty if poor whites did not exist. This you seem not to understand. You do not understand that you benefit directly from this system, that you are a true product of it. There can be no 'talk' of 'building' this and 'building' that without straight talk about race. We have to address the rot in the foundation before we can think to build a thing. I would like to hear a politician just once say 'I benefit directly from the system of white supremacy. I want to devote my excess resources to dismantling this system.' That is the only solution. Whites have to be willing to surrender their privilege. Period.

These empty calls for unity rouse much emotion in ignorant people. But to achieve true unity there has to be a reconciliation with history. Some great truth-telling must take place.

"United together, you can take back your country." When did this country ever belong to all of its people? Never yet.

"Because it is only a movement of citizens of every color, every income level, and every background that can change this country and once again make it live up to the promise of America." I remember the words of chief Red Cloud of the Lakota: "They made many promises. More than I can remember. But one they kept. They promised to take our land and they took it." You can't eat promises. We think a little patriotic rhetoric and flag-waving will suffice to bring this country into line with its many promises. What golden age of America are you referring to anyway?

40,000,000 Americans voted for George Bush. This time it will be more. There is no New Englander who can win in the South or the Midwest. There is no Democrat who can defeat George Bush. Hilary Clinton knows this. Otherwise she would be running. The Democrats cannot defeat George Bush because they do not legitimately wish to dismantle the system of global corporate colonialism for which he is the figurehead. It's a two-party gravy train. And those millions without the education and the civic engagement to see the fraud being perpetrated on them-what can be said of them? What can be said of the millions who are rich and want to stay that way, and damn everybody else?

What did you say about NAFTA and GATT? Did you say you want to dismantle them? If basic justice were your concern this is what you would say. You made some vague comments about paying foreign workers more.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I prefer George Bush right where he is. At least we citizens have to look at the worst face of what we have done to the world every single day.

I am saddened that blacks in the United States are falling for this typical Democratic bill of goods. I wish they would remember Clinton and the million jail cells. Because Democrats are the masters at putting a 'kinder gentler' face on capitalist piracy, they tend to put dissent to sleep. Like any disease, this needs to come to a crisis in order to be cured. A doctor should know this.

There is such a thing as race. There is such a thing as issues that are specific to specific groups. Rhetorical cries for unity ring pathetic at this point. There is no unity without truth.

It is so typical for a white to run on a platform of 'race doesn't matter.' But the fact that there are some blacks falling for this is ominous.

It is not possible to 'restore' what has never been.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xResponse to Howard Dean's Speech``x1071210707,50022,world``x``x ``xby Rootsie, Trinicenter Staff
December 14, 2003

How does this staged media event mean 'freedom' and a 'new Iraq'? What was ever relevant about capturing Saddam anyway except helping Bush in the polls due to the ignorance of an American people bamboozled into believing that Saddam had something to do with 9-11?

And how convenient that he is 'captured' (if he even was) a day or two after they set up a court in Iraq to try him.

Those pictures could be months old. They could be fabricated. This is the the aggravating thing. Anything could be true and we would never know.

I don't know what's worse: having a completely controlled media, or a criminally miseducated population that believes everything it tells them. At least in the Soviet Union the people knew enough not to believe the news.

Every TV station and media outlet is spinning and spinning, telling us what a big deal this is. Well on the crudest level it's macho revenge or something--'our' big guy brought down 'their' big guy. But Saddam is not and never has been the issue, except in the minds of brainwashed Americans. Just as on 9-11, I find the American response disgusting. How dare we be so ignorant? At this point in history it is simply a crime.

This was written on 9-11.

America America Does not love ideas
O no America does not love ideas.
America does not like to be sober. Not much.
America loves to leap before America looks.
America just cannot sit still.
America hates history, hates to be reminded
That causes have effects.
America cannot abide those who observe that her chickens
Have come home to roost.
America will pay anything for the illusion of safety,
Yet America is still afraid and can't figure out why
But that's an idea and like I said
America does not love ideas---
America busy anyways fixin her makeup.
She will sacrifice practically anything
Not to reflect, not to think long.
America is afraid of the dark.
After all America is the City on a Hill
The muscular might the brilliant thrusting light
Of a distant Deity
And America insists there is no downside to any of this
Of this America.
America don't need to play by anyone's rules,
America is America after all.
America says America loves freedom
While giving away as much of it as possible
As quick as possible. Freedom- but nobody feels free
Because there is much, much America refuses to see.
America is quick to anger, impatient, and unkind.
America gives no consideration to the seventh generation.
America loves gas-gulping cars
Dehumanized sex
and bling.
America loves varaiation after variation
Of the same old f*****g thing.
America loves distractions and diversions of all kinds
Cuz America can't stand her own mind.

www.trinicenter.com``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xSaddam has been Captured``x1071448688,17892,world``x``x ``xby leslie
Posted: December 15, 2003

Independent Haiti was born out of struggle beginning in 1791 and lasting beyond 1804. The fight was never an easy one and even after independence, Haiti had many negative factors hindering progression. Being a Black republic among white-ruled nations was a major setback as they refused to treat Haiti as independent. Scissions also existed within Haiti as the Blacks retained control of the North and the Coloureds, the South. A nation divided could not efficiently combat external pressures as was possible in unison. The problem was further compounded by the expulsion of whites from Haiti who possessed expertise in terms of the management of the economy. This further dampened international relations which sent the economy dwindling. Another possible blunder was that Haiti did not develop with the assistance of a mother country, as was the case with other emancipated territories. In this regard, the development of Haiti was hindered by the repercussions of the Revolution.

Immediately after the post-war epoch, Haiti was plagued with economic catastrophe. The revolution had destroyed the very foundation of Haiti's wealth: the agricultural production of coffee, spices, indigo and ultimately, sugar. Colonies that had undergone emancipation subsequently experienced the loss of their main export product, which was commonly sugar cane. Their position was that, economic loss came as a result of the decreased demand for the product. In Haiti's case, sugar was still extremely profitable but had come to ruins after the war. Cuba now took over as the leading sugar-producing colony with little competition from the smaller West Indian territories. Thus, Haiti began her independent history struggling to retain her dominant position in the race.

Haiti had problems administering new roles to the once enslaved African population. Haitian wealth lay in its ability to procure agricultural products for export. This was formerly done using coerced labour. Now that enslaved labour was no longer used to cultivate estates, a new labour scheme was required. Free labour was necessary in order that economic success was attainable. However, ex-slaves adamantly refused to work under a colonial-like system where they were subservient to the dominant planter class. Instead, they preferred to become an independent peasantry with their own lands used for subsistence and export purposes. While this may not have been a reality for many ex-slaves, they still had aspirations to become self-dependant estate owners. Land distribution in part originated from already existing hierarchies within slave communities. Such stratification aroused feelings of suspicion among former slaves. There existed the ‘big peasants' who owned land and often hired labour, the ‘small peasants' who depended on family labour, landless tenants and sharecroppers who provided labour in exchange for wages.* In this regard, the Haitian revolution led to, "an agricultural one, with small peasant plots largely replacing the plantations." This also led to "the creation of the caco armies, bands of peasants organized into private forces to protect landlords and to raid powerful opponents and poor rural dwellers alike." * Thus, the agricultural economy was unstable as there was much skirmishing among peasants who struggled for supremacy. Also, the very fact that they exported in small quantities lessened the possibility for substantial economic returns. Haitian development was thus hindered from early on in its life as a Black sovereignty.

Another factor contributing to the impediment of Haiti was that the international community displayed blatant hostility to the Black nation. Haiti proved to be an ideological threat to countries dependent on slave labour and was thus ostracized. Haiti's own rebellion triggered subsequent revolts such as the Nat Turner insurrection in the United States. Believing in the innate inferiority of the Africans, it was difficult for Europeans and Euro- Americans to conceive of continuing trading relations with the Black republic. They also feared that their countries would suffer the same fate. In this regard, all formal ties were severed except for a quiet trade that existed with Britain and particularly the United States.

Another probable reason that made it difficult for Haiti to progress was that she no longer participated in the slave trade which was then a lucrative fiscal venture. Whenever labour was depleted, it was easy to get an almost immediate supply from slave traders. Continuing with the slave trade as an independent nation would, however, prove contradictory to the ideals of the revolution. Some Haitians recommended the revival of the slave trade in order to increase the number of field workers. Labour was desperately needed as fewer than 350,000 Haitians survived the revolution.* Thus, due to the fact that Haiti's population was critically lowered and that there was no way to upsurge the population without the slave trade, Haiti was unable to start her independent life with the force needed.

Unable to cope with the changing external world, Haiti continued to increasingly lag behind. From the mid nineteenth century, there was a change in the economic tide: a change from an agrarian way of life to a more industrialized one. Due to the fact that Haiti was almost entirely cut off from the rest of the world, she was unable to procure the products appropriate to industrialization or even attempt to manufacture goods. Despite the small number of export products, Haiti did not do much to expand her economic horizon. In this regard, Haiti, overshadowed by growing economic enterprise worldwide, could not regain her dominant position on the market.

Further to this, unlike other territories that were emancipated, Haiti did not receive assistance from the mother country. Although Haiti was later recognized as a Black republic by the French, she did not receive help due to the nature of her independence. Unlike other territories, emancipation was not granted to Haiti. Instead Haiti fought for her independent status. Additionally, as a republic, France was not expected to assist Haiti to develop. Rather, Haitian independence was recognized on condition. An indemnity of 150 million francs was to be paid as well as the reduction of customs charges on French vessels to half the amount paid by other countries.* Thus, from the onset, Haiti entered independence with heavy debts, which hindered her upward development.

To further understand the current state of Haiti we must be cognizant of the dominant figurers who led them after independence. The first that would be considered is the authoritarian figure, Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Being enslaved to a cruel white master is said to have increased the intensity of his hatred towards whites. This hatred was further indicated when, in 1803, he reputedly tore the white strip from the French tricolour flag.* He insisted that Haiti's flag had two stripes, a blue and a red one to symbolize that the white had been ripped out of Haiti.* Dessalines' first critical move was the expulsion of the whites from Haiti in 1804. It is alleged that approximately 20,000 French were slaughtered.* Despite the removal of the white plantocracy, Dessalines attempted to re-instate the French plantation system to rebuild the sugar trade. The problem with this scheme was that it was difficult to get the newly freed population to do the work formerly done by slaves. This problem existed since 1794 and Toussaint tried to amend the situation by introducing the fermage system.

On hearing that Napoleon was to be made emperor, Dessalines decided to beat him to the coronation. Thus, on October 8, 1804, Dessalines became Jacques I, Emperor. He was extremely despotic in his leadership, as he demanded unflinching obedience from the Haitian population. In his short term in office, he made miscalculated moves that scarred Haiti for a long while after. One such blunder was the invasion of Santo Domingo which was checked by the accidental arrival of the French. This war laid the foundation for the animosity between these two nations. Many Haitians, particularly in the South became increasingly disenchanted with the rule of the despot. It is not surprising, therefore, that Dessalines was assassinated only three years after the declaration of independence.

Haiti subsequently plunged into a situation where political anarchy and civil war was evident. Henry Christophe from the north and Alexander Petion from the south contested for the governance of Haiti. Petion and his political advisors tried to deceive Christophe into becoming president but with virtually no power. Christophe thus declared the north the State of Haiti on February 17, 1807. On March 9, of the same year, Petion was elected president of the Republic of Haiti in which he had control over the southern half of the island.

In the black North, Christophe sought to bring his kingdom into the modern world. He began an ambitious programme of education, at least for the children of the elite, and spent a great deal on infrastructural development. In addition, Christophe re-introduced the fermage system. This was mingled with vigorous disciplinary force and worked with much success. However, it was the very implementation of this system that hastened the end of Christophe's regime. Plantations were either placed in the hands of military officers who showed dexterity and leadership on their missions or mulattoes who could prove their relationship to the original proprietors and the rest was leased to the government. Despite the success of the new system, the bulk of the black population were not in favour of it. They hated that this new system closely resembled slavery. Thus many of them fled to the south and those that remained, continued to express their abhorrence for the system. Dessalines' reign was ended when Boyer, Petion's successor launched an attack on the north. Christophe committed suicide which put an end to the division between the north and the south. Haiti's development, in this view, was slowed down due to the dissatisfaction of the ex- slave population who grudgingly worked under a slave-like system. With an unhappy labour force, Haiti was unable to move forward as a truly independent nation.

Under the leadership of Alexander Petion, Haiti was impacted negatively. He did nothing to re-invigorate the economy unlike Dessalines and Chrisophe. Due to the insolvency of the treasury, Petion redistributed lands as payment for military services. The effect of such action was that it created a growing independent peasantry who utilized their lands mainly for subsistence. They isolated themselves from cities and the external world and were seldom involved in government. Coffee supplanted sugar as the main crop as it could be cultivated by peasants and their families. Despite the massive turnover, coffee was not of major economic importance. In addition, land plots became smaller as they were sub-divided by landowners to be distributed to inheritors. This meant that goods were exported in smaller quantities which was not economically practicable at the time. Petion purchased peasant products at reasonable cost when prices overseas were low. This was done in an attempt to raise the market value of the products. This move proved ineffective as it made southern goods uncompetitive. Petion's tenure as the southern leader further encouraged economic backwardness which plagued Haiti for decades to come.

The reunification of Haiti was accomplished under the Boyer regime. The north, being the more prosperous of the two now assumed the immense debts of the south. In addition, as new leader of the united country, he extended land distribution to the north. Thus, Haiti grew largely to become a nation cultivated by small peasants. Under his reign, Haiti and Santo Domingo were united. He abolished the tax on primary export goods which deeply upset coffee cultivators in particular. He also agreed to the terms under which Haitian independence was recognized by France.* Boyer also became unpopular when he arrested prominent Black leaders. Such actions culminated in a series of revolts in the south. Many complained that his leadership was corrupt as army officers were promoted through nepotism, freedom of the press was restricted and magistrates and judges became "mere creatures of the president."* Boyer in 1843 abdicated when revolutionary forces had spread and he failed to suppress them. Here we witness Haiti being controlled by corrupt leaders who only sought self-aggrandizement. Thus, Haiti's progress was setback and has not been able to fully recover.

In retrospect, Haiti's progress was hindered as she was ostracized by the international community. Additionally, she had a huge foreign debt to pay in order that her independence was recognized. Further to this, she expelled the whites who possessed managerial expertise. Another factor was that Haiti was divided at a time when the only chance of her survival was with unity. She also received no assistance from France to help out as a newly independent nation. Lastly, the leaders that ruled Haiti after 1804, made decisions that proved to disrupt the growth of the Black republic. Haiti, in this regard, was unable to overcome the challenges that she faced that further encouraged her underdevelopment.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xFactors Which Hindered Haiti's Growth Since 1804``x1071546521,11969,rasta``x``x ``xBy Ayinde, Trinicenter Staff
December 16, 2003

What is wrong with many supposedly critical writers on the Internet? Are they suffering from analytical paralysis?

Let me spell it out as simply as possible:

SADDAM HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ATTACK ON AMERICA.

SADDAM WAS NOT AN IMMANENT THREAT TO AMERICA, BRITAIN, AND AUSTRALIA.

THE INVASIONS OF AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ WERE ILLEGAL.

HAVING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION IS NOT A CRIME.

They have not found any WMD, and may find them only when they plant some.

If possessing weapons of mass destruction is a crime, we should be targeting America, Israel, Britain, and other countries whose misleaders have demonstrated they are a threat to us all.

Capturing Saddam is about America's internal elections.

All the brutal crimes committed by Saddam were sanctioned by America, and were done with arms and chemicals supplied by many nations including, most of all, the United States of America and Britain.

We got what?
Give me a break!


Sources

¤ US supplied anthrax to Iraq
¤ US Corporations and Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction
¤ How the US armed Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons
¤ 17 British firms armed Saddam with his weapons
¤ How Did Iraq Get Its Weapons? We Sold Them
¤ When US turned a blind eye to poison gas
¤ A link between Saddam and bin Laden? No way
¤ The lies we are told
¤ Who lost Kuwait?
¤ British Dossier on Iraq Scandal
¤ United Nations: No Proof Saddam Gassed The Kurds!
¤ Israeli nuclear 'power' exposed

More News

¤ Let Saddam face ICC for Trial
¤ Saddam's capture: Irrelevant, except for American voters
¤ Meanwhile Halliburton gets more work in Iraq
¤ Meanwhile, in Baghdad, the slaughter goes on
¤ US Takes Custody of Another Wayward Client
¤ Saddam Hussein has been Captured``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``x"We Got Him" Give Me A Break!``x1071553528,28170,world``x``x ``xNewsday
Trinidad and Tobago

Saddam Hussein's surrender to coalition forces on Sunday should catapult into focus the need not only for the establishment of a properly structured system of War Crimes Tribunals, but for all countries which today are not signatories to the International Criminal Court [ICC] to become members and accept the authority of this body. The principle of the jurisdiction of War Crimes Tribunals should not be seen as applying merely to vanquished and/or weak nations, but rather to all. In like manner the legal authority of the International Criminal Court should have relevance for the entire international community. Admittedly, this is untrodden ground, but as George Washington, first President of the United States of America, would write shortly after his inauguration on April 30, 1789: "I walk on untrodden ground... There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent." Washington would also advance in a letter to the man he had appointed his country's first Attorney General, Edmund Randolph: "The administration of justice is the firmest pillar of Government."

This is something on which the United States should ponder, with specific reference to its acceptance of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. I offer this although I accept that purists will indulge in a bit of nit-picking. Hussein, undoubtedly, committed or must be held responsible for the committing of some of the worst atrocities of the past 200 years. Saddam Hussein, former iron-fisted ruler of Iraq, had led his country in the 1980s in a war against Iran in which the US had found to be convenient, and in which hundreds of thousands of Iranians were killed, many of them through being gassed. Iraq's atrocities in that war must take their place alongside those of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany during World War 11; a Fascist Benito Mussolini-led Italy invasion and brutal occupation of Ethiopia; the German military campaign in Tanganyika [1880-1907] in which 120,000 Tanganyikans were killed and/or starved to death; the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Algerians by the French from 1830 to shortly before Algeria gained her Independence, and the explosively repulsive "wiping out" of some 100,000 Filipinos, who had dared to struggle for the freedom of their country — the Phillipines — from the United States.

The almost systematic killing off of the Filipinos, whose "crime" was their very human desire to be free men and women, would prompt the American author, Mark Twain, to say that the "stars" on the American flag should be replaced with the skull and crossbones! For the record, Frances Ghiles wrote an article on the Algerian War of Independence which was published in the Times Literary Supplement of February 6, 1998 [Page 36] under the heading, "Another Savage War." But the above references to cruelty against the people of the several countries mentioned do not absolve Saddam and he must be punished. What they have done, however, is present a case for the expansion of the number of countries accepting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, and for the setting up of a system of War Crimes Tribunals. We must be careful not to view what Saddam, easily one of the cruellest tyrants of this and many other generations, did, in a vacuum. At the same time if we are not to simply pay lip service to respect for international law and the moral authority of the UN we must frown on the intervention in Iraq by the several nations led by the US, which launched an invasion of Iraq on the advanced spurious argument that they were searching for weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations should not have allowed itself to have been sidetracked over the years in a ridiculous effort to seek to verify whether Iraq was complying with its (UN's) resolutions. By pursuing this course rather than take firm action against the Saddam Hussein regime over reports of abuses of human rights, it tacitly allowed a barbaric government to pillage and to kill.

Meanwhile, the United States economy which had been in troubling decline since early 2000, but more rapidly from the last quarter of that year, is now improving and set to improve yet faster as a result of that country's real raison d'etre for its invasion and occupation of Iraq — the exploitation of Iraq's substantial reserves of crude oil and the gaining of multi-million dollar contracts for the reconstruction of that country. And although these are basically speaking to take place, the confidence in their being around the corner has already given a fillip to the US economy. There is a third factor in the invasion equation, that is the brake the George Bush Administration has put on Iraq having its crude supplied to the European Union (EU) paid for in Euros. Any spread of the EU's Euro manoeuvre would have led, as night follows day, to the displacing of the US dollar as the world's most favoured unit of exchange. This would have become an added factor in the weakening of the US economy. The payment in Euro strategy which was adopted in 1999 and saw even Trinidad and Tobago and Commonwealth Caribbean sugar to the EU, under the Convention of Lome, being paid for in Euros, again from 1999, no longer represents a threat to the US dollar. [Perhaps I should explain that the exchange rate with respect to the United States dollar can be applied vis a vis our sugar]. Had the United States and its coalition not cynically intervened militarily in Iraq, the Euro strategy so overwhelmingly embraced by Saddam Hussein and his advisers would have ultimately been Iraq's weapon of mass destruction, with its principal target being the US economy!

More Views

¤ Iraq: Baghdad Moves To Euro
¤ Can Iraq's Policy Affect the US$ and Euro?
¤ The Euro And The War On Iraq
¤ Dollars, The Euro And War In Iraq
¤ Dollar vs. Euro - Hegemoney


¤ Saddam, so not worth it
¤ Who will testify at Saddam's trial?
¤ Evil trying evil
¤ Still no mass weapons, no ties to 9/11, no truth
¤ Meanwhile, Halliburton handed another Iraq contract
¤ Bush and Cheney: Don't let them hustle us!
¤ Saddam and Dean and beyond
¤ "We Got Him" Give Me A Break!
¤ Let Saddam face ICC for Trial
¤ Saddam's capture: Irrelevant, except for American voters
¤ Saddam Hussein has been Captured``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xIraq's Real Weapon Of Mass Destruction``x1071663435,53303,world``x``x ``xThe following statement has been issued by Hackney Black Peoples Association, London:

Black History Month (BHM) in Britain is becoming like Kwanzaa in he USA. Kwanzaa was drawn up by a committee and was said to be a holiday for North American Africans (African Americans). The US government paid a large sum of money to the alleged founder of Kwanzaa and thus it became a holiday for all Americans. So it does not matter whether a person is of European or Asian descent, they can claim Kwanzaa as their holiday too.

Local authorities seeking to ride on the tide of popularity engendered started BHM in Britain by public Black History lectures organised by Black Community Organisations. Its popularity led to some local authorities making budgetary arrangements for BHM while some others went through the motions of supporting BHM. For Example, Hackney Council appointed a white woman to organise BHM.

Then we saw the Home Office, through its arm the Commission for Racial Equality, publishing glossy BHM booklets targeted at recruiting young Blacks into the ranks of the army and the police.

Next came the National Lottery Commission, which put up £0.5million for BHM in 2002, with most of the money going to the British Museum and the National History Museum.

This year, we had the spectacle of London Mayor Ken Livingstone and his flunkey Lee jasper trying to bask in the glory of the history of the African peoples of the world with their First Voices Conference. They were forced by Jews and Zionists to withdraw an invitation Professor Tony Martin, the world's foremost scholar on the Honourable Marcus Garvey, thus causing outrage and anger within the Black Community.

What is also now creeping in is the discredited idea of multi-culturalism, so that Asians and mother none-Africans can be funded to organise BHM events. The demand of Black children that they be taught their history in English schools has been completely ignored.

Given that Carter G. Woodson established BHM in the USA for the education of Blacks about their own history; not as seen by whites as the story of the conqueror for the conquered, then Black organisations in the UK have a duty and a responsibility to maintain and defend that position. We should not let those with vast financial resources take control of BHM and then use it against us.

To this end, the Hackney Black Peoples Association proposes the following:

1. That a committee representing the widest spectrum of organisations be established to maintain the continuity of BHM for its original purpose.

2. That letters be written to the Mayor, the CRE and the national Lottery Commission telling them to butt out of BHM.

3. That every year, the Committee organises an African Peoples as a BHM event where we discuss a particular aspect of our history to determine what lessons can be learned for present times.

4. Given the furore over the dis-invitation of Tony Martin, that for BHM 2004, he be recalled to speak at a BHM African Peoples Assembly on the History and Legacy of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA, then lessons to be learned for implementation, and the APA decides to establish one project that everyone will work to establish.

5. That in the meantime, demonstrations/pickets be held outside the offices of the Jewish Chronicle and the Board of Deputies of British Jews to protest the ant-African racism of Jews and demand Reparations for slavery.

Proposed by: Hackney Black Peoples Association ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xTaking back BLACK HISTORY MONTH``x1072202369,64956,``x``x ``xwww.blackcommentator.com

The Bush men decorate our holidays in Homeland Security yellow, orange and red, while demonizing Islamic green as the color of the most implacable foes of Western "civilization." Yet official silence conspires to hide genocidal maniacs in our midst who have sworn to erase the Black presence from the landscape of the United States: White Terror.

Tens of thousands of members of a racist legion operate openly in every corner of the nation – men, women, juveniles, extended families, cells, gangs, churches, clans, militias, border armies, all engaged in what they consider to be a war to the death against non-white America.

George Bush and John Ashcroft don't want you to hear about White Terror, understandably fearing that the lyrics of white supremacy strike the same racial chords as the Pirates' own War on Terror theme, itself a rearrangement of the many martial tunes written throughout American history in praise Manifest Destiny. Less than a decade ago Timothy McVeigh's band of terrorists got carried away with the logic of America as a White Man's Country, and may have cost the Republicans the White House in 1996. That's why the homeland security colors didn't change in May of this year, when federal agents arrested a white racist couple dealing in weapons of mass destruction in a small town near Tyler, Texas. The feds seized a cyanide bomb capable of unleashing a deadly, poison cloud, chemicals and components for additional WMDs, gas masks, 100 conventional bombs, an arsenal of automatic weapons, silencers and half a million rounds of ammunition.

The bust went unreported last Spring, although George Bush was said to have been regularly briefed about the "ongoing" investigation. Finally, the Dallas-Fort Worth CBS affiliate broke the story on November 26, when longtime militiaman and traveling gun merchant William J. Krar and his common-law wife pled guilty to possession of a chemical bomb and lesser charges. Local Channel 11 news producer Todd Bensman thought he had a huge national story on his hands, but CBS network refused to pick up his report. "I guess they didn't think it was important enough," Bensman told David Neiwert, a Seattle-based journalist who has covered right-wing terrorism since 1978. In fact, the national news blackout was near-total, as reported online by The Memory Hole.

The only media that saw fit to report about this terrorist plot within the US were a few newspapers and TV stations in Texas. The Web-based news outlet WorldNetDaily ran a story about it, but Google News shows that there hasn't been a word in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, or any other big media outlet. Why have the media decided that this is a non-story? It's hard to say, but we can say with certainty that if Muslims had been caught with these weapons of mass destruction, fake I.D., gas masks, and books on making explosives, it would've been front-page news for days.

A huge array of weapons, ammunition, bomb-making equipment, and racist literature were discovered in the Tyler arrest.

The New York Times got around to the story on December 13, not on the news pages, but through a back door Op-Ed article titled "Enemies at Home." Daniel Levitas' piece passed the Times' blandness test. "Americans should question whether the Justice Department is making America's far-right fanatics a serious priority," Levitas wrote. "And with the F.B.I. still struggling to get up to speed on the threat posed by Islamic extremists abroad, it is questionable whether the agency has the manpower to keep tabs on our distinctly American terror cells. There is no accurate way of analyzing the budgets of the F.B.I., Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security to discern how much attention is being devoted to right-wing extremists. But in light of the F.B.I.'s poor record in keeping tabs on the militia movement before the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, one wonders whether the agency has the will to do so now."

What apologetic nonsense. The federal police are acting just like their predecessors under J. Edgar Hoover, who for decades denied there was such a thing as the Mafia. Hoover knew full well that the Italian-American syndicate existed, since the Bureau had used gangsters countless times as lethal instruments against leftists in the union movement. The FBI was a friend to the Mafia until deep into the Sixties and – the movie, Mississippi Burning notwithstanding – sheltered and immunized far more Klansman than it ever arrested. The Bureau does as it is told, and it has been instructed to hide White Terror from view.

Indeed, there are striking similarities between the FBI's modus operandi with the Ku Klux Klan in the Sixties and the Bureau's behavior towards today's white terrorists; the feds watch, but don't do much of anything to stop them. There is no question that the Aryan Nations, National Alliance, Christian Identity, various reconstituted Klans, skinheads and hundreds of other homegrown Nazi organizations have been heavily infiltrated by various law enforcement agencies. After all, they are full of criminals of the kind that routinely trade evidence for extended sojourns outside of prison. In addition, the American domestic arms trade is a roadmap to the violent Right, a national grid full of above ground gun markets and fairs. All it takes is some cash to join the circuit and meet the folks.

Terrorists With Impunity

The feds met William Krar around the time of the Oklahoma City bombing. According to the November 26 television report from Dallas-Fort Worth: "In 1995, the ATF investigated Krar and another man on weapons charges. The other suspect told authorities at the time that he and Krar shared an abiding hatred of the federal government and had been planning to bomb government facilities, court records show. But the suspect later recanted the story about plotting terror attacks with Krar. Krar denied the allegation and was not arrested, according to records.

There is little to indicate that the feds wanted to make anything stick to Krar. On the day after 9/11, an employee at a New Hampshire storage site where the weapons dealer kept his regional customers' stock reported Krar's "wicked anti-American" remarks to the FBI, which filed a report but did – nothing! When the feds finally moved on Krar and his companion in Noonday, Texas a year and a half later, the arrest warrant said he was "actively involved in the militia movement…a good source of covert weaponry for white supremacist and anti-government militia groups in New Hampshire," his native state. How long had this been known to the FBI? It's a moot question, since such activities were clearly not of great interest to the Bureau.

Geoge Bush was not reported as saying that groups like these, and their right-wing political allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the USA.

Four months after 9/11, in January 2002 the feds stumbled on Krar's network through no smarts of their own when a package meant for New Jersey militiaman Edward Feltus was mistakenly delivered to a Staten Island, New York address. "The package contained more than five false identification documents, including a North Dakota birth certificate, a Social Security card, a Vermont birth certificate, a Defense Intelligence Agency Identification card, and a United Nations Multinational Force Identification card," said the East Texas U.S. Attorney's office. But no attempt was made to halt Krar's activities, which continued until May of this year.

The U.S. Attorney's statement claims that after the New Jersey package turned up, a "subsequent investigation" discovered that Krar "had accumulated dangerous chemical weapons," an apparent reference to a Tennessee Highway Patrol stop of Krar's car a full year later, in January 2003. State Police – not federal agents – found dangerous chemicals and a note that "appears to represent instructions for carrying out some kind of covert operation," Channel 11 reported. "It lists code words for cities where meetings can take place at motels."

The cities where the conspirators would presumably meet were called "zones" and included: Chattanooga, Bristol, and Knoxville, Tennessee; Scranton and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Winchester and Roanoke, Virginia; Jackson, Mississippi; and Shreveport, Louisiana.

The TV story continued: "Other codes appear to be warnings about how close police might be to catching the plotters. 'Lots of light storms are predicted,' for instance, means 'Move fast before they look any harder. We have a limited window remaining.'"

The FBI and other federal agencies had left the "window" open for mad white bombers Krar and Bruey for two whole years, but you'd never know it from the U.S. Attorney's press release. "Through the cooperative effort of the FBI, ATF, the Army CID and the Criminal Investigative Service, these defendants were identified and their activities pinpointed and neutralized. We live in a safer world because of the efforts of these agencies."

Honest lawmen see things differently. Channel 11 warned that "authorities familiar with the case say more potentially deadly cyanide bombs may be in circulation."

The Right Rampages, Again

The Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 people in 1995, most of them white and many of them children. For a time, the white public recoiled from the harshest rhetoric of their race-crazed kin, and it appears that many rank and file supremacists shrank away in shame, becoming inactive. Bill Clinton's political fortunes rose dramatically on the sea change of public revulsion at the Right, and he defeated Bob Dole decisively in the 1996 election. Thomas Sowell, Republican Uncle Tom Emeritus, still complains about that period. "The Oklahoma City bombing was immediately blamed on conservative talk show hosts, even before the perpetrators were known," Sowell wrote in a November, 2002 column, exaggerating as usual.

However, as the William Krar saga indicates, at no time have federal authorities treated white hate groups as clear and present dangers to national security. The lethal threat to Black America failed to spur Bill Clinton to any serious action against these very visible networks. Krar kept selling his wares, and apparently grew more sophisticated and deadly.

The Bush election 'victory', and the appointment of John Ashcroft as Attorney General, was like manna from white heaven for racist groups in the USA.

Then came September 11. Racism was back with volcanic vengeance, unbound by any notions of shame – the Great Mobilizer of White Americans. The horror of Oklahoma City had provided only a respite, after all. This time, the Republicans are determined to ride the tidal wave of white fear and hate to its ultimate, ordained destination: world conquest. And there will be no reminders of the despised Tim McVeigh to break the triumphalist spell – not if Attorney General Ashcroft can help it.

On the December 5 edition of Democracy Now! University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen attempted to explain the silence over racists armed with WMDs. "Cases like this – of domestic terrorism, especially when they involve white supremacist and conservative Christian groups, don't have any political value for an administration, especially this particular administration," said the professor. " Therefore, why – if one were going to be crass and cynical, why would they highlight this?

"On the other hand, foreign terrorism and things connected to Arab, South Asian and Muslim groups, well those have value because they can be used to whip up support for military interventions, which this administration is very keen on."

Jensen understates the case. The Noonday, Texas WMD story was squashed by the Bush Administration with the active collaboration of editors throughout corporate media. The December 10 issue of Intelligence Squad got it just about right: "Suddenly it becomes clear why John Ashcroft isn't going to make a big deal out of nailing these guys: they are essentially a more extreme version of Ashcroft himself." The Bush men conceal the existence terrorists, as if embarrassed by their own kind.

Reporters at Channel 11 in Dallas-Fort Worth were told, "federal agents have served hundreds of subpoenas across the country in a domestic terror investigation" since May. Yet there have been no subsequent news reports of such events and only three people are in custody: Krar, Bruey and the New Jersey militiaman, Edward Feltus. If the hundreds of persons suspected of terrorist activities were Arabs or South Asians, we might assume they were locked away incommunicado in the twilight Gulag created since September 11. But these are white Americans with special dispensation to engage in an ancient yet familiar rampage. They can hide in plain sight, because nobody's really looking.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRacist Terrorist Groups in the Heart of the USA``x1072582205,80328,world``x``x ``xBy Raffique Shah

WHEN an FBI agent, working under America's new Homeland Security laws, could grab an innocent BWIA pilot off a flight and say triumphantly, "We got him!" anyone with a modicum of sense and an understanding of history will realise that the world's sole superpower is in super trouble. It's a country that possesses weapons of massive destruction that could reduce Earth to rubble. But it's also a country that lives in mortal fear of ordinary people, some like our two harmless pilots, hapless victims of its paranoia, and others who are penniless but who are prepared to sacrifice their lives to bring this global giant to its knees by whatever means necessary.

On learning of the detention of the BWIA pilots, I was reminded of Homer's epic, Odyssey. I thought especially the episode in which Odysseus, who took his marauding men on a plundering journey through strange lands with even stranger people and beasts, came across the giants of Cyclops. There, trapped in the cave of the one-eyed Polyphemus and his flock of sheep, Odysseus would drunken the giant with wine then stab him in the one eye with which he could see. The enraged but now blind giant had to let his flock out to graze, and Odysseus and his men escaped by attaching themselves to the bellies of some sheep as the giant checked out their backs.

That is where the USA as a country has positioned itself at the turn of the millennium, a modern-day Polyphemus. It's enraged that some bedraggled Islamic fundamentalists could drive it into wars that it's sure to win by bombing poorly armed countries into submission, but which in turn exposes its troops and its people to deadly retaliatory action, especially suicide bombings.

It's frustrated that for all its sophistication and readiness to bully others to bend to its will in matters like the ICC or the WTO rules, it's becoming increasingly paranoid to the point where it ends up running helter-skelter looking for ghosts! What a state for the most powerful nation on Earth to find itself in!

The arrests of our two pilots were just the tip of an iceberg of paranoia that has enveloped US authorities (I don't know that ordinary Americans felt in any way threatened) in a manner never before seen in history. Over the Christmas holidays "jumpy" officials ordered several flights from Europe to US airports be cancelled, presumably because their intelligence suggested "terrorists" might use them to launch 9/11 type attacks on US targets. So even American citizens returning home to spend the season with their families were adversely affected by what I can only describe as "dotishness". Moreover, ours weren't the only pilots who were made to endure the humiliation of being listed as terrorists, and treated accordingly. Many others were, and I'm sure countless other persons, especially those with an Arab "hue" are probably still being held in chains at various detention centres across the US.

Their claim could be that the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, which triggered never-ending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was behind the security alert and the draconian measures that all visitors to the US are now being subjected to. But there are unanswered questions over 9/11 that remain hanging in the air.

For example, how could some two-by-two pilots who only recently got their licenses acquire the skills needed to make direct hits on targets like the WTC towers? Pilots with air force experience will tell you how difficult such feats are, and that even with aircraft designed for such "hits". Also, no one ever explained why, on that fateful day, so few people were at the WTC, and virtually none of the Jews who worked there (check the nationalities of those reported dead)! Or, to add to the mystery, why the alert US air-tracking systems never picked up the course deviations of the various flights involved in 9/11.

Whatever the facts surrounding 9/11 may be-and the truth has a way of surfacing, sometimes decades later-the end result of the US backlash against its perceived enemies is not a safer America. It's a grossly paranoid nation that's drifting into a police state akin to what obtained in Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia. Regarding the decision to fingerprint and photograph all visitors entering the US, Brazil has already taken retaliatory measures. As of the same date, all US passport holders entering Brazil will be subjected to similar scrutiny. It's a straight case of tit-for-tat, and one can see other big countries following suit, not because they want to harass Americans, but because they want to drive home the point that all human beings are supposed to be treated in an equitable manner, that Americans are not God's chosen children or "more equal" than anyone else.

In fact, the Brazilian judge who handed down the order had this to say about the US fingerprinting policy: "I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy (sic) of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis." I don't fully agree with the latter part of the statement, although, as I pointed out some weeks ago, the Guantanamo detention centre looks more like a Nazi concentration camp. And worse, the US authorities are guilty of detaining totally innocent people (like our two pilots) at similar camps across the world.

Ordinary Americans need to seriously question the sanity of leaders like President George Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and others of similar ilk who are misleading their richly endowed and once proud country into an abyss of instability, and ultimately to self-destruction. The question Americans should ask themselves is who else but America can destroy America?

There is no need to answer that question. Because Bush, and before him his dear dad and Bill Clinton, stirred up a hornet's nest by launching an unholy crusade against Islam. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are only fringe-elements who happen to belong to the fastest growing religion in the world. The mass of Muslims are a peaceful people, and if there are aberrations among them, tell me what religion is exempted from such? Christianity? Think of the century-old bitterness and blood spilled in Northern Ireland. Hinduism? Remember the destruction of the mosque at Babri or the many times Muslims were butchered by Hindu fundamentalists in different parts of India?

If ordinary Americans fail to stand up and reclaim their land in the name of democracy, then they will soon find themselves an isolated country that will inevitably implode.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xA Nation Gripped by Paranoia``x1073237834,49505,world``x``x ``xby Bukka Rennie

It makes you tired. Haiti, the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere, the only society of African slaves to have completely freed itself with blood, iron and guts, is now 200 years old.

She, Haiti, since then became the pariah society of the West, to be isolated, boycotted, blockaded trade-wise and even forced to pay compensation in gold to masters from whom they freed themselves.

Haiti freed itself but the world was not yet ready for such a Haiti and that has been to date Haiti's great tragedy. No society can develop in isolation. Isolation enhances stagnation.

Much like a family that is incestuous, blocking out or resisting in every which way the influx or injection or intrusion of new strains, such a family's tree of life is severely weakened and is thereby placed in jeopardy.

The analogy is not tight because whereas the incestuous family's isolation is voluntary and self-inflicted, Haiti's isolation was quite the opposite. And whereas the resulting weakness of the incestuous family is biological and genetic, the weakness of Haiti is structural and socio-economic.

What depths of reality do we have to plumb before we can come to understand that we owe it to Haiti, the flag-bearer of Caribbean freedom and self-determination, to have stood in solidarity with her since the very initial days of political Independence?

Did we have to wait until Bush told us, just as we seem to be waiting on Giuliani for a strategy to deal with crime? What manner of people are we?

I refuse to accept any suggestion that we are impotent because of some peculiar accident of history or because of some flaw in our cultural matrix from which we are yet to escape. Or because of our legacy of dependence and "unresponsibility" that emanates from our rites of passage that took us on a journey from being slaves to proletarians to clerks. And in the process instilled in us some uncanny, extremely unique, weird and peculiar inability and incapacity to fathom how this place works.

We living here, existing here, managing and negotiating the complexities of numerous daily relationships, creating all kinds of things out of nothing, making space where there is no space, yet we are told in the same breath that we are incapable of comprehending Caribbean reality. How can we be located at such extreme poles at the same time? What a contradiction!

True to say if such were indeed the case then we would have to be the dumbest sons of bitches to have ever walked this planet, Earth. I cannot be party to any such postulations. I have great difficulty with this and I must say so. Probably those who engage in such histrionics and captious sophistry, do so because of some driven obsession with the desire to be eternally "original".

In fact there is nothing wrong with such an obsession. Seeking to be original and to think divergently are diamond assets that are not very common and should be complimented wherever they appear. Such thinking is exactly what our schools and campuses require urgently.

Yet one must acknowledge that there is much to this world that is universal precisely given the fact that, in the last 500 years, capital and capitalist relations comprise the dominant objective socio-economic force that have structurally pulled the globe into a tight whole.

Still the original question has to be answered. Why are we yet to embrace Haiti as a responsibility?

During the years of Caribbean slavery, no revolt was isolated, and the action always spread to other islands in the chain. That exhibited the height of consciousness and the level of preparedness of slaves for combat, notwithstanding the cases of sell-outs on the part of house-slaves.

And when, at the turn of the century, the agenda of the "proletarians" was on the front burner, no one had to tell Caribbean workers about the necessity for regional solidarity. In fact the demand for a Caribbean nation is in fact a proletarian demand.

Ask the female traders and hagglers of the Caribbean who do business from one end of the chain to the other for the survival of their children. It is though a systemic problem for the "clerks" who inherited power after Independence, programmed no social transformation and became the new "governors" with a morbid fear of an empowered people.

What reality is there to be plumbed? The system has to be rooted out lock, stock and barrel. Only the "clerks" do not know or do not wish to know that. The people from below will have to push up for their voices to be heard. It is the only way to get Caricom on the road and for Haiti and Cuba et al to be embraced fully.

According to CLR James, the reality is that our people were mis-educated and our political consciousness twisted and broken, our sense of self-confidence and political dynamism poisoned and corrupted by imperial schooling in the immediate 50 years before Independence.

The "Kingdom of Clerkdom" has been the result. The settling for zones of comfort, basic cowardice and the lack of will to get up and do what is necessary, the fear of engaging and challenging the people, the constipated fear of fear itself, are all hallmarks of "clerkdom".

Also Read:

Haiti-A Call For Global Action by Randall Robinson``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xHaiti: Do it now!``x1073496445,19739,world``x``x ``xby Tyehimba

America, the so called epitome of democracy, freedom, and capitalism fought their battle against the colonial might of great Britain in 1775 and with the help of black slaves who fought as well, freed themselves and their country from the colonial tentacles of Great Britain. They won the right to self-determinism/ to chart the course of their own destiny. They drafted their Declaration of Independence that stated, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness". Yet it took America until 1865 to free their slaves from the bondage of chattel slavery. Also, the European Americans facilitated the grand massacre of the indigenous people (misnomered Red Indians), justifying the annihilation by branding them as evil savages. These indigenous people who once roamed the wide expanse of their land (know today as America) were herded into small reservations: what was left of them that is, and forced to live a life contrary to their own traditions. This act of sheer hypocrisy has tainted the nation that once dreamed of being a beacon of freedom, democracy, equal rights and justice for the world. This single act of momentous hypocrisy has now been proliferated into a culture of corruption, individualism, world imperialism and wanton carnal gratification. Just imagine, Thomas Jefferson, former President of USA, who helped draft the Declaration of Independence, at the time, traded slaves from his plantation for kegs of molasses.

Having gained Independence from the colonial might of Britain and severing all forms of British colonial control, America embarked on a series of expansionary policies that would ensure they achieve the status of a Colonial superpower. The misleaders of that time, and even now, firmly believe in freedom for Americans (white Americans that is) but not freedom for anybody else. This white supremacist/patriarchal/ 'might is right' stance that is the foundation of the American legacy has manifested itself not only in America's policy to other mostly non white nations but also most strongly in America's internal policy to the black (non-white) people that also make up the nation of USA. It has been a legacy of blatant racism, discrimination, oppression and violent suppression of any group, organization or idea that is not congruent with the popular culture that is manipulated by the upper echelons of American society. Black people who are termed as the minority has felt the full brunt of these oppressive policies that has sought to suppress the very essence of themselves. Blacks are the minority in society but the majority in the prisons. Blacks are targeted by the police, tortured, sodomized, killed, and falsely imprisoned. How much more sickening, heart- wrenching stories of brutal torture, intimidation and slaughter by the security forces of America will we hear. The immigration policy of the USA is very deliberately structured to increase proportionately the number of white people versus the number of black people. The Educational curriculum by its very nature reinforces the degradation of the Black people in America. Blacks have less access to quality education and are forced to assimilate Euro centric standards and culture to survive.

Very integral to the success of the colonial imperialistic designs of America on the world is the whirring propaganda machines that spew American popular culture, values, products and other assorted junk. Fast food outlets pop up on every busy corner with bright signs declaring Mac Donalds, KFC and Burger king. These fast food outlets sell billions of steroid laced carcinogenic products to long lines of people who are seeking a taste of the American dream. Genetically modified foods usually without any labels are consumed in great quantity. Humanitarian aid being given to Afrikan countries by the US is genetically modified.

Our youths are walking advertising boards, advertising the wide range of American products. Nike the sign says: 'just do it'. While Nike one of the greatest symbols of American capitalism still has Asians working in terrible slavery-like sweatshop condition. The cost of producing one pair of shoes costs about $ 1 US, while the price of a pair often crosses the $100 US mark.

Very central to America's imperialistic thrust for total global domination is the success of its media that spew a conglomeration of arrogant 'God bless America' garbage. When I was little boy I enjoyed watching Westerns with the 'brave' and 'heroic' cowboys taking on and beating the 'savage', and 'evil' native Americans (misnomered Red Indians). Years later I understood how dangerous and false this image is and how important it is in upholding the well doctored American image of being fair, righteous and just. The American materialistic value system bombards the world's consciousness along with complementary images of the all-conquering American hero fighting the evil forces of the world. This arrogant pattern has permeated the offering of Hollywood (who is controlled principally by Jews), which is beamed all over the world via the high tech American satellite network. One consequence of this is that people all over the world have the perception that Hitler was the worst thing that ever happened to the human race. The atrocities committed by people like Rhodes, Ian Smith, Mussolini, King Leopold and others (who make Hitler look like a goody-two-shoes) are whitewashed and overlooked by those who should know better. King Leopold slaughtered more than 12 million Afrikans approx twice that of the Jews killed by Hitler. To add insult to injury there is a scholarship given mostly to Afrikan people that is named the Rhode Island Scholarship*. This is equivalent to giving a prize to Jews and calling it the Adolph Hitler Scholarship.

We need to look no further than the Israel/Palestine conflict, the Venezuelan/Chavez situation, the Zimbabwe land issue or more recently the Iraq invasion to see the viciousness of American Media and understand the importance of having alternative sources of media. CNN, NBS etc serves America and American interests just like BBC serves English interests, often overlooking truth and justice. History has shown this fact so often that it has become painfully predictable.

In this era, to be overtly racist has become politically incorrect, so the nature of racism and white supremacy has ascended to new heights of subtlety. Despite of the many black people who are in positions of power within the current American system, this is just an illusion that will fool the many that are sleeping. The slave elevated to the position of slave driver is not a statement of black empowerment, but rather just a perpetuation of white supremacy. This tokenism is done to garner the support of the respective group for activities that are often detrimental to the said group.

It is expected that some people will get uncomfortable when the word white supremacy is uttered, but if the reality of the world order is not clearly and openly articulated, how are we going to progress past the illusions, patronizing attitudes, empty platitudes and self contempt that is so pervasive throughout the global landscape? As it is now, black people in and outside America will get no justice, no reparations, and no real equality under the capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist order that has produced the likes of Jefferson, Reagan and Bush (times 2). It is a system that has no regard for humanity and the sacredness and dignity of human life. It is a system that is rooted in a popular culture of death, extolling the 'virtues' of might, materialism, greed, individualism, violence, money and power to all who will listen. God bless America indeed.


*This scholarship is by a European institution not an American one, but I included it because it is relevant to the overall context of the argument.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAmerica, Bastion of White Supremacy``x1073707200,18788,rasta``x``x ``xBy Rootsie, www.rootsie.com

Every school in the United States has its obligatory Martin Luther King Day 'celebration.' It is interesting to ask students what they know about Dr. King:

"He got freedom for black people."
"He believed the races should get together."
"He believed in love."
"He got assassinated by a racist guy."
"He had a dream."

Once the little ones are finished decorating their papers with butterflies, rainbows, and flowers, perhaps it's time to ask, as I did:

"Did you know he was beaten and arrested many times?"
"No."
"Did you know his house was firebombed?"
"No."
"Did you know he knew he was going to be killed for the work he did?"
"No."
"Did you know he spoke out against the Vietnam war, and was assassinated shortly after?"
"No."
"Well what kind of man do these things say he was?"
"Brave."
"And who did all these things to him?"
"White people."
"From where?"
"The United States."
"Are those people gone now?"
"Well they don't do those things anymore."
"Well they killed him, didn't they? Don't you think they would feel pretty good about that?"
"Well yes."
"So are they gone now? Where did they go?"

At this point there would be many places to take such a conversation, from atrocities like Richard Byrd or the MOVE massacre, to government complicity in his harassment and assassination, to the lived reality of racism today in the United States.

But Dr. King has been colonized, co-opted as some sort of poster child for America's illusion of racial harmony. I remember how white people in the North feared Malcolm X and loved Dr. King; they ignored his militancy and embraced him as a 'good black.' He knew he would be silenced, and by whom. He knew that the moment Malcolm X spoke out on the international stage, he was quickly murdered. And yet Dr. King persisted.

But we don't want to talk about revolutionary spirit. We want our children indoctrinated into the idea that 'democratic processes' work, that if someone has a problem they must simply speak out and the government will write a new law to help them out. The assassination of Dr. King is viewed as anomalous to his work, and not as the inevitable result of it. In the North especially, people could shake their heads and cluck sadly about those 'Southern crackers.'

'Freedom fighter."
"Revolutionary."
"Radical."

None of these are used to describe Dr. King, and they would not be appropriate to describe the whitewashed version of him that has been constructed over the past 35 years. On this day, Americans are not encouraged to take a cool look at their history, and they are certainly not invited to reflect on what has become of Dr. King's 'dream.' Their president appointed a racist judge to a Federal bench while a filibustering Congress was out of town, and last year to celebrate he announced a lawsuit against the University of Michigan's affirmative action policies.

They are encouraged to dreamily dream a self-satisfied and self-serving dream. Howard Dean a few weeks ago insinuated in a speech that there are no racial issues in America, and that suits us just fine. We can listen to the 'I Have a Dream' speech and get teary-eyed. We can celebrate Dr. King's dream, but in no way are we willing to face his reality.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xMartin Luther King in the American Psyche``x1074644467,9090,views``x``x ``xBy Stephen Gowans
January 25, 2004, www3.sympatico.ca

Sweep away the mendacity of all the high-faulting pretexts for war, and still life goes on as it always has. Bush and Blair are liars, but so what? Anyone who had as few as two functioning neurons banging around their cranium could figure out that Saddam's cupboard was bare of weapons of mass destruction, and that the secular Baathists had no time for the religious fanatics of al-Qaeda. Besides which, who were the US and UK, two countries stuffed to the gunnels with biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, which have never seen fit to be bound by international law, to say Iraq, or anyone else, couldn't have the weapons they themselves can't seem to get enough of? Is it that Washington and London and their imperialist rivals seek to preserve their monopoly over devastating weapons so they can push other countries around, without having to face stiff resistance -- that is, so they can continue to be imperialist powers, reaping imperialism's full rewards? North Korea's possible possession of nuclear weapons is hardly a threat to the world; it's a threat to US plans to make over the northern part of the Korean peninsula into a workshop for US capital. Since a new crop of sweatshops is hardly going to make my life, yours, of those of Koreans, any better, and is likely to make them poorer and more insecure, climbing aboard the "north Korea must irrevocably and verifiably dismantle its nuclear weapons program" bandwagon, hardly seems to be an act of enlightened self-interest.

Still, what those who doubted the Munchausens Bush and Blair never doubted was that Saddam was a monster. Hence, the mild reaction to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's revelations about the Bush administration planning war on Iraq from its very first National Security Council meeting. Who could doubt the American population could get behind White House press secretary Scott McClellan's assessment? "The world," he remarked, "is safer and better because of the action that we took to remove a brutal regime from power in Iraq." It's easy to reconcile yourself to any war fought to drive a demon from power, even if the public justification is bullshit. American involvement in WWII, which was never inspired by the lofty ideas feel-good histories say it was, is nevertheless celebrated for its consequences. Maybe our motives weren't pure, it's conceded, but the Nazi reign of tyranny was ended, and the Holocaust was stopped. The ends, it seems, always have a habit of justifying the means, so long as the latter work.

It's to be accepted as self-evident, and denied only at the risk of being excommunicated from the Church of the Sane, that Saddam's demise as leader of Iraq has made the world a safer place. On this, former White House speech writer David Frum and Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, and dissidents of the sort who complain bitterly that the New York Times won't publish their op-eds, see eye to eye. "That he [Saddam] is evil," remarked a perspicacious critic of US foreign policy in the months preceding the invasion "is beyond question. The world would be a better place without him." The British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who's made sure he's followed the accustomed British policy of tagging along after the Americans, spoke almost the same words. And now McClellan. Do they all get their scripts from the same writer? Or is the truth so abundantly evident that it's one of those things everyone can agree on, no matter what their politics?

There are, to be sure, plenty of leaders around the world who Americans, cabinet members and dissidents alike, can agree are evil, and so getting rid of the demons – in some fashion – can be considered a desirable goal, whose achievement will justify whatever means make the demon go away. Therein lies a crucial point about prominent dissidents: their dissent is partial. They don't dissent from the demonization of the target; indeed, they often take a lead role in heaping opprobrium on the goat du jour. "Love me, love me, love me," they demand. "I'm a liberal. I'm for all things nice and pleasant and good and against all things bad and nasty and repellent."

Joanne Landy, an editor of the journal New Politics, is emblematic. She's one of the driving forces behind a petition that calls for a "democratic" US foreign policy, but amounts to nothing more than a public display of wrapping oneself in the flag of virtue. Landy and her co-signers are for democracy and freedom, and one guesses, for puppy dog tails, children's smiles, long walks along the beach, and that second cup of coffee on a lazy Sunday morning. She's also against nasty people and dictators and tyranny and grimy bathtub rings, and, well, just about anything bad, really.

Washington's conspicuously genuflecting to Mars offered Landy occasion to put her moral purity on display. She deplored the Bush cabinet's march to war, but at the same time, in a consummately safe and politic act, loosed a broadside against the reviled Iraqi leader. What Saddam's failings had to do with Washington's aggressive intentions was unclear to anyone not besotted by Washington's PR fantasy that Saddam and his mythical WMDs lay at the root of the planned takeover. Indeed, Landy and her co-signers made a point of skewering the story. No, they said, it wasn't Saddam's failings that were at issue. His worst crimes were committed while he was a client of Washington, and nobody at the White House or State Department seemed to particularly care. The problem was that Saddam had later chosen to step outside the orbit of US control.

Okay. So if Saddam's failings had no legitimate connection to the US policy of regime change, why was Landy conspicuously denouncing Saddam? Wasn't this raising the volume on the core justification Washington could use for war (we got rid of a nasty brutal dictator and the world's now a better and safer place)?

The most prominent of Landy's co-signers had argued that liberals, while being portrayed as occupying a pole on the political spectrum opposite that of conservatives, could be shown to share core assumptions with their conservative opponents, differing only in tactical considerations. Political diversity, they argued, amounts to nothing more than a disagreement over how to achieve the same agreed upon goals.

The same analysis applies to the anti-war stand of the same, radical dissidents, who articulated it. They agree with conservative forces on the goal (get rid of the monsters) but disagree on the means (regime change without US force or regime change engineered by the Pentagon or regime change by some other means?) Yet, it should be clear that once you've agreed there's a monster the world would be better off without, military intervention, or something equally, or more devastating, like sanctions and blockades, are likely to strike most people as being about the only realistic options.

You can use economic pressure and political isolation to force the targeted regime to step down, but that's a broad-brush approach that, pursued by the Clinton administration, led to the deaths of over one million Iraqis, but not to regime change. Nor has it the immediacy necessary to appeal to a public persuaded that the goat of the day represents a threat so vile and imminent that he must be neutralized post haste.

Another non-military alternative is to stand by and wait for the monster to be overthrown internally, but that hardly seems to have much chance of success, especially if the internal opposition must rely on its own limited resources. Besides, who's going to agree to do nothing, when the targeted leader has been thrust into the public eye as the new Hitler? Lurking in the background in these considerations is the specter of the Holocaust, and collective guilt over not having acted soon enough to stop it.

So, furnishing the internal opposition with aid, even creating an organized opposition from the rudimentary bits and pieces that already exist, is an option, but if you believe that Washington's motivations for regime change have nothing whatever to do with ousting the old regime because it abused human rights or was planning a genocide or had defied the UN, and, furthermore, that US aggressions are really all about pursuing US interests, then support for a policy of intervention amounts to clear-eyed support of Washington's imperialist goals.

It could be objected that while indeed this may be so, the objective in supporting a policy that advances US imperialism, is not to support US imperialism per se, but to rid the world of a monster and to improve the human rights situation. The implication is that given a choice between Saddam and an imperialism that offers some measure of democracy and civil and political liberties (as US imperialism, in its mildest guise, does), imperialism is the lesser of the two evils; that US domination of Iraq is preferable to Saddam. For Washington and the corporations whose profits grow with each cruise missile, tank and bomber delivered to the Pentagon, not to speak of each reconstruction contract they secure, this is surely so. For ordinary Iraqis, the equation isn't so lopsided.

Moreover, once you've accepted support for an internal opposition, which, chances are, will rely in some way on armed struggle or the threat of force to overthrow the targeted regime, how much further must you go to accept the legitimacy of armed intervention from abroad? Indeed, how are the two different? To be sure, the apparent locus of control is different; one's internal, the other external, but that's a surface distinction. Both types of intervention are, in fact, controlled from without, indirectly in the case of aid being furnished to an internal opposition, but even so, the goals of the intervening power, not the goals of the internal opposition and the domestic population, are likely to be senior. It's unrealistic to expect an intervening power to furnish funds, equipment, training and diplomatic support indiscriminately; it will, on the contrary, be careful to target its support to groups and movements that can be counted on to pursue its objectives. Hence, the differences in support for a proxy internal army entrusted with the goal of toppling a regime, or one's own military given the same task, are hardly different in either ends or means. Both options involve the use of force; both are controlled from abroad; and both rest on the understanding that the goals of the intervening power will be pursued.

That then seems to leave two options. You can insist that it's up to internal forces, and internal forces alone, to oust the monster, but few people are going to be comfortable with an non-interventionist policy when dealing with a figure who's been built up to be the new Hitler, a genocidal monster, or an imminent threat to world peace and security. Alternatively, you can support non-military intervention, which, can, in the case of sanctions, be more devastating than the direct use of force, or, in the case on internal revolt, also reliant on violence. Plus, the same goals of imperial domination lay behind these non-military measures. Repudiating the use of force applied from abroad, while favoring sanctions or material support to proxy armies, is sheer hypocrisy. It might seem to be the morally virtuous position, but it is hardly so. Which invites the question: What form of intervention, organized, directed, or aided by an imperialist power, is legitimate? The answer is: none.

This is not to argue for non-intervention as an absolute, but for intervention, where it's appropriate, that isn't bound up in the pursuit of the intervening power's geo-political objectives. Hence, there are two issues to be addressed: When is intervention appropriate? What kind of intervention doesn't advance imperialist aims?

Military intervention, under international law, is supposed to be limited to those instances in which a country faces an imminent threat from abroad. Under these guidelines Washington's use of military force has not, in dozens of cases, including the most recent in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, been legitimate. While the illegitimacy is of moral and legal consequence, it is of little moment from the perspective of practical politics. There is no overarching body, no system of sanctions and penalties, no international community, to stop the United States from stepping outside the bounds of international law. And while internal opposition is theoretically a check on Washington disregarding the rules, the American population is mostly unaware or unconcerned, but most importantly, materially unaffected, for the most part, by their government's ill-behavior. It may be that under the Nuremberg rules the waging of unprovoked wars is the most heinous of crimes, and therefore, that US presidents are the most heinous of criminals, but what does that matter to Americans, except perhaps for feeling a momentary twinge of embarrassment or guilt or irritation that anyone should bring the matter up? Has it affected them materially in any way they can apprehend? Have they lost their jobs because of it? Have their homes been bombed? Has their country been blockaded? Have their lives in any way been made poorer, or miserable? Except for the blowback of 9/11, the answer is no, and for most Americans, the idea that 9/11 is a retaliation provoked by US domination of the Middle East, is unfathomable.

What's more, I suspect that the strictures international law place on the use of military force are, today, regarded by large parts of the population in the Western world, as hardly desirable, an unwelcome restraint on the ability of the "international community" (i.e., US-led coalitions) to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries to prevent humanitarian catastrophes. The material basis for the US population to mount an effective opposition to their government waging unprovoked wars doesn't exist, not at the moment, and perhaps never will, and, insofar as intervention appears to have the effect, whether intended or not, of producing some humanitarian good -- whether stopping ethnic cleansing or ridding the world of a monster -- the use of military force is popularly supported.

War has almost always been associated with the investing of the enemy, and most particularly, the leader of enemy forces, with great malice. Evil, not context, or history, or economics, or the actions of outside forces, matter. The behavior of the enemy is to be attributed to one thing: wickedness. And while no human is ever thoroughly evil, in war, the distorting lens of propaganda, makes the enemy so. Hence, Washington invents the term "axis of evil" to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea, three countries it intends to dominate, rather than "the axis of countries that resent US power," the resenting of US power being the thread that ties the three together, according to David Frum, who invented the phrase. And what does "resent US power" mean but "resists domination by Washington"? This transformation from human to demon is carried along upon a stream of exaggeration, as well as outright deception. Foibles are turned into sheer evil; well-intentioned mistakes into intended outcomes of diabolical design; restrictions on civil liberties become a power-mad quest for authoritarian rule and dictatorship; the leaders of governments that meet guerilla attacks head on are transformed into vicious, blood-thirsty war-lords. And once the enemy has thus been transformed, war can be justified to prevent the greater evil that must surely follow. The monster Slobodan Milosevic must be stopped before he carries out the planned genocide of ethnic Albanians; the monster Saddam Hussein must be stopped before he supplies al-Qaeda with biological, chemical and nuclear weapons; the monster Kim Jong Il must be stopped before he herds half his population into labor camps and sends nuclear armed missiles hurtling toward Hawaii. But Milosevic never carried out a genocide in Kosovo; Saddam Hussein didn't have banned weapons; and Kim Jong Il (who, we're told, is not only evil, but irrational and unpredictable) won't be inviting his country's complete annihilation by launching a missile at Hawaii, (though his irrational unpredictability is supposed to establish this as a very real possibility.) And while it may seem so to those who misunderstand the Bush administration to represent a qualitative break from administrations of the past, the doctrine of preventive war, promulgated by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under the heading "pre-emptive war," is hardly the creation of the Bush administration, but has been practiced by preceding administrations, from Clinton's, which contrived a story about a genocide it had to prevent in Kosovo, to all post-war administrations right up to Reagan's, which sought to prevent the spread of communism.

It must be acknowledged then that the rhetoric of preventive war involves highly exaggerated portraits of an evil which can have no basis in reality. This is a world of comic book fiction, teeming with comic book plots and comic book villains and heroes, who are larger than life. Large parts of the population, and no less sections of the political Left, are taken in, including those who otherwise greet the official pronouncements of imperialist governments and their established media with great skepticism. Where accusations of great evil are concerned, they're prepared to accept a high false positive rate, if the accusations are leveled at foreign leaders. Where their own leaders are concerned, their standards are more exacting. Thus, obloquies can slip effortlessly from one's tongue in connection with Washington's latest bogeyman, but to speak, in the same manner, of George W. Bush (or any president) is unwelcome. To insist that the world would be a safer and better place were Bush voted out, ousted illegally, or to use his own ominous words, taken out, would be dismissed as lunacy of the worst sort, and, at best, naivety, (which it is), and yet the most prominent of Left intellectuals can say the same about Saddam without inviting the mildest reproach.

To be sure, were Bush swept from power, it's doubtful US foreign policy would change in any significant way, and the chances that the goals to which foreign policy is yoked would change are infinitesimally slim at the very best. There may be changes in the tone and the feel of policy, and the methods may differ (or not), but replacing Bush with Clark or Dean or even Kucinich isn't going to transform the United States from an imperialist power driven to open up space for its corporations, to one that doesn't scramble for access to foreign markets and resources and seek to enlarge its economic sphere of influence. It would be naïve then to say, as is said of Saddam and Milosevic and Mugabe and Kim, that the world would be a better place without him. Who the president of the United States is, is hardly as important as the "anonymous economic and social forces" (to use Jacques Pauwels' apposite phrase) that act as coercive external forces. This, many prominent dissidents in the US, will agree is true.

But if it's naïve to suggest anything of significance would change were Bush ousted, why isn't it equally naïve to claim the world is better off for Saddam having been deposed? The answer is that it is indeed naive; that Saddam's ouster, by itself, made no difference, which is not to say that regime change hasn't made a difference, but when Washington talks about regime change it means something far more fundamental and far-reaching than simply deposing a single person: it means undertaking the wholesale transformation of a society, from top to bottom. Washington never sought to depose Saddam alone. It sought to depose a way of organizing the Iraqi economy, which limited, and in many respects negated, the interests of US corporations. It should be wondered why Washington has taken pains to organize the selling off of Iraq's largely publicly-owned economy; why it has set out to wean Iraqis from economic supports put in place by the former Baathist government; and why it has maneuvered to ensure that Iraq will be open to penetration by US capital on preferable terms. One might also wonder why George W Bush's National Security Strategy is top heavy with references to spreading free trade, free markets and free enterprise, including to Iraq, or why (to show the Clinton administration's goals were the same), NATO demanded at Rambouillet that the Milosevic government allow Kosovo to be made over along free market lines. It should be wondered too why Perle and Frum say they're willing to live with the continued rule of a Communist government in North Korea so long as the new regime, like the Chinese Communists, adopts "rational" economic policies, i.e., applies for admission to the WTO and allows US corporations to operate low-wage sweatshops. Washington doesn't seek regime change so much as system change, an opening of economies partly or wholly closed to US corporations. The demonization of individuals simply provides an excuse to occasion, by military means or otherwise, the radical makeover of a society along lines that profit US corporations. And Washington doesn't particularly care who presides over the newly opened economy. Whether communist, pro-capitalist, dictatorial or democratic, the nature of the leadership is of little moment. What matters is whether the regime is willing to allow its country to be folded into the US economic sphere of influence.

"Washington's policies," remarks the historian Jacques Pauwels, "whether fashioned by the Republicans or the Democrats, consistently aim to serve the corporate interest." [1] So too does the conspicuous demonization of foreign leaders by radicals serve the corporate interest, by reinforcing the official pretext for changing foreign regimes in favor of those whose policies invariably turn out to be congenial to US corporations. It is unthinkable that the US would oust a foreign leadership and allow one to take its place that was not willing to bow to its (inegalitarian) economic demands. The DOS regime, which replaced Milosevic's, has been ardently committed to the neo-liberal policies US corporations insist on, not surprisingly, since the DOS, is largely Washington's own creation. Similarly, the high sounding Western-backed Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, which seeks Robert Mugabe's ouster, is equally an enthusiastic standard bearer of neo-liberalism. For all his failings – and there were many – Saddam Hussein presided over the development of a society far more materially and socially advanced than most others in the region. It would be naïve to think that the remaking of Iraqi society by the US will improve the conditions of the country's ordinary citizens. Indeed, Iraqis already find themselves significantly worse off, and as US policy makers insist on laying the groundwork for the eventual selling off of Iraq's publicly owned enterprises and assets, and on weaning Iraqis from social supports provided by the former government, they will sink further into poverty and misery. US corporations, however, will profit. While all this happens, the American people will be persuaded by the official mythology, which proclaims Saddam's fall from power was necessary because even radicals can agree that foreign regimes that are barriers to expansion by US capital must go.

It is a mistake to adopt the great man theory, the idea that history is shaped by individuals in positions of great power, rather than by anonymous economic and social forces. To be sure, the same anonymous forces determine who the great men are, but they determine much beyond that. This, successive US administrations have understood, and have based their foreign policy on. There is much more to turning a country around than changing the personnel at the top; the laws, the system of ownership, the way the economy is organized, must be changed too. And yet what's plain to those who formulate imperialist foreign policy is lost on many of those who oppose it. Dissidents will bristle with outrage at the abuses, real or invented, of foreign leaders targeted by their own government, but will, with exceptions, be blind to the wholesale economic transformations their government will impose on the hapless victim, and will remain oblivious to how the lives of ordinary people in the conquered lands have been impoverished, while corporate interests at home have been enriched. Their attention ends the moment the decisive blow is administered to the great man, leaving the intervening country room to quietly plunder its latest conquest, the attention of the dissidents now drawn to the new great man who will, in time, be thrust to the center of a new "crisis" the international community must face up to and address. And so, despite their egalitarian sympathies, many dissidents of the Left are completely unaware of the transformation their governments engineer of target countries from roughly egalitarian societies into grossly inegalitarian ones, along the lines of the US capitalist model. Others aren't, but place more of a premium on liberal values than egalitarian ones, and are less concerned with the loss of full employment and food subsidies and social safety nets in the newly conquered country than with the lifting of restrictions on freedom of assembly and free speech and multiparty democracy.

At home, the same dissidents also work to replace their own leaders, and, when successful, feel betrayed in time as it becomes clear that the personnel change at the top failed to effect the desired change. Clinton was no better than Bush, Blair no better than Thatcher. That changing the name plates at the cabinet table doesn't, by itself, change much of anything, should provoke the obvious question: Why is it that the successor's policies almost always turn out to be the same as those of the reviled predecessor, even where the successor is ostensibly poles apart from his predecessor politically? The answer is that successor and predecessor, no matter what their political differences, are constrained by the same economic and social forces. That they respond similarly to those forces, or in the same manner, should be no surprise. And yet many dissidents labor under the illusion that economic imperatives can be left in place, their coerciveness somehow blunted by the election of someone with the right credentials. Their own governments are free from this illusion, and therefore ensure their regime change policies are aimed at much more than simply changing the roster of foreign governments.

Inversions are instructive. If the "international community" is duty bound to go to war to prevent imminent humanitarian catastrophes and to remove monsters from power, (and to stay around afterwards to refashion the economy along lines that suit the purposes of Western corporations), does it not also follow that the international community, sans the US, is duty bound to go to war with Washington to prevent continued US lawlessness? It is no exaggeration to say the US is the most regressive force on the planet, and far and away the greatest threat to peace and security, beyond the combined threat multiplied tenfold of the members of the extended "axis of evil." That the world would be better off without US bullying is plain. One need only cite one big example, and one small example, of Washington's danger: its withdrawal from the ABM treaty, which threatens to spark a renewed nuclear arms race, and if the construction of a missile shield proves successful, will provide the US with a first strike capability to sweep away Russia and China as potential threats to its domination of the planet; it's intention to thwart WHO plans to limit the growing crisis of obesity, safeguarding the profits of the grocery, fast food and sugar industries, which would be affected. In Washington, corporate interest trumps all other concerns, from security to the environment to poverty to homelessness to unemployment and, yes, to obesity. And so, if ever a case could be made for the preventive use of force, the United States is the prime candidate as the target country. Would those who backed NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia and saw merit in the US attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq agree? What of those who struggle with the question of whether it's right to sit idly by and watch great evil stalk the world? If great evil is afoot in the world, most of it surely comes from the US. Should an outside force (or one from within) launch an attack on Americans in an effort to overturn US militarism and imperialism, killing tens of thousands in the process, whose deaths could then be dismissed sententiously, in the American way, as the few broken eggs needed to make an omelet? The absurdity of this position is clear.

This is not to say that criticism of targeted regimes should be withheld. It would be naïve to think that anybody is beyond reproach, free from error, and morally pure, and one adopts an untenable position by denying the warts and blemishes of targeted leaders. But not all criticism is sincere, and some is vain and self-serving and has political consequences that could hardly be called progressive. One could, for example, take exception to the Cuban government's decision to execute hijackers, arguing against capital punishment under any circumstances, while making the case that Cuba's defense of its actions has been weak and unconvincing. That is my own view. To make the case in a constructive way, is one thing. To do so as part of visible public campaign mounted in the midst of a propaganda offensive launched by the US government, whose aim is to overturn Cuban socialism and deliver the country back to its accustomed role as purveyor of cheap labor and raw material for US capital, is quite another. The latter is a self-serving act of flaunting one's moral purity, which, while perhaps satisfying personally, has the political consequence of reinforcing the demonizing of a foreign regime long on Washington's hit list. Deploring Cuba's warts will have you singing the same tune as Washington. By itself, this isn't a bad thing. But it becomes a reprehensible political act when it's deliberately timed to echo Washington's insincere criticisms; and when it's utopian in character, that is, when it takes no account of harsh realities: that Cuba's socialist experiment has been forced to eke out an existence under hostile and extremely unfavorable conditions; that the US has indefatigably sought to overthrow the country's socialism for more than four decades; that the full efflorescence of political and civil liberties along with the kind of acephalous political structure favored by Left critics in the US would have condemned the island to a quick return to the margins of capitalism long ago. The latter point is hotly debated, its critics arguing that a rich democracy teemed with undiminished political and civil rights are Cuba's best defense against US imperial designs. The argument is breathtakingly naïve, but debating the point is largely a waste of time. There's no resolution, because no one has ever tried to defend a revolution by refraining from imposing some limitations on political and civil liberties, and by eschewing all forms of central authority. To be sure, even multiparty democracies that boast strong civil and political liberties have not fared well in seeking to wall off, all, or large parts, of their economies from US corporate control. Indeed, their very openness has provided Western governments an entrée to manipulate the political process, destabilize the economy, and organize the overthrow of the government, while seeing to it that the new government is committed to canceling the offending socialist or economically nationalist policies of the past. I doubt the prospects for survival of a decentralized state that shuns all restrictions on civil and political liberties are, in the face of hostility from conservative forces within and abroad, very promising. Accordingly, full democracy and unlimited liberty, while unquestionably desirable, cannot, under current circumstances, be considered attainable, if a socialist or economically nationalist regime is to have a fighting chance of survival.

The very idea of economic and social rights, and more so, the idea that they should be guaranteed, is largely foreign to a Western and particularly, US audience, whose acquaintance with human rights is likely to be limited to civil and political liberties: the right to free speech (the right to have your say, and be ignored); the right of assembly (the right to hold large-scale demonstrations that make no difference); the right to form a political party (the right to enter the political arena and be vastly outspent and overshadowed by established parties flush with corporate donations and backing.) That anyone could have a right to shelter, to food, to clean water, to medical care, to employment, is unthinkable in the US. That anyone's right to these necessities could be guaranteed is doubly so. And so it follows as a matter of course that the political dialogue, even on the Left, where one would expect concern for economic and social rights to be most acute, is largely devoid of references to this class of rights, but teems with references to civil and political rights. Indeed, so thoroughly does awareness of political and civil liberties overshadow economic and social rights, that where the two come in conflict, support for the primacy of political and civil liberties almost always prevails by default.

Of course, this isn't invariably so, for there can be found small pockets of support for the idea that economic and social rights, can, at times, be senior to civil and political liberties. Those who lean in this direction, are, not surprisingly, regarded in countries like the US with great suspicion, not only by the population at large, but by large parts of the Left, as well. They are called the old Left, the authoritarian Left, Stalinists, and their elevation of economic and social rights above civil and political liberties is denounced as apologetics for the denial of a full spectrum of civil and political rights. On the other hand, the new Left, anarchists, social democrats, and those who call themselves democratic socialists – the broadest part of the Left in Western countries – are inclined to give political and civil liberties primacy. While they lambaste the old Left for accepting the diminution of political and civil rights as a necessity of political survival for regimes trying to guarantee economic and social rights, the idea that their elevation of civil and political liberties above other rights might, by their own formulation, be considered apologetics for the denial of material security to all, would be incomprehensible to them. Finally, some Leftists deny the two sets of rights can ever be in conflict, and that the failure to deny either, here and now, is reprehensible and a great failure. The latter two groups make up the bulk of the most progressive part of the populations of Western imperialist countries, which means that a regime that seeks to withdraw, or remain aloof from, the Western imperial orbit, and uses central authority and limitations on some rights to ensure its survival, is highly unlikely to receive the support of these groups. On the contrary, it's far more likely to find itself the object of their intense disdain.

While it may seem that the failure of the Western Left to support many anti-imperialist struggles is rooted in the ideas they hold dear, it is more appropriate to say their ideas and actions are rooted in material conditions. Those denied adequate shelter, who haven't enough food, and can't find work, will place a greater premium on economic and social rights, than someone who has a secure job, plenty to eat, and comfortable accommodations. The right to form one's own political party hardly matters to one who hasn't enough to eat, and if the former must be given up for the latter, the choice is an easy one to make. By comparison, one whose livelihood, and therefore whose material security, depends on his liberty to speak and think and organize as he pleases, will find the preservation of political and civil liberties enormously important, and will hardly look favorably on any regime that fails to share his convictions. One's heart never strays far from one's stomach.

Another part of the reason the Left in Western countries, but most particularly the US, zealously participates in the demonization of regimes their governments seek to oust, is based on political calculation and compromise of a sort rampant among Left forces, which can be summed up in the phrase, "We must pick our battles." If the Left's recent history wasn't littered with one defeat after another the strategy might recommend itself as a guide to future battles. As it's been a dismal failure, one can be skeptical. Here's how this political calculus played out with regard to Iraq: Anyone who vigorously opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq, who did not, at the same time, make his distaste of Saddam plain, was said to run the risk of being denounced as a defender of a dictator, supporter of a tyrant, and apologist for a nasty, brutal regime. To side step the charge, the Left needed to join in the demonization. This would take the allegation that the Left supports Saddam's crimes off the table, and focus the debate on the invasion and occupation itself. Hence, argue vigorously against both Saddam and US plans for military action.

The reasoning seems plausible enough, but there are three problems with it. It can't be denied that opponents who refused to demonize Saddam were called dictator-lovers. But the most vociferous accusations came from the Left (from people like Michael Albert, Todd Gitlin and Joanne Landy), not the Right. Moreover, Noam Chomsky, who more than anyone else made clear his distaste for Saddam, was accused by conservative forces of bearing the sins of the Left, to wit, of supporting dictators and tyrants. The accusations your opponents hurl at you needn't have any basis in reality, and often don't. Therefore, as a means of taking the Left's supposed support for dictators off the table, the strategy failed miserably, especially so considering it was demonizers of the Left like Albert, Gitlin and Landy who made sure it was brought up over and over again, particularly in connection with the International ANSWER campaigns. (Today, Landy fulminates against ANSWER for showing a videotape on its campaign buses praising Saddam's health care system.) Most importantly, however, the strategy had the opposite effect of that intended: It turned up the volume on the core justification Washington uses for the war and occupation (we got rid of a nasty brutal dictator and the world's now a better and safer place.) Against this, the opposing arguments that military action breached the strictures of international law, wasn't approved by the UN Security Council, and was based on a pretext, didn't have a chance. There's too much sympathy for the view that the ends justify the means, and that the goal of Saddam's ouster was imperative, to give legal and moral objections any persuasive force. Which is part of the reason Paul O'Neill's revelations have been greeted with all the indignation and galvanized political activism a yawn can muster.

1. Jacques R. Pauwels, The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Toronto, 2002. p .22-23.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xGilding imperialism's friendly mask``x1075378225,53313,world``x``x ``xby Ayanna www.rootswomen.com/ayanna
February 10, 2004

Islam, Colourism and the Myth of Black African Slave Traders

Africans in the Diaspora have the challenge of rewriting a history that has been stained by years of distortions, omission and downright lies. One of the biggest challenges of rewriting this history has been the Atlantic Slave Trade, and one of the biggest sore points has been the idea that "Black Africans sold their own into slavery". A lack of information, a paucity of expansive scholarship and an unwillingness to have a serious discourse on Colourism as it existed in Africa even before European intervention, has contributed to this. Diaspora Africans are often quite naïve and will do anything to hold fast to the illusion that " we are all Africans" and ignore the racism that has existed among a group that is far from uniform.

In looking at the issue of Colourism I could not help seeing the links between the role of Islam in Africa and the role of Africans in the slave trade. The book, Islam and the Ideology of Slavery by John Ralph Willis is very helpful in looking at the almost imperceptible link between the enslavement of 'kufir' non-Muslims or infidels, and the belief that Black Africans were not only heathens but inherently inferior. This is not a new thought and certainly not one that originated with the Muslims coming into Africa. Several Jewish exegetical texts have their own version of the mythical Curse of Ham being blackness. Given the common origins of these two major religions, it is thus not surprising that both Jews and Muslims played some of the most important roles in the enslavement of Black Africans next to the Europeans.

In an article by Oscar L. Beard, Consultant in African Studies called, Did We Sell Each Other Into Slavery? he says "Even the case of Tippu Tip may well fall into a category that we might call the consequences of forced cultural assimilation via White (or Red) Arab Conquest over Africa. Tippu Tip's father was a White (or Red) Arab slave raider, his mother an unmixed African slave. Tip was born out of violence, the rape of an African woman. It is said that Tip, a "mulatto", was merciless to Africans."

The story of Tippu Tip who is one of the most widely known slave traders has always posed a problem for historians, especially Afrocentric historians in the Diaspora trying to find some way to reconcile themselves to the idea of an 'African slave trader'. The fact that Tippu Tip was not only Muslim, but 'mulatto' is vital. The common ideology of Judaism and Islam where Black Africans are concerned is certainly no secret. While in some Islamic writings we see an almost mystical reverence for Africans, especially an over sexualized concept of Ethiopian women who were the preferred concubines of many wealthy Arab traders and Kings, in others there is distinct racism. Add to this the religious fervor of the Muslim invaders, their non-acceptance or regard for traditional African religions, and the obvious economic and political desires for which religion was used as a tool, and we get an excellent but little spoken of picture of Islam in Africa.

Historians did not often record or think of the ethnicity of these 'Africans' who sold their brothers and sisters into slavery. As part of our distorted historical legacy, we too in the Diaspora buy the idea that all Africans were uniform and 'brothers', but the true picture, especially at this time was not so. Centuries of contact with Europe, Asia, North Africa produced several colour / class gradients in the continent, divisions fostered by the foreigners. This may have been especially prominent in urban and economic centres. When we combine the converting, military force of Islam sweeping across western and eastern Africa placing a virtual economic stranglehold on villages and trading centers that were Kufir, with the intermixing of lighter-skinned Muslim traders from the North and East Africa creating an unprecedented population of mixed, lighter skinned Africans who began to form the elites of the trading classes we can see how a society begins to change.

Some historians have tended to downplay, or completely ignore the potential for change in scenario. It has even been suggested that one cannot transplant a modern day problem outside of its historical context. However, we see this creeping problem of colourism occurring all over the continent. In the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique where European traders and administrators were encouraged to intermarry, the elitist, trader class was largely Mulatto and Catholic. If we look at the situation in Ethiopia with the age-old oppression of the original Ethiopians, the Oromo of indigenous Cushitic stock, by the more Arabized Amhara this too has its roots in colour prejudice. There were hints of this occurring in many other instances at crucial points of contact between indigenous black Africans and lighter-skinned foreigners or mixed Africans and the most significant of these were in the areas of severe Islamic incursion.

Many towns and villages converted to Islam because of the protection that the military banner of Islam could offer them in a changing economic, political and social landscape. But the more damaging result was the many light skinned, converted Africans, children of mixed encounters that now felt a sense of superiority over their dark skinned, black African counterparts. Colourism is indeed of ancient vintage. The truth of the matter is that fair skinned Arabs' racist attitude towards Blacks existed even before they invaded Africa. The evidence for this can be found in how they dealt with the Black inhabitants of Southern Arabia before they entered Africa as Muslims. Discerning readers and thinkers can look at this and many other accounts of this time and get a clearer picture of the inherent racism of this situation. When we combine this with the desire for African slave labour by Europeans it was no large feat for these often lighter skinned, Islamized Africans to enslave the black kufir, whom they barely endowed with a shred of humanity. And of course jumping on their bandwagon would have been those black Africans with deep inferiority complexes, who would have been only too eager to do the duty of the 'superior' Muslims in an effort to advance themselves. These facts are certainly not hidden and the patterns are everywhere, even today but it is we who do not like to see. For centuries we certainly have not been conditioned for Sight.

This leads us to another direct way colourism played itself out in the slave trade and this is in the 'type' of Africans who were enslaved. The biggest victims of slavery were undoubtedly the darkest Africans of what was called the "Negroid" type. If you look at old maps and documents by early European explorers you can note that the parts of the continent that they explored was divided by their crude definitions of what they saw as different African ethnicities. The regions of West and Central Africa were seen as the place of the "Negroes" which was distinct from Ethiopian Africans and even more so the lighter, more Arabized North Africans. We cannot say that NO Africans we taken from the north, but by and large most slaves that came to the West Indies, Americas etc were of the type mentioned above.

Beard continues, "In reality, slavery is an human institution. Every ethnic group has sold members of the same ethnic group into slavery. It becomes a kind of racism; that, while all ethnic groups have sold its own ethnic group into slavery, Blacks can't do it. When Eastern Europeans fight each other it is not called tribalism. Ethnic cleansing is intended to make what is happening to sound more sanitary. What it really is, is White Tribalism pure and simple." But the thing is that this thing we call 'slavery' never was a uniform institution. When people speak of slavery they immediately think of chattel slavery as practiced as a result of the Atlantic Slave Trade and apply this definition to indigenous African servitude systems, which bore little or no resemblance to chattel slavery. It is misleading to say, "Every ethnic group has sold members of the same ethnic group into slavery. It becomes a kind of racism; that, while all ethnic groups have sold its own ethnic group into slavery, Blacks can't do it" as it denies the complexities of that particular colonial, chattel slavery situation that existed between Africans and Europeans.

Servitude systems that existed in Africa, and in other indigenous communities cannot be compared to racist slave systems in the Western world and to this day we attempt to try to see this slavery in the same context. People bring up accounts of Biblical slavery, of serfdom in Europe and yes, of servitude in Africa and attempt to paint all these systems with the same brush. However NO OTHER SLAVE SYSTEM has created the never-ending damaging cycle as the Atlantic Slave Trade. West Indian poet Derek Walcott has stated his feeling that our penchant for forgetting is a defense mechanism against pain, that if we were to take a good hard look at our history, at centuries of victimization, it would be too much for us to handle and we would explode. Well I say we are exploding anyway and in many cases from bombs that are not even our own. We have begun the long hard road of rewriting our ancient history, of recovering our old and noble legacy. Let us not stop and get cold feet now when the enemy now appears to take on a slightly darker hue. We must look at the slave trade in its OWN context, complete with all the historic and psychological peculiarities that have made it the single most damaging and enduring system of exploitation and hatred ever perpetrated in the recent memory of mankind. Until we do we will not escape its legacy.

From: www.rootswomen.com/ayanna/articles/10022004.html

Continue to: Slave? What Slave? :
A Study of the Traditional Systems of African Servitude
``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Myth of Black African Slave Traders``x1076860537,84855,rasta``x``x ``xFrom: Rastafari Speaks Message Board

Posted By Ta'ziyah Bandele
February 13, 2004

Greetingz Afrikanz and others,
I'm seeking for the etymology of the word Afrika? How did this word came to be? I know the first name of Afrika was Alke-bulan, that's how our Ancestors named it. What I'm seeking for is some history about the transmission from AlkeBulan to Afrika....
Could some one share his knowledge with INI here or give certain certain links where I could find Truth...


Posted By Djehuti
February 13, 2004

From Gerald Massey en Dr. Ivan Van Sertima we learn that the Kemmiu (ancient Egyptians) used the term "Af-Rui-Ka" to designate beginnings, refering to inner Africa, the place the ancestors of the ruling class came from, the so called "followers of Horus", who had invented metalurgy.

Later the Romans would latinize this word to 'Africa', and the adjective for Africa is 'Afer', which means 'black', 'dark'.

It has been suggested that Northwest Africa was called Alke-bulan by its original inhabitants (those who lived there before the Phoenicians arrived). But the Romans would destroy the most important local civilization, Carthage,and would add the whole area to their empire, which was already known as Africa in those days.

The Roman general who finally defeated Hannibal, among the greatest military geniuses of all time, Scipio the younger, was as a badge of honor named for the country he had conquered. So Africa is not named for a Roman general as many people still think, no, the Roman general in question was named for the country he had conquered: he was already known as Scipio the younger, but only after his conquest he was named Scipio Africanus.

And by the way, Europe was named for the Black Phoenician goddess Europa, which etymologically means 'the place where the sun sets'; the west. And the Greeks used to call Africa 'Libya'.


Posted By Ancient Youth
February 13, 2004

I read that it was a europeon map-maker by the name of Leo Afrikanos who it was named after around the 1500's.


Posted By Djehuti
February 13, 2004

Yes, this is a mistake many, many people are making. Who was Leo Africanus?

Well, the man was named al-Hassan ibn Mohammed al Wazzani by his parents and was born in either 1493 or 1494 in the city of Granada; he was a Moor. He became a very learnt and very well-travelled man, but unfortunately he was captured and enslaved by European pirates in 1518 and offered to pope Leo X as a present.

The pope baptized him, named him for himself Giovanni Leone, but the man became popularly known as Leo Africanus because of his skincolor. But the pope was quite impressed by the erudition of this African and set him free.

Leo Africanus became quite annoyed with the negative image European writers were, even then, creating of Africa so he wrote a famous book called "The History and Description of Africa" to set the record straight.

Several scholars have suggested that the Leo's lifestory has inspired Shakespear to write Othello, so one might argue that Leo Africanus was the original Othello! Leo Africanus can be seen as a forerunner of great African scholars like Cheikh Anta Diop, John Henrik Clarke, John G. Jackson, etcetera, and I think we must stop confusing him for a white European.


Posted By Ta'Ziyah Bandele
February 15, 2004

Give Thanks Brotha Djehuti for the Info. I also found some information about the word Afrika. It comes from a book named "De Afrikanen" (The Africans) it is saying;
The old romans called their colonial province in recent Tunis and East-Algeria 'Africa', probably because the name was in combination with a Latin or Greek word for that area or population , or the name was descend from out of the local used languages like Berbers or Phoenisch (Foenisch). Further he is asking in his text; Did the Romans called this Continent after the Latin word Aprica, meaning "sunny". Or did the Romans and Greeks used the Greek word Aphrike, meaning "without cold". Next he is also saying that Arabic immagrants transmissed the word Africa to Ifriqia and that these two sources (Semetic and a Greek-roman) have gave their support to the identification of the word Africa.

What ya think Djehuti? and others....


Posted By I-Am-In-Hotep!
February 15, 2004

Afuraka/Afuraitkait(Africa) Afurakanu/Afuraitkaitnut(Africans) Afurakani/Afuraitkaitnit(African) culture

By the ancient Kemites..... thousands of years before any greeks and romans came to the scene.

Afu-Ra-Ka meaning house of the great soul of Ra!!

Do the Math!


Posted By Djehuti
February 15, 2004

Yeah, you might translate it like that, but Af-Rui-Ka was merely a term, like I said before, the Kemmiu used to designate beginnings, refering to inner Africa, so you might translate it the way as has been done above.

But what about the book "The Africans", is it the book by Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui, the one who avoided any discussion on the ethnic background of the kemmiu?

Eurocentric scholars are always trying to start history with the Greeks and Romans, suggesting the Kemmiu didn't possess a proper civilization. And by the way, in my book "The Return of the Black Star Line" I discuss the etymology of the word Africa (p. 41).``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe word Afrika!``x1076860990,55736,views``x``x ``xGary Younge in Port-au-Prince
The Guardian

Haiti's political class has failed it, but the first black republic has also been squeezed dry by a vengeful west

As civil war encroaches, civil society implodes and civil political discourse evaporates, one of the few things all Haitians can agree on is their pride in Toussaint L'Ouverture, who lead the slave rebellion in Haiti that established the world's first black republic. "The transformation of slaves, trembling in hundreds before a single white man, into a people able to organise themselves and defeat the most powerful European nations of their day is one of the great epics of revolutionary struggle and achievement," wrote the late Trinidadian intellectual CLR James in his book The Black Jacobins. The transformation of that achievement into a nation riven by political violence, ravaged by Aids and devastated by poverty is a tragedy of epic proportions. Full Article``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xHaiti: Throttled by history``x1077559701,14748,world``x``x ``xBy Stephen Gowans
February 18, 2004

When Sam Smith led the mob of angry white men that strung up a black man accused of a heinous crime, he faced a torrent of criticism.

When it turned out the victim was innocent, he faced more.

Smith didn't care. The victim was a ne'er-do-well. And he had taken over the victim's farm, and was running it at a profit for the first time ever.

The way Smith figured it, the world was better off without the victim, innocent or not.

Besides, what's a mob to do -- wait until it's absolutely clear a potential assailant is blameless? The victim surely had to bear some of the responsibility for not doing more to prove his innocence.

Few people found Smith's reasoning compelling.

When criticism persisted, Smith exploded. "I know in my heart and brain that white people ain't what's wrong in the world."

***

Defending his government's decision to invade Iraq on entirely spurious grounds, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared, "I know in my heart and brain that America ain't what's wrong in the world."

If by America, Rumsfeld means Blair Doan, who works at the hardware store on Main Street, or Cynthia Firsby, a cubicle worker with Hewlett-Packard, he's right.

Doan and Firsby and hundreds of millions of other Americans ain't what's wrong in the world.

Rumsfeld is.

Or more precisely, what's wrong is the recurrent theme in US foreign policy of seeking to dominate foreign territory, a theme that has roots in capitalism itself, and spans Republican and Democratic administrations.

Rumsfeld, his cabinet colleagues, and British toadies, are mere agents, no more so, and no less so, than Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman were agents of the same theme.

No more than the next Democrat president will be.

War isn't an aberration, the policy of hawks and neo-conservatives in power. It's an ongoing motif in US external relations.

And the reason why is war is good for business.

The destruction of Iraq by the US military has been a boon to weapons manufacturers like Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing, who depend on the Pentagon -- and a robust military budget -- to provide an unceasing flow of revenue.

These firms have an interest in a continually expanding war budget, and will see to it that there's no shortage of potential enemies whose demise must be presided over by the combined forces of the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines -- profitably equipped by the combined forces of Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon and so on.

Downstream, firms like Becthel (one of whose directors, George Shultz, led a committee that lobbied for the invasion of Iraq), Fluor, (Dick Cheney's old firm) Halliburton, and dozens of others, pocket billions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction contracts.

This is the charmed circle of US capitalism. Corporate America builds the bombs and missiles to destroy the infrastructure of other countries, and then moves in to rebuild what it has destroyed.

At a profit.

And spending on the military serves to combat the incessant danger of aggregate demand falling, and the economy slipping into recession, or worse.

Meanwhile, an endless round of tax cuts have relieved corporate America and its wealthy functionaries of their fair share of the tax load, so it's ordinary Americans who pay the bulk of the taxes to fund the merry-go-round of capital accumulation, not the corporations who profit from the "destroy it-rebuild it" cycle and not the wealthy investors who pocket the interest on bonds sold to finance the national debt that grows ever larger as military spending spirals ever upward.

It's no accident that things work out this way.

After all, who's running Washington?

You don't have to go far to run up against millionaires, former corporate directors and CEOs on sabbatical on Capitol Hill.

And it doesn't matter who's in power -- Republicans or Democrats. It's always the same.

In fact, all branches of government -- executive, legislative and bureaucratic -- to say nothing of the key positions in both major parties, are teeming with personnel drawn from corporate America. Just the kind of people who know a thing or two about the importance of new markets and new outlets for investment and how inimical taxes are to the expansion of capital.

What also makes war good for business is the practice of "smash it, reconstruct it" being applied to target countries that impose limits on American exports and investments, providing the benefit of expanding corporate America's vistas, once the target country's government is ousted, and a pro-US (trade and investment) regime is left in its place.

Iraq's economy was largely state-owned, hardly the kind of arrangement that corporate America's leaders, continually scouring the world for outlets for the profitable investment of their capital, looked upon kindly.

So, it's no accident that the US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer (himself plucked from the heights of corporate America), has set about making over Iraq into a Middle Eastern model of free trade, free enterprise and free markets (read: an economy open to US exports and investments.)

Similarly, US hostility to the government of Slobodan Milosevic had much to do with Serbia's refusal to jettison a socialist orientation, which limited US investment opportunities.

As the former communist countries of Eastern Europe embraced the free market, and breakaway republics of Yugoslavia elected neo-liberal reformers, Milosevic replied with a defiant rejection of privatization, free markets, and integration into Western capitalism.

Sanctions, subversion, bombardment from the air, the buying of the opposition, and finally a coup, put an end to Milosevic keeping part of the Yugoslav economy closed to corporate America.

So, Rumsfeld's right. America ain't what's wrong in the world.

It's the expansionist theme of US foreign policy, fueled by capitalism's drive to accumulate, that's wrong.

****

While Rumsfeld seeks to make ordinary Americans complicit in the Iraq war by using the inclusive "we" to draw them into the crime, Blair Doan and Cynthia Firsby should think twice about taking the bait.

Their inclusion is selective. They weren't consulted about the war; they didn't gather phony intelligence to contrive a sham casus belli; they didn't decide to defy the UN.

And yet Rumsfeld wants to make them accountable, because they're Americans. What's that got to do with it? They may be Americans, but they're hardly beneficiaries. On the contrary.

Billions of dollars in taxes are hoovered out of their pockets and injected directly into corporate America's collective bottom line.

And they're paying the opportunity cost of squandering America's enormous productive assets on the fevered pursuit of capital expansion, when they could be used to the benefit of the majority, to provide basic material needs, high quality education and universal health care, the kinds of benefits the USSR, Eastern European countries, and yes, Yugoslavia, used to provide all its citizens, despite having more modest productive assets; the kinds of benefits even Cuba -- poor, harassed and systematically disturbed for the last four decades -- provides universally.

Some 55,000 Iraqis have been killed so far, 13,000 herded into concentration camps (John Pilger, "Mass Deception," The Mirror, February 3, 2004).

The toll is monstrously high. We should be clear who -- and what -- is responsible.

It ain't ordinary Americans.

Reproduced from:
www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWho, and what, is behind US's recurrent drive to war?``x1077754307,28415,world``x``x ``xBy Amy Goodman and Jeremy Scahill

The US lawyer representing the government of Haiti charged today that the US government is directly involved in a military coup attempt against the country's democratically elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Ira Kurzban, the Miami-based attorney who has served as General Counsel to the Haitian government since 1991, said that the paramilitaries fighting to overthrow Aristide are being backed by Washington.

"I believe that this is a group that is armed by, trained by, and employed by the intelligence services of the United States," Kurzban told the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!. "This is clearly a military operation, and it's a military coup."

"There's enough indications from our point of view, at least from my point of view, that the United States certainly knew what was coming about two weeks before this military operation started," Kurzban said. " The United States made contingency plans for Guantanamo."

If a direct US connection is proven, it will mark the second time in just over a decade that Washington has been involved in a coup in Haiti.

Several of the paramilitary leaders now rampaging Haiti are men who were at the forefront of the US-backed campaign of terror during the 1991-94 coup against Aristide. Among the paramilitary figures now leading the current insurrection is Louis Jodel Chamblain, the former number 2 man in the FRAPH paramilitary death squad.

Chamblain was convicted and sentenced in absentia to hard-labor for life in trials for the April 23, 1994 massacre in the pro-democracy region of Raboteau and the September 11, 1993 assassination of democracy-activist Antoine Izmery. Chamblain recently arrived in Gonaives with about 25 other commandos based in the Dominican Republic, where Chamblain has been living since 1994. They were well equipped with rifles, camouflage uniforms, and all-terrain vehicles.

Among the victims of FRAPH under Chamblain's leadership was Haitian Justice Minister Guy Malary. He was ambushed and machine-gunned to death with his bodyguard and a driver on Oct. 14, 1993. According to an October 28, 1993 CIA Intelligence Memorandum obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights "FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Douzable met with an unidentified military officer on the morning of 14 October to discuss plans to kill Malary." Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, was the founder of FRAPH.

An October 1994 article by journalist Allan Nairn in The Nation magazine quoted Constant as saying that he was contacted by a US Military officer named Col. Patrick Collins, who served as defense attache at the United States Embassy in Port-au-Prince. Constant says Collins pressed him to set up a group to "balance the Aristide movement" and do "intelligence" work against it. Constant admitted that, at the time, he was working with CIA operatives in Haiti. Constant is now residing freely in the US. He is reportedly living in Queens, NY. At the time, James Woolsey was head of the CIA.

Another figure to recently reemerge is Guy Philippe, a former Haitian police chief who fled Haiti in October 2000 after authorities discovered him plotting a coup with a group of other police chiefs. All of the men were trained in Ecuador by US Special Forces during the 1991-1994 coup. Since that time, the Haitian government has accused Philippe of master-minding deadly attacks on the Police Academy and the National Palace in July and December 2001, as well as hit-and-run raids against police stations on Haiti's Central Plateau over the following two years.

Kurzban also points to the presence of another FRAPH veteran, Jean Tatun. Along with Chamblain, Tatun was convicted of gross violations of human rights and murder in the Raboteau massacre.

"These people came through the Dominican border after the United States had provided 20,000 M-16's to the Dominican army," says Kurzban. "I believe that the United States clearly knew about it before, and that given the fact of the history of these people, [Washington is] probably very, very deeply involved, and I think Congress needs to seriously look at what the involvement of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency has been in this operation. Because it is a military operation. It's not a rag-tag group of liberators, as has often been put in the press in the last week or two."

Kurzban says he has hired military analysts to review photos of the weapons being used by the paramilitary groups. He says that contrary to reports in the media that the armed groups are using weapons originally distributed by Aristide, the gangs are using highly sophisticated and powerful weapons; weapons that far out-gun Aristide's 3,000 member National Police force.

"I don't think that there's any question about the fact that the weapons that they have did not come from Haiti," says Kurzban. "They're organized as a military commando strike force that's going from city to city."

Kurzban says that among the weapons being used by the paramilitaries are: M-16's, M-60's, armor piercing weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. "They have weapons to shoot down the one helicopter that the government has," he said. "They have acted as a pretty tight-knit commando unit."

Chamblain and other paramilitary leaders have said they will march on the capital, Port-au-Prince within two weeks. The US has put forth a proposal, being referred to as a peace plan, that many viewed as favorable to Aristide's opponents. Aristide accepted the plan, but the opposition rejected it. Washington's point man on the crisis is Roger Noriega, Undersecretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs.

"I think Noriega has been an Aristide hater for over a decade," says Kurzban, adding that he believes Noriega allowed the opposition to delay their response to the plan to allow the paramilitaries to capture more territory. "My reaction was they're just giving them more time so they can take over more, that the military wing of the opposition can take over more ground in Haiti and create a fate accompli," Kurzban said. "Indeed, as soon as they said, 'we need an extra day,' I predicted, unfortunately, and correctly, that they would go into Cap Haitian (Haiti's 2nd largest city) and indeed the next morning they did."

The leader of the "opposition" is an American citizen named Andy Apaid. He was born in New York. Haitian law does not allow dual-nationality and he has not renounced his US citizenship. In a recent statement, Congressmember Maxine Waters blasted Apaid and his opposition front, saying she believes "Apaid is attempting to instigate a bloodbath in Haiti and then blame the government for the resulting disaster in the belief that the United States will aid the so-called protestors against President Aristide and his government."

"We have the leader of the opposition, who Mr. Noriega is negotiating with, who Secretary Powell calls and who tells Secretary Powell, you know, 'we need a couple more days' and Secretary Powell says 'that's fine,'" says Kurzban. "I mean, there's some kind of theater of the absurd going on with this opposition where it's led by an American citizen, where they're just clearly stalling for time until they can get more ground covered in Haiti through their military wing, and the United States and Noriega, with a wink and nod, is kind of letting them do that."

Kurzban says that because Aristide's opponents rejected Washington's plan, "the next step clearly is to send in some kind of UN peacekeeping force immediately."

"The question is," says Kurzban. "Will the international community stand by and allow a democracy in this hemisphere to be terminated by a brutal military coup of persons who have a very, very sordid history of gross violations of human rights?"


Democracy Now! is a nationally-syndicated radio and TV program broadcast on Pacifica Radio, NPR, community TV stations and Free Speech TV Channel 9415 of the DishNetwork. Mike Burke and Sharif Abdel Kouddous contributed to this report. They can be reached at: mail@democracynow.org. Reproduced from: www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/25/1613200``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xUS is Arming Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries``x1077834626,25071,world``x``x ``xBy Kurt Nimmo, www.kurtnimmo.com

Hugo Chavez, in no uncertain terms, has warned the Bushites he will use the oil weapon against the United States if Bush attacks Venezuela, America's fourth-largest oil exporter.

"[I]f Mr. Bush is possessed with the madness of trying to blockade Venezuela, or worse for them, to invade Venezuela in response to the desperate song of his lackeys... sadly not a drop of petroleum will come to them from Venezuela," Hugo Chavez recently told supporters, according to AFP/Reuters.

Is Chavez paranoid?

Hardly.

Recall the CIA attempted coup against him in 2002.

How do we know the CIA engineered the failed coup? "Same way we know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning," writes Bill Blum, former State Department employee. "That's what it's always done and there's no reason to think that tomorrow morning will be any different."

The problem is, for the Bush administration, Chavez is not part of the neoliberal New World Global plan. "I consider myself a humanist, and a humanist has to be anti-neoliberal," Chavez has said.

Moreover, Chavez considers himself a bolivariano, that is to say he takes inspiration from the Carta de Jamaica and the Discurso de Angostura, texts written by Simon Bolivar, called El Liberator because he kicked the Spaniards out of Bolivia, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. In addition to fighting against foreign invasion and economic domination, Bolivar's philosophy, as practiced by Chavez, translates into land redistribution for the poor and an increase of oil income for the government.

In other words, less money for Bush's Big Oil buddies and more for the people of Venezuela.

It doesn't help Chavez also sells oil to Cuba, visited Saddam Hussein, and sacked the upper management of Petroleos de Venezuela, the nation's oil company, infamous for its corruption.

But what really rankles Bush and Big Oil is the fact their CIA-engineered coup d'etat on April 12, 2002 did not stick.

Unlike the seemingly effortless removal of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, getting rid of Chavez will not be easy.

In the short time Chavez was held at a prison on the Venezuelan Caribbean island of Orchila after the CIA-sponsored coup in April, 2002, Fedecamaras business lackey and oil executive Pedro Carmona dissolved the National Assembly, voided the 1999 Constitution introduced under Chavez and approved by popular vote in a national referendum, fired Supreme Court justices, repealed laws that gave the government control of the economy, and handed control of Petroleos de Venezuela over to Gen. Guaicaipuro Lameda, an active military officer.

As Philip Reeker, US State Department spokesman, said at the time, "We want to see a return to democracy" in Venezuela.

For Bush, the State Department, and the CIA, voiding constitutions approved by popular vote is the only "democracy" the third world should expect. As a prime example of Bush's grotesque version of democracy, look no further than Iraq where an American proconsul and a gaggle of handpicked lackeys rule and popular elections become more and more remote by the day.

No doubt the Americans would feel more at home with another Perez Jimenez, the brutal army captain, virulent anti-communist, and self-appointed dictator of Venezuela who did such an effective job eliminating progressive reforms that Eisenhower gave him the Legion of Merit.

"The anti-Chavistas don't equate democracy with voting," writes Greg Palast, who interviewed Chavez in 2002. "With 80 per cent of Venezuela's population at or below the poverty level, elections are not attractive to the protesting financiers. Chavez had won the election in 1998 with a crushing 58 per cent of the popular vote and that was unlikely to change except at gunpoint." Bush, the IMF, and Venezuela's ruling elite are nostalgic for the days when the notorious embezzler of public funds, Carlos Andres Perez, and Accion Democratica ruled. In 1989, Perez sent the military to slaughter 1,000 workers and poor people from the cerros, or shantytowns, for the audacity of protesting against an IMF austerity plan.

Following the slaughter, IMF Managing Director Michael Camdessus wrote to Perez and said he was "profoundly moved" by the loss of life but said the IMF was convinced "that the economic policies were well-conceived." No word if Camdessus was "profoundly moved" by the further impoverishment of pensioners and the poor for the sake of US creditors holding Venezuela's debt.

Chavez blamed the CIA for the failed coup, and for good reason: Charles S. Shapiro, the US ambassador in Caracas and former Deputy Chief of Mission at the US embassy in Chile at the time of the CIA-sponsored coup against Salvador Allende, admitted that military training camps for Venezuelan opposition forces are currently being run in Florida. For some reason the Ministry of Homeland Security does not seem to mind.

If it walks and talks like the CIA, good chance it is the CIA.

"On January 29, 2003, The U.S. daily, the Wall Street Journal, published an editorial revealing the existence of terrorist training camps in Florida," writes CasaVenezuela editor Dozthor Zurlent. "Rodolfo Frometa, a Cuban, and former Army Captain Luis Eduardo Garcia, a Venezuelan, are named in the article as the leaders of the paramilitary coalition formed by the 'F-4 Commandos' and 'The Venezuelan Patriotic Junta.' Garcia, a former Captain, was one of the leaders of the defeated coup against democratically elected president Hugo Chavez Frias in Venezuela in April 2002."

Florida is where the CIA's Task Force WH-4, Branch 4 of the Western Hemisphere Division, set up training camps for the failed Bay of Pigs covert operation against Cuba.

According to Shapiro, plotting the overthrow of Venezuela's democratically elected government "is not necessarily a crime," especially when that country has a whole lot of mighty fine sweet crude and a leader with funny ideas about empowering poor negro y indio folk.

Bush and the bankers have a little problem. Globalization is taking heat all over Central and South America, from Bolivia to Chiapas. Opposition to the FTAA, a sort of NAFTA on steroids, is nearly universal. In October, Bolivians brought down neoliberal President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. "All governments in Latin America, even those most solicitous of the United States, know they are negotiating the FTAA with a loaded and angry popular movement cocked at their political heads," writes David Moberg for In These Times.

For the Bushites, though, "loaded and angry" popular movements are not the problem; under brutal enough conditions, those movements can be stifled.

The problem is Hugo Chavez.

They blame him not only for the fall of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, but also for funding Colombia's FARC and ELN. Moreover, they say Chavez is conspiring with Fidel Castro and offering sanctuary for "European leftists, retired East European intelligence officers and activists from countries on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism," as the AP hysterically reported in January. The Bush Ministry of Disinformation, U.S. News & World Report division, would have us believe "Middle Eastern terrorist groups" are operating "support cells" in Venezuela and elsewhere in the Andean region.

As investigative journalist Jeremy Bigwood discovered through an FIOA request, the National Endowment for Democracy, a well-documented CIA front, has backed anti-Chavez projects and recall referendums in Venezuela.

The documents Bigwood made public reveal ties between the US embassy in Caracas and Chavez's opposition, that is to say the ruling elite and business interests pushing Washington's neoliberal agenda. Add to this the CIA-esque training camps in Florida run by Rodolfo Frometa and Captain Luis Eduardo Garcia, and it becomes obvious what the game plan is -- ousting the democratically elected leader of Venezuela and installing an obsequious lackey, such as Carlos Andres Perez, a true-blue servant for neoliberalism and the Wall Street loan sharks.

No wonder Chavez called Bush an "asshole."


Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Visit his blog at www.kurtnimmo.com. Reproduced from: www.kurtnimmo.com/archives/00000035.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xMission Accomplished in Haiti: Onward to Venezuela?``x1078610766,58163,world``x``x ``xby Ayinde

Those White so-called liberals, French and Canadian alike, should know that most informed Africans do not buy their clean hands image in relation to the Iraq war. We know quite well that you 'liberals' are no different from Bush and company, especially when the aggression is directed towards African nations, and other so-called third world countries, e.g. Haiti and Zimbabwe.

Blair has done his part not to come over as a hypocrite to his whiteness by supporting Bush's warmongering. Make as much noise as you wish in Britain, we Blacks know quite well that you are not sending Blair to face war crimes charges. Pomp and ceremony as it relates to Eurocentric protests, but we do know when it comes to the crunch, you are not really standing up for justice all around.

How many of these anti-war, so-called liberal, so-called progressive writers, and their fans who wish us to believe they are humanitarians, would want to use their privileges and finances to back Black liberation movements or better yet starve the capitalist movement? How many are prepared to leave Blacks to work out their own systems of governance without demanding that they be placed at the helm or have some controlling interest? I dare say that I do not believe any of you are serious.

Yes, I too did not support the War in Iraq or Afghanistan, not because I wanted to look progressive, but because I have witnessed the effects of European Arrogance and Greed on Black people, and saw how it has also denied most white people the right to have a fair say in their politics. The Bravado of many White writers only speaks of their confidence in a system that they know is not targeting them. They feel slavery is over but fail to examine their own slave status, holding on to the remnants of privileges that their color brings them.

So in the backdrop of that, I don't expect many Whites to lose any sleep over the U.S., France, and Canadian inspired and/or assisted coup in Haiti. France and Canada were only too willing to show the Bush administration that their lack of support for the Iraq war does not affect their skin allegiance. They know on what side of the fence their privileges are aligned. So onward backward you brazen hypocrites, and show us all the extent of your character, for you do not know who is really watching.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xHa! Those White so-called liberals``x1078708608,36358,rasta``x``x ``xBy Cynthia Mckinney

Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney delivered this address March 6 at a UC Berkeley conference titled "The Role of Law & Policy: Africa, the Caribbean & the U.S." sponsored by the African-American Law and Policy Report.

Nowhere do we see the impotence of Black America played out before our eyes and those of the world as we now see in the case of Haiti. But let me add that it hasn't always been this way, and it doesn't have to be this way.

First of all, as I see it, the correct call is not just for investigation, but also for reinstallation. Just as the U.S., in the 1950s, launched its policy of rollback for communism, so too must Americans of good conscience call for the Bush gang of thieves to roll back the coup in Haiti.

If you will recall, the United States and Haiti have been in this exact same place before. Gen. Raul Cedras had stolen power in a coup against the democratically elected priest who worked in the barrios of Port-au-Prince. Haitian Americans in Florida and New York and elsewhere worked non-stop to reinstall Father Aristide to power.

The Republican Justice Department had just overseen the largest expansion of the Congressional Black Caucus since the passage of the Voting Rights Act as it forced Southern legislatures to draw districts that would allow rural Blacks finally to elect candidates of their choice. Black voters, with a massive turnout, had turned George Bush's father out of the White House and elected Bill Clinton instead.

So the stage was set on the inside and on the outside for a massive shift in U.S. policy toward Haiti, leaving the Republican antipathy for Aristide behind. This shift so infuriated at least one small group in white America that, in the Florida redistricting case, the plaintiff actually wrote that the increased strength of the Congressional Black Caucus had actually changed U.S. policy toward Haiti, and for that reason, among others, the size of the CBC had grown too large, thus the lawsuit against the district of Congresswoman Corrine Brown.

The brief of the Florida plaintiffs provides a smoking gun for the effectiveness of the larger, stronger, younger Black Caucus that entered Washington with an agenda grounded in the people. It also places in stark relief what is possible when Black America has authentic leaders, well placed, in politics.

Eventually, Cedras was given money and escorted out of Port-au-Prince while some of the leaders of FRAPH, the CIA-inspired tonton macoute replacement, found refuge in the U.S., the Dominican Republic and other places. With most of his term spent out of office, Aristide eventually was triumphantly returned to office. Upon the expiration of his term, Aristide left office and ran for reelection after the end of the term of his successor, Rene Preval.

Now, according to one of my investigative sources, one of the contracts that Preval put in place was with the Steele Foundation to provide presidential security. The Steele Foundation, headquartered here in the Bay Area, is reportedly very close to the Pentagon, with its former leader coming directly from the Pentagon's Office of Intelligence. Interestingly, it reportedly maintains an office in Miami, the home of the headquarters of the U.S. Special Operations Command, which was reportedly involved in training the rebels who ousted Aristide. So, at the time of Aristide's "capture," he supposedly was protected by a Pentagon-sanctioned security team that just happened to fail to secure him.

Additionally, according to this same source, some of the Dominican troops and Spanish and English-speaking paramilitaries trained by the U.S. during last year's Operation Jaded Task in the Dominican Republic were fighting alongside Haitian rebels in the north and on the southern coast of Haiti. We are told further that Haitian government authorities intercepted vans carrying new M-16s across the border from the Dominican Republic. According to the report I have received, Haitian authorities began intercepting vans carrying the weapons from the Dominican Republic beginning last year, and shortly after the U.S. military delivered 20,000 M-16s to the Dominican Army.

Haiti was about to celebrate its bicentennial. I remember how happy this country was when it celebrated its bicentennial. That joy has been denied to the Haitian people. Jean-Bertrand Aristide's slogan during the country's commemorative campaign was restitution, reparation, celebration. And he had declared Haiti an African country.

Aristide was no COINTELPRO leader. No "clean Negro." And, in the language of J. Edgar Hoover, he "excited the Negroes." So now, understanding who Jean Bertrand Aristide really is, and at the same time knowing how our country deals with authentic leaders like him, we can't be surprised by what happens. We should, however, be dismayed if our collective power is not able to restore Aristide to power once again.

Haiti's lawyer charged that the U.S. government was directly involved in the coup and that the coup leaders were armed, trained, employed by the intelligence services of the United States.

An eye witness, Aristide's caretaker, told French radio that "the American army came to take him away at two in the morning. The Americans forced him out with weapons."

After having spoken directly with President Aristide, Congresswoman Maxine Waters reported that Aristide was surrounded by the military. "It's like he's in jail. He says he was kidnapped," she said.

Randall Robinson also spoke to President Aristide. Robinson said that Aristide emphatically denied that he had resigned.

Rev. Jesse Jackson got Aristide on the phone with an Associated Press reporter, and Aristide himself said that he was forced to leave. He said, "They came at night. There were too many. I couldn't count them." He said that agents told him that if he didn't leave, they would start shooting and killing. Aristide is quoted as describing these agents who threatened him as "white Americans, white military."

Donald Rumsfeld said that the idea of an abduction was just totally inconsistent with everything he heard or saw. The White House dismissed allegations that Aristide had been kidnapped by U.S. forces eager to force him to resign and flee into exile. Colin Powell said flatly that Aristide was not kidnapped. Powell said, "We did not force him on the airplane."

Now, I don't know about you. But it is clear to me by now that I can't believe Donald Rumsfeld. I can't believe the White House. And I can't believe Colin Powell.

But even more than that, notice Powell's use of the word "we."

And therein lies the essence of our predicament.

On March 1, 2004, the Washington Times headlined Colin Powell's comment, "I am on the President's agenda." Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell have provided a Black face for policies that have devastated the global community and our American community. Progressive America and the global community need a strong, vibrant and activist Black community.

A recent report in the New York Times found that 50 percent of the Black male adults in New York City are unemployed. According to the State of the Dream 2004 report, if current rates of progress remain the same, it will take eight years for America to close the Black-White gap in high school graduation. It will take 73 years to close the college graduation gap, 190 years to close the imprisonment gap, 581 years to close the per capita income gap, and 1,664 years to close the home ownership gap. Clearly progress on important quality of life indices is not being made quickly enough.

But we won't see that portrayed on UPN, FOX, CNN or the WB. Increasingly, prominent leaders tell us that we don't need a movement any more and that agitators who concentrate on these facts are passe.

And to them I only ask one question. What becomes of a community that rewards those who pick the fruit up but fails to protect those who shake it down?

Tree shakers are all over the globe trying to uplift their communities. Only through our active and informed participation in the political process here will we be able to stop the powers that produce pernicious policies. Only through our participation in the political process will we be able to protect the global community - like Haiti, like Venezuela - from the vicissitudes of powerful people acting in our name who don't care one whit about the values that we hold dear.

Black America, vibrant with authentic leaders, in active partnership with all progressives, can change what is happening here at home and the policies being implemented abroad.

And so I end with a plea and a charge for us as a people to stand up, speak truth to power, don't cower, and say to those who control this awful machine, "It's time for you to stop, right now."``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xHaiti and the Impotence of Black America``x1079668800,5432,world``x``x ``xBy Stephen Gowans
www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans
March 10, 2004

That business people and professionals comprise the Democratic Convergence (or Democratic Platform) and the Group of 184, the main opposition groups that successfully sought to oust Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, should have been a tip off that Aristide's alleged democratic lapses weren't at the heart of the groups' enmity toward the reformist leader.

Aristide's committing the unpardonable sin of jacking up the daily (not hourly) minimum wage to $1.30 from 80 cents two years ago [1], and his doubling of the minimum wage in February [2], surely left opposition kingpins Maurice LaFortune, head of the Haitian Chamber of Commerce, and Andy Apaid, a US national who owns a number of Haitian factories that depend on low-wage labor, seeing red -- literally and figuratively.

Cutting into profit margins by driving up wage rates from desperation-level to misery-level, and playing the "smile-f*****r" game -- "oh sure, we'll privatize these state-enterprises," but failing to carry through -- is hardly the kind of game someone who's already on shaky ground for expressing a distaste for capitalism ought to be playing if he expects to have a long and fruitful career in politics. And getting too close to Washington's Latin American bugbears Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez -- and demanding that France compensate Haiti for the crimes of colonialism -- didn't endear Aristide to powerful forces that could arrange his ouster as a matter of no great difficulty. A band of armed thugs streaming over the border, disruption and disorder, dead bodies littering the streets, and what could a humanitarian state do but intervene to restore order? And if order meant carting off the offending President, well then carting him off it would be. The next president, you can be sure, won't be jacking up minimum wages, and he'll quickly see to it that the demands the IMF has been making for years that state-owned enterprises be placed on the auction block are acceded to with alacrity. Otherwise, he too will be ushered out the door faster than you can say "don't f**k with us."

Many years ago, the recently deceased Marxist economist Paul Sweezy observed that the outstanding characteristic of reform movements was the progressive bartering away of principles for votes and respectability [3]. Aristide, to be sure, did his share of bartering, not so much for votes, but to assuage conservative forces, so they would leave him be. The other side of the coin of Sweezy's observation is that reformists who accept the capitalist frame of reference and don't barter zealously enough, don't last long. So there's more than a touch of naivety in the shock that attended Aristide's being swept from power. If you choose to live in the bull's pen and get in his way, expect to get the horns.

There's also more than a dollop of bulls**t in the sly innuendo that Aristide was a dictator, or the overt claim that Aristide was a despot who had worn out his welcome. He had worn out his welcome, that's certain -- but not with ordinary Haitians, 10,000 of whom took to the street to demand their President's return, lambaste the US for occupying their country, and to call Bush what he is -- a terrorist [4] (which proves that being poor and Haitian doesn't mean you don't know what's going on.) Aristide wore out his welcome with people like Maurice LaFortune and Andy Apaid, and with Washington too, where a new standard of judging the democratic credentials of foreign leaders has taken hold.

Aristide, remarked US Vice-President Dick Cheney "was democratically elected, but he never governed as a democrat," [5] the same charge leveled against Venezuela's Chavez, and earlier Yugoslavia's Milosevic, one the US uses in some form or other to dismiss opponents who insist unhelpfully on getting themselves elected and thereby making it tough to engineer their ouster as part of a moral crusade to deliver long-suffering foreigners from despots. So you stretch the truth as far as you can, to upset the rule of leaders of reformist governments who don't accept the rule of the IMF, or the logic of capitalism. "Oh yeah, he was elected, but he didn't rule like a democrat. He pissed off a lot of powerful business people, a lot of people who thought the country needed a good dose of economic reform, and you don't want to do that. That's not governing like a democrat."

But then the credibility of Dick "oh sure, there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, no doubt about it" Cheney should be a little suspect, to say nothing of his commitment to "governing as a democrat." Wasn't the Bush administration bursting with bon mots for Spain's Jose Maria Aznar for standing tough against democracy, when polls revealed that 91 percent of Spaniards were opposed to Spain backing the invasion of Iraq [6]? Aznar went ahead anyway, elected, but hardly governing like a democrat, at least not by any normal definition of the word democracy, but then normal definitions don't count in Washington where democracy really means "democracy for the few."

Aristide, who must of thought he could get away with governing without recognizing the inviolability of this definition, says he was kidnapped, by which he means forced from Haiti, flown overseas and dumped unceremoniously into the Central African Republic. Cheney and US Secretary of State Colin Powell say that's nonsense. So, who are you going to believe? Aristide, or Cheney and Powell? I seem to recall a time when a dispute over the question of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction came down to a challenge. Who has more credibility: Powell, Cheney, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on the one hand, or...Saddam Hussein? If you voted for the first three, count it as a learning experience that guys with nice suits, a facility with language, impressive CVs, and healthy bank accounts, aren't, ipso facto, more truthful than reviled foreign leaders with swarthy skin, dark, heavy facial hair, and a penchant for military uniforms.

"These Americans who are pontificating about human rights and democracy would not recognize these things even if they hit them on the faces," observed Zimbabwe's Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, after the United States announced it was tightening sanctions on the poor African country for reasons it says has something to do with President Mugabe's democratic lapses, but as in Haiti, has more to do with the economics of capitalism. "So go tell the imperialists to go to hell [7]."

Indeed, we should, including US Presidential hopeful John "I'm tough and prepared to use US force unilaterally [8]" Kerry, who is as bullish on US imperialism as his Republican counterparts are. The Kerry Democrats want to follow the party's tradition of "muscular internationalism," a policy that would allow for the "bold exercise of US power," in the tradition of Harry (atom bomb) Truman and John (Vietnam war and Bay of Pigs) Kennedy, little different than the Republicans wanting to preserve US global pre-eminence, eclipse the rise of a great power rival, and shape the international security order in line with US interests. The difference, minute and insubstantial, is that the Republicans wear their aims on their sleeves, while the Democrats cravenly hide behind a veil of moral authority [9]. But even that difference is questionable. Kerry's promise to be tough, to act unilaterally and pre-emptively, suggests the veil may have been cast aside. And the likely Democratic standard-bearer's declaring that the US wasn't the villain in the Vietnam war [10] calls to mind a paraphrase of Moyo's comment: Kerry wouldn't know moral authority if it hit him on the face.

It gets worse. Besides being the principal practitioner of terrorism -- a point made repeatedly by Noam Chomsky -- the US can hardly be regarded as a model of human rights, though Washington has enough hubris and confidence Americans will hungrily imbibe the deception to make the claim. It is an act of jaw-dropping hypocrisy to bomb, strafe, and burn to death tens of thousands of Iraqis in a war of conquest based on a lie, and then denounce other governments for human rights violations that, together, pale in comparison to this single atrocity. Add the equally horrific trail of blood and carnage the US has left in Afghanistan, on top of the Pentagon having rounded up 10,000 Iraqi males to be interned in concentration camps, some as young as 11 and as old as 75 [11], and the hypocrisy defies belief. Iraq has become one large Guantanamo, remarked Adil Allami, a lawyer with the Human Rights Organization of Iraq [12], a reminder that the eponymous Guantanamo is no human rights picnic either.

A country whose human rights record is so foul has no business planning a war crimes tribunal for Iraq, but putting Saddam Hussein on trial is good politics -- and so, a war crimes tribunal is in the works. As the New York Times pointed out, "facing wide-scale criticism after no unconventional weapons have been found in Iraq, administration officials have increasingly turned to the evidence of the wide-scale atrocities committed by the Hussein government as a justification for going to war [13]," and it should be added -- because this is entirely the point of the whole exercise -- to justify the US having committed its own wide-scale atrocities in invading and occupying Iraq. But then at least Washington is consistent. The Hague Tribunal, set up under a Democratic administration, serves the same purpose as the soon-to-be established tribunal for Iraq, set in motion by a Republican administration: to justify decisions to trample international law, blast away thousands of people, and install puppet governments in far off lands that posed no threat but are home to attractive prizes of imperialist conquest. The US, observed Arab legal specialist M. Cherif Bassiouni "is looking to have a political vindication of why the US went into Iraq. With no weapons of mass destruction to be found, the next best thing is to show how bad Saddam was, how his regime was like the 'Nazis' [14]." In other words, set up a tribunal to call attention to Saddam's atrocities to draw attention away from Washington's.

Salem Chalabi, nephew of Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi, who proved to be an inexhaustible source of misinformation on Saddam Hussein's mythical banned weapons program, is heading up the war crimes issue. Chalabi makes no bones about using the tribunal as a propaganda tool to focus attention on Saddam's atrocities, steering it away from Washington's own atrocities in Iraq and its earlier complicity in the Ba'athist party record of murder and bloodshed. Which is to say, with US backing, Chalabi is planning a mischievous political prosecution, the very same abuse the US says it has shied away from signing on to -- and is actively undermining -- the International Criminal Court for. Chalabi says he'll "tailor the trial procedures in such a way that shows we learned the lessons of the Milosevic trial [15]," which is to say he won't allow "the tribunal and people like Saddam to be the principal teller of the history here [16]." Washington has expressed anger that Milosevic has fought back, challenging the official line effectively. The same mistake won't be made twice. Saddam will be denied a platform, and he won't be allowed to " call witnesses like Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to testify about the United States' earlier co-operation with the Hussein government [17]." To put it in other terms, Hussein won't be given room to impugn the official line, and so wreak havoc with Washington's carefully constructed propaganda exercise. There will be no telling the imperialists to go to hell.

1. "Power Shift In Haiti Puts Rights at Risk," Washington Post, March 7, 2004.

2. Statement on Haiti, Freedom Socialist Party, March 3, 2004.

3. Paul M. Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development: Principles of Marxian Political Economy, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1970, p. 352.

4. "Thousands of Aristide Supporters Pour Into Streets," Reuters, March 5, 2004.

5. "They destroyed our democracy: An interview with Jean-Bertrand Aristide by Amy Goodman," March 8, 2004.

6. "Aznar faces 91% opposition to war," The Guardian, March 29, 2003.

7. "Zimbabwe Reports Seizing Plane With 64 Suspected Mercenaries," The New York Times, March 9, 2004.

8. "Kerry Condemns Bush for Failing to Back Aristide," The New York Times, March 7, 2004.

9. John Pilger, "Bush Or Kerry? Look Closely And The Danger Is The Same," New Statesman; March 04, 2004.

10. Mark Hand, "It's Time to Get Over It: Kerry Tells Anti-War Movement to Move On," www.counterpunch.com, February 18, 2004.

11. "As U.S. Detains Iraqis, Families Plead for News," The New York Times, March 7, 2004.

12. Ibid.

13. "U.S. Team Is Sent to Develop Case in Hussein Trial," The New York Times, March 7, 2004.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid. ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xTelling the imperialists to go to hell``x1079983405,98630,world``x``x ``xWhat Kind of Democracy to Expect If the Opposition Takes Control

By Rai O'Brien

Many are wondering why there is no unified opposition party in Venezuela ... this is perplexing, especially since there is a large section of society which actively seeks the replacement of the elected government.

I began my recent discussions, over a period of the last several months, with opposition supporters ... people interested in the Venezuelan political situation and with supporters of Chavez and the "Bolivarian Revolution."

I put forward the idea of the need for true democracy to flourish in the country ... for a "loyal opposition" along the lines of that which has historically been present in the classic "democracies" of Europe and North America.

It has also been a cause for bewilderment why there have been no alternative proposals by those against the rule of Hugo Chavez, other than his departure from the political scene.

What I have found has truly amazed me.

I have concluded from my discussions that the Venezuelan opposition envisions no organized and unified party, no de facto group of potential candidates to run against Chavez (conceivably in 2006), and no assembled program.

Why has democracy in Venezuela been a process which has alienated such a large segment of the population, resulting in widespread civil disobedience?

My discussions with opposition supporters have yielded frustratingly little which could be used in encouraging productive debate in the present political situation ... the sheer level of anger is startling to a non-Venezuelan, such as myself.

The level of total polarization of the two sides is seemingly insurmountable. In general, any attempt, on my part, to inject the idea of opposition-leaning citizens and Chavistas debating the future of the country in a civil manner has been thoroughly and categorically denied as a possibility.

It is apparent that no discussion at all can proceed on the issue of governing the country with Hugo Chavez Frias as the country's President.

I have had to re-examine what democracy is ... at least, as it may apply to the two major constituencies in Venezuela (chavista and opposition).

I do not believe that many would argue with my conclusion that opposition-types strongly admire the political system in the United States and, since discussions with the opposition have been so fruitless in discovering what they truly look forward to instituting in the country, we must look to what the US system actually is. We must also look at what is recent history in Venezuela.

Opposition proponents of the eradication of Hugo Chavez from the political arena have a recent factual track record from which we can construe basic expectations of what they would impose on Venezuela economically and politically, if they indeed succeeded in ending the Bolivarian Revolution of Hugo Chavez (this accomplished most effectively by forcing Chavez from power in Venezuela, of course).

The facts themselves, in many discussions with opposition-types, are in some dispute. However, to proceed with this discussion we must attempt to establish some facts from which we can produce at least some tendencies, if not an outright model of a new, non-MVR-dominated, but pro-business national government.

First of all, there was a coup d'etat which took place in April 2002. The aim of this action was to force Hugo Chavez from power. It succeeded for some 48 hours. Among the first actions of the Carmona government was the institution of an oligarchic dictatorship ... this being concluded by their dissolution of the National Assembly, the Constitution and the Supreme Tribunal of Justice.

It has been widely disputed by opposition supporters, but what also occurred during the coup period was essentially state terrorism against Chavistas. The opposition, I know, will virulently argue this, and also laterally accuse Chavistas of human rights violations against them ... but the one seemingly indisputable fact is that, in the aftermath of the coup, "democracy" did not seem to be a primary concern of the opposition.

A second fact is that, after the coup was overturned, their next organized step was the "national strike" (as it is portrayed by opposition) or the "employer lockout" (as defined by Chavistas) from December 2002 to February 2003.

The overriding fact of the matter ... no matter how it is labeled ... is that the opposition clearly intended to destroy (at least in the short term) the Venezuelan economy, with the intended result being the goal of creating a situation where Venezuela would be "ungovernable," resulting in the forced resignation of Hugo Chavez.

We can argue the means used to quell this assault on the economy, but not that it occurred, and what the desired result was of the strike/lockout.

Third, we must look at the recall referendum signatures process, which is the third attempt organized by the opposition to remove Chavez from power.

Here I will attempt to distill this entire situation into the basic reality: the opposition did utilize, to some extent, blatant fraud in the process (as well as masses of legitimate signatures), from the undeniable submittal of hundreds of thousands of indisputably fraudulent signatures; to the more marginally disputable "challenged" signatures as have been held in limbo until the "repair process" (endorsed by the CNE and approved by the TSJ) can either reaffirm them as genuine, or to throw them out all together.

An important fact, as well, is to say that the CNE has given the opposition and opportunity to verify the signatures by having the disputed votes reaffirmed by the signers if in fact they did vote for the removal of Chavez.

To this point in time, the opposition has restricted it's cooperation in the process to their lawsuit challenging CNE to implement the "repair" process. This legal attempt has proven to be unsuccessful. The process is still there to institute a civilian-mandated referendum on Chavez' rule. It is still possible for the opposition to prevail, if their disputed signers simply come forward and verify their signatures. Over two thousand sites have been authorized for owners of the disputed signatures to perform this reaffirmation.

So no rational argument can be made that the opposition is being denied the right to constitutionally utilize the constitutionally-mandated recall referendum, if they can prove they indeed have the votes for it to proceed.

I add this: the opposition has pointed out, with some justification, that some government retaliation has been imposed on signers ... and ... that the government has accused employers of coercing voters to sign for the recall referendum, as well.

Judging from the three organized efforts of the opposition, we can see that there was little hesitancy to utilize 1) violent anti-Constitutional means to destroy Chavez' government by violent means; 2) a willingness to destroy the economy of the nation in the "strike" or "lockout" (whichever terminology you prefer) in order to topple the state; and, 3) when presented with a Constitutionally-endorsed tool to remove Chavez from office, they chose to utilize fraudulent (as well as non-fraudulent) means.

In dispute also are the use of computers at polling places, holding signatures for weeks after the vote and the presence of the same handwriting on entire multi-voter ballots.

In conclusion, it must be assumed that the opposition clearly believes that any effort to topple Chavez is legitimate. Also, any form of government they would organize, if they succeeded to power, would not include the MVR.

Last ... although only implied by the lockout ... PDVSA would again be under control of the opposition, subject to their own unsupervised accounting methods in rewarding the state as owner.

At no point in any of the three phases did the opposition cooperate under strict democratic guidelines. When in power they indisputably instituted an oligarchic dictatorship. Whether this would be permanent or temporary is disputable, however.

All we have to go by is what they actually have attempted since April 2002 since they do not state a detailed program post-Chavez.

Let's move onto the concept of democracy, itself.

"Democracy" can be best defined, at this point in history, as understood and practiced in the USA, my country. Let's factually state that this is now the reality in a world of one "superpower" ... the United States of America. Let's examine, in general terms, just what "democracy" has become in the US; and how "democracy" is being imposed in our two newest "democracies": Afghanistan and Iraq.

The reason is that these are the two latest examples of plans to set up democratic systems.

Lets look at the US example: The US political system is indisputably and totally controlled by two political parties. These two parties are undeniably controlled by money. The political system relies on corporate and personal financial campaign-fund contributions to political candidates. It is indisputable that large campaign money decides the winners in nearly all national elections. The only question is whether the cash controls votes, as it certainly does influence them, at the very least. The two presidential candidates for 2004 have little to differentiate themselves. Both are sons of large and wealthy families, both support what some would categorize as economic imperialism and national self-interest, and some would call free-market globalization (this is a separate debate).

The media in the US can "make or break" candidates, most recently Howard Dean. In the last election Al Gore was demonized as a liar, among other things, by the press, who were indisputably "soft" on their criticism of Mr. Bush. This indisputably influenced the outcome in an election decided by 500 or so Florida votes, which itself is being still debated in our society regarding it's legitimacy. Indisputably, money rules in the US political system. Therefore, it is logical to surmise that the interests of the moneyed classes in the US are dominant in the process. For one to believe in a "real" democracy, self-delusion is indeed necessary. We could extend these ideas to mean that the present US "democratic" system simply ensures that the minority rules.

The US has instituted two "democracies" post-9/11: They are Afghanistan, headed by a US hand-picked president, with a "democratic system" which involves warlords, not citizens, and exists only because the US bodily protects the president from assassination. The average citizen in Afghanistan is not projected to be involved in the system. Some would say that this is unfair, because the system is just establishing itself. I would reply that the aim here is to allow the US to withdraw from the country, but to perpetually control US military bases; and, that once the US withdraws day-to-day control on the ground in civil society that things will regress back to warlord control, "at best", or Taliban-control, "at worst."

The CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) in Iraq first attempted to institute a democratic system by a hand-picked panel of puppets (Governing Council) which has thus far had two options: to approve the dictates of Paul Bremer, or to not co-operate and be powerless in the new system. The first attempt to form a "democratic" government was the institution a system of "caucuses," whereby the US would, in essence, control the candidates in the electoral process (much like the two property parties in US politics control the candidates the hapless American voter gets to choose from).

When this system was exposed as a cynical attempt to establish a permanent de facto US-controlled government (amenable to US interest desire to control Iraqi oil wealth, and maintenance of US military bases in the country perpetually), the civilian leadership of the head cleric of the majority demographic of the country, the Shi'ites, refused to go along with it, and it had to be abandoned.

The most recent attempt forced the Governing Council to agree to a new Constitutional amendment which would force legislative gridlock, thereby maintaining all the decrees of the CPA perpetually, since 75% of the population would need top agree to any change (this is actually worse than it sounds, because the Kurdish minority could effectively block any changes, and since they are the closest to the US they would be open to manipulation, or in the least, could block anything unfavorable to them, therefore making an "Islamic" government impossible, although it is indisputably preferred by a majority of the Iraqi population).

Therefore, we can see by the three models (US, Afghanistan, Iraq) that true democracy is not a subjective central aim.

The US is thoroughly dominated by moneyed interests, and US-endorsed democracies (as well as totalitarian states aligned with US interests) survive merely because they support US aims.

In conclusion, it is not disputable that the opposition in Venezuela admire the US system. The US has been discovered to have been indisputably in at least covert support of the opposition coup attempt in April 2002. It has been proven, as well, that opposition leaders did openly meet with Bush administration officials in Washington prior to the "national strike" or "lockout." And it is indisputable the US government non-governmental organization, financially supported by the US government, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), did provide financial support to the recent recall referendum drive by the opposition.

With these facts in hand, I must believe that "democracy" ... in the sense it is mostly widely accepted by average person everywhere ... is not the goal of the opposition.

What is being contemplated is the new "globalized version" of democracy.

This is most concisely defined as a system which portrays itself as a democracy, but in reality is a system which supports the goals of the elite in the global economy.

Our modern media, too, is shown in all its glory in Venezuela, which is almost entirely dominated by corporate interests, as it blatantly is in today's US. These interests coincide with those of the wealthy classes. Our political parties effectively exclude average persons from the governing class. Our choices, as citizens, essentially restrict themselves to the selecting between two hand-picked candidates of the elite classes.

This is the "democracy" which can be expected in Venezuela if the opposition takes control of the country.

And, this is why the opposition does not present a unified party, with a group of established potential viable candidates to run against Chavez if there is a 2006 election ... and why there is no stated opposition program.

It is simply not in the opposition's interests to present any of the three (all prerequisites under a truly democratic system in Venezuela).

The only way for the opposition to disprove these conclusions would be to take the steps necessary to effectively participate in the Venezuelan political system: present a unified opposition party, begin to formulate a leadership, openly publish a alternative program of national governing; and, to work with all people and alternative political groups towards national prosperity.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhat's Brewing in Venezuela``x1080705671,82535,world``x``x ``xBy Raffique Shah, www.trinicenter.com/Raffique

ONE year in today's global village that we call the world, what with communications being almost instant, seems almost like a nanosecond. In fact the latter term is itself a by-product of modern communications technology that illustrates the speed at which we can access information. Today, those who own and control the finest in modern technology-from "smart bombs" to "video conferencing"-have also grown to fear the very wizardry they have helped create.

George Bush is one such victim of his own devices. One year ago, in the face of worldwide protests and dire warnings dished out by who could see its implications, the US president sent his forces to reduce what was left of Iraq to rubble. He convinced himself, or maybe he was persuaded by the likes of Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz, that "taking out" Saddam Hussein and taking over Iraq was a breeze. In and out in a year. Rid yourself of a dictator you helped create, win popular support among Saddam's millions of victims (perceived or real), most of all win control of the world's second biggest oil deposits, and ride out of town in glory.

Now that he is bogged down in the desert with little hope of extricating himself from a Vietnam-in-the-sand, he must wonder what "blight" has hit him. For all the bravado that he won't run from Iraq, or his generals' seemingly contradictory statements that they are "finally winning the war", things don't look so rosy for Bush. In fact, they look rather thorny. Maybe he's not bright enough to understand that this is one war he will not win. Worse, his "war against terror" has backfired so badly, the entire world is now in more danger than it was before his misadventure.

But if the war is hurting America and its coalition partners badly, information technology is hurting him worse. His chances of gaining a second term in office in the November elections are quickly evaporating as the lies he and his aides peddled to the American people and to the world are being exposed. What must hurt him even more as he reflects on his sins that are catching up with him is that the man who is likely to beat him is the rather dull John Kerry. Now, unless he can present Americans with Bin Laden's head on a platter for Thanksgiving, his re-election goose seems to have been already cooked in the burning sands of Iraq's desert.

I started this column by postulating that modern technology has advanced to the level where it returns to haunt those who created it or who rely on it. Bush went to war on the false premise that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). To date the Americans have not even been able to plant any such weapon, so busy are they trying to protect their backsides from crude roadside bombs and suicide bombers. That lie having been exposed, he transformed his mission into one of liberators. Maybe he is not a student of history. If he were, he'd have recalled the words Britain's General Stanley Maude, who, as John Pilger recalled recently, when he entered Baghdad back in 1921, said: "Our armies do not come as conquerors, but as liberators." In a few years the British army "liberated" more than 10,000 Iraqis-from their lives! Killed when they dared to oppose the army of occupation.

Within one year of the invasion of Iraq, so much misinformation has been laid bare for public scrutiny, Bush and his partner-in-crime, Tony Blair, must be cursing the man who invented the tape recorder or bugging devices. For example, in an article in the May issue of Vanity Fair, Christopher Meyer, former UK ambassador to Washington, says even as Bush and Blair discussed a response to 9/11 in Afghanistan, Bush remained obsessed with Iraq. He was present at the meeting when Bush told Blair (who was focused on the Taliban and al-Qaeda): "I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq."

So whatever happened in Afghanistan where mud huts were bombed into-well, dust, Bush was bent on going into Iraq. But why? Was it mere revenge, finishing off a fight his old man had started? Was it just the oil? Again, technology comes to the rescue. IPS reporter Emad Mekay uncovered a rather interesting remark made by Philip Zelikow, who is now executive director of the 9/11 commission. At the University of Virginia on September 10, 2002, the then head of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, told his audience: "Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat is and actually has been since 1990-it's the threat against Israel."

Now, that's not far-fetched, more so coming from the mouth of someone who served at the highest level of national security under Bush. If you look at it, pre-1990, Iraq was the only Arab country that had the capacity to take on Israel militarily. So snuff out Iraq and forget about the eunuchs in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the UAE and even Iran. All fired by the lure of the almighty "greenback", pretending to pray five times a day to Allah, but not even sparing a thought for the Palestinians who have been reduced to refugees in their own country.

Richard Clarke, Bush's one-time counter-terrorism expert also said Bush was so obsessed with removing Saddam he ignored intelligence reports on possible al-Qaeda attacks on US soil. Now, along comes Rice (maybe she's being served up on a platter without knowing it!) to just about confirm what Clarke and Zelikow said. Finally testifying before the commission, Rice tells of a number of warnings of attacks on the US before 9/11. But she tries to signal that intelligence was inadequate for the government to act. Still, her colleague Powell tried to convince the UN Security Council that two "big trucks" picked up on satellite photos in Iraq were really labs for the manufacturing of chemical weapons! And the man is not even ashamed to admit that in so doing, he sent 600-plus (and still counting) American boys to their deaths, that in its 10-year war against Iraq, America has killed more than one million Iraqis, mainly children.

Yes, one year was a long time many moons ago. Today, it's like a flash. In that short time, Bush has slipped from hero to zero (well, almost), Rice is proving to be tasteless, Powell admitted making an ass of himself and the UN. Pity the poor buggers.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xBlood and sand - one year later``x1081668081,48505,world``x``x ``xBy Rootsie, www.rootsie.com

Here we are again. A quagmire. It could be 1964, but it's so much worse. The United States versus a billion Arabs.

Like 1964, an election year. Neither party with the political will, neither candidate with the simple integrity to say "We made a mistake. It's time to get out of there." The pretext for this war was to 'free the Iraqi people.' No need to say what a crock that is, but even on that basis the United States has failed. What lies ahead for Iraq is a ghastly civil war and, at the end, a fundamentalist Shi'ite state. Moderates in the Islamic world have had the rug pulled out from under them, and are really in an impossible situation. They are already pulling out of the 'interim government.' How could it possibly be in the Shi'ites' interest to share power three ways with the Kurds and Sunnis when they comprise 80% of Iraq's population? How can moderate Shi'ites stand with any moral or political authority when they are perceived as shills for the Americans?

'But we can't leave now. That would leave Iraq to civil war and chaos.' Just as in Vietnam, the United States harbors the self-serving illusion, or at least feeds the public the line that 'we' hold the key to 'lasting peace and stability,' in some grotesque caricature of fatherly concern. 'We have to destroy Vietnam to save it.' Compared to the guys running things today, Nixon looks like a starry-eyed liberal.

Kerry says the answer is to run to the UN for help, that the problem with Iraq is not that United States invaded, but that it invaded without cajoling the UN into joining in. That was a ridiculous argument he and his Democratic buddies were making last winter, and it is more ridiculous now. Democrats were joining the anti-war protests last winter with that line, and they should have been called on it then. They deserve no less than the Republicans to be thrown out of office.

This is not 1964. Americans are far less mindlessly patriotic now, far more in love with their selfish pleasures. You don't notice anyone saying too loud that sacrifices will have to be made. No one is in the mood. It is disgusting to say, but the only hope I see is that regular Americans will not take kindly to this rising body count and it will take far fewer than the ten years it took then to stop this war.

The United States left Vietnam quietly with its tail between its legs and that was that. The denouement to this escapade will not be nearly so neat. Another false pretext for this war was to 'combat terrorism,' but again all I can say is we ain't seen nothin' yet.

Arabs look at those images of the dead in Fallujah and they see the humiliation of Palestine. They see 150 years of first the British and now the Israelis/Americans. 150 years of rage. We say insurgency. They say Intifadah. 'Bringing stability to the region?' How about World War III?

The idea of the use of nuclear weapons is on the table. It is hard to imagine this nightmare scenario, but the future of global capitalism is at stake. A mistake that many people have been making for a long time is not allowing themselves to see the full dimension of the nightmare, unable to imagine that 'they' could really, after all, be so terrible, unable finally to entertain the notion that their own comfort could actually be disrupted in any way. They actually believe that 'getting rid of Bush' is the answer, as if the 'problem' will go away when he does. Well I don't feel too sorry for them, and they will see soon enough what their implicit support for the status quo buys them in the end. In this war for corporate global hegemony, American people are as expendable as any others. I wonder how kindly they will take to thousands of their children being used as cannon fodder to advance the interests of the rich. They don't seem much concerned about their civil liberties being stripped away one by one. Maybe Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor was right: people are ultimately terrified by freedom and don't want it at all. Maybe they've gone too soft to care.

At this late date it seems too little to say that America's inability to behave decently in the world, with its citizens' passive approval, has sown the whirlwind. Maybe at last the consequences will fall squarely where they legitimately belong.

My father is 92 years old. He lived through the Spanish Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II, and they affected him and his family directly. These days he just shakes his head. "It's never been this bad," he says. I wonder who else has noticed. I wonder if it's too late to avoid the worst.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xHere We Go Again``x1081668113,61645,world``x``x ``xUniversal Blackness?

Posted by raggamuffin
Africa Speaks Reasoning board/Human Beginnings

Since humanity was born out of Africa, should other non-black races be included in the back to Africa movement?
Should whites consider this their home as well?

Please reason with me on this complex issue.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Response by Ayinde

While it is legal for whites to migrate where they wish like anyone else, I don't support any white person moving to Africa under the label of repatriation, which as the previous poster said, is a term generally used for those Africans who were forcibly removed from Africa.

There are Whites that embrace some brand of Rastafari, go to Africa to reside, and they then call that repatriation. Although some Blacks embrace this as a sign of togetherness, I don't. I see it as a cop-out by some Whites that should be in the West trying to dismantle the antisocial capitalist system.

Remember that I said I don't support it, not that I can stop it. But I do all in my power to ensure that my funds do not go to such muddling moves.

Blacks who embrace this are equally delusional as they fantasize about a world of earthly togetherness that is not based on justice for all. Justice mandates that those who have benefited from the abuse of others should pay reparations, and they should allow the former victims to rediscover their own social systems. Any well-intentioned White person should invest their time and resources in educating themselves and others about the ills of the capitalist system as it is, and they should be using their 'privileged' position in these societies to fund and promote progressive Black movements without trying to take controlling interest.

To add insult to injury, some whites leave the West and go to Africa then want others to finance them. This to me is a gross insult. Resources should be going to Africa to support progressive Black movements, and to alleviate the sufferings of those indigenous to the region that cannot easily move out. Resources should not be going to Whites who choose to go back there to play 'grassroots poor'. Those Whites should leave Africa, Repatriate to the West, and get a job. Their history first exploited Africa, now they return to extract more, and divert necessary attention and funding from more deserving African causes.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhites and Repatriation``x1082057328,90243,views``x``x ``xby Ayanna Gillian

For so many African people in the Diaspora it is difficult to really conceptualize our history and heritage as something miraculous and marvelous. Centuries of racism, colonialism and misappropriated history have created a people who have very little concept of the great civilizations that they were taken from, a large segment of humanity which is in a sense rootless, with no real understanding of its own historical origins.

Even as Afrocentric historians attempt to uncover what was buried and rediscover what was thought lost, it seems to be a drop in the bucket in the face of the daily wars, massacres, poverty and political torment that take place on so much of the continent in our present day. Added to this, the only African history that is often taught to our children in schools is the legacy of slavery and colonialism and the awful brutalization at the hands of Europeans. It is little wonder then that psychologically for so many African people, their history seems to begin with European intervention. This is not the fault of the historian who works tirelessly to expose the real history of the colonial era, or the journalist who seeks to bring to light the political and economic travesties that many Africans face at home and abroad. However it is perhaps the inevitable result of our recent history.

I must however stress the phrase "recent history," for the last few centuries have been merely a moment in the vast span of African history. But sometimes it can appear that, like the forest that took thousands of years to grow but can be destroyed by a carelessly thrown match in matter of hours, our recent history has done us irreparable damage. When faced with a global power structure that is hell-bent on the destruction of the powerless, with the perpetuation of mind-numbing ignorance which allows it to continue the pillage of the world, one can ask: what weapon can be forged to fight the beast?

When I look at the wealth of literature, art, music and theatre that has emerged from Africa and elsewhere in the Diaspora, I can't help but notice how much of 'us' has survived there and how much of 'us' can be transmitted through these expressions as well. I recently read a play by Nigerian playwright, author and poet Wole Soyinka, called Death and the King's Horseman. The play is set in the last days of the great Yoruba kingdom of Old Oyo, which was, unbeknownst to it, (as all empires are destined to be), on the brink of collapse. While it is ostensibly about a particular interaction between Yoruba society and Western colonial intervention, the play focuses on the ritual of Yoruba life, the intersection of the world of the living and the dead. Most of the drama is in fact psychological and metaphysical and not material at all. It examines the physical clash of cultures and the domination of one over the other (which seems to pervade much of the discourse on the colonial history) through the lens of Yoruba cosmology and ritualized community structure.

One particular part of the play caught my attention. Elesin Oba, the King's Horseman, is living his last few hours before he is to commit ritual suicide upon the death of the King. He sees it as divine honour to continue his duties and lead the way for the king to pass over, and then join the ancestors in the heavens. This is a portion of the conversation he had with his Praise Singer:

"PRAISE SINGER: "In their time the great wars came and went, the little wars came and went; the white slavers came and went, they took away the heart of our race; they bore away the mind and muscle of our race. The city fell and was rebuilt, the city fell and our people trudged through mountain and forest to found a new home but- Elesin Oba do you hear me?

ELESIN: I hear your voice Olohun-iyo

PRAISE SINGER: Our world was never wrenched from its true course. There is only one home to the life of a river mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of a man; there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?"

What beautiful words! In the midst of our reality of injustice, persecution and racism, of children who can identify more with European history than their own, and self-deprecating academics and anthropologists who tell the stories of their people yet demean them in the same breath... When I read those lines, one thing is made abundantly clear: our colonial history, while cataclysmic and traumatic with far-reaching consequences that must be addressed, was merely an incident in African, and indeed human, history. Our culture and legacy are so much deeper and so much more ancient than that. If we can conceptualize African people as ancient kings and queens, as the businessmen, educators, empire-builders and spiritual leaders of the world, if we can conceptualize the origins of mankind in Ethiopia and our long, slow beautiful movement, our adaptation and survival right along with the evolution of the geological landscape as we know it, if we can conceptualize our even more ancient origins as energy, as bits of the universe and right out of the divine darkness of a black hole, if we can conceptualize these things, then we will have touched the tip of the iceberg of African and human history.

"There is only one home to the life of a river mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of a man; there is only one world to the spirit of our race." There is something immensely comforting and powerful in those words: to know that the strongest part of us is in spirit, in the very essence of our beings, and that it is this that is more infinitely valuable than anything else we can conceive. In spite of all that has happened, in spite of our scars and wounds, we emerge strong and continue the long trod that we began millions of years ago. This is why the study of history is so important: not only the study of the colonial incident in an academic sense, but getting in touch with what is truly integral to African culture and spirituality. When we can see this and get to the heart of it then we can get a more expansive knowledge and understanding of WORLD HISTORY AND OUR COMMON ORIGINS.

So many Diasporic Africans have been brainwashed. While they talk of racism and the evil of colonialism, psychologically they still really believe the culture of Africans inferior to that of Europeans. They still use European ideas of success to evaluate ancient Africa. Much is about measuring against Europe, and many cannot let go of Europe enough to just look at the rich diversity of ancient Africa together with the people's common values. They can get that they were treated horribly, they can get that the injustice was built on racism, but they still cannot see past the years of cultural brainwashing to the real magnificence of our African culture.

Works like this one can help. They help us begin the process of psychological decolonization right along with the struggle for physical, economic and political sovereignty. Knowledge of history must go hand in hand with a rich appreciation for the diverse cultures of Africa. We must see our ancestors as the initiators of world history, and not as its victims. The art, the literature, the song, the dance, can create a litany of healing and reconciliation. The power of a people with a firm grasp of its history is formidable, and we Africans have the wealth of all history behind us.

It is in embracing that history that folks may be able to really see themselves as they are and as they could be, and to truly appreciate the wisdom of the best of our ancestors. When we traverse history, experiencing aspects of the culture, visiting the literature, we get a heightened sense of that magnificence and can see clearly that this colonial 'incident' was certainly not the 'death of the race'. In the words of our ancestors calling out to us in gentle reminder from across the ages, "Our world was never wrenched from its true course", but we know the way back, and forward.

The original URL of this article is:
www.rootswomen.com/ayanna/articles/23052004.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xOur world was never wrenched from its true course``x1085284800,26499,views``x``x ``xBy Rootsie

The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe, and Power in the Heart of Africa By Bill Berkeley

This is a crucial book for understanding the dynamics of white behavior in Africa and its horrific results. The modern story of Zaire/Congo is a dramatic example of the author's thesis that 'ethnic cleansing' and 'tribal conflict' have their roots in European imperialism and their fruits in the killing fields of Liberia, Somalia, Sudan, Angola, Rwanda…and Congo.

"A common illusion of the post-Cold War era is that the superpower rivalry suppressed traditional ethnic rivalries that have since resurfaced with a vengeance. In fact, all too often the opposite has been the case. The superpowers did precious little to suppress ethnic conflicts and much to spawn them-by elevating, financing, and arming tyrants who would one day exploit ethnicity as a means of clinging to power. Buffeted by history's changing winds, bereft of their superpower backing, one by one the embattled creatures of the old world order have struggled to survive in the new by playing the ethnic card." (17)

The 'tribalism' that Western analysts bemoan as the underlying problem in Africa is a direct product of the worst slaving years of the 18th century, when disrupted societies retreated to family and kinship ties for self-defense. The word 'tribe' itself came into use in the colonial era, and as a racist smear pointing to the hopeless inferiority of Africans. As in so many cases during this period, the Europeans perceived the 'brutality' and 'barbarity' of Africans and did not realize that they were looking in the mirror.

The story of Mobutu is a story that stands for many others across the globe, where 'American interests' took precedence over basic morality, with results so terrible it is hard to take them in.

"It was the Kennedy administration that helped to elevate Mobutu Sese Seko to power in what became Zaire…Republicans, for their part, would toss the more memorable rhetorical bouquets at Africa's most notorious despot. In 1976, Henry Kissinger, during a stop in Kinshasa, cooed about the 'respect and affection that lie at the heart of the relationship between' the United States and Zaire; he assured Mobutu that 'the United States will stand by its friends.' It was President Reagan, in a felicitous phrase undoubtedly screened if not crafted by his assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, Chester Crocker, who called Mobutu 'a voice of good sense and good will.' President Bush called Mobutu 'one of our most valued friends [on] the entire continent of Africa.' By then the United States has ponied up $1 billion for Mobutu's predatory regime." (81)

The CIA recruited and groomed Mobutu in Belgium, where he was exiled as a member of the opposition to Belgian rule. Eisenhower ordered the murder of Lumumba, first prime minister of newly independent Congo, fearful of another Cuba. CIA operative Larry Devlin brought Mobutu back to Congo to lead the coup. Lumumba was murdered. Mobutu was supported by every president from Kennedy to Clinton.

Here are the fruits of Mobutu:

. Per capita income in 1980 1/10 of what it was at independence in 1960
. In the 1990's poverty 'dropped below measureable levels'
. One paved road in ten that existed at independence made it to the 1990's
. The only reliable surface transport was the Congo River, but there were no boats to travel it
. Half the country's children die by the age of five
. 6,000% inflation in 1992 (24 million Zaires to the dollar). When Mobutu ran short of funds for his various pleasure palaces and escapades, he simply minted more.
. 80% unemployment
. in 1986 schools received $8 million of the $73 million budgeted for them, health programs $8 million of $24 million
. Zaire received 1 $billion in US aid during the Reagan years
. Mobutu's personal wealth was estimated at over $5 billion, roughly equivalent to the national debt. He opened his own Swiss bank.
. All of this rampant gangsterism was of course accompanied by brutal repression of all opposition.

Mobutu's Mafia-style 'kleptocracy' began sagging under the weight of the monstrous corruption, and so he pulled the 'ethnic card,' just as Charles Taylor did in Liberia. The IMF and World Bank pulled their support from Mobutu. As in so many other places in Africa, the end of the Cold War meant that the US and Europeans suddenly dropped their pet dictators like hot potatoes, having no use for them anymore. It is at this point that the desperate despots resorted to fanning the flames of ethnic conflict.

Like the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Kasaians in Zaire were enlisted as favored groups by the whites and used as 'proxy agents of domination.' They had been cultivated by the Belgians, and Mobutu used the long-standing resentment of them as a tool of his tyranny, fomenting mass slaughter, promoting the ensuing chaos to his own advantage by using hostility against the Kasai to deflect it away from himself.

The armed rebellion by Laurent Kabila in 1997 finally toppled Mobutu after 37 years, but the chaos and ruin Mobutu left behind have ensured 7 years of civil war and foreign incursions with horrific suffering for the Congolese people.

In the summer of 2000, the UN reported that 1.7 million Congolese had died in two years of civil war. The war continues with staggering death tolls to this day.

"[Rep. Howard] Wolpe had been a scholar of African affairs before he went to Washington. He clashed repeatedly with [Chester] Crocker for eight years as Africa subcommittee chairman. When I asked Wolpe about Crocker's argument to me about the legitimacy of protecting American interests in the Cold War, Wolpe replied, 'I have no quarrel with that. But every time America stood up for dictators, we actually did very little to advance American interests. We stood up for regimes that were inherently unstable. We were complicit in their crimes. We fed instability on the entire continent….This engagement or walk away analysis-it's a false dichotomy. We ended up creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Mobutu especially. We were always told that there was no alternative to Mobutu. In the end we ensured there was nothing left behind." (78)

It is important to remember Congo today. As Americans try to take in the Abu Ghraib revelations, they should understand that it is all of piece with American conduct throughout the world for the past 50 years at least. It IS us, of that there is no doubt, and if we don't like it we should do something about it.

This is from Berkeley's chapter on South Africa:

"In my own interviews with apartheid's securocrats, they never failed to remind me of what they took pains to describe as their close relationship with 'you guys,' as one put it. 'It's a brotherhood,' General Joe Buchner, the notorious covert operative and torturer who was at the heart of the 'black-on-black' violence in South Africa, told me wistfully: 'We in the police of the various offices overseas-everybody knew you. Our training came mostly from you guys-and the Brits.'"

I fail to see the distinction between training torturers, financing and sanctioning torturers, and doing the dirty work ourselves.

The original URL for this article is:
www.rootsie.com/articles/2004/2505.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xBook Review: The Graves Are Not Yet Full``x1085550063,38578,rasta``x``x ``xby Ben Roberts

Does anyone notice that these days George Bush hardly ever haunts military bases like before, giving political speeches crowing about keeping America safe and being an exemplary Commander In Chief. No more gleeful declaration that the world would see a mighty American military 'Shock And Awe' in Iraq on a scale never witnessed before. No more prancing off a warplane on a sleek carrier flight deck bedecked in TopGun flight suit and declaring 'Mission Accomplished!' No more beaming with delight as he surprises those under his command with a turkey all dressed on a platter. No more brusque military style declarations that 'I served my country.' The comic relief provided by some of those events is noticeably absent, as the 'war President' seems to have abandoned his soldiers, wanting no part of anything remotely connected to the military. But the question needing to be asked is, Why this about face?

Remember Bush's National Guard debacle. He kept stressing that he served his country as a Guardsman. He created his own firestorm when questions began to fly and revelations began spilling out. General Turnispeed, the top man in the Guard where Bush was supposed to report to, said that he never saw him. Bush was unable to explain why no one saw him and why he did not take his physical exam. The most telling revelation however, was probably the one we never got to hear. In an article in the Tennessee Flyer, two Guardsmen, one named Paul Bishop, recounted how the young Bush was supposed to report to their unit. These were young men from small town America, with limited resources. They were anticipating Bush's arrival, having heard that he was well connected, and of course they reasoned that his presence might prove to be an asset. Well, they revealed that Bush never showed up. These men appear to have no political agenda, and one or both described themselves as Republican. They have decent jobs as airline pilots, but decided they had to say something when Bush kept claiming Guard service to his country, when they knew otherwise. Bush tried everything in an effort to douse the fire he started about this Guard service, from a 'Meet The Press' appearance, to revealing pay stubs and dental records while in the Guard. Would it not have been much easier if Bush could show a photo of himself with his buddies hamming it up after a flight training mission? Fortunately two black men saved Bush's presidency. No kidding. It was basketball star Kobe Bryant and Michael Jackson sexual misconduct scandals that finally pushed Bush's Guard service nightmare into the background.

Bush promised Shock And Awe, and he delivered more than he bargained for. We certainly have Shock and Awe with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal of Americans dehumanizing and torturing Iraqi citizens in their own country. No question we have Shock And Awe with the brutal decapitation of the young American, Nicholas Berg, with a smile so engaging, enthusiastic, and full of life. Prior to this sad distressing tragedy, in the opening moments of the war in Iraq, American bombers dropped so called 'smart' bombs in the Al Mansour residential district of Baghdad in an attempt to, as they called it, 'decapitate the leadership of Iraq.' An upscale restaurant in this area was obliterated and a woman dining there with her child was left with the torso of her little one in one spot and the head in another. That was Shock And Awe all right. George Bush has seriously endangered the lives of Americans since coming to office, and Berg's father is right in his assertion that Bush is responsible for the death of his son. If we seem surprised about atrocities at Abu Ghraib, we shouldn't be. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the whole cast of characters consistently scoffed at the Geneva Convention and the International Court as a forum for abiding by international law. So it is not surprising that the military chain of command of this Commander In Chief would adopt his attitude, with or without his complicity. A Commander In Chief leads. This one led all right. Right down a path of shame, embarrassment, and moral decline that America will not recover from anytime soon. All this under the guise of safeguarding Americans.

Bush thought this past Thanksgiving that, as Commander In Chief, a TV op with the troops under his command was in order. There he was with a turkey on a platter beaming with delight with our troops in the Gulf. Nice touch. But why does this same Commander In Chief and leader of men coldly refuse to acknowledge these same soldiers by not being present at their last farewell when they fall in battle in a war he sent them to? If that was not bad enough here is the ultimate insult. It was startling to see Bush recently in a photo in one of Washington's major newspapers. The scene was of him at a memorial service with a wreath being laid by a military officer. In the photo it is hard to determine whether Bush's face is conveying sorrow or an anxiety and desire to remain anonymous. Be that as it may the thought was 'Oh finally the Commander In Chief is appearing at the graveside of fallen Americans.' Not! Bush was at a memorial service at the Spanish embassy in Washington to honor the Spanish citizens killed in the Madrid train bombings. Now do not get me wrong here. The carnage in Madrid was so shocking and sad that it was most fitting that Bush appear to show America's condolences. But how must Americans feel, especially those who lost their loved ones in Iraq, when they see Bush at this event with the express purpose of keeping some coalition together, while steadfastly refusing to show his face to memorialize their loved ones who paid with their lives in a war he condemned them to? What are they to make of their Commander In Chief?

If you, like me, are pining away for more of the earlier comic relief from Bush and his team have no fear. We still have it. Bush was recently sighted at a war college in Pennsylvania, and by inference that makes him the war President, though he was careful not to loudly claim this, bullhorn style, as before. In his speech Bush made it clear that the reason he 'sent our men' into Iraq was to bring about democracy and freedom. This is absolutely false. In his speech to this nation on the eve of war, Bush made it clear that the overriding reason he was sending our forces into war in Iraq was because they had diabolical weapons of mass destruction that could annihilate us at any moment. Ask the mushroom cloud lady, Condeeleza Rice. She left no doubt about this. Last week on the front page of the Washington Post was a picture of Donald Rumsfeld walking along the dusty street of Abu Ghraib prison with his entourage. While there he announced, 'I'm a survivor.' At Abu Ghraib, where Iraqis suffered, died and survived abuses Iraqi style and American style, Rumsfeld was declaring himself a survivor. Last week US forces had a running shootout with Iraqi fighters at one of the Shiites most holiest cemeteries in the Muslim world in Karbala, Iraq. A few weeks ago our forces handed over security of Fallujah to former Saddam army regulars who were shooting at them days before. The Iraqi General in charge was promptly sacked when he reported that there were no foreign insurgents in the town. That'll teach him never to cross CNN and our stellar American media. Now Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress leader, Iraqi Governing Council bigwig, self anointed leader in waiting to rule Iraq, and former darling of America, is in a brawl with us and now wants us to set his Iraq people free. And now for this hot off the press piece de resistance. Bush wants to raze the Abu Ghraib prison. Pray tell why? In America we prominently display monuments to pain and suffering. Why should Iraqis have theirs erased?

An African parable is quite applicable to Bush's attempt to weasel out of, and distance himself from those under his command and their atrocious behavior at Abu Ghraib, when he stated in response to the torture photo revelations, 'That is not the America I know.' The saying is: 'Fish always begin to rot from the head on down.' Anyone having spent time around fish knows this to be true. Instead of being contented with acting like a sea of SpongeBobs soaking up everything the White House, the Pentagon, CNN, Fox Cable, and embedded reporters throw at them, what Americans should tell Bush in response to his predictable style of take-the-high-ground-and-let-the-grunts-take-the-fall-over-Abu-Ghraib disaster is this: 'Mr. President this is not the America I entrusted to you for safekeeping and leadership. Look what you, the Commander In Chief, have done to my country.'

Ben Roberts is a newsletter editor, freelance writer and published author. His book, Jackals of Samarra, was published in January 2001. Ben can be contacted by email at: grandt730@aol.com``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xGeorge Bush: Commander In.... Please!``x1085768062,86036,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde

Selassie is a historical figure. If it does not matter who he is or what he did, then I guess people can use that same symbolic argument to worship Hitler or even Bush.

Selassie was a real person and also a symbolic inspiration to many, including colonized and Christianized Africans whose only source of learning, after they were uprooted from more indigenous ways, was the Christian Bible. But not all colonized Africans took the Christian Bible literally, and certainly many did not think Selassie was divine. Many were inspired by the presence of an African King in the midst of all the poor Black images and ideas fed to us through European miseducation. Even Garvey used Selassie to inspire Africans about their own greatness and ability to rival the British monarchy. Garvey never meant that Selassie was the new God for Black Africans.

But apart from the Africans who were Christianized, there were also other Africans/Rastas who rediscovered natural livity, and were not looking to any earthly symbolic head. They were quite convinced that they could relate to Jah through nature, and that ALL earthly governments and leaders were subject to corruption. This situation is not dissimilar to the Zionists in Israel. Look at the trouble in the world today from the ones who think Zion is a specific literal location on the earth. There were, and are, many Africans who disagreed with many of Selassie's moves, and certainly many of the Black kinky-haired Africans in Ethiopia who were not part of the ruling class felt Selassie alienated and negatively discriminated against them. No amount of mental gymnastics can nullify their lived reality.

Even within the African Rasta community there are many who may not be on the Internet who know that the whole over-glorification of Selassie is not right. To many Black Africans, Selassie means nothing, and no one can deny the validity of them holding on to their own older concepts of divinity, and choosing how it evolves. Selassie was not the defining aspect of Rasta, and the movement did not develop to worship any man.

So as much as Selassie was/is a symbol to some Africans, and WE learn from him like other African personalities, many here will have to accept the fact that many Africans can identify with other symbols of historical greatness and still be quite in order with Rasta.

Also, the meaning of Ras Tafari (head - he who inspires awe) cannot be the exclusive domain of one person. The concept of Ras and Tafari can be found in other African symbols, and in the way they paid respect to their elders. Certainly the meaning of Haile Selassie (Might of the Trinity) is an old African concept that has permeated all other cultures that conceptualize a Trinity. Languages evolve and new words developed while the essential meaning is the same. So even the words 'Ras Tafari' and their meanings are not the exclusive property of one group of Africans, as the words and meaning were around before Selassie the person.

Selassie was the Emperor of Ethiopia, which is home to a whole range of people who have their own ideas of spirituality and worship. I doubt he could have gotten them to give up their customs to worship him, and he certainly did not demand that.

So yes we can respect the symbolic and physical value of Selassie without casually moving the discussion into the illusive symbolic and ethereal domain just to make some feel comfortable.

Rasta is also about reasoning out issues. The Racism and Colorism as it relates to how Selassie is promoted above other African personalities like Garvey, could be reasoned on.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xDemystifying Haile Selassie``x1086852659,42674,rasta``x``x ``xTaken from a reasoning on Rastafari Speaks Message Board.
The threads for this reasoning are linked here

by Ayinde

"… interracial relationships are a great tool to break down racism" [sic] - Ras Adams Simeon

Ras Adam said: "robert raskind, a white anmerican, is down in jamaica tell the people of the land to forgive whitey for the past so the healing can begin. i guess he figures the apology reparing is not going to be coming any time soon and so let jamaicans be the bigger person and say i forgive you and tsrat the healing to move on"

If he had come to me with that, I would have frankly told him that he should spend the rest of his life fighting for reparations to be paid to Blacks. He should work hard and give every cent he earns, in excess of what he needs for basic survival, to Black groups. He should go and try to change the conduct of Whites. I would not let him feel that 'sorry' was good enough while he is still in a position to receive unfair privileges.

Ras Adam said: "so where do we go now? whats next?
i dont have the answer. i am just dialoging."

I rather suspect that the way you embraced Rastafari never allowed you to consider these very serious issues or to relate to better-informed people.

Ras Adam said: "because despite race being a construct, it exisits because we are all still under its spell its hypnosis. it is real because we perpetuate its lies. because we have race check boxes on applications it is an unfortunate reality. i am now white like a piece of paper but i am called white and right or wrong thats societys way right now. so to that i say anyone free to mix and mingle with whomever absolutley. humanity loving humanity. beautiful. and if you have adopted your oppressors policiies of bigotry segregation seperation superiority. sorry for you. I understand why we have these reactions reflexes, but hopefully we can elevate and forward humanity one day. p.s. there's no S on my 1st name. ADAM."

I am not under any spell about race. I understand it quite well, and most people who do are less likely to fall prey to the many deceptions that result from racism. They can always watch out for all the varying levels of unfair privileges that are associated with it.

You can mix with whomever you wish, but the fact still remains that you are still more than likely to be treated better than Blacks based on your skin color. That is what you carry around every day, and no matter how many Blacks you feel that you embrace, you will be still accorded unfair advantages in this White system. So simply feeling that you are different does not change the system. When there is equal opportunity for all then there will be no race issue. It is strange that you do not like Blacks to take this into account when dealing with you. You expect Blacks to be colorblind in a white system that is unfair to them. Unfortunately for you and for others, some don't challenge you on this often enough, especially as you are involved in Black affairs.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRace..so now what?``x1087185600,617,views``x``x ``xTaken from a reasoning on Rastafari Speaks Message Board.
The threads for this reasoning are linked here

by Ayanna

"… interracial relationships are a great tool to break down racism" [sic] - Ras Adams Simeon

I personally find this a very ugly suggestion. Not because I have a personal problem with people of any race mixing for whatever personal reasons they desire, but for a white person to come into a black movement/ forum and advocate race mixing is extremely ugly in my view. As someone from a Caribbean island that is extremely 'mixed' racially due to our slave plantation legacy and later further infusions of Indian, Chinese, Syrian and Portuguese labourers and merchants, I know quite well, and I am sure other informed Caribbean ones can attest to this, how often we see whites looking at little mixed, light skinned children with a preferential eye over dark skinned children or at children with 'good hair' over children with 'bad hair'. Because these whites may find these mixed children cute, or even have a relationship with those who may be a part of their biological family, it does not mean they suddenly love black people or even learn to view blacks without racism, it just means that they are grateful to at least have a less black one in their midst.

To me, any white that advocates race mixing hates black people. I see the same attitude in many blacks in the Caribbean as well. Many of them also prefer these children who are mixed and light skinned, and curly/ strait haired. This is simply a continuation of the degradation of plantation slavery where to have a mixed child would mean possible upward advancement for that child. It is also a manifestation of an ingrained self-hatred where one desires to be as close to white as possible. Surely you must be aware of this. We have debated this issue when we looked at colourism before, and when we looked at the whole issue of hair straitener vs natural hair and how each is viewed.

Race mixing is certainly not a new phenomenon. It was rampant among plantation societies and is rampant now. Certainly you cannot advocate that planters who sexed black slaves eventually became less racist? Certainly you cannot state that because people jumped into bed with each other that they suddenly developed some deep abiding understanding of race issues and their own hypocrisy and ignorance? Sex is the oldest form of domination in the book and we women know that quite well. You will have to come again with that argument to convince me. Especially when I live in a society where racism is simply more undercover especially among the various mixed shades of the black community, where most would rather die than be called African or allied with the kinky haired black Africans.

From the way this discussion has been going it would appear that the way to end racism in the view of some here is to eradicate the pure black race! To turn all blacks into a non- threatening shade of brown! All blacks! From the half confused self-denigrating Diaspora black to the pure Bantu woman proud of her race and culture. To do what? To create a race of Halle Berry's to make us more palatable to racist whites who want an exotic and not a real person? Indeed the problem of racism simply becomes even more dense and complex when there is race mixing. It certainly does not eradicate it, and it may even compound it.

This is no 'pie in the sky' assumption. I can state this having lived in a biological family where the skin tones and mixing runs the whole gamut, as well as observing a mixed race community and wider society for many years. I have always been aware that the preferred general aesthetic was to be mixed and light, among whites who viewed blacks and among many blacks who viewed other blacks.

I can say much more on this if others engage the subject properly and with an eye to viewing the real situation that exists. It may be nice to assume that at some indefinite point in the indiscernible future that we will all mix and be a melting pot of friendly brown, but I can tell you that there are societies where this has already happened to a considerable extent, and they are no closer to resolving race issues than they were in the 1800's.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRace mixing to to break down racism?``x1087272000,30044,views``x``x ``xTaken from a reasoning on Rastafari Speaks Message Board.
The threads for this reasoning are linked here

by Ayinde

"… interracial relationships are a great tool to break down racism" [sic] - Ras Adams Simeon

Genocide:
The deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group

The Rastafari Movement is political, cultural and Black African focused.

Is that what (((SOME))) mean when they say Rastafari is a new breed of people? Is the motivation here to end the Black race? Surely they are not selling this 'mix and get along' idea to those at the head of the capitalist system. Try telling those like Bill Gates that they should marry and share their wealth with the poor fat Bantu woman in Africa to help break down racism.

These are the kind of views that are held close by some or even many Whites when they get into Black Movements. Their mission is to destroy Blacks racially, politically and culturally as well as change the objectives of the movement.

So I make no apologies for having extreme caution when dealing with many people, especially Whites in a Black Movement. Many just do not get it, and want to be spokespeople for Black causes.

It is quite easy for anyone to shout 'Haile Selassie' and 'Rastafari' all the time, while holding tight to his image. Many don't get that different people interpret these symbols differently. So Haile Selassie for some lighter ones can easily be the symbol of covertly encouraging Blacks to race-mix so that they (Whites) can get off the hook, by doing away with Blacks. The easiest thing to do is to copy the symbols and use them against the very Blacks they were supposed to uplift (not eradicate).

I am sure that their are many other 'White Rastafarians' who hold these genocidal ideas (they may honestly not see it as genocide) while dealing with Blacks in this movement. I mean if one who has been around so long could so casually let it out then I am sure that there are many others.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRe: Race mixing to to break down racism?``x1087272000,4882,views``x``x ``xA response on the thread:
Garvey speaks on Haile Selassie I
Rastafari Speaks Message Board

by Ayinde

I can agree that some people can be inspired to do some deeper reflection on their lives, and even get their first window into African affairs through Selassie. That is easy to see. It is also clear that for many, Selassie is not just a symbol and he did not operate to their satisfaction. I do not agree with many of the positions he took, but I don’t spell them out. There are many other personalities that we can examine to look at things another way and make our own judgment.

I am in no way agreeing with the idea that hailing up Selassie is the cornerstone / foundation of Rasta for reasons I have given before. I also disagree with the idea that he is the only or ideal teacher for Africans. But as I said earlier, I see no problem with him as one of our many ancestors whom we can learn from. For Africans to be insisting that he is our supreme godhead is simply no way to unite. There is no way all Africans would ever agree on this for a whole variety of reasons, and insisting on this is really inconsiderate especially when many people will be inspired by different personalities depending on their own state of awareness, and this is totally consistent with the free mindedness of Rasta.

I deliberately try to keep away from extensive criticisms of Haile Selassie because I am aware that there are others around who would use those arguments for a different agenda than aiding the development of the African community.

There was a thread by some Oromo posters that addressed much of this. That thread is linked in the reasoning section found through the articles link above.

Once Africans are receptive to learning from a wide variety of our ancestors then they will not have any major issue.

On the issue of generalizing about Rastafari and Christianity, it is also my experience that the majority of people who embrace Rastafari come to it with a Christian leaning. So I find nothing strange about generalizing about that. Of course the exceptions are in the minority. It is easy to see that if some people have done more research, and also have more experiences with oppression from colonized Blacks as well as the white dominated system then they would bring more fire to the reasoning. The issues to them will not be exercises in mental gymnastics but will show the urgency of their experiences. That is how Africans should react to clear and present danger.

Although all people are free to their views on all these matters. I doubt that everyone will agree on everything. But in saying this I am quite clear that it is important to see through the motivations of people before making alliances to build community.

I am more in agreement with Kelani’s views on Selassie not being the ideal symbol for dark-skinned kinky-haired Africans. I say this for many reasons that I have given before on discussions about people’s sensitivity to issues as it relates to how it affects the Black kinky-haired Africans. Too often I am not impressed with the moves of people who just do not get it, because they do not feel it from that end of the spectrum. This does not mean that a Blacker person will get it. I am simply saying that I will quicker choose a Blacker more informed person to speak on my behalf over a fairer person. The simple reason is that a Blacker person who has experienced the worst of the system, and is committed to the highest of integrity is LESS LIKELY to neglect the people whom the system negatively affects the most.

I have seen many others who did what they thought to be their best, but they never tackled the issues with the urgency that the Blacker ones expect. It is like they have to appease the rest, and if there are leftovers then the Blacker ones get considered.

Again this is my personal view. I have seen many, especially Black kinky-haired women, who have many negative experiences in this corrupt system, and when they are armed with the ability to express their own views, they will do well in the frontline of any movement.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xBlack Africans and the Symbol of Selassie``x1087358400,54092,rasta``x``x ``xTaken from a reasoning on Rastafari Speaks Message Board.
The threads for this reasoning are linked here

by Ayinde

"… interracial relationships are a great tool to break down racism" [sic] - Ras Adams Simeon

Ras Adam said: "preschoolers love to play with kids if all colors, then someone poisons their minds and by middle school they are mostly segregated for life. sick sick sick and i won't look blindly at people boosting up these ideals." a

Seeing that Whites control the miseducation system, media etc, then Whites are mostly responsible for miseducating the young ones. It is to the White system you should appeal, and not to Blacks. You are really asking Blacks to change when Whites have the economic and political power to do something about it all.

In a Black movement it is quite in order for Blacks to suggest that other Blacks should not race mix. It is in order because as Blacks we see nothing from the White system that is about fundamentally changing its attitude towards Blacks. So it is a direct response to Racism, White arrogance and material domination. The solution to Racism is not that Blacks must accommodate Whites, but Whites should change their ways, compensate Blacks, and back away from any form of control over Blacks. Whites should respect the rights of Blacks to chart their own course, and even make their own mistakes. You cannot have it both ways with privileges in both the White and Black communities. It is like keeping a box of apples, then asking the Black person to share half of his one apple with you in order to demonstrate that he is about equal opportunity. You will have a box PLUS a half of his ONE apple, and he just a half of an apple. When whites and other light-skinned ones come with their unfair expectations of Blacks, and wanting the same treatment as Blacks in Black Movements, this is how they come over. Their race/color privileges speak loudly here.

Your idea of Utopia spells out Genocide for dark-skinned Africans.

In all the regions where Blacks have almost been bleached out, like Argentina, and to a lesser extent Venezuela and Brazil, the Whites who feel they are unmixed, still dominate the economic and educational landscape, and racism is rampant there.

Aboriginal children (the offspring of a white parent and an Aborigine parent) were taken from their families and raised in orphanages where they were to be civilized with the intention of marrying them to a white person or grooming them to be a domestic servant. They had charts and all to show how to pale out the Aborigines population. There is a movie about this that sometimes shows on cable named, 'Rabbit-Poof Fence'

You have posted several times that 'Rasta don't deal with Racism'. And given some of your views, it is obvious that you have not dealt with these racial issues inclusive of White privileges, while you claim alliances with Blacks.

So your suggestion might sound Utopian to you, other uninformed light-skinned ones, and maybe some very deluded colonized Blacks. But from an informed Black-kinky-haired African point of view, they are extremely racist. You are proposing that the Black victims of Racism should change their skin color as a means to end racism. It matters not that you say race mixing, which includes whites, as you are quite White and privileged to know that White economic and political dominance, would remain, hence no change in the status quo.

You may also be unaware that some Blacks, who can make millions of dollars in spite of the oppressive nature of the White system, are the ones most likely to end up with poor Whites who feel they cannot get ahead in the White system. So the economic benefits from these Blacks quickly return to Whites.

Mind you, I am not seeking any apology from you for that ridiculous suggestion. However, I would suggest that you think again as nowhere in this response of yours have you shown an understanding of how racist that proposition was, not withstanding the fact that these issues have been discussed time and time again on this board. It is quite understandable that many light-skinned and other colonized ones on these public forums will not feel the magnitude of the disrespect and depth of racism that fuels such a proposition. The fact that you are at pains to defend it to the extent of even calling it Utopian, says much more about how deeply ingrained these anti-Black feelings are, and how this 'rainbow', 'one people' talk can really be a call to silence the dark-skinned Black voices.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRace mixing and Racism``x1087358400,64974,views``x``x ``xTaken from a reasoning on Rastafari Speaks Message Board. The threads for this reasoning are linked here

by Ayinde

Maybe many will not get the impact of the insult in Adam's proposition. It should be an insult to all who embrace any Black Movement. But it goes deeper than that, and I really do not expect everyone to get it. He has been associating with Black people and, I suspect from his post, children for a long time, so what he is advocating is part of how he either covertly and/or overtly relates to children as well.

The other issue is the earlier point I made about people interpreting Haile Selassie's speeches to suit their own anti-Black agendas. I am sure Ras Adam Simeon is familiar with most of Haile Selassie's speeches apart from many other things, and if that is what he gathered from them, then there is something fundamentally wrong with how some are dealing with the messages. Many Blacks, especially the dark-skinned kinky hair type, experience the system one way, and others, who are privileged in various degrees, who do not feel what some Blacks do, are certainly taking these speeches another way. For example, Ras Adam interpreted this part of Haile Selassie's speech, "…until the color of a man skin is no more significance than the color of his eyes…" as validation for his race mixing to solve racism argument. Let me again quote the actual premise that he is defending: "I think interacial relationships are a great tool to break down racism.". So it is obvious that he has been interpreting Haile Selassie's messages quite differently from many Blacks he claims to embrace.

The Selassie speeches, Marijuana, and Reggae music on their own, were not sufficient to change the core of these beliefs about racism, and how it is viewed and felt by many Blacks. This is no casual thing; this points to many issues. It is also about the fact that unsuspecting Blacks may be embracing and promoting ones who are quite aware of the ripple effect of their words and actions, to the detriment of Blacks. Let me quote him here: "i'm a beleiever in the zen ripple effect of o persons actions one butterfly in kansas' flutter causing a tsumani in fiji idea. so all we can do for sure is work on ourselves and hope to influenece a few w/ positive ideals." -Ras Adam

Maybe some do not appreciate that all the genocides started with ideas that spread with either lightening speed or the 'zen ripple effect', to use his words. So it is a matter of self-defense to expose the madness that these ideas are trying to encourage.

My views are certainly not about hating anyone, or trying to advocate that people should not make their own judgement on how they form relationships.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRas Adam misinterpreting Selassie's speeches``x1087444800,99070,views``x``x ``xINN WORLD REPORT

HICKS: The new book is called Welcome to Terrorland, about Mohammad Atta and the 911 cover up in Florida. There is a lot to talk about here. You are unique because a lot of these 911 books are speculative. But you do did two years of independent research in Florida obviously putting yourself through a lot of risk and danger. We want to jump in and talk about Amanda Keller, Mohammad Atta's girlfriend and maybe go to a clip later, but before we do that give us the summary of what you've found in Florida.

HOPSICKER: What I found in Florida was that the government story about the terrorist conspiracy's activities before September 11th is not just an error, it s a lie. The time line is wrong. The FBI's timeline is wrong. Everything they are doing is designed to protect an operation that was under way in southwest Florida that trained, between 1999 and September 2001, literally hundreds of Arabs to fly. In other words, in 1998, there were two or three Arabs learning how to fly, by the end of '99 it was flying hundreds of them. So obviously there was a covert operation going on; the flight school where Mohammad Atta went to, Huffman Aviation in Florida is not a business and was not operating like a business. So it was, and is, something else.


Full interview:

Also reproduced here``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xMohammad Atta and the 911 cover up in Florida``x1087470097,14357,world``x``x ``xThis is one response from among many that are linked here. The debate is on the Rastafari Speaks Message Board.

Interracial Relationships and Brown Babies

By Ayinde

The issue is not about people mixing if they so choose. No one person can decide how people should associate, as there are many reasons individuals can get together with people of different races.

The issue is Adam's thoughtless view, "… interracial relationships are a great tool to break down racism" [sic], together with the fact that it is coming from one who many may have unwittingly taken seriously in this Black community. Remember that he is also talking about a Utopian race of Brown people.

The Rastafari Movement is a Black Movement that primarily seeks to uplift Black Communities, following the degrading effects of Slavery, Colonialism, Neocolonialism, and Racism on Black People.

It stands to reason that the movement is supposed to be encouraging Black people to take pride in themselves, their race and color etc. So it is more than passing strange for me to hear Ras Adam, who is supposed to be around for a long time, advocating that a great tool to break down racism is about bringing an end to Black-skinned people through race-mixing. So we should all dislike being Black to end racism? The further implication of that is to push people to further dislike Black skin. It is also about trying to legitimize what takes place in Black communities as a result of Colorism, i.e. Blacks hooking up with lighter shades based on a distorted idea of Beauty, and for what they feel is upward social mobility.

I certainly do not feel that his idea can have any real effect on me personally. But it sheds light on many issues, most of all, how people are receiving these messages that are popular in this movement, and whose interest is being served here.

That ridiculous proposition is indirectly saying that the problem with racism is the Blackness of Black people, since it proposes a set of Brown people as the final solution. So how are Black people who are in a Black Movement supposed to take that? Here it is that this White guy is now inadvertently telling Blacks: That the problem with racism is their Blackness.

Well to any sensible person that should be seen as downright disrespectful and racist. Making that type of suggestion in a BLACK movement is obscene.

We already experience brown-skinned ones discriminating against Blacker ones, which is called Colorism, so any move to promote them as the ideal, spells out hopelessness for the Blackest of our people. That is certainly not utopia for the Blacker ones.

If you were Black with kinky-hair like me, and had to deal with the silly bigoted conduct of people who perceive themselves superior based on the color of their skin, and the texture of their hair, then you would immediately know that the proposition spells doom for Blacks. If more people do not see it that way, it is only because there are less Black-skinned, kinky-haired ones on these forums, who actually do take pride in being Black.

Racism is a reality; Colorism is a reality; the idea of 'nice hair' that is assessed based on its proximity to European straight hair is also a reality that fuels negative discrimination. All these discriminations, and more, impact on Black-skinned kinky-haired Africans the most, especially in these Eurocentric societies. Even among many light-skinned and Blacker ones who profess to be above these things, I have seen negative actions/reactions based on these discriminations.

I have had to publicly defend the rights of some children who were denied entry to schools because their parents either braided their short kinky hair or they had dreadlocks. The schools called that untidy.

All these discriminations, and more, impact on a certain type of Black people the most. I am also aware of the negative discriminations coming from even mixed-race people, even within the same family. So saying race-mixing would end racism is crap, and worst yet it unfairly places the burden for dealing with racism on the worst victims. It is saying that the Blackness is unacceptable, and the lighter shades are acceptable. That is a genocidal anti-Black approach to trying to deal with racism.

In a Black Movement that is supposed to be fighting racism and other ills, it is quite appropriate for Ras Marcus, if he is indeed Black (I never met the man), to advocate that Blacks should not mix. Remember Blacks are the victims in the system, and to some of us, most Whites only pay lip service. Often it seems like Whites who are around in Black Movements want Blacks to fix the situation, and worst yet, to do it without discomforting whites. It is not important for them to understand the issues. They appear cool just smoking weed, dancing to reggae, and throwing around Rasta/African clichés. Much about the conduct of lighter ones when dealing with these issues demonstrates their lack of sensitivity, in my view. They always want the Blacker ones to watch their words, be casually friendly, and to accommodate them. To deny them is to have these Whites and other light-skinned or mixed-race ones suddenly accusing some of us of reverse racism, bigotry, feeling we know too much, and many other choice adjectives for not pandering to them. This does not mean that dark-skinned Blacks do not act ridiculously at times, and deserve cautioning.

The fact that I have been able to get what I wanted, in spite of the corruption of this Eurocentric system, is no consolation to many others like myself. The system is still wrong, and these issues have to be addressed. It is people's ignorance of these core issues that keep many from being incensed at what is taking place in Haiti. The lives of the Blacker ones are way undervalued to the extent that many are not moved when they see these Blacker ones under attack. So I see no reason to make alliances with people who have not demonstrated sensitivity to these issues.

Many mixed ones were historically privileged to have had educational and other opportunities ahead of the Blacker ones, and they were more articulate for a while, but they still do not get it (in my view), as they are often too busy playing for personal attention and fortune (some blacker ones also operate that way). Many light-skinned ones do operate as if they expect the Blacker ones to be their servants. Also fair-skinned ones are used to saying what they want anywhere they feel, and they don't care who they are disrespecting when they conduct themselves badly.

So any proposal that says the Blackness of people's skin must change to deal with these learnt behaviors, is really genocidal for Blacker ones. If Blacks had the economic and political control, and were saying that the solution to racism is to do away with white skin through race mixing, you would have easily seen the madness implied there. So a call like that about Blacks should be seen as a call for the annihilation of Blacks.

Informed Blacks in the Rasta community should not jump to any idea of race mixing for the purpose of getting fairer skins. That is already an issue that ‘we' are supposed to be educating Blacks against. The Blacks who find that acceptable would be those who have problems accepting their own Blackness. The mixed ones who find it acceptable are doing so because the proposal validates their superiority complexes. The Whites who find nothing wrong with that proposition are just the materially poor whites being comforted with the idea of their 'superior' over all others. You will hardly find wealthy Whites supporting such a proposal.

Remember, we are discussing White Ras Adam's 'Utopian' idea in a Black Movement, which is, "interracial relationships are a great tool to break down racism". Add this to his firm position that Whites are entitled to benefit from the Repatriation Movement, and I can see the master plan. He says it is only a few Whites benefiting from Repatriation so far, so it is nothing, and he called me a bigot for challenging Whites' claim to Repatriation to Africa.

The only line he has not crossed so far is in making a claim for Whites to receive Reparations for Slavery. He does not have to worry about Reparations, as he knows that Whites have no intention in paying that. Anyhow, if his utopian master Brown race plan could work, and Reparations were being paid out, Blacks would be forced to the back of the line for whatever change that falls from the pockets of the fairer ones.

I am saying that Ras Adam's Utopian Brown-skinned race to break down racism is only about keeping the Blacker ones down, and promoting Ras Adam's Whiteness in a Black Movement.

He should take advice similar to what the China Daily media gave Bush, which is, to do himself and the world a huge favour by establishing a closer relationship with reality rather than wrestling with his own version of the truth.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRas Adam's solution to racism``x1087591628,76022,views``x``x ``xTaken from a reasoning on Rastafari Speaks Message Board.
The threads for this reasoning are linked here

by Ayanna

"… interracial relationships are a great tool to break down racism" [sic] - Ras Adams Simeon

People always like to jump the gun. To quickly move from the stage of discomfort, rigorous self-examination, and plain hard work to a point where they can make themselves feel more comfortable. They do this especially when subjects or ideas come up that challenge beliefs or behaviors that they have always held close, or always adhered to. They also do this to avoid having their own hypocrisy exposed.

“Race… so now what?” How did you even reach there? It appears to me that you and so many others have not even addressed the intricacies of racism or understood the idea of race fully, yet you want to jump to the 'now what' stage? There are several truths that people need to face and the truths are not pretty and sugarcoated. There are no messages of peace and love and forgiveness and reconciliation there. However the majority of people (although they claim otherwise) has no interest in the truth and refuses to ruthlessly examine how they contribute daily to the system of racist oppression. They have no intention of delving head first into the history of the movement they claim to love and follow and they certainly have no intention of seeing its flaws, its inaccuracies or its perversions. The fact is, and I have seen this too many times on this board to count, that many so called Rastas on this board want nothing to do with Africa, they want nothing to do with its cultural and racial core and they certainly want nothing to do with the real roots of this movement that would certainly find their own ideas sorely lacking.

The hardest thing for people to do is look at themselves. They will try all kinds of acrobatics to avoid it. They will run and bring ' facts and figures', they will post five and six articles, and they will prattle and make noise and pick fights etc just to avoid the stillness in their own minds that is deafening to them. This stillness is deafening because it is truth. It is facing yourself and your own hypocrisy and making a determined effort to ROOT IT OUT. Once you are exposed to better information from better-informed ones and then refuse to make the shift through your own arrogance or ignorance, you will not have peace.

It is a convenient excuse and distraction from many whites and many deluded blacks to say, well yes racism exists, yes slavery happened, yes colonialism happened but that is all in the past now right? We can all forget and get along right? WRONG. History is something we live with daily. Our ancestors certainly understood this as they saw time not as horizontal and linear but vertical. Our past and our futures all intersect within us and the spiritual malaise that has resulted from the effects of our bloody history with whites and near-whites has not yet been expunged. The global political and economic structure continues to benefit from the blood of the people of colour of this world, and continues to use and exploit them for their own gains. Ones can dress it up all they like: 'Oh that is not because of racism that is just the capitalist system', or 'Look at how many mixed race couples we see nowadays, people are not racist as they used to be.' Ha! Well these naïve ones may enjoy sitting and being exploited, they may be blind to the perpetuation of history but informed ones certainly are not.

People need to deal with what IS. Racism exists, cultural discrimination exists and injustice exists. People must be clear on that first and clear on the perpetrators of this system. They must make every effort to break down this system, starting with the breaking down of the mirror of this system that exists within themselves. They must be critical of history, analytical about information and look for the subtle abuses that existed and continue to exist even among the Africans that many Rastas revere, yes, even to the ranks of the King whom you call God. They must accept the initial state of discomfort; accept the pain that often comes with the shattering of all illusions; indeed they should welcome it in pursuit of the source of all truth.

There will be no jumping the gun to appease the egos of others. Forget the 'now what' and deal with the issue first! As far as I have seen no matter how often some on this board raise the issues, twice as many run from them and bury their heads in the sand, immediately leaping to the brotherhood stage. It is not at all surprising that most of them who display this conduct are white. This denial is a trademark of white privilege. The privilege of being comfortable, of being accepted, of having your views and your ideas made the standard, of being allowed to be the one who defines, and not the one who is defined. What we need to see is that this ruthless examination of these issues benefit all of us. There are many whites and many blacks that are stuck in this loop of history and cannot see the way out of it. Until they acknowledge Africa, the blackest of the black, the ancient of the ancients, and deal with their own conduct and integrity they will have no real freedom and no real peace.

Black people will not have these issues sidelined and railroaded! We will not be rushed to the 'what next' stage when we know that the 'now' is still with us. And we will not allow whites that choose to be in our midst to do it either.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRe: Race..so now what?``x1087621540,27032,views``x``x ``xSeptember 11, July 4 and Systematic Torture

By Forrest Hylton

Having been asked to comment on the US and the meaning of its power in Latin America, I begin with a triptych of historical references. When John F. Kennedy, Jr., was assassinated more than forty years ago, Malcolm X saw it as a case of chickens coming home to roost. If I understand him, he meant that the US government could not systematically promote, employ, and/or condone violence against African Americans at home and colored peoples abroad, and expect to remain immune from its effects. Speaking at a press conference the year after Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated, H. Rap Brown, a spokesperson for "the sons [and daughters] of Malcolm X," the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, said, "Violence is as American as cherry pie." The foundational facts of US history-- the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement and terrorizing of Africans and their descendents --preceded the subjugation of the Philippines and the Caribbean by more than two centuries. Hence, as Rap Brown implied, US imperial violence needs to be viewed in proper historical context. The final reference points not to words, but deeds. As tanks rattled through Santiago streets and people were herded into stadiums by the thousands, on September 11, 1973, Salvador Allende committed suicide in the presidential palace, having refused to renounce his democratic socialist principles. Thus began what later became a worldwide transition to neoliberal capitalism under US imperial auspices.

When the World Trade Centers fell on the morning of September 11, 2001, my initial thought was that chickens had come home to roost with greater vengeance and destruction than anyone had expected. After watching images of people jumping from collapsing, burning buildings on TV, from my rooftop, I gazed at the endless clouds of smoke billowing over Brooklyn, in shock. Even for most of us living in Manhattan at the time, only Hollywood disaster movies-- many of them little more than allegories of late imperial anxiety --offered a set of referents with which to interpret what had happened. One suspects that a majority of US residents, far from the material sites of destruction, experienced the events of September 11 with the same immediacy as a combination Hollywood disaster movie/Reality TV show. After hearing a young African American woman blame the attacks on Palestinians, I thought, "It doesn't matter who did it. Sharon will use this as a way to implement his plan for a Greater Middle East, and may try to drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank altogether, while the bulldogs of the Bush administration will get their war with Iraq. In Colombia, Uribe will convince the Bush administration that he is the hemisphere's firmest ally in the fight against 'terrorism' and will help shift the phony focus on the 'war against drugs' to 'the war against drugs and terror.'" I wish I had been wrong. However, like Rumsfeld and the neoconservatives (Feith, Wolfowitz) to whom Sharon is so close politically, Sharon has encountered difficulties on the road to realizing his insane goals. Uribe has been much more successful.

Excepting Venezuela, Latin America has all but dropped off the radar screen of the US media and policy debate (such as it is) since September 11. Since no one appears to be watching, Uribe has a free hand in dealing with social protest in Colombia, which has been even more thoroughly criminalized, and linked-- with or without evidence --to "terrorism." Mass detentions are now the norm, particularly in Arauca, where most of US Special Forces troops are deployed to train an elite battalion to protect a petroleum pipeline that belongs in part to Occidental Petroleum. Paramilitary activity has taken off exponentially alongside Colombian and US army presence in Arauca, and though the military-controlled and run zones of "rehabilitation and consolidation" (ZRCs) were declared unconstitutional last April, they continue to operate as before, along the pipeline's route to the Caribbean. At the other end of the pipeline, and similar to the rest of the Atlantic coast, Coveñas is a paramilitary paradise. No need for US Special Forces there: the zone has been (and continues to be) "cleaned" of "subversives" and "terrorists" in order to save "democracy." Perhaps that explains the recent massacre, in which children were burnt alive, of the Wayúu in the upper Guajira?

In Colombia, unlike Turkey, the cleansing is not ethnic/national, although ethnic and racial minorities, like women and children, suffer a disproportionate amount of the violence. The "cleaning" is political and economic, and designed to a) rid the country of communities that stand in the way of proposed highways, canals, dams, and natural resource extraction; and b) criminalize a broad spectrum of thought and action so that the population will accept the institutionalization of impunity, the deepening of the neoliberal model, and the tightening authoritarian discipline of the government and its paramilitary allies. Never before have trade unionists (especially in the public sector), indigenous and Afro-Colombian movements, human rights activists, students and teachers, neighborhood organizations, and peasant communities come under such sustained assault, and proposed anti-terrorism legislation will make things worse-- in a country where the military already exercises police powers.

With firm US backing, however, Uribe will seek a second term in 2006 (constitutional niceties aside). The "peace process" with AUC paramilitaries-- which, along with the "bandit extermination" campaign, forms the centerpiece of Uribe's administration -- appears to have stalled for the time being, though some reports (narconews.com, eltiempo.com) suggest that war criminal Carlos Castaño, former leader of the AUC, is in Israel. He may have been aided in his escape by the US government, even though Colin Powell declared the AUC a terrorist organization on September 10, 2001, and in spite of the fact that Castaño is wanted for extradition to the US on charges of cocaine trafficking.

For Castaño, exile in Israel would represent a return to the source: following a brief stint in the Colombian army, Castaño received training in Israel in 1983, the year after Ariel Sharon's most notorious massacres in Lebanon. Carlos Castaño's "disappearance," like his older brother Fidel's, may only heighten the power of the paramilitaries-- led by Salvatore Mancuso, José Vicente Castaño, and 'Don Berna' --to "negotiate" their insertion into a state against which they have never struggled. There has been much infighting among paramilitary factions of late, which is to be expected, as they are immersed in, and emerged from, the enormously powerful criminal underworld (one of many perverse fruits of US anti-drug policy that have ripened since the days when then Vice-President George H.W. Bush's principal occupation was prosecuting the drug war). The FARC and ELN guerrillas, meanwhile, who number at least 25,000, are more isolated from the urban majority than ever, but have suffered few major military defeats, having chosen a tactical retreat in the face of government offensives, which have been successful in terms of media representation, but not on the ground. News of paramilitary atrocities has disappeared, but in Arauca, the Guajira, and across the country, massacres, assassinations, and disappearances continue, and would remain unknown to the world except for the work of courageous journalists and human rights activists. In contrast, when the FARC massacred more than thirty coca workers on a paramilitary plantation, it made headlines worldwide. The disparity of media coverage is even more striking than the brutality of the massacres, 70% of which are committed by paramilitaries, and 27% by guerrilla insurgents (almost exclusively FARC).

As Alexander Cockburn pointed out, with respect to Venezuela, it's the same guys with the same plan: Reagan redux. Roger Noriega and Otto Reich are inveterate conspirators closely connected to anti-Castro Cubans. If a democratically elected government-- Allende in 1973 in Chile; the Sandinistas after 1984 in Nicaragua; Chávez after 1998; Aristide in 2004 in Haiti --responsive in any way to the demands of its most exploited and disenfranchised citizens, comes to power in the Western Hemisphere, it must be overthrown "by any means necessary" to prevent the threat of a bad example. If a country begins to overcome the legacy of centuries of racism, poverty, and colonial/neocolonial inequality by regaining some measure of national sovereignty in the US's "backyard," the peoples of the hemisphere could get the wrong idea about democracy. They might interpret the concept as meaning direct popular participation in the taking of decisions that affect their daily lives, and they, rather than US or European multinationals, might decide to exercise control over territory and natural resource extraction, processing, and marketing. (Just look at Bolivians.) From the perspective of US imperial planners, this must never be allowed to happen again, especially because between them, Latin American countries (Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador) supply more oil to US markets than the Middle Eastern countries combined. Only the threat of a bad example explains the longevity of the US stranglehold of Cuba. Judging from John Kerry's public declarations, counter-insurgent visions for Latin America and the Caribbean will not change if George W. Bush loses November's presidential election.

Along a border which may be militarized with forty-six new tanks that former president of Spain, José María Aznar, donated to Uribe, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías faces the most rightwing, pro-US regime in South America, and if there's another coup before or after the August recall referendum, do not be surprised if Colombia sends troops at US insistence, possibly alongside US marines or Special Forces, or if AUC units, replete with Colombian soldiers, are deployed. After all, AUC troops were recently discovered on the ranch of a prominent anti-Castro Cuban in Venezuela; an incident which has yet to be clarified, but suggests a possible Miami connection between the rightwing Venezuelans, Colombians, and anti-Castro Cubans.

While resisting the overall thrust of US trade policy-- designed to monopolize Latin American resources and markets through free trade agreements --Lula, the last great hope of parliamentary Leftists and anti-globalizers worldwide, agreed to share high-tech border surveillance equipment with Uribe in 2003 and again in 2004. Unlike Chávez, Lula also signed the "Declaración de Asunción" on July 15, 2003, pledging allegiance to the imperial agenda of the "war on drugs and terror." So far, Lula has shown no signs of having an independent foreign, as opposed to trade, policy. In spite of Chávez's efforts and the struggles of vibrant people's movements from Patagonia to Panamá, Latin America remains firmly in the grip of US imperial control, though the consensus in Washington is that Venezuela and the Andean countries have become "trouble spots" where "democracy" is in danger of giving way to "terrorism"? Plan Colombia and its successor, the Andean Regional Initiative, are clear signs of how Washington intends to bring its southern neighbors into line. Compared to the Alliance for Progress, which converted Latin American militaries from "hemispheric defense" to "national security" and emphasized "civic action," current policy is all iron fist and leather glove.

To close with torture: in contrast to some parts of the world, I suspect that most Latin Americans were not shocked by the revelations from Abu Ghraib. To a greater extent than elsewhere, in Latin America and the Caribbean, successive US administrations helped institutionalize torture, along with "disappearance," as preferred methods of dealing with dissent during the Cold War. The CIA torture manuals from the 1970s-an era of criminal military dictatorships purportedly designed to fight "communism"-are widely remembered in Bolivia, where people were never disappeared and tortured on the scale of Argentina, Uruguay, or Chile. The only surprise about the images from Abu Ghraib was that they made it into the media. Though influenced in some measure by Israeli policy in the occupied territories, the worldwide gulag system established in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantánamo, and the oceans of the world, was pioneered in Latin American "National Security States" during the Cold War. Here, US-sanctioned torture is old news. What stands out about US foreign policy when viewed from La Paz (and, I imagine, other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean) is not the changes since September 11, but the remarkable continuity of imperial domination since World War II. Until that continuity is broken, and until the semantic distinction between "democracy" and "dictatorship" can plausibly be upheld, the 4th of July will provide no cause for celebration in the Americas.

Forrest Hylton is conducting doctoral research in history in Bolivia. He can be reached at forresthylton@hotmail.com. Originally published at counterpunch.org``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xUS Imperialism in Latin America``x1089000000,80777,world``x``x ``xAnother Bush Lie About Iraq: Saddam Didn't Mass Murder His People with Gas. But is it Worse than that?

by Rob Kall, OpEdNews.Com

Now we're discovering that one of the last excuses G.W. Bush has remaining for going to war, that Saddam gassed thousands of his people, is also a lie-- a lie that Bush should of and probably did know was a lie.

Back in 1988 thousands of Kurds were reported killed in the gassing of Halabja. The CIA even prepared a report on it. Too bad the Bush people don't like to bother with reports. They have direct info from God.... Oh. I guess this proves that it's not God talking to George. Maybe he's having flashbacks. Maybe it's a case of the DTs. Maybe he's having strange symptoms from choking on another pretzel.

Bottom line.... Sadam did not kill those people. Bottom line--- Bush knew it and still uses it to argue his case for going to war with Saddam. This article about how Saddam will use testimony from the CIA to prove he did not do the gassing got me started on the column you are reading.

The IRANIANS gassed Halabja. The US knew it. Bush senior knew it and that's why, in 1988, the US gave Iraq poison gas to defend itself with.

Yet George W. Bush, in building his case for war, said, "The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured."

Now, it appears that Saddam didn't use the poison gas on his people at all.

It gets even worse. When you tie in Achmed Chalabi, the accused Iranian Mole, who fed Bush's military neocons lies about Iraqi WMDs, you get a picture that adds up to the Iranians first mass murdering thousands of Kurds, then tricking Bush to go to war to do their dirty work-- defeating Saddam and neutralizing Iraq as a military threat. Bush has been working for the Iranians!

Now, one might be inclined to attribute this to the stupidity of George W. Bush and his advisors. But wait. His advisors are supposed to be really smart. And there's that little matter of the October Surprise that Ronnie Reagan and his VP George Bush senior pulled off upon taking office in the White House. It was the mess in Iran, more than anything else, that blew it for Jimmy Carter. Iran saved the Republicans' butts and handed them an eight year reign in Washington DC.

Is it too much of a stretch to speculate that the Republicans used their experience exploiting chaos in the Middle east to win the 2002 elections? Is it too much of a stretch to speculate that the Iranians worked with some of the neocons? Maybe. Is it too much of a stretch to speculate that the Iranians used their experience manipulating politics in America, used Chalabi to trick Bush and his failed advisors into a war that eliminated their sworn enemy and neutralized the army that had killed hundreds of thousands of their troops? Is that such a stretch? I don't think so.

Bottom line-- when an independent or right winger tells you he or she is glad we took out Evil Saddam the mass murderer, point out that Bush has lied about the mass murder too, that the worse mass murder that happened in Iraq was perpetrated by Iran, and that Bush was tricked by Chalabi into doing Iran's dirty work. Bush's father even gave Saddam poison gas to use in defense against the Iranians.

Weapons of mass destruction? No!

Saddam as evil mass murderer? No!

Huh? Saddam was not a mass murderer as Bush and Blair said? But he cut off people's heads and hands. That's nasty, right? If you think so, then take a look at Saudi Arabia. Decapitation is a regular form of execution in Saudi Arabia, and other parts of the Arab world. Cutting off hands is also a punishment for unacceptable actions, like thievery, that has been around for centuries in the Arab world. Years ago, while sharing a family dinner in a home in Morocco, I started to take a handful of food from a family-style bowl (cous-cous, I think) but they raised a ruckus and stopped me before my left hand touched the bowl. My host explained that the left hand was used for clean-up, in a country where toilet paper was a luxury most people couldn't afford. It was dirty and offensive to use the left hand to eat. When a thief is punished, his right hand is cut off and he can no longer share food with others.

Was Saddam the worst offender in the Middle East? I don't think so. The Iranians were guilty of gassing thousands of people. But the Iranians had a real army. Bush went after an Iraqi army that was far weaker than the one his father took on in 1991. The real villains are still out there. But now, after being duped by the Iranians, Bush has created a playground for terrorists that they would never have dreamed possible. Bush created a recruiting scenario for terrorists that they wouldn't have even fantasized could be that good.

What's left for Bush to lean on in his battle to hold onto his appointment to the Whitehouse? The divisive cultural issues are all that he has left to salvage his plunging presidency. We can expect him to go after churches, NASCAR dads, blue collar moms, southern Christians, homophobics... and that he and his surrogates will stir the waters of prejudice and division to a level this nation has not seen since the civil war. It's going to get very ugly.

Rob Kall rob@opednews.com is publisher of progressive news and opinion website www.opednews.com and organizer of cutting edge meetings that bring together world leaders, such as the Winter Brain Meeting and the StoryCon Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story This article is copyright Rob Kall and originally published by opednews.com but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog or web media so long as this credit paragraph is attached. Reproduced from: www.opednews.com/kall_070604_gas_lies.htm``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xDid Saddam Mass Murder His People with Gas?``x1089168786,45229,world``x``x ``xThe Dhoti and The Dashiki

By: Linda E. Edwards

It must be getting close to Emancipation Day in Trinidad and Tobago, the great Day of Denial for Afro-Trinidadians who examine themselves to discover who they are, and continue to proclaim that they "not African", as in "me ent no African nuh." And once again, I dust off computer time to comment on these idiocies, uttered by Ministers of Government and other so called leaders of the people. Once again, I futilely invite them to look around, and look at themselves; but as my niece Elke is fond of pointing out "denial is more than a river in Africa."

It seems almost ancient history to be quoting the former Nigerian Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, who was serving here in 1986. He was speaking at a programme at Valsyn Teachers College that year, another Year of Denial, at a programme sponsored by the Anti-Apartheid Organization of TnT. What he said then has stayed in my memory. Permit me to paraphrase: I constantly meet people in my work here, who look African, but who are quick to tell you that "I am part Chinese", or "part Indian," or "mixed with whites." What I see when I look at them, is African. The African is distinctive by his skin colour and hair type. Now, wherever you go in the world, when people see you, they will react to you first as an African, then when you speak, they will probably assign a category: West Indian, North American or African, but first they will judge you and react to you as an African."

Now what about this the Ken Valleys and Reggie Dumases, educated men supposedly, do not understand? It is that absence of leadership among Trinis of African ancestry that still has me puzzled. What level of education does it take to make a child of the African Diaspora stop the foolish utterances that seem to give aid and comfort to those who stole our ancestors, raped our women and attempted genocide in various forms on our people, and are still doing this today? What is there about the British system of doing things that causes a brainwashing unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate themselves? Why are our male leaders continuing the denigration of our people?

"I once met some Negroes on a very dark night. Their faces were so black, I could hardly see them, but their two rows of snow-white teeth were quite plain". Capt. Cutteridge, West Indian Reader Book 3 (I think it is Book Three, but I no longer have the copy, but I memorized that text a long time ago.) Trinidadian children of all races were made to read this, and when an inspector of schools came to visit Cumuto R.C. which is where I went to school, and we read these passages to him in fluent English, he, having had his eyes opened, and being Negro like us, asked if anyone had ever seen a Negro. "Noooo" we chorused. None of us would admit to meeting anything so black at night that we could see nothing but teeth. (In my child's mind I thought of a lagahoo or some other evil being.)

The inspector gave a bitter smile, and turned to the teacher and criticized him for making us read that derogatory passage. I assign this inspectorship to Mr. A.A. Mark, who having been to England, had had his eyes opened.

Now, my father was quite dark of skin, but I could see him at night. So whatever was being described in the West Indian Reader had no relation to all of his ancestors who arrived in Trinidad in 1815, as a group of free Africans (Mingo and Minerva Edwards were the ancestors who came). It had no relation to my beloved great aunt Say-Say, who went to the ancestors in 1985 and lived on the ancestral land in Hardbargain all her life. and no relation to any of the very dark-skinned people of Williamsville of whom I am a direct descendant.

Eric Williams also had his eyes opened in England. As a young man he must have been proud of his curly hair, his mixed racial heritage and all that. Then he discovered that he was Negro, and there were limits beyond which a person of his heritage could not go, double first at Oxford notwithstanding. He turned that anger into freedom for his people in Trinidad and Tobago, put a lot of emphasis on education, and went to visit the Homeland, Africa, on his first big international trip after Independence.

His political descendants are being narrow-minded when they simply ascribe to clothing a racial identity, of which they are not proud. It is more than clothing. "Best Village", Mastana Bahar" "Carifesta", and all the folk choirs in the country, are meant to celebrate the duality of our culture. Before we get comfortable in our clothes, we should be comfortable in our skins.

I often point out to the African-American children I try to educate through the teaching of literature, interspersed with social commentary, that we Diaspora Africans(diaspora means the scattering, for those too busy to look it up,) that we Africans in the west are the only people I have ever met who use our skin colour as a curse: "Move yo Black Arse(African American) "haul yuh arse" Afro-Trini. "Yuh done black aready, yuh doh have to be stupid too", also Afro-Trini.

When I was a teenager, it was said of a certain family in TnT, rich in legal tradition, that one could not go to visit them at night. You couldn't find them. This type of slur was considered very funny, so funny in fact, that I who was a country bookie, and never knew these people personally, know the mauvais langue up to today. Friends of mine were proud to decline marriage offers from Tobagonians, because "He too dark". They wanted their children to have good hair. No marriage came, no children either, with no kind of hair whatever.

These attitudes are so ingrained in us, children of Africa, that friends of mine believe they are complimenting me when in winter, my skin is paler than in summer and they refer to it as pretty.. And when I used to straighten my hair, people thought I was beautiful. Now, they don't, and these are Caribbean people of African descent. I am not talking about your uneducated people who do not know better. I am talking of women with M.A's , Ph'D's and M.D.'s

It is the male version of these "foolish women" who still are grateful for the raping of their female ancestors so that they have some bastardized white blood in them, that publicly proclaim to all who trumpet their foolishness utterances in the papers, that they "ent no African". What the devil are they then? Are they Taino? Aruac? Other First American? Indian(from India), Chinese? European? Indonesian? What?

All of these people have distinct facial characteristics that tie them to a land and a people. No matter where they live, and how long they have lived there, these people, unless they were wiped out like the Tainos and Aruacs, maintain a distinct culture, and identity. It shows itself in preferred foods, clothing, and in the case of Aboriginal people who were forcefully raised as whites, a sense of anomie than demands a return to their Aboriginal cultures.

Our African men, in Trinidad and Tobago, in many of their public utterances, display that same sense of anomie. Their pot of clay, out of which they drank their lives, is broken. It has been cast away, and they are looking for the fragments to reassemble them, and rescue their sense of wholeness, mistakenly, they constantly proclaim who they are not, when skin and hair, as well as nose give them away.

Achille, Walcott's character in Omeros, sails up the Congo and is asked by his ancestor what does his name mean, and he replied "nothing. It's just a name."
The father's comment sears the mind. "And did they mean you to be nothing, those who named you? A name states the expectation one has for a child." Achille has no response.

So, once we though that Timbuctu was a place of Mooks. Who exactly told us that? When we learned that The University of Timbuctu exchanged medical personnel with Oxford in the thirteenth century, some of our minds denied that. We had been too brainwashed already.

A magazine I subscribe to, (its free, published by Saudi Aramco Oil company,) documents the Muslim world, in all its glory. A recent issue devoted conspicuous space to the manuscripts of Mauritania, West Africa. Because Islam does not destroy old books, researchers were able to find Korans and other writings that go back in West Africa to before the year 1000CE. This means that West Africans, of the skin colour of denial of many Trinis were reading and writing in Arabic five hundred years before Columbus came to the New World, and helped begin the slave trade in Africans that today causes prominent politicians in Trinidad and Tobago to downcry the wearing of African and Indian clothes. The same colonial domination brought both African and Indian to TnT. We know that.

As for me, a Christian, African, Trinitodebone female, my wardrobe is full of clothes from other cultures. Abayas(recent acquisitions from a trip to Saudi Arabia), bubbas, ponchos, saris and shalwar kameezes, as well as the clothes from the West. Comfort in one's skin and hair allows comfort in a wide choice off beautiful clothes. I am happy with men in agbadas and dashikis. Life is a costume party, and one should dress for the occasion, and know who one is.

Trinidadian men who are "making it" and who vociferously deny their African-ness are simply lost men. The Western Christianity that they adhere to, proclaimed their ancestors as savages, and enslaved them, yet they cling to the tenets of that belief system, and its euro-centric values, while denying the Africa, whose one teaspoon of blood darkens the skin, thicken the lips, and widens the nose beautifully.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xIn The Valley Of The Mooks``x1089476495,746,views``x``x ``xby Ayinde
Updated: July 17, 2004

Why is the U.S./Europe suddenly concerned about the racist Arab drive to kill off dark-skinned Africans in Sudan? This should be the question at the forefront of the minds of thinking people. The UN and the U.S. (both partners in crime) are aware that the entire White World policies today were built on the foundation of racism. It is the same racism that allows the U.S. and UK to lie to the world and invade Iraq without the fear that they will be charged as war criminals. Who will charge the U.S. and UK criminals? Certainly not their other European counterparts.

Look how easily France, which 'opposed' the war on Iraq, was able to join the U.S., and supported (to put it mildly) the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. They did this just because he raised minimum wage, and was calling on France to pay reparations. They intend to keep Haiti as a sweatshop under the financial control of a few Whites. It matters not that they installed a Black puppet leader there. The first elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was considered unfit by a group of thugs with support from the U.S. and France. They did not care how many ordinary poor Blacks in Haiti elected their president. These racist European misleaders felt it was their decision to make.

We Black Africans, even in the West, know quite well that they get away with these abuses because other people generally do not care about Black kinky-hair Africans. They were conditioned to feel that we are incapable of organizing ourselves and managing our own economic wellbeing. When Whites want to demonstrate their paternalism over Africans, they organize these massive media charities to show they are saving the suffering helpless Blacks -- the same Blacks that both Arabs and Whites exploit, and keep in a desperate situation so they can steal or cheaply acquire labour and resources.

This takes me to my main concern. It should be made clear that the U.S. and other Europeans interest in so-called peace in Sudan, and the sudden mainstream media coverage of the racist, murderous conduct of the 'Arabs' in Sudan, is not driven by their concern for the well-being of Black Africans. As usual, it is to get control of the resources, which in this case is the oil deposits in Darfur and southern Sudan. Once again Africans are being crucified between two murdering thieves, the U.S./Europeans and the Arabs.

"Khartoum's genocidal policy in Darfur and the south is also a grab for resources. The Arab north is arid and barren, but the south is arable with vast oil deposits Khartoum covets and badly needs. In the west, in Darfur, Arabs seeking to escape the spreading desert kill and displace Africans for more productive land." - Makau Mutua

The African Union has stated that they are organizing troops to send to Sudan. This is obviously a tough issue for them to navigate. America is already running the propaganda campaign in an attempt to get to the resources first. Claiming that the AU is doing nothing is to not understand that this is a longstanding issue that the West was never interested in until this present U.S. administration's extreme drive to control all oil supplying regions. The AU will now have to quickly organize funding and troops, while they are being pressured to serve the U.S. interest in and out of Africa. We simply can look at the U.S. conduct in fueling the overthrow of the democratically elected president Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, as another example of how they are operating.

It is important that the African Union does not allow the U.S. and UK to use the racism in Sudan as a pretext to gain Black votes and sympathies, to distract from their Invasion of Iraq, and also to get control of the resources in Sudan.

Here is an important point made by Obi Nwakanma:

"Many Africans have focused singularly on the effects of the European conquest and colonisation of Africa. And Africans have often forgotten that the history of Africa is the history of double penetration: one from the East, and the other from the West."

Obi Nwakanma further explains:

"The Arabs have come to dominate the Sudan, and have consigned the indigenous Negroid population to the lowliest status, treating them as slaves, from a tradition which began as the Arabs moved into this stretch of Africa, which was once the site of Nubia, the great African civilization. Sudan has been mired in civil conflict, with the Christians rallying behind the John Garang led Sudan Peoples Liberation Army, SPLA, fighting for control of the South from the Arabs of the North.

Generally, Sudan has remained in a flux for most of its modern era. It was conquered by Egypt in 1821, which unified the northern part until the rise of the Mahdi, Muhammadu Ibn Abdalla who led a campaign of colonial resistance against the Anglo-Egyptian alliance with his party of the Ansas. This group remains the basis of the Umma party in Sudan to date led by descendants of the Mahdi."

So why the sudden U.S./European concern?

It is important to remember that greed is the root of racism.

In case there are serious Africans reading these comments, please remember that in recognizing that European countries, including the U.S., owe Africans reparations, and not charity, the Arabs should also be called upon to pay reparations.


Also read:

DAFUR: the open sore of a continent
www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/columns/c311072004.html

African Troops In Darfur By End Of July: AU
www.islam-online.net/English/News/2004-07/09/article01.shtml

Racism at root of Sudan's Darfur crisis
www.csmonitor.com/2004/0714/p09s02-coop.html

History Of Colonialist Intrigue In Sudan Remains Unabated
www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=9537&list=/home.php``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xSudan's Darfur crisis and US/European concern``x1089796429,85723,world``x``x ``xBy Ron Jacobs

Any person who is honestly opposed to the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has got to wonder why the movement that developed against the US war on Iraq before the March 2003 invasion has faltered so badly and now seems to be caught up in the movement to electorally defeat George Bush, even though that means supporting John Kerry-a politician who not only supported the invasion and occupation, but talks openly about widening the war to include the NATO countries and tens of thousands more US troops. One could place the blame on the failure of the movement's politics, always more liberal than anti-imperialist. Or, one could place the blame on the leadership. In both cases, one would find some basis for their argument.

When it comes to the bottom line, though, the underlying cause for the US antiwar movement's current stasis is that most of its adherents believe in one of this country's basic tenets-a tenet that is ultimately religious in nature. For lack of a more descriptive phrase, we'll call this phenomenon American exceptionalism. On a basic political level, this phenomenon is the belief that, for some reason (America's system of democracy, or maybe its economic superiority), the United States system is not subject to the same contradictions and influences as those of the rest of the world. This belief in American superiority finds its foundation in some of our culture's basic religious and cultural constructs. It's there in the first settlers' belief that they were conducting a special errand into the wilderness to construct a city on a hill in the name of their heavenly father and every single president and wannabe always implores this same heavenly father to "bless America" at the end of every one of his speeches. This is no accident.

It is this belief that gave the Pilgrims their heavenly go-ahead to murder Pequot women and children and it was this belief that gave General Custer his approval to kill as many Sioux as he could. It made the mass murder of Korean and Vietnamese civilians acceptable to the soldiers at No Gun Ri and My Lai and exonerated the officers who tried to hide those and many other war crimes from the world. It gives George Bush the only rationale he needs to continue his crusade against the part of the world that stands in the way of the more mercenary men and women behind his throne as they pursue their project for a new American century. And, most importantly for us, it informs a goodly number of decent Americans in their tentative opposition to those men and women. Consequently, while they may oppose George Bush's approach to Washington's war on the world, they do not necessarily disagree with its goals.

Therefore, they find themselves making the argument that somehow some way; the United States must repair what it has so ruthlessly destroyed in Iraq. If our friends in the movement did not believe in America's essential goodness, its exception to the rules that govern power and the desire for power, than how could they believe that the very same agents that destroyed the country of Iraq would be able to repair it? Indeed, why would such a good country have destroyed another in the first place? These questions raise two of the most obvious contradictions governing the major part of the US antiwar forces. In fact, the antiwar movement is only one of the many places in the US cultural and political arena where such exceptionalism occurs.

It can be found in the struggle for equal rights for women, gays and lesbians; and it can be found in the struggle against racism. It is present in the mindset that refuses to support the right to armed struggle by oppressed peoples and it is present in the mindset that perceives other cultures less advanced than that which we have in the United States. . It's even present in the approach progressives take towards our national elections-it's as if our electoral system is beyond reproach, fair beyond criticism and impossible to taint. Because of this misconception, we allow our government to force its version of democracy on people around the world. Then, when these folks either reject our high-minded attempts to enlighten them or, even worse, actually use the electoral processes foisted upon them to elect someone who they want but who opposes US designs, the progressives find themselves as offended by this slight as the neocons.

How to change the movement to a movement that is capable of continuing its pursuit of justice once its right flank is co-opted by the system? At the risk of sounding redundant, study the world, not just the US. Develop an understanding of how capital works and forget the idea that capital ever has good intentions. Capitalism is an economic and political system that has no morals. It is not immoral, nor is it moral. It is amoral. In order to survive, it must expand, either by moving its operations into new regions or by taking over other capitalist ventures and their markets. Usually, the most successful capitalists employ both means. In recent history, the most successful capitalists have been mostly American. The fact that the US spends more money on weaponry and war is directly related to that phenomenon.

America is not a better country than any other. Its citizens and residents are as venal and as great as any others in any other part of the world. The only thing that sets us apart is our wealth. The only reason we have that wealth is because we stole it. God didn't give it to us, nor did any greater American intelligence or know-how. Robbery is what our foreign policy is based on, just like our racial policies. It's not the policies that need to change, but the foundation upon which those policies flourish. Until US activists accept this and give up their conscious and unconscious acceptance of the myth of American exceptionalism, any movement against war, racism, and other ills of our world is bound to fail. Not because it doesn't have the right motivation, but because it doesn't have a radical enough conception of itself and the world it exists in.


Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Originally published at counterpunch.org``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAmerican Exceptionalism: A Disease of Conceit``x1090455909,72530,world``x``x ``xRichard Gott in Caracas
Saturday August 7, 2004

To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise of international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo Chávez is about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a referendum designed to lead to his overthrow.

First elected in 1998 as a barely known colonel, armed with little more than revolutionary rhetoric and a moderate social-democratic programme, Chávez has become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America to the neo-liberal hegemony of the United States. Closely allied to Fidel Castro, he rivals the Cuban leader in his fierce denunciations of George Bush, a strategy that goes down well with the great majority of the population of Latin America, where only the elites welcome the economic and political recipes devised in Washington.

While Chávez has retained his popularity after nearly six years as president, support for overtly pro-US leaders in Latin America, such as Vicente Fox in Mexico and Alejandro Toledo in Peru, has dwindled to nothing. Even the fence-sitting President Lula in Brazil is struggling in the polls. The news that Chávez will win this month's referendum will be bleakly received in Washington.

Chávez came to power after the traditional political system in Venezuela had self-destructed during the 1990s. But the remnants of the ancien régime, notably those entrenched in the media, have kept up a steady fight against him, in a country where racist antipathies inherited from the colonial era are never far from the surface. Chávez, with his black and Indian features and an accent that betrays his provincial origins, goes down well in the shanty towns, but is loathed by those in the rich white suburbs who fear he has mobilised the impoverished majority against them.

The expected Chávez victory will be the opposition's third defeat in as many years. The first two were dramatically counter-productive for his opponents, since they only served to entrench him in power. An attempted coup d'état in April 2002, with fascist overtones reminiscent of the Pinochet era in Chile, was defeated by an alliance of loyal officers and civilian groups who mobilised spontaneously and successfully to demand the return of their president.

The unexpected restoration of Chávez not only alerted the world to an unusual leftwing, not to say revolutionary, experiment taking place in Venezuela, but it also led the country's poor majority to understand that they had a government and a president worth defending. Chávez was able to dismiss senior officers opposed to his project of involving the armed forces in programmes to help the poor, and removed the threat of a further coup.

The second attempt at his overthrow - the prolonged work stoppage in December 2002 which extended to a lockout at the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, nationalised since 1975 - also played into the hands of the president. When the walkout (with its echoes of the CIA-backed Chilean lorry owners' strike against Salvador Allende's government in the early 1970s) failed, Chávez was able to sack the most pampered sections of a privileged workforce. The company's huge surplus oil revenues were redirected into imaginative new social programmes. Innumerable projects, or "missions", were established throughout the country, recalling the atmosphere of the early years of the Cuban revolution. They combat illiteracy, provide further education for school dropouts, promote employment, supply cheap food, and extend a free medical service in the poor areas of the cities and the countryside, with the help of 10,000 Cuban doctors. Redundant oil company buildings have been commandeered to serve as the headquarters of a new university for the poor, and oil money has been diverted to set up Vive, an innovative cultural television channel that is already breaking the traditional US mould of the Latin American media.

The opposition dismiss the new projects as "populist", a term customarily used with pejorative intent by social scientists in Latin America. Yet faced with the tragedy of extreme poverty and neglect in a country with oil revenues to rival those of Saudi Arabia, it is difficult to see why a democratically elected government should not embark on crash programmes to help the most disadvantaged.

Their impact is about to be tested at the polls on August 15. Vote "Yes" to eject Chávez from the presidency. Vote "No" to keep him there until the next presidential election in 2006. The opposition, divided politically and with no charismatic figure to rival Chávez to front their campaign, continue to behave as though their victory is certain. They discuss plans for a post-Chávez government, and watch closely the ever-dubious and endlessly conflicting opinion polls, placing their evaporating hopes on the "don't knows". They still imagine fondly that they can achieve a victory comparable to that of the anti-Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1990.

Yet their third attempt to derail the government is clearly doomed. The Chávez campaign to secure a "No" vote has struck the country like a whirlwind, playing to all his strengths as a military strategist and a political organiser. A voter registration drive, reminiscent of the attempt to put black people on the election roll in the United States in the 1960s, has produced hundreds of thousands of new voters. So too has a campaign to give citizenship to thousands of long-term immigrants. Most will favour Chávez, and Chávez supporters are already patrolling the shanty towns and the most remote areas of the country to get the vote out on August 15. One unexpected bonus for Chávez has been the dramatic and perhaps semi-permanent increase in the world oil price. As he explained to me a few days ago, he is now able to direct the extra revenues to the poor, both at home and abroad, for Venezuela supplies oil at a discount price to the countries of Central America and the Caribbean, including Cuba. Chávez celebrated his 50th birthday last month, and he has talked of soldiering on as president for years in order to see through the reforms he envisages. That is not such an improbable proposition.

He has also been helped by the changing political climate in Latin America. Other presidents have been climbing over themselves to be photographed with him. He has patched up relations with Colombia and Chile, hitherto cool, and last month reinforced his friendly relations with Brazil and Argentina by signing an association agreement with the Mercosur trading union that they lead. Once perceived by his neighbours as a bit of an oddball, he now appears more like a Latin American statesman. Up and down the continent he has become the man to watch.

Faced with a Chávez victory, the opposition may yet turn in desperation to violence. His assassination, hinted at recently by former president Carlos Andrés Pérez, or the deployment of paramilitary forces of the kind unleashed in recent years in Colombia, is always a possibility. Yet the more civilised sectors of the opposition will set themselves, with luck, to the difficult task of organising a proper electoral force to challenge Chévez in 2006. When I asked an uncommitted bookseller whether he would vote to sack the president in mid-term, he replied: "No, they should let him get on with the job."

Richard Gott is the author of In the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the Transformation of Venezuela, published by Verso; his latest book, Cuba: A New History, will be published next month by Yale University Press. This article was originally published in the Guardian UK and is reproduced here by consent of the author.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhy Hugo Chávez is heading for a stunning victory``x1091980283,46787,world``x``x ``xBy Jack Random

Hugo Chavez, the embattled leader of the Bolivarian movement and president of Venezuela, faces a referendum on his presidency this Sunday. In the balance lies the immediate and foreseeable future of democracy in Latin America.

Given the revelation that the Bush administration has contracted ChoicePoint of Atlanta to gather dossiers on the citizens of Mexico, Brazil, Nicaragua, Argentina and Venezuela, it is clear that when the president speaks of fighting for democracy it has less to do with the ideology of our founders than with the manipulation of democratic institutions as practiced in Florida 2000 (see Greg Palast, Venezuela Floridated, August 10, 2004).

In April 2002, the administration failed in a thinly disguised coup directed at Chavez. In March of this year, they directed their efforts against Jean Bertrand Aristide of Haiti in a successful coup. Aristide accused the administration of forcibly removing him from office and deporting him to the Central African Republic. Secretary of State Colin Powell dismissed Aristide's account as absurd though he did not feel compelled to document that absurdity. Even in the American version, this was an intelligence operation. If Aristide's accusations were false, the record would have proven so.

When all but the Congressional Black Caucus (the only mainstream political body to challenge the Florida disenfranchisement) fell silent, Hugo Chavez stepped forward. He not only accused the CIA of a coup in Haiti and an attempted coup in his own country, he issued a warning of retaliation. The threat was not as idle as one is tempted to believe. Venezuela owns ten percent of all American oil imports. With the price of oil at a record high, the Saudis have already boosted production in support of their allies in the White House. It is doubtful they can do much more. If Venezuela were to cut supply and demand fair compensation (they currently get a 16% royalty), even the anticipated capture of Osama bin Laden might not be enough to win reelection.

Now that the beast of global dominance has thundered over poor little Haiti (even as it digs deeper in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates), Hugo Chavez takes his stand in the ring, taunting his monstrous nemesis: Toro! Bring it on!

At the time of Aristide's deposition, Chavez was only days away from securing a Caribbean community alliance to defend the Aristide government. On the heels of failure in Afghanistan and Venezuela, in the wake of the disaster in Iraq, it is clear the administration is emboldened when it should be restrained. They will stand democracy on its head in pursuit of its stated objectives: military dominance and control of vital resources.

Chavez has not only been defiant in the very face of danger, he has been phenomenally resilient. In political terms, he has risen from the dead. He has rallied the support of his people, the working poor and the disenfranchised. He has led the resistance to globalization, which is nothing more than a corporate license to exploit second and third world nations. Given the events in Haiti, the people of Venezuela and throughout the region are no longer fooled by American rhetoric. They recognize the heavy hand of central intelligence. In some ways, the opposition has made Chavez stronger than ever. If he can stand up against American-sponsored insurrection and corporate invasion, it emboldens others to stand with him.

Despite the "victory" over poor and defenseless Haiti, the administration is losing the war in Latin America. We are over-extended and over-exposed. When the self-appointed hemispheric protector is more feared than any perceived enemy, the people will not rally to America's cause. Mindful of our tortured history throughout the region, they are answering the call to rally against it. Everywhere where democracy exists (Brazil, Canada, Spain, Britain, Mexico), the people have delivered the same message: No to the war, no to an American empire, no to globalization, and no to corporate rule.

On Sunday, the people of Venezuela will stand up to be counted. They will not be bruised and bullied into silence. They will not be barred from the polling place. They have stood with Chavez this far and they will stand with him again. The only thing that can deny them is corruption and fraud sponsored by the enemies of democracy. I do not believe they will stand for that either.

Viva Chavez!

Jazz.

Check out the Venezuela section at Trinicenter:
hwww.trinicenter.com/world/venez.shtml

Jack Random is the author of the Jazzman Chronicles, Volumes I and II (Crow Dog Press) and Ghost Dance Insurrection (Dry Bones Press). His commentaries have been published by CounterPunch, Albion Monitor, FirstPeoplesCentury, Trinicenter, Global Research, and Dissident Voice. The War Chronicles is available at City Lights SF and Amazon.com.
Contact via: www.jackrandom.com``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xToro! The Challenge Of Hugo Chavez``x1092340603,81998,world``x``x ``xWhy Venezuela has Voted Again
for Their 'Negro e Indio' President
by Greg Palast

History Making Democracy in Latin America

By: Sharmini Peries, www.venezuelanalysis.com

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, first elected in 1998 made democratic history today in a triumphant defeat of the recall referendum on his Presidency.

The very Constitution that he championed in 1999, that re-elected him in 2000, allows for a mid-term recall referendum for the President’s term in office. After six years in office, in this recall referendum held on Sunday, August 15th, Chavez lead with a 58% majority. Voters clearly exercised their constitutional right to confirm the President in a historic referenda process, never practiced in the history of this hemisphere.

Under the watchful eyes of over six hundred international observers and media scattered throughout the country, a majority of Venezuelan’s prevented their president from being ousted by a coalition opposition led by Accion Democratica (AD) and the Christian Democrats (COPEI), both parties representing the moderate and ultra right. Renowned international election observer delegations from the Carter Center, Organization of American States (OAS), and European Parliamentarians hailed the referendum process as free and fair.

Full Article : venezuelanalysis.com

Thousands Gather Outside Venezuelan Presidential Palace for Chavez Victory Speech

Outside the presidential palace, thousands listened to President Hugo Chavez’ victory speech shortly after the country’s only electoral authority (CNE) announced the preliminary results of the presidential referendum which show that a majority of Venezuelans voted to keep Chavez as President of Venezuela.

Full Article : venezuelanalysis.com``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xVenezuela's Chavez Triumphant``x1092675809,57808,world``x``x ``xThe Challenge of Hugo Chavez

By Jack Random

The referendum soundly denying a recall of President Hugo Chavez was
not only a victory for the common people of Venezuela, it was the empowerment of the powerless all over the world. It was a demonstration of the power of democracy and an astonishing defeat for corporate imperialism, for the new world aristocracy, for avarice without borders, and for the self-anointed directors of a global economy. It was the stone that fell the beast.

For Hugo Chavez, the road ahead will not be easy. The corporate masters have unlimited resources and the prize of Venezuelan oil is too great to be discarded but, after costly failures at military and political coups, they are compelled to change tact. What they failed to achieve by insurrection, they will attempt to achieve by corrupting the Chavez government. The president and his most trusted officials will be tempted by visions of treasure and bounty yet they will stay the cause.

Now is the time for celebration. Though the war is by no means over, democracy has won a great battle. People all over the world rejoice and nations take note: There is another way.

We will watch with great interest the future of Venezuela and its regional allies. We wonder how long a nation's people can be denied while its resources are siphoned away by corporate thieves. We wonder how far governments will sink into debt before they find the courage to stand with Chavez and Bolivar in defiance.

For now we applaud and we pray that the vision of Simon Bolivar finds its way.

Viva Chavez! Viva Venezuela!

Jazz.

Jack Random is the author of The War Chronicles (Jazzman Chronicles, Crow Dog Press) and Ghost Dance Insurrection (Dry Bones Press). His commentaries have been published by CounterPunch, Albion Monitor, FirstPeoplesCentury, Trinicenter, Global Research, Matrix Masters, IndyMedia and Dissident Voice. The War Chronicles is available at City Lights SF and Amazon.com. Contact via: www.jackrandom.com.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xVIVA CHAVEZ! VIVA VENEZUELA!``x1092895579,85217,world``x``x ``xby Ayinde

Many would like to believe their special white or light-skinned friends and family are somehow above being racist. This is understandable, as many will consider it disrespectful to their parents, other family members and friends to admit to others that their family and friends are racist, and are part of the oppressor group to some degree.

Usually people operate as if truth is a democracy, so they do not weigh arguments properly, but instead they play for popular support. This keeps most people personally dishonest. Anyhow, this is my personal take on some comments here.

This 'we are all oppressed' line is also the line that whites use, as many of them are also oppressed in the white-dominated system. This is because the White system is about materially enriching a few White males while all others are expendable. Many whites tend to play down the privileges they get in the system and use the line, "let us all get together to fight the system".

Many mixed blacks of lighter complexion do not know how ugly that sounds, as they are not the ones on the receiving end of the worst in the system. They are not the ones who the system negatively impacts the most. Mixed blacks even play a part in the sustained oppression of dark-skinned blacks. Generally speaking I find that lighter-skinned mixed Blacks are very tolerant of token accommodations, as these usually materially benefit them first ahead of darker-skinned Blacks. So the line, "let us all get together to fight the system" that seems to play down the privileges and abuses from light-skinned ones, can be taken to mean that we should all get together to promote light-skinned people.

How people interpret language and speak is conditioned by their direct experiences, together with how they have informed themselves. If dark-skinned Blacks lack an awareness of the development of European thought together with the origins of what Europeans co-opted badly from Africa, they are not in a good position to express themselves in their own best interest, or give more enlightening interpretations to things. Everything they speak or do will be about sustaining White dominance. They will in effect be making moves which run counter to their own self-interest, and which further, are anti-black.

Mixed-race people do understand the language of oppression, but many lack the deeper sustained experiences of the system to move with urgency. Generally speaking, they remain unable to feel and act from the urgency of the dark-skinned Black experience. Remember, I said that many Blacks also are not as sensitive because of their ignorance of the system, and of history in general. Many are unable to properly articulate their experiences.

Dark-skinned Blacks who are very sensitive and receptive have one or two things in common. They have deliberately studied the history and/or they have received very traumatic negative experiences in the system, which allowed their senses to be heightened. These Blacks are usually more sensitive to the movements in the system as well as to the motivations of people. Some can falsely feel that we have special problems instead of realizing that we may have special insights.

Whites and light-skinned mixed-race people are at a material advantage in terms of this corrupt Eurocentric system, but they have a natural sensitivity disadvantage.

This is the gap that light-skinned ones do not perceive, and since this English language was not developed to express the feelings of Blacks in general, and to an even greater degree the feelings of more sensitive darker-skinned Blacks, we are left continually looking for better ways to express ourselves. Others do not get the depth of what we say. We must use the same words, but our understandings are not the same. Later I will give an example of this.

Light-skinned ones who engage Black issues are usually more preoccupied with bridging the racial divide than with rooting out the problem, so the moves they find acceptable will usually be unacceptable to a more informed Black-skinned kinky-haired person. Also, since most people have a poor perception of self, they tend to promote their image as the ideal. This can come over as just a token shade away from the white saviour complex. Generally speaking, from my personal experiences, I find informed light-skinned ones to be more into symbols than substance; they are more comfortable with language than with meaning. They confuse information with knowledge, and are unable to identify with legitimate experiences that do not conform to their assumptions. They are more into the show of doing than into real service.

There is no getting around the fact that lighter-skinned people, for all of their good intentions, cannot be as directly sensitive to the system as informed darker-skinned Blacks, and by extension they are also less receptive to many forces. If they have integrity, they will always be aware of this and other truths when they see and hear them, and can use that to guide their conduct like all others.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xLight-skin privilege is an unspoken rule``x1092974400,70257,rasta``x``x ``xBy Basildon Peta, Southern Africa Correspondent

The United States has called for the building of a "coalition of the willing" to push for regime change to end the crisis in Zimbabwe. The new American ambassador to South Africa, Jendayi Frazer, said quiet diplomacy pursued by South Africa and other African countries in its dealings with the Zimbabwe president needed a review because there was no evidence it was working. She said her country would be willing to be part of a coalition if invited.

The US could not act on its own, "put the boot on the ground" and give President Robert Mugabe 48 hours to go as requested by beleaguered Zimbaweans but the US would be willing to work in a coalition with other countries to return Zimbabwe to democracy.

Full Article : independent.co.uk

Was overthrowing Mugabe the deal Bush and Blair made? Blair helps bush with his bogus war in Iraq, in exchange for U.S. support to overthrow the leader in Zimbabwe, who is definitely no friend of Blair?``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xUS seeks 'coalition' to force Zimbabwe regime change``x1093459066,72162,world``x``x ``xThirty-One Years and Counting Inside the Belly of the Beast

By Veronza Bowers, Jr.

I send each and every one of you my very warmest greeting from 31 years deep inside of the Belly of the Beast.

As you know, I'm a former member of the original Black Panther Party, and even though government officials claim that there are no political prisoners in this country's prisons and jails, it's simply not true. Having already "served" over three decades in continuous custody in federal prison, I'm one of the longest held political prisoners in the U.S. of A. There are quite a number of us scattered about & but that's a very long story.

Picture this in your mind ... if you dare:

After 30 years of being denied release on parole, despite the fact that your conduct has been exemplary for over 20 years and you have long since met the criteria to be released on parole, finally your mandatory release date rolls around. April 7, 2004. Everything is set.

Your daughter, who was 5 years old when you were taken away to prison and is now 36, sent you a top-of-the-line fashion suit of clothes so that you would be properly dressed to "step in the name of freedom with love." She along with three of your sisters fly in from across the country to be there at the prison gate to pick you up. In fact, there will be a whole entourage of dear friends and well-wishers who will be out in front of the prison with plans to all gather at the home of a friend about an hour's new red Cadillac's ride away.

A grand celebration is planned: a big cook-out at which your godmother had cooked hot-wings and home-made strawberry cheesecake. Another friend, from Tonga, in keeping with their cultural traditions, has roasted underground several baby pigs. Others are bringing all kinds of foods.

There will be a live band playing jazz and blues, a swimming pool, etc., etc., etc. In a word, a lot of caring people have gone though a lot of effort, not to mention expense, to welcome you in their brave new world far removed from the world of prison walls that had kept you on ice for so long. They are there to welcome you with unconditional love and support.

On the inside of the prison, there has been a "going home" gathering put together by friends, replete with food, music, and emotion-filled, open-hearted, teary-eyed talk and laughter. Everyone came together to wish you well and a prosperous new life.

You'd given away to friends all of your possessions: watch, alarm clock, sweat clothes, running shorts and tennis shoes, handballs, weightlifting belt, visiting clothes and shoes, commissary items, rain poncho and winter coat. The only things you kept were your Taipei Shakuhachi silver flute and some books.

You'd used up all of your 300-for-the-month telephone calling minutes because after April 6 you wouldn't be needing any more from the BOP. You'd made the rounds, shaking hands and hugging so many men you'd probably never see again. You'd even tried to give words of encouragement and hope to young and old men alike who you were leaving behind in very desperate and hopeless situations.

Yes, the time was growing near you to leave the world of concrete and steel and razor wire and gun towers--the land of the living dead--and you were very happy and at the same time very sad.

The last "official thing" that you were required to do, you did. All prisoners, on the day before their actual release date, are required to "go on the merry-go-round," i.e., you must take a check-out form around to each department head for their signature, which means that you are cleared of all obligations to that department. Everything is all set to and good to go.

After doing all of that, you're sitting outside in the Sweat Lodge area with your two closest friends just enjoying each other's company in SILENCE. A loud announcement over the loudspeaker ordering you to "report to your unit-team immediately" breaks your peace. You know that something is not right. Your sixth sense--maybe even a seventh--lets you know the "hidden" right away.

As you walk into your counselor's office, you know what he's about to say, even before he says it. So you focus upon that one thing that has sustained you and always pulled you though the roughest of times--even pulled you though those time when knife blades were slashing at flesh, when bullets were flying through the air trying to find your body, when you learned of the passing of your Dear Mama and the officials wouldn't allow you to attend her funeral even though you had only seven months left until your Mandatory Release date--yeah & one breath at a time.

"You won't be leaving tomorrow."

You already knew that, but you didn't know why & so you breathe deeply, one full breath, two full breaths. A strange silence fills the room, and since it's quite obvious that some reaction is expected of/from/by you, you just continue focusing upon the Breath. "Why?"

"Well, all we know is that the National Parole Commission called the institution and ordered that you not be released tomorrow. The warden is very upset and he's been on the phone with them all day trying to get some clarity."

Just like that! A simple phone call from a National Commissioner in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and all of the plans for you to be "steppin' in the name of freedom, with love" are cancelled, wiped out, voided until further notice.

How do you feel? Me, too!

Since that terrible day, with the help of some friends here, I put together a very good draft of an Emergency Petition Unlawful Detention Beyond April 7, 2004, His Statutory/Mandatory Release Date Under 18 U.S.C. 4206 (d.).

I tried to get the prestigious law firm of Willie E. Gary to take my case. To date, I don't know whether his firm will get involved.

On May 2, I met in the visiting room with attorney Gilda Sherrod-Ali of Washington, D.C., and presented her with the draft of my 2241 motion. We discussed it at length and it was agreed that she would file it in the U.S. District Court in Ocala, Florida. It will go before Judge Hodges, the same judge who denied and dismissed my last action against the Parole Commission. My situation now is that I am being held in prison UNLAWFULLY since my Mandatory Release date of April 7, 2004.

So that's about it from this side of hell, my friends. I want to thank you with all of my heart, all of the love, concern and support you've given me.

I know that in the past whenever the call went out for financial contributions to cover attorney fees, you didn't hesitate. I have to ask again. There will be one more round and unfortunately there are not many lawyers around like it was in the '60s. So please, any contribution you can spare for my legal defense fund will be greatly appreciated.

I remain steadfast and looking toward a better future for us all.

Learn more about Veronza at www.veronza.org. And he would love to hear from you. Write to:
Veronza Bowers, Jr., #35316-136,
FCC, Medium C-1, P.O.
Box 1032, Coleman FL 33521-1032
or email veronzab@yahoo.com and include your return address.

Reproduced from
http://www.counterpunch.org/bowers08272004.html ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``x"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"``x1093635796,33400,world``x``x ``xby Ayanna Gillian

"…humans have a deep abiding need in their psyche to be consistent in our attitudes and behaviors; we want to feel in agreement and unified in thought and action. Inner harmony sounds good to everyone, and so it was Festinger's view that when we feel a disharmony, or dissonance, within ourselves, between two factors, we strive to decrease this tension by either changing our original thought, giving strength to the opposing thought, or letting go of the behavior. All three techniques are in the name of decreasing dissonance because it is threatening to experience such a large crack in our rationale that dissonance often creates" (colorado.edu)

While I agree with the conditions that cause people to experience this phenomenon, I must say I do not think they have got it absolutely right. Festinger insists that in order to minimize or erase the tension created by cognitive dissonance, humans either change or modify their original thoughts to accommodate the new information or abandon the old ideas completely.

I think Festinger has greatly underestimated the human WILL to blindness. In my observation, most people try to invalidate the informant or the information itself in order to keep their 'sanity' intact. Another paper speaks of 'mode 2' thinkers (www.propaganda101.com), those who respond to logical arguments with emotional ones. They use emotional thinking and arguments to attempt to counter and invalidate the conflicting truth. They play on their own existing fears and those of others to attempt to get them to come over to their side; the fewer people who accept the new information, the easier it is to invalidate.

Another flaw in the theory (as far as I have read thus far) is that it appears to theorize in a vacuum without taking into account the sociological and economic conditions that may cause reactions to cognitive dissonance to differ. I think a level of comfort and privilege assists in the rejection of conflicting information. Not only are privileged ones used to having their opinions, ideas, ideologies be the standard and the unchallenged, but they sometimes may have more to lose psychologically and materially by accepting conflicting ideas that challenge the status quo from which they benefit.

When one is comfortable, one is more willing to discredit the incoming information, because it is the source of dissonance. Privileged ones do not like to accommodate, to accept their own wrongs or to let go of ideologies that held them high. The U.S is a classic example of this. More Americans believe their President because they have more to lose by accepting that not only is he a liar, but that their way of life is a lie. They have more to lose psychologically (as far as they see it) by realizing that their great society was built and continues to be fed by racism and exploitative capitalism. Even further than simply accepting the lies of one man, it is near impossible for them to accept the lies of a national ideology that has held them superior. Other whites are often not too far from this regardless of their nationality.

Those who have little to lose materially, are used to being the oppressed, those who exist in a perpetual state of discomfort find it easier to accept information that disproves or discredits the existing ideologies as it is these ideologies that have oppressed them anyway. Often, those in a state of discomfort move faster to truths. They react with an urgency that only the oppressed can feel and move much more quickly towards action. Those who have much to lose in matter, more often than not, will fight and kick and scream against it. It is the ultimate irony to me that most people while they claim to want freedom, if given a choice, with inevitably choose slavery.

It is no wonder that some of the most revolutionary thinkers, the most critical insightful journalists have come, especially in this age of expanding media capacity, from the Third World. When you are quite aware of constantly being lied to and by whom, the truth is far easier to see.

It would then appear that people are crazier than we may have previously imagined them to be. Our privileged elite, the ones that run the countries, make the decisions and create and uphold the ideologies are walking, talking lunatics. They are running from the voices in their heads, existing is a perpetual, near schizophrenic state of cognitive dissonance, wailing and screaming in so many ways at the pain. But the will to blindness is so strong that most will refuse to let go and walk in light.

In opposition are the masses; the poor, the dispossessed, the discriminated against, the searching, the hungry, the victimized. They too however are no less fractured and psychologically splintered and subject to many of the false ideas that society propagates. Also even in this group of the less materially advantaged are those who want to fit in with the elite, who will ignore the noise in their heads to belong, to be accepted, to benefit materially and socially from an order that has denied them. We often see this behavior in blacks who have risen in the system or benefited materially. They too want the comfortable ideology and often forget the urgency of those with whom they may have once shared experiences.

The trick is that these very conditions can help to form a person whom once empowered, once given a sliver of light and truth, will walk strait toward it, no looking back, shedding a skin of lies and deception, a skin that never fit comfortably anyway, and embrace truth. And even among the privileged are those who can't shut out the noise, for which the psychological tension is too much to bear, who will make the effort to improve, to grow and to shed the skin of lies and illusions. In all walks of life are people of integrity and courage, people who are not just victims of time and history and circumstance but are its initiators.

Imagine a new world order where the once possessed are now the dispossessed. Where the more you have materially the harder it is to perceive and act on divine, life giving truths; where the order is inverted and the victims of history are now its divine keepers; where the direct path to heaven lies not in privilege, but in the ability to abandon the cushy comfort of lies and false ideologies, and trust in the light that is the source of all…

Check out Ayanna's Website at:
www.rootswomen.com/ayanna``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThoughts on Cognitive Dissonance``x1094437051,86022,rasta``x``x ``xBy Stephen Gowans

Communists For Kerry

It's one thing to be a laughing stock without intending to be, but it's a quite another to volunteer for the job. Which is what the four-member "Communists For Kerry" contingent did when it marched in the Anyone But Bush protest outside the Republican convention in New York City last weekend. The Washington Post quipped that the group's support is something "Kerry might prefer to eschew."

That Kerry shares nothing in common with Communists is obvious – and that their support, if it meant anything, would be a liability to his campaign, is equally apparent; hence, the quip. But isn't it equally true that Communists share nothing in common with Kerry – or ought not to?

As for the Anyone But Bush, which is to say, Vote For Kerry, "movement," I'm reminded that the December 1932 presidential election in Germany featured a similar Anyone But Hitler, which is to say, Vote For Hindenburg, movement.

Back in those days there were no "Communists For Hinderburg," a Communist being something very different then. (Today it's someone who works to elect Kerry in the US, gets out the vote for the Labor Party in the UK, and invites capitalists to join the party in China.) Back then the Communists ran their own candidate, Ernst Thaelmann.

Thaelmann was eschewed by the social democrats, who thought him either as bad as Hitler or not so bad but unlikely to win, and therefore to thwart the little corporal's bid for power. So they backed Hindenburg, the establishment candidate. Hindenburg won – which may, at the time, have been proclaimed a great victory for the "movement," but any sense of accomplishment was short-lived. Almost immediately, Hinderburg appointed Hitler to the post of Chancellor.

So the ABH movement got Hitler anyway, which is what the ABB movement will get: not Hitler, but Bush -- either the one with the silly smirk or the one with the bushy hair.

Billionaires For Kerry?

"Then there was Billionaires for Bush," recounted the Washington Post, "a satirical group outfitted in cocktail dresses and silk gloves, tuxes and top hats and cigarette holders. They waved placards emblazoned: 'It's a Class War – and We're Winning.'"

Clever. But was there a Billionaires for Kerry contingent, waving placards emblazoned: "It's a Class War – and We're Winning" at the Democratic convention? Just wondering.

Darfur: Why Now?

What seems to escape the attention of a lot of people who find ongoing satisfaction in working themselves up into a moral frenzy over the regular depredations, exploitation and inhumanity of the world, is that people are being plundered, murdered, humiliated, starved, terrorized, bullied, dispossessed and crushed every minute, in thousands upon thousands of places around the world.

Which isn't to offer a "poor are always with us" sop. We should be outraged.

And yet our attention at any one time is only ever drawn to one, or at most, a few, of those places, so that we come to believe that all the inhumane conditions of the world (at least those worthy of our urgent attention) are concentrated in one locale, and that plunder, starvation, dispossession and terror elsewhere, can be ignored, if, indeed, we ever grasped their existence.

Kosovo is a good example. There, for a few years, a low-level civil war raged, and few people outside of Serbia and governments that had a history of dominating smaller countries, noticed.

In time, these governments – the US, the UK, and Germany at the core – brought the civil war in Kosovo to the attention of the media (which mostly passed along what they had been told uncritically, their accustomed role) and in turn the public became engaged, and outraged, ready to accept some form of intervention to put an end to massacres, deportation and what was understood to be genocide. Maybe everyone didn't agree that the intervention should come in the form of an armed response, but some form of intervention was considered necessary.

And it came – in the form of high altitude bombing. A long history of imperialist domination would have suggested that the US, British and German interest in Kosovo had little to do with saving ethnic Albanian Kosovars, and much to do with smashing the rump of the former Yugoslavia that refused to be drawn completely into the orbit of Western capitalism. Serbia kept electing socialists, when all the other republics were electing pro-capitalist, anti-socialist "reformers" – the kind of people who get nods of approval in plush boardrooms.

Today, any moral outrage at the goings on in Kosovo is the province of a very small group of people. Attention has been drawn to other brutalities, elsewhere. And yet all the events NATO said it intervened to put an end to – ethnically-motivated murder, deportations, the destruction of religious artifacts – are present in Kosovo today, only they're carried out by the ethnic Albanian population against Serbs, Roma, Jews and other ethnic groups.

If we accept that Kosovo was an unpleasant place before the imperial intervention, all that has changed is that Serbia is now in the midst of being fully integrated into Western capitalism – with the expected grim and regrettable consequences for its population, and with consequences that are none too pleasant for labor elsewhere either. The dismantling of socialism in Eastern Europe, and the smashing of the Yugoslavian variety, has meant a massive increase in the pool of labor available to Western firms at a fraction of the price once commanded by workers in Germany, the UK and the US. It's no accident that a spate of German unions is accepting longer hours and leaner benefits with no increase in pay to protect their member's jobs from moving to low-wage former socialist countries teeming with the unemployed. And ethnic cleansing in Kosovo hasn't stopped at all. If anything, it's worse. The only stratum benefiting from NATO's intervention in Kosovo (and also from the dismantling of socialism in Eastern Europe and elsewhere) is the beneficiaries and representatives of Western capital – which, considering their virtual sway over the state in NATO countries, was the driving force behind the intervention in the first place.

With Kosovo in mind, we might, then, ask what determines which of a seemingly endless array of inhumane conditions around the world is singled out, so that all other inhumane conditions disappear from our notice, and we become suitably worked up over this outrage and not that one?

Stephanie Nolen, a correspondent with the Toronto Globe and Mail remarked that "few in the West paid attention 20 years ago, when the Sudanese government unleashed a similar [to Darfur] campaign against ethnic groups in the south, or when it froze Darfur and other non-Arab regions out of economic development and political participation. Now that the region is on the map, there is an opportunity for the kind of pressure that got Khartoum to agree to a power-sharing deal that ended the war in the south earlier this year."(August 30, 2004)

What Nolen doesn't explain is why Darfur, after having been frozen out of economic development and political participation for years – and where the killing began more than half a year ago -- is only now "on the map." Or why, for that matter, no one seemed to notice, much less care, about "a similar campaign against ethnic groups in the south"?

Is Darfur like Kosovo – an unpleasant place whose unpleasantness can be cited as a reason for Western imperialist powers to intervene, in the name of humanity?

It seems significant that Darfur is home to large reserves of oil, and equally significant that the China National Oil Company owns the development concession. It is standard operating procedure in Washington to do what's necessary to eclipse China's rise as a great power rival, and since China's continued growth is dependent on imports of oil, most of which come from US-dominated Western Asian sources, upsetting China's efforts to achieve security of supply serves an important US foreign policy goal. Already, the US occupation of Afghanistan and troop presence throughout Central Asia has impeded China's plans to build a secure pipeline corridor to the petroleum rich Caspian Basin. And guess who, apart from Russia, France, India and Indonesia, owns oil field development rights in Iraq -- or did, until the US occupation threw who owns what up into the air? Iran: another country in which China has an oil stake. Needless to say, a US intervention in Sudan, in, say, the form of an occupation, would do to China's plans to establish a secure supply of oil what the US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have already begun. For the US, it means control of the spigot, and therefore a stranglehold over an emerging rival.

So it is that Darfur's suddenly being on the map, might lead one to wonder whether the populations of the Western imperialist countries are being manipulated, their moral outrage something that can be turned on and off to suit the conquest du jour.

Some will say, maybe this is so, and maybe intervention (if it comes) will reflect imperialist motives, but something good may come if, as a consequence, the killings and deportations stop.

Did the killings and deportations stop in Kosovo?

And what of the main (though hidden) goals of intervention – plunder, exploitation and subjugation?

A Great Bargain?

It's a great bargain, says Democratic vice-presidential nominee John Edwards.

If Iran agrees to turn over all its nuclear fuel, so that it can't secretly churn out nuclear weapons -- say the way Israel has secretly churned out nuclear weapons (though in Israel's case, without a squeak of protest from Uncle Sam) -- the Kerry administration will allow Iran to have nuclear power plants.

So what if Tehran turns down the offer (great bargain though it is)?

That, says Edwards, will only prove Iran has a secret weapons program (though it could prove the country's ruling clerics know how to tell officious Americans to sod-off and mind their own business.)

What would Washington say if a United States of the World offered the US a great bargain: You keep your nuclear power plants, but give us all your nuclear fuel, and throw in that shit load of nuclear weapons you spent decades holding over the heads of countries that didn't want to accept permanent Third World status as drawers of water, hewers of wood, markets for your exports, and sites for building sweatshops?

Let's carry this one step further. Kerry offers his great bargain, and it's turned down. What then?

A strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, say like the one the US was contemplating on north Korea's facilities a decade ago?

So why does the US, which presides over a growing collection of nuclear weapons (including new bunker buster warheads to take out north Korean subterranean command facilities) want to ensure Iran and north Korea are nuclear weapons free, while having no intention of giving up any of its own nukes, or asking Israel to do the same?

Geez, you'd think there was a double standard.

Maybe the answer is this: Were Iran and north Korea armed with nuclear weapons, it would be so much more difficult for Washington to install puppet regimes, as in Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Reproduced from:
www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/bedlam1.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xNotes From Bedlam``x1094664002,38441,world``x``x ``xCharles Boylan of Vancouver Co-op Radio interviews Kevin Pina
by Kevin Pina and Charles Boylan; September 21, 2004

Charles Boylan: I saw an e-mail yesterday and it said that the Haitian Army is re-establishing itself. I want you to tell us what you know about these facts, and to tell us a little bit about what this army is and its history.

Pina: Well it's the Forces, d'army Haiti Fad'h, which was the army created by the US back during the first occupation of Haiti, which lasted nineteen years, from 1915 to 1934. The army, traditionally, was a tool of the ruling class of Haiti. It could be bought; it was responsible for more than thirty-three coup d'etats in Haiti's history. During the 1990's, after the coup d'etat against the first government of President Aristide, the army became very deeply involved in drug trafficking. Certainly it's an army that has never had to be used to defend Haiti's sovereignty against any outside force. It's traditionally been a tool of repression for Haitians inside Haiti.

As far as its resurgence [goes], what we know is that members of the former military, as well as members of the former CIA trained paramilitary death squad FRAPH, as well as officers such as Guy Philippe [formerly] of the Haitian police, were given safe harbour by certain segments of the Dominican government and certain segments of the Dominican military. After the year 2000 we know that they began several series' of incursions into Haiti, which led to the assassination of several members of Aristide's Lavalas Party . They would make armed incursions into Haiti and they would then return to their "safe haven" in the Dominican Republic. There have been charges that there's no way that this could have been done without U.S. complicity and the U.S. knowing exactly what was going on.

Certainly, I was reporting about [this]…about two, two and a half years ago. So, certainly if I had that information, it had to be available to the United States government, certainly the U.S. embassy in the Dominican Republic. And, the former military along with these other forces I described, used Dominican territory to launch an attack into Haiti; a larger attack into Haiti in early February [2004], which led to the coup d'etat of the constitutionally elected President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was forced out of the country on February 29th of this year.

Boylan: Now, the United Nations forces are there. They're there under [the auspices of] some sort of U.N. Resolution I assume. What is their role in all of this?

Pina: Well, it's been very sketchy. The government claims today that they've re-taken the town of St. Marc. The former military has been regrouping and has been calling for its reinstitution, its recognition and reinstitution to its former role, which is basically, de facto rulers of Haiti, as I said, open to bidding to highest bidder within the traditional ruling bourgeoisie of Haiti. They've taken over much a large segment, a swath of the Northern country, which includes the town of Hinche, the Plateau Central including an area called Morn Kabrit, and the town of St. Marc. The UN and the PNH had announced that they had re-taken St. Marc yesterday, however we have not confirmed that.

What's interesting to note is that the UN 'says' that it is assisting the Haitian police force, and [on] August the 14th, the Lavalas organization, which was Aristide's political party - which has of course has seen tremendous repression since the President's forced ouster on February 29th - on August the 14th, Lavalas held demonstrations in the second-largest city, Cap-Haitien, and in the capital, Port au Prince. In both those demonstrations, the UN and Haitian police had demonstrators tuck their t-shirts into their pants, so they could be sure there were no guns at the demonstration. The very next day, on August 15th, the same UN and Haitian police allowed 150 Haitian military to march openly in the capital of Port au Prince, brandishing M-16s, M-14s, a few M-60s, and they were not challenged at all. So, if indeed the UN are beginning to challenge the former military, it's a brand new phenomenon.

Many people who are in Lavalas who, as I said, have been victims of this campaign of repression since Aristide's forced ouster of February 29th, really see themselves as now being caught in a pincer movement between two forces. One is the Haitian National Police - backed up by the United Nations forces - and on the other side is the former military who are trying to come back into power. Now, it's really interesting to note that the United States has worked with the current so-called "interim government"; Lavalas refers to it as 'de facto' government, the U.S. installed government of Gerard Latortue, to now talk about integrating a 1000 of these former military soldiers into the Haitian National Police. Well, they'd already started this process beginning back in March; it really doesn't make sense for them to that they say they're not going to allow the former military to be restored to its former role while at the same time they're virtually transforming the Haitian National Police into an entity that contains a large percentage of those same former military.

Boylan: When you speak this way about this pincer movement my mind flashes back to the tragedy of Lumumba in the Congo 'way back in 1960's,' you had the same sort of intervention by the U.N. on the one side and you had the Chambe [Mobutu's] reactionaries on the other. It's hard to make these parallels of course but it seems to me you have the U.N. sort of playing a duplicitous role here. The original invasion of course was by the United States, Canada, and France. Have all of their forces left the island now?

Pina: I still see smatterings of Canadian troops; there are some French forces here that are laying low; there is still a small contingent of U.S. Marines. But mostly it's the Brazilians, the Chileans and the Argentineans, who are taking the lead. Certainly, I believe that the role of the French and the U.S., and the Canadian is at this point a leadership role within the command structure of the U.N. forces. It's also interesting to note that there's a new level, a new wave of repression that began this last Sunday. Now remember that the U.N. forces claims that they are assisting the Haitian police. This includes even if the Haitian National Police are performing an action at the behest of the Latortue government, which may be based upon a lie, as in the case of So Anne, who is a popular folk singer, who's home was violently invaded by U.S. Marines on May 10th and she herself was arrested by the U.S. Marines, based upon an accusation of the Latortue government, that she was planning to attack U.S. forces.

So, the UN will back up the Haitian police even if the Haitian police from the Latortue government are performing an action that is based upon false information, false information that they know is false. This last Sunday, the Haitian National Police began to indiscriminately round up all adult males in several popular neighbourhoods where Lavalas support is known to be great. On Sunday they arrested more than sixty males in a neighbourhood just North of the capital, and yesterday they arrested another thirty in a neighbourhood called St. Martin. Sunday, the police would come in, and they would create this net around the neighbourhood and then they would indiscriminately round up all adult males who were caught in the net without any cause or justification. Always lingering in the background are large APV vehicles with heavily armed United Nations troops. I guess they are [there] to ensure that no one will resist the Haitian police while they are performing this broad procedure of indiscriminate detainment and arrest in popular neighbourhoods where Lavalas support is known to be greatest.

Boylan: Can you go into a little more detail about the current level of political prisoners in Haiti's penitentiaries, and also put into context this issue acquittal of known murderer Louis Jodel Chamblain, who is one of the "rebels" we read about in early February?

Pina: The Inter-American Human Rights Commission was just in Haiti; they represent the OAS, and of course Amnesty has had several of its researchers on the ground, on and off, as well as Human Rights Watch. Pretty much everyone is in agreement that besides the 'high-profile' Lavalas political prisoners, such as Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, and interior minister Jocelyn Privert, and, as I said earlier, So Anne – Annette - Auguste, this famous Haitian folk singer, there are a lot of lesser known people affiliated with the Lavalas party who are currently filling the jails, not only just in the capital of Port au Prince, but also in places like Cap Haitien. I still receive daily calls from people who ask me - because I'm known as a journalist on the ground - if I can put them in touch with human rights organizations; some of them have been wasting in jail since early March without any trial.

The Haitian Constitution says that people should be brought before a judge and charges should be brought before them after forty-eight hours, but there are people who have been in jail for months and months without any charges never seeing a magistrate or a judge. The jails right now are said to be chalk full of people who are affiliated with Lavalas, who consider themselves to be political prisoners. It is interesting that Jodel Chamblain, who was the second in command of the FRAPH [the Front for Advancement and Progress in Haiti], which was the CIA-trained paramilitary death squad responsible for thousand and thousands of deaths following the 1991 coup against Jean Bertrand Aristide, and who was seen by eyewitnesses to be the trigger man who assassinated a leading businessman and Aristide supporter Antoine Izmery on September 11th, 1993…

The trial was obviously a sham, human rights organizations have rightfully condemned it; it's interesting to note that while Jodel Chamblian was given his 'day in court' as was Jackson Joanis who was the former head of anti-gang, who was also implicated in the murder of Antoine Izmery. Annette Auguste, Prime Minister Neptune and Interior Minister Jocelyn Privert, have had just these cursory visits to the court, and then nothing has been done, they've just been left without word of when their next hearing will be, whereas with someone like Jodel Chamblain is given an immediate trial where eight witnesses are called, seven of the witnesses are frightened out of their minds and will not come to the hearing. Only one shows up and he says nothing about the incident, and the jury deliberates in the middle of the night in secret for fourteen hours and the man is acquitted of this horrendous crime; clearly there is an inequity, there is not an equal application of Haitian law and the Haitian Constitution. But again I think that's to be expected when you have a government that is more beholden to Washington, and to Ottawa, and to Paris, then it is to its own people, and its own constituency. Remember, this government that's in power now has never withstood the test of democratic elections; it's in power by virtue of the role that those three nations played in overseeing the forced ouster, if you will, of the Constitutionally elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide on February 29th of this year.

Boylan: Well, this puts the question on the whole constitutionality of the validity of the invasion in the beginning, and I'd like you to speak, if you will, to a Canadian audience, of what you know about Canada in this whole affair.

Pina: It is clear that Canada played a very pivotal role in terms of backing and going along with U.S. foreign policy. Certainly the Canadian government, I would say in, a lot of ways, lacked backbone, at best, and, at worst, were openly complicit with this ouster of Constitutionally, democratically-elected president [Aristide]. But to go to the particulars of what happened on February 29th, you've got to remember that Canada has towed the line of the U.S. government that there these armed rebels threatening the capital. Well, this is just complete nonsense. It was very clear how this theatre went down.

Foreign embassy after foreign embassy, beginning with the Italian embassy, who were then followed second by the Canadian embassy and other European embassies demanded that all their citizens flee Haiti and that hit the headlines big: "Foreign Nationals Flee Haiti" And the n finally the United States demanded that its citizens flee Haiti and that hit the headlines big: "U.S. Citizens Flee Haiti." You know, President Aristide and Lavalas had been condemning these armed incursions I had spoke about earlier, by the former military, by the former paramilitary death squad, FRAPH, from the Dominican Republic into Haiti, in which they were killing Lavalas officials and then returning to the Dominican Republic. They'd been condemning this for years, and their condemnations had been falling upon deaf ears in the [corporate] press.

Suddenly, Guy Philippe and these guys show up in the country, and all of these [corporate news] editors fall over themselves to find budgets, including sending your dear Paul Knox from the Globe and Mail out here. Suddenly they've got these budgets, per diems, and transportation expenses to send these reporters out to fall all over themselves to cover this 'huge story' of the rebels. When, as I said, Lavalas had been condemning and talking about these people being in the Dominican Republic for years, and it was falling upon deaf ears and the press never had any attention span for it or interest in it, whatsoever. Suddenly, they discover them 'by miracle' and its this huge headline, and as I said this is compounded by this theatre of foreign embassies demanding that their nationals leave, ultimately leading to the U.S. embassy demanding its nationals leave.

The very next day 50 armed U.S. Marines arrive into Haiti, into the capital, flown in a big flurry on a big transport plane, purportedly to check on the security preparations at the U.S. embassy, and then the next bead in this story, this theatre if you will, is that, suddenly, the Toussaint L'Ouverture airport is closed to all airport traffic. Now, you've got to remember that not a single foreign national in this entire time ever had a scratch or a hair touched on his head. Nor was there ever a single shot fired at the airport, and that's what leads myself and many others who were here, who experienced this, to believe that this was just a superb theatrical performance that was being led by France, Canada, and the United States to give the perception of these "dire" circumstances, to give the perception of this 'embattled dictator' Aristide, who had to 'cling to power' by virtue of these violent forces, his 'minions' of his party of Lavalas.

And, by the way, they [Aristide's supporters] were in the streets, and they were trying to protect the capital, and that's why I say that this threat that the U.S. government said forced Aristide out of office, that the rebels were going to enter the capital, was a non-threat, because there was no way that 200, or even 300 heavily armed men could have entered this capital at any time without heavy house to house fighting and heavy resistance. It's just a lie and a non-threat.

What you also have to remember that at the exact moment that those 50 U.S. Marines who entered Haiti under the auspices of checking the security preparations at the U.S. embassy; at the same moment that they were entering Aristide's residence, to take him out of office, to force him onto that airplane to Bangui, in the Central African Republic; at this very same moment there was a large transport plane on the tarmac in Jamaica, refuelling, that was carrying re-supplies of arms and ammunitions for the Haitian police force. This was not, as the U.S. and Canada, and the French presented, a President who was "resigned to his fate." This was a President, who because that transport plane was being sent in a unilateral assistance agreement with the government of South Africa, with the re-supply of arms and ammunition for the Haitian police force, and as I said at the same moment the President was being taken out by the U.S. Marines, that same plane was refuelling on a tarmac in Jamaica; that was why they had to take him out, because, quite the contrary to the image they portrayed of this man who was resigned to his fate, who had lost the support of his people; this was a man who was willing to fight for the sovereignty, was willing to fight to continue his democratic mandate.

Boylan: This is a very telling story; I don't think that's been broadcast here, that's for certain. That aspect of the story; we were all left wondering, 'Why did Aristide leave? What the hell was going on? And of course we were all left in the dark by the mass media manipulation of the airwaves. This is an extremely important chapter. Tell us a little bit more about this story, tell us a little bit about the circumstances facing you and all those who are trying to bring light to what is actually happening in Haiti, and what oppositional forces, internationally, locally, are putting some weight behind the Haitian people in this dark moment of their history?

Pina: Well, you've got to realize is that it was a huge campaign of disinformation that demonized Lavalas and demonized Aristide, and this is still going on today. They use buzzwords like 'chimere,' which is a term that they call Lavalas who defended themselves, or who defended the government. They've painted Aristide as a 'dictator' who 'lost the support of his people,' who was relying upon his Lavalas 'shock troops.' They've really presented this dark image of what was essentially, what is essentially, a movement of the majority of the poor in this country, they continue [to demonize] to this day.

There has been so much misinformation, and so many lies; the Haitian press participated in it: they fed stories to the international press, and the international press fed it back to them, and suddenly what was innuendo and rumour gets 'transformed' into reality and suddenly reality gets turned on its head, and a lot of what I read [in the press] about Haiti is the exactly the reverse of what I myself and many others who live this reality day to day; what we experience and how we see the situation. Today the Haitian press still plays an horrendous role; the standard of journalism and what passes for the truth, and what passes for professionalism is just abhorrent.

The major news outlets here are owned by large families who are aligned with the elite, or are members of the small economic elite themselves, it's clear that they've had a large role in this movement to overthrow Aristide; it's clear that they'd spent a tremendous amount of money in public relations, whether that be over the internet, in the U.S. press, the French press, the Canadian press. And the U.S. corporate media in general, as I said, presenting this image of the movement of the poor in a very ugly and, I would say, false light. It's not to say that, certainly, there weren't errors made by Aristide; it's not to say that there weren't people amongst the masses of the poor who weren't angry, and who ultimately felt cornered and that they had no resort except to violence. But you've got to remember, and not to apologize for it or excuse it, we have to understand that this really a response to people who knew that this was going to happen, that their greatest enemy who was this corrupt, dangerous, murderous institution, the Haitian military, was being poised to return to this country. They knew that a year ago, and of course how can you expect people who's mothers were raped, whose brothers and fathers were brutally murdered, whose sisters were murdered, not to react very emotionally and in some instances violently, knowing that this was going to happen, that the Haitian military was being poised for an eventual position of return to Haiti?

A lot of what was twisted and said to represent the evil 'shock troops,' the chimeres of the dictator Lavalas, was the righteous indignation and anger of a very, very frightened mass of poor people in this country who for the first time had a government that they felt represented their interests. All you have to do today, with what is going on with this U.S. backed government, this U.S. installed government, by virtue of this action that the U.S., France, and Canada pulled in Haiti, you see that there was a Ministry of Literacy under the Aristide administration, that was one of the first ministries abolished. Literacy, and the majority of the poor learning to read and write is not a priority for this [de facto] administration.

There was public housing that was built where poor families could rent an apartment but their rent would be applied for equity to allow them for the first time to own an apartment or a condominium, that was a decent home with running water and electricity, that was something modern. Now, that housing is being taken over by this government to give to U.N. officials for their own personal housing. Imagine, housing that was built for the poor is now being taken over by this U.S. installed government, to turn over to United Nations workers, and the peacekeeping force, their commanders, so that they can live in them while they are displacing and evicting the poor, who, for the first time, had housing. These are just a few examples to show you what the priorities are now versus what the priorities were. It seems that you only really get to really understand what was really going on before by seeing it being dismantled today.

Another point is the agrarian reform. Everybody always said that there was never any effort to help the majority of the poor who are peasants in the countryside; seventy per cent of Haiti's population are poor peasants living in the countryside. Well, it's only today when we are seeing the agrarian reform being dismantled, under this U.S. installed government, the former landowners are returning and taking back the land that was distributed to the peasants under the Agrarian Reform Act, that we understand that there really was was an agrarian reform project. That huge propaganda campaign, the people who control the press said that agrarian reform program never existed, and the only reason we can see today that it clearly existed is that now the peasants are fighting back and there's open violence now, and rebellion by peasants in the countryside against these large landowners returning to re-claim the land that was distributed to them under the agrarian reform that was started first under the Preval administration, and then continued under the Aristide administration.. These are examples of projects that clearly benefited the majority of the poor, that people said never existed, that the corporate media completely ignored and only focussed on stories that were fed to it buy the elite-controlled media that focussed on these negative acts of violence…[disconnects…]

Boylan: Listeners must be very angry as they listen to the things you are enumerating, listing off these facts that are brand-new to most people. What can we do about it, how can we empower ourselves to affect change, and [to help] restore democracy to Haiti?

Pina: I think that it's got to start with our own governments. I was very proud of Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who [recently] called out Washington, Paris, and Ottawa by name today. She said, 'they're the ones who created this mess, they're the ones who are responsible to clean it up.' I think she's absolutely right, that we have to hold our governments accountable, that we need to [exert] pressure, even though the media, which has played such a terrible role in all of this, particularly the corporate media: These are large businesses, these are people who get called up buy the prime minister's and the presidents and the secretaries of this and that, and have the news influenced and shaped for them. These are the people who would rather call the Embassy first to get their reaction, then to risk their necks out on the street to try to get the reaction of the average poor person.

So, they've played a terrible role; right now they are conspicuously silent, they've done their damage, so what means is that we have to rely upon our own education networks, that means that we have to create our own sources of reliable information, that we need to cherish those sources, we need to support those sources, and we need to use that information that we get from those sources that we trust, to then leverage it against our elected officials, in order to get them to stand up, to put this issue back on the burner again, where it belongs. To get them to take responsibility for what they have done in this country, and what they have done to this country. Certainly what has gone down in Haiti falls right at the doorstep of Mr. George Bush, the Junior. I'm certain that right now this is not an issue in the election, but there are people who are trying to make it an issue in the election, particularly when we see, in a lot of ways, the U.S. you know played the leadership; I don't mean to cut Canada down, but they've really sort of been the lackeys, and the lapdogs, if you will, of U.S. foreign policy in this. I'm not trying to say that they weren't smart enough to do their own damage, but you know it's pretty much the U.S. that's called the shots on the ground here and Canada has pretty much saluted and said 'yes sir, whatever you need?'

The French played a more of a public leadership role on the ground; but Canada certainly had a definite role, and certainly the Canadian people should take responsibility to pressure their elected representatives, to put this issue back on the burner and to force them to restore democracy to Haiti, first of all. This is not a government that has been tested by the polls and it doesn't look as if the next elections in Haiti are going to allow the majority political party, who, as we discussed earlier, has been violently repressed, has been subject to mass arrests and mass detentions, is caught in this pincer movement between the violence of the Haitian police committed against them backed up by the United Nations, and the violence of the dreaded former military; they're not going to be able to participate in a free way in the next elections. So those elections are not really going to represent the will of the majority of the Haitian people either.

What I can say is that people should watch closely, because I think that this popular movement is not going to go gentle into that good night. We see it beginning to reassert itself again; we see that people, despite this tremendous atmosphere of a witch-hunt, despite this tremendous atmosphere of political persecution and intimidation, are still continuing to fight for their rights, still continuing to fight for their right for themselves to be part of a Party that represent the voice of the majority of the poor of this country. That's what we need to be watching for, keeping our pulse for, to know who to support on the ground. The NGOs, by and large, play a very evil role in this country. Certainly they played part and parcel right into this campaign to overthrow the democratic government of Haiti. Remember that Haiti saw its first peaceful transitions from one President to another under the Lavalas Party…

Boylan: I'm sorry to tell you this but times up. Kevin, this has been very enlightening and very, very helpful for our audience to listen to this information; and we will definitely be back in touch; thank you very much for joining us. This has been very helpful, and I want to thank-you for joining us.

Pina: It's been my pleasure.


*This interview was conducted on September 8, 2004. For more information, please go to Wake Up With Co-op. Boylan also hosts "Discussion," Wednesday evenings at 7:00 PST. Kevin Pina is an independent journalist, filmmaker, is Associate Editor of the Black Commentator, and currently resides in Haiti.

Reproduced from:
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=6276%20§ionID=55``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRolling Haiti Back to Colonialism``x1096092919,69684,world``x``x ``xPro-Capitalist, Pro-Investment and Fiscally Conservative

What Brazil Is And The Two Remaining Members Of The Axis Of Evil Aren't

By Stephen Gowans

Funny how hypocrisy can be as conspicuous as a pile of steaming shit sitting in the middle of a living room which everyone manages to step gingerly around pretending not to notice.

This happens so frequently (not steaming piles of shit showing up in living rooms, but bold hypocrisy meriting nary a comment) as to be a sort of law of everyday life. So it comes as no surprise that Colin Powell can dismiss as a matter of no consequence Brazil's refusal to allow international inspectors greater access to one of its nuclear reactors, while treating Iran's plans to develop nuclear energy as close to tantamount to a declaration of war on thousands of years of Western civilization, and nobody falls from his chair in stunned silence. Instead, they go about their business, as if the steaming pile of shit isn't there.

(When I happened upon a recent Washington Post headline, "Iran's Missiles Can Now Hit Europe," I wondered whether I had mistakenly picked up the National Star in the supermarket check-out line and why the headline hadn't been punctuated with a closing !. Maybe policy on the use of exclamation marks is all that distinguishes the two newspapers anymore.)

"I don't think Brazil can be talked about in the same vein or put in the same category as Iran or North Korea," said the secretary of state.

Well, no, they can't.

First of all, Brazil isn't on Washington's hit list. Iran and north Korea are. The latter have a survival interest in developing nuclear weapons to make Uncle Sam think twice about bombing them. As dark people who "resent US power" i.e., haven't a yen to become economic subjects of the US ruling class, they're just the kind of people US supremos like to wage war on.

Second, Brazil, under the tutelage of Lula da Silva, isn't threatening "the balance of power," New York Times-speak for challenging US military supremacy or saying no thanks to becoming a hyper-exploited annex to the US economy.

Indeed, Lula, the kind of non-threatening, pointless, progressive that US liberals and "democratic socialists" can warm up to as one of their own, has "hewed to a pro-capitalist, pro-investment and fiscally conservative line," as the New York Times puts it. Which means to members of the US ruling class, he's their kind of progressive, which, it must be added, he is also to the US progressives who are backing (no, forgive me: are voting for) a pro-capitalist, pro-investment and fiscally conservative John Kerry in the upcoming US presidential election.

Is that pro-gressive as in pro-capitalist, pro-investment and pro-US (ruling class)?

IRAQ REDUX?

"While none of the aid workers and officials…denied there was a crisis in Darfur," remarked The Observer on October 3rd, "many were puzzled that it had become the focus of such hyperbolic warnings when there were crises of similar magnitude in both northern Uganda and eastern Congo."

The difference is that the crisis in Darfur hands the US (or to be more precise, those who own and therefore run the place) an opportunity to strengthen their position and weaken that of a major rival, while those in northern Uganda and eastern Congo do not.

A betting person would put his money on the US eventually pressing for regime change in Khartoum, followed by the "international community" installing a pro-US, pro-capitalist, pro-investment, fiscally conservative puppet government, (the accustomed practice in these cases), and the eventual eviction of Chinese oil interests from Darfur and their replacement by US oil majors. This would allow the US ruling class to extend its domination to another important oil producing region of the world, deny China access, and so strengthen US oil security at the expense of a major competitor's.

That's not to deny there's a crisis of very grave proportions in Darfur. But there's an important principle illustrated here. There are humanitarian crises happening all over the world, but not all of them – in fact, very few of them – become issues to be debated before the UN Security Council or to be editorialized on in newspapers.

Why some and not others?

If you look at this in an unprejudiced way you'll find that those that are brought to the world's attention serve the interests of those who brought them to our attention, while those that are not, either don't serve those interests, or harm them.

For example, there is a humanitarian crisis of greater magnitude in Kosovo today than the one NATO used as a pretext to bomb Yugoslavia, yet most people – including the human rights liberals who demanded NATO go to war against the Yugoslavs – are ignorant of the province's currently grim humanitarian situation. With Yugoslavia, after years of resistance, joining the ranks of former Communist countries colonized by Western capital, Kosovo has become a crisis that no longer serves NATO's interests, and therefore, no longer needs to be in the spotlight.

Darfur, by contrast, has sprung, as these things usually do, out of nowhere, to become the all-consuming, urgently pressing crisis of the moment, another opportunity for human rights liberals to make Pharisaical displays of their humanitarian piety, while remaining ignorant of crises of equal or greater magnitude elsewhere in the world, that don't serve the interests of their country's ruling class.

MIDDLE NORTH AMERICA OR THE USA?

I'm often struck by how some of the most astonishing pronouncements go unnoticed, or at least, unremarked upon, but I've learned that little of what US officials say that falls into the category of being arrogant, imperious, bullying, or aggressive passes without some trenchant comment by north Korea's official news agency.

For instance, just the other day, the KCNA commented upon George W. Bush's "stating without hesitation that the U.S. would have attacked Iraq even if it had known that the latter had no weapons of mass destruction."

Bush, in the news agency's estimation, is "a fascist tyrant steeped in war, murder and plunder," which strikes close to the truth, though "fascist tyrant" may be a tad hyperbolic, and what's left out is that Bush's Democratic predecessor, and a possible Democratic successor, could just as easily be described in the same terms. After all, Clinton was no stranger to war, murder and plunder, and nothing in Kerry's history, campaign statements or class allegiance would lead anyone of unprejudiced mind to believe he's a sui generis. Warlord, murderer and plunderer are parts of the job description.

The north Koreans got closer to the mark when they observed that Bush's admission that he would have attacked Iraq, WMDs or not "revealed the aggressive and predatory nature of the United States," but then so too does a string of aggressions from the Indian wars through the war on the Philippines at the turn of 20th century through Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (1991), Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, and a number of minor aggressions in between.

And that's to say nothing of Uncle Sam's vigorous saber rattling, something north Koreans needn't be reminded of. The din of rattling sabers, which the US under successive administrations has managed to keep up for over half a century, has, in recent years, risen to a deafening pitch.

Which brings me to this: Since the country may soon become a theater in which the United States' ruling class will yet again reveal its aggressive and predatory nature, Americans may as well learn its name: DPRK, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Calling it North Korea is kind of like calling the United States Middle North America.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/DPRK.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhat Brazil Is and The Others Aren't``x1097508090,89308,world``x``x ``xby Black Commentator, blackcommentator.com

Forget the hoopla and ballyhoo celebrating Black faces in high places. The median net worth of an African American household is about $6,000, while white households wield 14 times as much wealth: more than $88,000. The disastrous details are contained in a report on wealth disparities by the Pew Hispanic Center, "The Wealth of Hispanic Households: 1996 to 2002," but the worst news is for Blacks, one-third of whom have no assets or a negative net worth.

The bottom fell out of Black wealth accumulation in the deep recession of 2000 - 2001, a downturn that hurt all ethnic groups, but from which whites and Hispanics rapidly rebounded. Whites recouped their losses from the recession and fattened their holdings by 17 percent between 1996 and 2002. Hispanics boosted their meager household wealth to about $7,900 during that period - still only one eleventh of white households, but almost fully recovering the 27 percent loss they suffered at the turn of the 21st century. Blacks also lost 27 percent of their net worth in 2000 - 2001, but got back only 5 percent in 2002. These African American losses appear near-permanent, the result of the deindustrialization of the United States - the destruction of the Black blue-collar workforce.

Hispanics, clustered in the low wage service sector, suffered less lasting effects. However, for African Americans, the worst news just keeps on coming, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow discrimination. As Roderick Harrison, a researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, told the Associated Press: "Wealth is a measure of cumulative advantage or disadvantage. The fact that black and Hispanic wealth is a fraction of white wealth also reflects a history of discrimination."

It is a 'reflection' in the American mirror that whites don't want to see, believing in the vast majority that their privilege and wealth has been earned - and at no one else's expense. In truth, as Harvard social demographer Dr. Michael A. Dawson puts it, "The racial structures in the United States continue to this day to produce wealth disparities." Today, these structures are working feverishly to dislodge Blacks from their precarious perches in the middle class. Yet whites remain implacably opposed to engaging in even a discussion of reparations, while continuing to profit from 'the inherited gift that keeps on giving' (see , May 8, 2002). Surfing through the recession with their assets largely intact, white America pretends that some malady of 'culture' - rather than the crimes of a nation - is what holds African Americans back. And some Black fools believe them.

Tomfoolery in high places

"There were several members of the Congressional Black Caucus who took the position that the racial wealth disparity was due to the misbehavior of Black folks," says Dr. William 'Sandy' Darity, recalling events at the 2003 Black Caucus Week, in Washington. Several silly Black lawmakers theorized that wealth disparities could be eliminated if only African Americans would engage in less impulse buying and save more money, said Darity, a Professor of Public Policy Studies, African and African American Studies and Economics at Duke University. He continued: "In fact, if you control for income, the Black savings rate is at least as high as the white savings rate. There is some evidence to suggest that it might be higher."

By Darity's calculations, African Americans would have to go without food, shelter, clothing and all other expenses en masse "for well over a decade" to save enough to achieve wealth parity with whites. "So I would say, there is no way that you can catch up by systemic and careful savings. If African Americans saved all of their income - that is, if we didn't eat, pay any bills, but saved every cent of income - we could not close the wealth gap," said the professor, who also teaches economics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

In economics, the past is present; it is the cushion on which some folks arrive in this world. In the United States, those white cushions were likely embroidered by no- and low-wage Black folks whose descendants are today being slammed to the pavement with no buffer of any kind.

African American households earn less than 60 percent of median white income. At the pace of catch-up since 1968, according to a report issued earlier this year by United for a Fair Economy (UFE), "it would take 581 years' to achieve income parity with whites. But wages are not wealth. For most Americans, home ownership is the major asset. Seventy-five percent of whites own their homes, while more than half of Blacks rent. At the rate of 'progress' recorded since 1970, UFE estimates 'it would take 1,664 years to close the ownership gap - 55 generations."

The roots of this unbridgeable gap - unbridgeable, that is, by the conventional mechanisms of capitalism - are much nearer. Duke University's Dr. Darity follows the path the mule never took to examine the value of the 40 acres most ex-slaves never got. "We were supposed to get 40 million acres, we managed to accumulate 15 million by dint of our own efforts, and now we're down to about one million acres," said the professor. "I think people tend to deemphasize the importance of land as wealth. The areas designated by Union General William Sherman's [1865] field order are now some of the most valuable land in American." He is referring to the coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia, now home and playground of the rich.

Of the 15 million acres of land accumulated by Blacks throughout the South in the aftermath of the Civil War, most "was fairly systematically taken away through terror, taxes and fraud. There were instances of the wholesale destruction of Black deeds by arson," said Darity. The African American real estate patrimony was all but wiped out through white private and public lawlessness - crimes that led directly to today's racial wealth disparities.

Had the post-Civil War federal government honored and expanded upon Gen. Sherman's 1865 promise, or passed Congressman Thaddeus Stevens' 1867 Reparations Bill for the African Slaves in the United States, which would have allotted 40 acres "to each [formerly enslaved] male person who is the head of a family," African Americans might actually have gotten an economic leg up on the waves of European immigrants that poured into the country during the latter decades of the 1800s.

Trillions lost

What would an 1865 plot of 40 acres be worth to Black America today? According to economist Darity's numbers, about $1.6 million dollars to every African American - not counting the mule. "That should be the anchor for reparations," he said.

And what of free and devalued Black labor? In a 2000 paper, Professor Joe R. Feagin, of the University of Florida, at Gainesville, reviewed a number of labor reparations calculations. He concluded:

"Clearly, the sum total of the worth of all the black labor stolen by whites through the means of slavery, segregation, and contemporary discrimination is staggering - many trillions of dollars. The worth of all that labor, taking into account lost interest over time and putting it in today's dollars, is perhaps in the range of $5 to $24 trillion."

Feagin also tackled the land issue, to demonstrate that historical federal largess to whites dwarfs current Black reparations claims:

"Passed under the Abraham Lincoln administration, the Homestead Act provided access to productive land and wealth, mostly for white families, from the 1860s to the 1930s. Some 246 million acres were provided by the federal government, at minimal cost, for some 1.5 homesteads. Research by Trina Williams estimates that - depending on calculations of multiple ownership, mortality, marriage, and childbearing patterns - somewhere between 20 and 93 million Americans are now the beneficiaries of this large wealth-generating program over several generations. Williams (2000) suggests that the most likely figure is in the middle range, perhaps 46 million, a figure equal to about one quarter of the current population. Almost all of these beneficiaries have been white, as only 4,000 African Americans made entries under the Homestead Act."

Thus, white folks, many of them immigrants, received multiples of the acreage promised to Blacks - 246 million vs. 40 million - yet their descendants laugh out loud when African Americans bring up "40 acres and a mule."

Not one cash dollar

Reparations supporters may tally the bill by any number of formulas, but white America isn't hearing any of it. Data from a study of racial divisions under the George W. Bush administration, conducted over the past four years by Harvard University Professors Michael C. Dawson and Lawrence Bobo, reveal no support among whites for cash payments to compensate Blacks for slavery and Jim Crow. "None, no support, not any," Dawson emphasized. "It's a different world, in terms of how different groups see reality. There's also a different moral universe."

Within that morally challenged universe, only 4 percent of whites favored reparations for Black slavery in surveys conducted in 2000 and 2003. Two-thirds of Black respondents favored reparations for slavery.

This year, Dawson and Bobo, both professors of African and African American Studies, sought to clarify Black and white attitudes toward three reparations proposals: cash payments to African Americans as individuals; scholarship funds for disadvantaged African American youth; or the establishment of a Community Trust, to be used to rebuild Black schools and community infrastructure and foster small business.

Whites unanimously rejected the idea of cash payments to Blacks. When asked to assume that reparations were necessary, and to choose some form of compensation, whites favored a Community Trust over scholarships. African Americans favor both cash payments and the Community Trust idea, but are more likely to support the Community Trust framework. All three proposals enjoy some degree of support among African Americans.

A question from the Dawson-Bobo 2003 survey may provide the best measure of general white moral obtuseness on issues of race. When asked if reparations should be paid to the survivors of the white destruction of the Black communities of Tulsa, Oklahoma (1921) and Rosewood, Florida (1923), 84 percent of Blacks said "yes." Only 11 percent of whites agreed, an indication that widespread white feelings of guilt over racial oppression is a myth.

Professor Dawson noted that "even when presented with a demonstrable survivor of a contemporary event, whites oppose any reparations to the Black victims."

That's because most whites consider themselves to be, somehow, victims of African Americans, just as they feel set upon and victimized for no good reason by dark Islamic forces in the world, and for the same reasons that they constructed a national mythology of victimization at the hands of 'savage' Indians. The Dawson-Bobo statistics tell a tale of racism in the raw.

So deep is the collective psychosis, that the current and historical reality of enforced Black economic instability, as detailed in the Pew wealth disparity study, seems to affirm many whites in their delusions of superiority. Against all facts and reason, white America rejects redress of Black grievances, because it refuses to recognize its own bloody legacy, as described by University of Florida Professor Joe Feagin:

"White privilege is ubiquitous and imbedded even where most whites cannot see it; it is the foundation of this society. It began in early white gains from slavery and has persisted under legal segregation and contemporary racism. Acceptance of this system of white privileges and black disadvantages as 'normal' has conferred advantages for whites now across some fifteen generations."

There will be a reckoning.

Reprinted from:
www.blackcommentator.com/110/110_cover_white_wealth.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWealth of a White Nation: Blacks Sink Deeper``x1098489157,50710,world``x``x ``xThe timely release of the Osama tape four days before Americans go to the voting booths should come as no surprise.

Osama has been a central theme of the election campaign. The Bush administration has been preparing public opinion for the eventuality of a terrorist threat prior to the November 2 elections.

Osama tapes have emerged periodically since 9/11 at critical "political moments". Moreover, since 9/11, there have been six code orange "high risk" terror alerts. Often associated with these and other terror alerts, a mysterious Al Qaeda, Osama or Al Zarqawi tape emerges.

The Bush administration has in fact intimated on several occasions that a terror attack on America could take place prior to the elections. It had even set in motion formal procedures for canceling the elections in the case of a terror alert.
Full Article : globalresearch.ca


Arafat possibly poisoned: doctors

Medical tests on the ailing Palestinian President, Yasser Arafat, have ruled out leukaemia or any other life-threatening condition.

"The latest tests have found that President Arafat does not suffer from any life-threatening illness and what he has is curable," an aide, Nabil Abu Rdainah, said yesterday.

Mr Arafat, 75, underwent tests and scans on Saturday at a French military hospital the day after being flown from his shell-battered compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Doctors are looking at a possible viral infection or poisoning, but the final test results will not be available until Wednesday.
Full Article :smh.com.au -- Reprinted here``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xOsama bin Laden supports Bush Reelection``x1099265018,4676,world``x``x ``xBy Jutta Schmitt

With one of the first strategic military targets being a hospital so as to avoid pictures of civilians reduced to bits and pieces reaching the world and negatively impacting on Operation "Bomb 'em all into Oblivion," the razing to the ground of Fallujah ... the city of the "die-hard insurgents" and "home to absolute evil" ... has taken its course.

In a truly asymmetric "war," the American military has been using novel and devastating methods to clear Fallujah's streets. It has adapted a mine-clearing system, based on a rocket-propelled hose with explosives attached, used for the first time on D-Day on the fortified beaches of Normandy", as we learn from Times Defense editor, Michael Evans.

Marveling at the wonders of modern technology at the disposal of the American aggressor and the seamless transition from bomb-blasted streets to reality TV, war reporter James Hider describes how "the green video screen in the back of a Bradley fighting vehicle is the ultimate in reality television, and that is how we watched the battle of Fallujah unfold as our 30-tonne steel beast advanced into the district of Jolan, the rebels' bastion, in the small hours of yesterday morning ... on a screen accurate enough to show rats scavenging on the rubbish piles."

And as nothing but scavenging rats, indeed, are considered Iraqis who have never accepted the invasion and occupation of their country by a foreign aggressor and who keep fighting against their "liberation" with whatever means they can, determined but chanceless in the face of the aggressor's technological superiority and artificially boosted "morale." By means of "the US Army's psychological warfare team, playing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries from loudspeakers" the reality of war blends into the war of realities, making American troops feel like war-hero movie stars. And this is how we see suicidal vocation meet the pavlov conditioned mind in the streets of Fallujah, the two sides of our perverted world that reduces the human being to absolute nothingness.

On the one hand, the despair of defense turns human beings into bombs. On the other hand, Pavlov training is required to send an army to raze a city to the ground and "combat" against its besieged population. The carnage has to be put into proper scenery so the American troops' minds can switch to cinema reality, where they morph into Colonel Kilgore of Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam film, Apocalypse Now:

"Some scenes are memorable, notably the spectacular attack on a village by 9th Air Cavalry helicopter gunships, complete with loudspeakers playing Richard Wagner's "The Ride of the Valkyries." After the attack, the deranged Colonel Kilgore, wearing a Stetson, dismounts from his command helicopter, which is emblazoned with the insignia "Death From Above," surveys the carnage his attack has caused, and pronounces, "I love the smell of napalm . . . it smells like victory."

* The American Bush electorate, far from the smell of the phosphor-melted flesh of TV screens. After all, it's just "reality TV".

Hopefully, modern technology will soon revolutionize television broadcasting. Because I sincerely think it IS a shame that "you can't show war as it really is on the screen, with all the blood and gore. Perhaps it would be better if you could fire real shots over the audience's head every night, you know, and have actual casualties in the theater" (or in the TV room for that matter), as a D-Day veteran dryly suggests.

'Cause that may be the only way the American public thinks twice before their next election.


JUTTA SCHMITT, M.A., Political Science, Philosophy & Sociology is an Assistant Lecturer (ad honorem) in Political Science at the University de Los Andes (ULA) in Merida.
You may email Jutta Schmitt at jutta@aktionspotenzial.de``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xFallujah: Fiction meets Reality``x1100324957,85109,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde

Dreadlocks did not first enter Trinidad via Jamaican Rastafarians; it entered with Indian indentured servants; some grassroots Indians also carry dreadlocks. (This can be developed at a later time.) It is these same Indians who first introduced many Africans in Trinidad to Marijuana as it was legally available and used as part of their religious practices. This was taking place long before the 1930s. Indians in India also have a long continuous history of dreadlocks and marijuana that goes back thousands of years. The world recognized Jamaica as its birthplace and that is no big thing.

Most Rastas on the Internet understand very little about life in the Caribbean (Jamaica and even Trinidad) where the resurgence of Rasta played out in its early stages.

They unwittingly try to impose changes on something without understanding the context that gave rise to it, so they inadvertently walk around with ideas that do not serve the Rastafarian Movement's original intention.

The movement was about dealing with the social neglect of mostly dark-skinned Black Africans who were enslaved and robbed. The original issues are still around, and people who cannot identify with the issues just do not get it. The resurgence of African dreadlocked Rastas was in a Jamaican/Caribbean context where whites were not the majority in terms of numbers, but maintained control of the education, media and financial institutions. The dynamics that Caribbean people have to deal with are not the same for many people in other countries. Caribbean people have to deal with many variants of racism because of the diverse people who were either brought in as indentured servants or later on migrated here, while Blacks still maintained the sizable majority. This is the context.

Light-skinned ones did not experience what dark-skinned Blacks did back then. Most of them got jobs in the banks and other places, being the first pick of whites. It is true some suffered, but there were many social advantages for them. In no way did they have the kind of social invisibility as poor dark-skinned Blacks. But many dark-skinned Blacks do continue to feel the truth of what caused the Rasta resurgence today. Even if they never heard of Rasta, they can easily come in and identify with all the issues.

Everyone wants to associate, but reading about Rasta and chatting with a few elders does not on its own qualify them as spokespeople or leaders for Africans, especially the Africans who suffer the worst in the system.

Even today in many parts of the Caribbean, to call oneself African invites ridicule, and people are denied opportunities for that. Claiming an African name can place one in a very disadvantageous position. Blacks in these islands are not the minority, so there were no special programs to address these social issues. Most people casually accepted that because they had black governments that they were in control. Many are now realizing that their governments have been announcing policies that were given or dictated to them by imperial powers.

It is obvious that people who have withstood denial of rights from whites, colonized Blacks and all others for 40, 50, 60 years, would resent someone who does not have a long history of struggling for those rights being suddenly placed in a position of authority in an organization that is supposed to be primarily dealing with their issues, and worst yet, someone who symbolizes all that Blacks, who remained resisting the system, were fighting to remove. Therefore, Black Rastas in Barbados, being upset because their government appointed a 'white' or near-white Rasta to the post of Director of the Commission for Pan African Affairs, should be understood in this context.

People who want to associate with Rasta should get a better understanding of the environment and conditions that spawned its resurgence. If they feel they are somehow above Caribbean people then they just cannot get it.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRasta and the Caribbean``x1100537225,73623,rasta``x``x ``xBy Ayinde

I wonder what different people mean when they say 'God'.

Across cultural lines it can have myriad meanings. It could be that people do not know what they, or others, are trying to convey when they use the word 'God', given the fact that it is not a term indigenous to many cultures.

There are nature's earthly forces, forces in people, forces in historical lineage, and forces that can be summoned from the Universe. Indigenous people had no problem relating to all these forces so they did not fuss about different concepts of deities, as they were quite aware that deities are the collective good abilities of anyone or anything in nature that could be used for both good and bad (depending on how things were being interpreted). They were more aware that the collective good that some people will see in one person/personality can be seen as bad by another, as they first related to what worked for the benefit of their community.

So the concept of everyone having to pay homage to one particular personality or concept of a deity was quite unreal, although they all acknowledged a supreme force that guided it all. The beliefs of one group of people, who called themselves Christians, were forced on other people against their free will, and that was never a good thing. So as far as I am concerned, unless people can recapture their broader awareness of forces/deities, the argument about whose idea of a god is more correct is not even a worthy debate.

Indigenous people recognized their leaders and/or healers as extensions of ancestral forces and/or universal forces, but they were practical in their relationships there. If the local leader worked in a way that enhanced their survival they were cool with that, and paid the local leader all the respect befitting of a deity. But when they realized that they were not benefiting from the local leader's guidance, they simply felt that their local deity lost favor with the bigger forces, and they were prepared to try another. Of course given the amount of information available today, people have more to consider before making a determination of good and bad, as people communicate internationally. Good and bad has to also be relevant to more than just one's local province.

Christians do not like these kinds of debates where they are called upon to define what they mean by god, as the concept was spoon-fed to most of them without having real experiences of what it entails.

As far as I am concerned, no one should accept anyone's idea of religion unless they see how it relates to their own indigenous values, and can benefit them from there. No one should be forced to accept another's idea of divinity. People have to also emancipate themselves from spiritual slavery.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhat do people mean by 'God'?``x1102179603,99511,rasta``x``x ``xBy Ayinde

What if Rastas and other Afrocentrics choose not to adopt any ONE idea of 'religion', but take suitable aspects from any and all ideas of religion that emanated from Africa, as Rastafarians have certainly done in part? This way they can identify with all the different ways Africans have always expressed their spirituality, from a position of respect, and in so doing identify with more of nature and Africa as a whole. This way they can make cultural ties with the most distant or remote peoples in Africa. Is this not a move for the better? Only a colonizer or a missionary would want to tell a people that their own way of viewing the world and divinity is wrong, and they should give it up to follow theirs, when such a people are not infringing on other people's right to be different.

Clearly, Africans in different environments saw divinity in its many forms and they paid respect to it. So why should it be too difficult to grasp that the free-mindedness and ongoing reasoning that are an integral part of being a Rasta, can lead people to a greater respect for all of life in its diverse states, and not to be rigid adherents to only one way of perceiving things.

Christianity is part of a colonizing structure to many Africans who felt it was forced on them, and would be viewed differently by members of the Solomonic line and others in Ethiopia who did not experience direct slavery and colonization mixed with Christianity. There are other groups in Ethiopia as well as all over Africa who are quite entitled to view life and divinity in a way that addresses their concerns, and to not be persecuted for being different especially if they are not infringing on other people's right to be different. In other words all Africans are not Christians and we today can learn and respect the diversity, without being imposing.

The fact that Rastas and other Africans disagree with what you propose is a clue that there is way more to the story. Haile Selassie was also a politician who wanted to maintain alliances with certain European powers, including their Pope, as a means of fortifying his 'concept of Ethiopia' (there are others in Ethiopia who disagreed with him). So any right thinking person would be more discerning when dealing with his statements. I am sure you have noticed that many of his statements are not taken up by many Rastafarians, who out of a sign of 'respect' will not publicly disagree, but who also felt and demonstrated that they too have a right to discern and determine their own course.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRastas and other Afrocentrics``x1102392000,20130,rasta``x``x ``xRe: Do other Creatures Quarell about the Creator??

Response by Ayinde
December 05, 2004

Much of the debate about Selassie's views on Christianity has been available online for a long time, so if some have a problem with them, it may be because they do not agree with some of the things Selassie said and did. In that case they should feel free enough to simply say so. I am of the view that Selassie could not understand the effect of colonialism on Africans, and why some would have considered him their Saviour/God. I would not expect an Emperor to understand that. Admitting that one does not agree with his position on some things does not take away from the symbolic presence that he was.

The problem is that some people feel that to follow Selassie means to take everything literally, and suspend their own discerning ability.

Garvey and Selassie did not understand the context of dreadlocks, marijuana and so many things that were already taking place in the Caribbean before their time. I have respect for their efforts, but I do not agree with everything they did. Admitting these things does not diminish the contribution these people made to the development of Africans as well as others.

Having a more realistic view of these people (without demonizing them) can allow many to appreciate their own discerning abilities

_____________________________________


Re: Do other Creatures Quarell about the Creator??

Response by rasi
December 05, 2004

Please elaborate on your conclusion that His Majesty did not understand the effects of colonialism. I am of the view that if you live on a contininent that is/has been colonized, and you are a leader/Emporer you are most likely to understand the effects of colonialism on Africans, since he. himself is an African.

How do you know that His Majesty or Marcus Garvey did not understnd the context of locked hair-I am confident that they both were aware of the Nazarene vow, and how it pertains to not taking a razor to the head.

_____________________________________


Re: Do other Creatures Quarell about the Creator??

Response by Ayinde
December 05, 2004

I explained that in my view Selassie did not appear to understand why Africans in the Caribbean would prefer to accept him as their 'savoir and messiah' rather than the Jesus that had been handed to them through the colonizing effects of Christianity. This is quite evident and has been explained by others on this board. Selassie clearly stated that he was not Jesus Christ reincarnated and that there were people in Jamaica that believed he was so. He encouraged the Ethiopian Orthodox Church to set up in Jamaica to teach them about worshipping differently.

So in my view he did not get that.

Being aware of Nazarene vow as spoken about in the Jewish Torah does not mean they understood the context of dreadlocks, marijuana and so many things that were already taking place in the Caribbean before their time. Earlier on this board I mentioned the influence of Hinduism on Rasta in Trinidad, and I believe it was the same in Jamaica. Ethiopian orthodox priests sent by Selassie to Jamaica demanded that Rastas cut their locks in order to be baptized.
(You can always check with Ras Marcus to see if I am correct about this.)

_____________________________________


Re: Will the Real Christians Please Stand?

By Ayinde
December 20, 2004

The typical Christian response to reports of Christian abuses is, "not everyone who says he or she is a Christian is of Christ", or words similar to that effect. But at the 'heart' of these 'believers' is a missionary zeal born out by their arrogance and disrespect of other people's values.

One Christian tactic often used is to go through indigenous values to draw from the silliest interpretations in an attempt to invalidate them. Of course, they don't like it when others show the silliness in their beliefs. They don't admit that the power behind the spread of their beliefs was/is brute force/murder, and not benevolent deeds.

Missionaries are generally characterized by their unwillingness to learn about other people's values, unwillingness to respect people's right to operate as they choose, especially when other peoples' cultural ways clearly do not infringe on the rights of others. When challenged on this, they usually give distorted interpretations of other people's values in an attempt to discredit them. They can always argue that people do the same with Christianity, but they fail to acknowledge when people condemn Christianity, they usually have real experiences and a living testimony of abuses, all done in the name of their 'one book'.

Try telling them that KRST was a natural state in the development of individuals (although different cultures have their own terms for that state, and various other states of consciousness), and was a part of most indigenous African cultures before people were plagued with Arab and European/Christian violence and elitism. Try telling them the oneness of KRST is the common truths that people realize when they raised their consciousness. Try telling them that each person is his or her own savior in their own right (although they need help from others). Tell them, and see how blasphemous they find these very old but true ideas.

_____________________________________


All Rastas are Perfect and Know all about HIM

Response by 'King David'
December 20, 2004

[[[ The typical Christian response to pieces like this is, "not everyone who says he or she is a Christian is of Christ", or words similar to that effect. But at the heart of these 'believers' is a missionary zeal born out by their arrogance and disrespect of other people's values. ]]]

It is good of you to judge the "heart of these 'believers'".

How is this in harmony to the words of Haile Selassie I ?

"In pondering over the life, the goodness, humanity and sacrifice of the Savior of the World, in looking at the laws which He gave us, how much should we be ashamed to call ourselves Christian people, and yet not to follow His footsteps. Had we been Christain people, had we been worthy of the name, peace would have reigned on all the face of the Earth, and would have risen to the level of the immortal angels who always glorify the Eternal God, and the peoples of the world would no longer have remained divided into hostile camps. " Word of Haile Selassie I

[[[ One Christian tactic often used is to go through indigenous values to draw from the silliest interpretations in an attempt to invalidate them. Of course, they don't like it when others show the silliness in their beliefs. They don't admit that the power behind the spread of their beliefs was/is brute force/murder, and not benevolent deeds. ]]]

Is there a way to [[[ show the silliness in their beliefs ]]] and Hold up to the Teaching of Haile Selassie ?

"It is quite true that there is no perfection in humanity. From time to time we make mistakes, we do commit sins but even as we do that, deep in Our hearts as Christains we know we have forgivness from the Almighty. He taught Us all who seek Him shall Find Him. To live in this Healthy Life, a Christain Life, is what makes Me follow Jesus Christ."

For Christian people no day is as glorious and as joyous as the day on which they commemorate the Nativity of Our Savior Jesus Christ. On this day each one of Us tries to forget his worries and his anxieties and endeavours to alleviate those of his loved ones and friends, and to forgive those who have wronged Him, so as only to mediate on the life of Him who is Supreme Lord in All.

How is Haile Selassie I term for "Christian" any different from the term you use for Christians, you really need to set up a distinction here, or run the risk of looking hypocritical.

[[[ Missionaries are generally characterized by their unwillingness to learn about other people's values, unwillingness to respect people's right to operate as they choose, especially when other peoples' cultural ways clearly do not infringe on the rights of others. When challenged on this, they usually give distorted interpretations of other people's values in an attempt to discredit them. They can always argue that people do the same with Christianity, but they fail to acknowledge when people condemn Christianity, they usually have real experiences and a living testimony of abuses, all done in the name of their 'one book'. ]]]

their 'one book'
What is the problem with their [[[one book]]]
"Today man sees all his hopes and aspirations crumbling before him. He is perplexed and knows not whither he is drifting. But he must realise that the Bible is his refuge, and the rallying point for all humanity. In it man will find the solution of his present difficulties and guidance for his future action, and unless he accepts with clear conscienceof the Bible and its great Message, he cannot hope for salvation. For my part I glory in the Bible. "

Does Haile Selassie I have a problem with the 'one book'?
If he didi where is it mentioned, and does He speak this highly of any other "one book"?

[[[ Try telling them that KRST was a natural state in the development of individuals (although different cultures have their own terms for that state, and various other states of consciousness), and was a part of most indigenous African cultures before people were plagued with Arab and European/Christian violence and elitism. Try telling them the oneness of KRST is the common truths that people realize when they raised their consciousness. Try telling them that each person is his or her own savior in their own right (although they need help from others). Tell them, and see how blasphemous they find these very old but true ideas. ]]]

Which of these doctrines were adopted by Haile Selassie I, where each person has 'his own unique christ'?
can you show me evidence of any of these doctrined being taught by Haile Selassie I or his church?

_____________________________________


All Rastas are Perfect and Know all about HIM

Response by Ayinde
December 21, 2004

You are putting this comparison of statements to the wrong person.

I am already on record stating that I did not agree with everything Haile Selassie did. I consider him ONE of our MANY esteemed African personalities. All the African personalities I admire made mistakes, in my view.

If Haile Selassie said or encouraged anything that is different to MY words and actions, then you can simply take it as a sign that I disagreed with him, or I am disagreeing with the context or interpretation YOU are giving to what was said or done. Disagreeing with him does not, on its own, mean either of us is right or wrong. It simply means I disagree.

I am not a follower of anyone or anything but myself. Seeing that I have free will, I have the ability to think and act in my best interest. Knowing myself removes the need to have to 'one-up' about ideas on divinity.

Truth is not a democracy - determined by how many people vote or agree.

Consider this quote:

"While Rastafari certainly maintains a sense of family, it is not a unified bloc. Several subgroups and varying beliefs vie for the soul of Rastafari. These differences in theology, lifestyle, and behaviors all fit within the broad umbrella of Rastafari because, at its heart, it is an Afro-Caribbean identity movement--not primarily a religion with clearly defined, universally accepted dogma and doctrines."``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWill the Real Christians Please Stand?``x1103601600,44605,views``x``x ``xPosted By: Fyahman
Date: Tuesday, 28 December 2004, at 5:51 p.m.

I agree. It's the focus. AFRICA MUST BE FREE, FOR ALL BLACKMAN WORLDWIDE TO BE FREE. That's what I heard said as I was growing up. It still holds true today. I know it's hard but it should be the one and only focus of all Africans in the diaspora. So, we all should try to encourage that attitude amongst other Africans; wherever they are to be found. When Africa is free and strong; we will be all free and strong anywhere we are on this earth.

Salem en Fakir innah RastafarI
www.rastafarispeaks.com/cgi-bin/forum/config.pl?read=49034

By Ayinde

Certainly all people need to examine African history to free themselves from false notions about Africa, and Africans throughout the Diaspora. They should do this to get an awareness of human abilities and potentials, to construct a better meaning for civilization and where it started and to look at different values to elevate their own selves. In other words, people need the African focus to free themselves from the legacy of Arab and European invasions where the victors told the stories. They need to also understand the effects of African naïveté.

On another level the statement means that as Africans we are tied to the misrepresentation of Africa. Once people who have been affected by these distortions are not free to "develop" as they choose, then our work is far from over.

Not only Africans on and off the continent need this focus but also Europeans, as they too are not free. Wars for economic gain are based on greed, which is also based on fear. False notions of superiority and inferiority are based on ignorance and fear. Informing Europeans who want to learn, and getting them to change their direction also helps Africa.

So encouraging people to develop an African focus is first beneficial to those who choose to develop the focus, and the immediate impact should be from where they are.

Some are either misunderstanding or misrepresenting the idea of impacting from where they are. Some do not see that assisting people from where they are is also part of assisting the African Diaspora and Africa. It is not like similar problems are not around us. Of course assistance should first go to those who need and want it the most, and in this respect it is usually about helping other Africans, but it is not limited to that. An African focus is NOT only about trying to assist Africans on the continent of Africa, it involves the entire African Diaspora and ultimately the whole world.

People should not be on this 'I want to free Africa' paternalistic mindset as if Africans on the continent are unable to conceptualize a better Africa and help themselves. People should not believe that only those , with some awareness, know what all Africans want. Many Africans on the continent only have a vague idea of other Africans outside of their ethnic group, so they think little of killing other Africans. Many do not think there is much to gain from revisiting African history. They too need to learn about Africa in general, and the wider Diaspora. Some on the continent are doing things with much awareness. The same holds true for Diasporan Africans.

One can have the clearest idea for Africa, but if one cannot share it in a way for others to see how it can work for them, then one is stuck alone with that idea. So although one's awareness should be rooted in Africa, people still have to start doing from where they are.

Far too often some people superimpose their awareness of issues in parts of Africa over all of Africa, as if there are no examples of better on the continent; as if Africans on the continent need Africans in the wider Diaspora to somehow come marching over to tell them what to do, or to raise and dump aid on people carelessly. Even if this were done, it would be no different to the conduct of missionaries; Africans on the continent should want help from Diasporan Africans and should learn to respect the views of Diasporan Africans. I can understand rushing in to assist with natural disasters, but not disasters that are the product of poor conduct/greed. These things need to be reasoned out, and while language is a problem across Africa and the Diaspora, we can surely communicate better ideas among people who can understand us, right where we are. Some who are multilingual can share across the languages, but for most people, mobilizing from where they are is the immediate work.

I am sure many could not see that assisting Grenada following hurricane Ivan was also helping the African Diaspora. Assisting victims of the recent Asian tidal wave is also helping the African Diaspora.

Help is not limited to only doing things on the continent of Africa. The focus and reason for doing is what will ultimately make the difference.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAfrica Must Be Free For All Blackman To Be Free``x1104347567,39367,views``x``x ``xDemocracyNow.org

The disaster is killing thousands in Ache but the Indonesian military has been doing that for years. Now activists fear the Indonesian military will use the disaster as a cover to further the killing of the Acehnese and that the Pentagon may use the disaster as an excuse to restore aid to the Indonesian military which was blocked after the military's massacre in East Timor in 1999.

AMY GOODMAN: Today, we are joined in our studio by Suraiya I.T. She heads up the International Forum on Aceh. She is Acehnese herself. We are also joined by Allan Nairn, activist and journalist, who has just recently come from Indonesia and has spent a good deal of time in Aceh. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Suraiya I.T., let's begin with you, how is your family in Aceh now?

SURAIYA I.T.: My family is fine because my mother lives in east of Aceh, because east of Aceh is okay.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you hearing about Banda Aceh and the areas hardest hit.

SURAIYA I.T.: I just heard from the NGO coalition from Aceh. The situation is getting worse because of the victims are increasing, and the supply of medical aid is very limited, and the supply of what's limited also.

AMY GOODMAN: What are the numbers that you're hearing in terms of the numbers of people dead?

SURAIYA I.T.: Just in Banda Aceh is sad. The number until now is more than 30,000 people were dead. Not yet from west of Aceh, Meulaboh because of the communication problems, because of transportation problems, so, we cannot exactly [know] how many people. Maybe it's according to the people in the ground, almost 60,000 people were killed in the whole Aceh.

AMY GOODMAN: 60,000 alone.

SURAIYA I.T.: 60,000.

AMY GOODMAN: Which are higher than the figures that we are hearing at this point.

SURAIYA I.T.: Yes, yes, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Is medical aid getting to the people?

SURAIYA I.T.: According to the people on the ground, because they just called me three -- three in the morning this morning. I asked them, how about the medical aid? According to them, actually, it is -- the aid -- so many aids came from outside the country, but the problem is stuck in the Halim airport now. So the medical assistance, the medical aids cannot enter to Aceh, first because of the military operation in the first, and secondly, totally no medical system in Aceh. And about the scene yesterday, the government officially announced that journalists and foreigners can enter Aceh. However, because of transportation, because of the situation getting worse, they cannot just come into Aceh, because of the transportation, the aid starts in Halim airport and in Medan, so --

AMY GOODMAN: So, can medical people, can relief freely make their way into Aceh?

SURAIYA I.T.: Seems yesterday, yes. However, like I told you, because of transportation, because of the system, they cannot enter directly to Aceh right now, because flight is very limited, because of the transportation from Medan to Banda Aceh is very limited also.

AMY GOODMAN: Is the Indonesian military there?

SURAIYA I.T.: Yes. The problem is, according to my perspective, the coordination is very bad because of government, not good coordination to concentrate about the transportation problem. I think it's very, very bad because of the coordination is very bad in Aceh.

AMY GOODMAN: We are also joined by Allan Nairn, journalist and activist, just recently returned from Indonesia, has spent a good deal of time in Aceh. Allan, what are you hearing?

ALLAN NAIRN: As Suraiya said, the military, until about 24 hours ago was impeding international aid agencies from coming in. There was a team from -- a medical team from Japan that flew in, and turned around in frustration because the military wasn't letting them enter. This is undoubtedly caused thousands of extra deaths. The reason the military won't let them in is that Aceh has been under semi-totalitarian de facto occupation by the Indonesian military. On TV, people may have seen footage of the Grand Mosque of Banda Aceh, one of the few big structures left standing, and in the yard in front of the mosque, it's litters with bloated bodies and dead animals, and debris and the building itself is cracked. It's now a scene of devastation. But just five years ago, the yard in front of that mosque was filled with anywhere from 400,000 to a million Acehnese who were carrying out a peaceful demonstration calling for referendum. A vote -- a free vote in which they could choose whether they wanted to become independent of Indonesia. In proportional terms, Aceh has a population -- before this disaster, had a population of about four million. This means that anywhere from 10 percent to 25 percent of the entire population of Aceh, turned up on the lawn of the mosque that day, to call for freedom. It's -- proportionally, it's one of the largest political demonstrations in recent world history. If a similar thing happened in the US, you’d be talking anywhere from 30 to 60 million people here to give an idea of the enormity. Faced with that kind of civilian movement, the Indonesian military moved to crush them, assassinating, disappearing leaders, raping female activists. Jafar Siddiq Hamsa, who was a leading international spokesman for the Acehnese -- he was becoming to Aceh what Jose Ramos Horta was to East Timor. Jafar lived in the US for a few years. When he went back to Aceh in 2000, he was abducted, his body turned up wrapped in barbed wire, multiple stab wounds in his chest, his face sliced off. The military wants to crush the civilian movement in Aceh because they know they can’t win a political fight. They prefer the military fight. There is an armed rebel group in Aceh, the GAM, the Aceh Independence movement. The military occasionally sells them weapons. They wants this war to continue. It enables them to make a political point. They say to people and the rest of Indonesia, see, there is danger and chaos. You need us, the army, to protect you. Who else can you turn to? And secondarily, the fighting in Aceh gives the Indonesian military and police a gold mine of corruption. The -- there is a system of police and army extortion of the poor and small businesspeople. Every week, you have to turn over 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 rupia, the equivalent of a couple of dollars. You cannot drive on the road without being shaken down. And people are not free to move within Aceh. It's one of the worst situations of repression in the world, and the Indonesian military wants it to continue that way.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to break. When we come back, we'll talk about what this occupation and the tsunamis mean together at this point with Aceh, ground zero of the global calamity that is currently unfolding, now hearing up to 70,000 people killed, estimates that it will be over 100,000 people killed. Our guests, journalist Allan Nairn, and Suraiya I.T. of the International Forum on Aceh.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking about ground zero right now, about Aceh, Indonesia, the site of two catastrophes, one the natural calamity, and the other the military occupation that has gone on for years. Our guests, Suraiya I.T. of the International Forum for Aceh as well as journalist and activist, Allan Nairn, who has just come out of Indonesia and has spent a good amount of time in Aceh. Allan, as you talk about the political situation in Aceh, the military now looking like the people who will help those in Aceh, whoever has survived.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, the military just announced they're sending in 15,000 additional troops into Aceh. They undoubtedly will use the new situation where people -- Acehnese will be coming home, many of whom are in exile will try to come home to search for the dead, bury the dead, see what remains of their houses. It's likely that Indonesian military intelligence will be using that to target people. Just two days before the quake, the military announced that they were sending 4-500 additional military intelligence people into Aceh. The Indonesian military intelligence is now funded by the American CIA Under the guise of anti-terrorism, even though by an objective definition of terrorism, killing civilians, more than 95% of the terrorist acts in Indonesia have been carried out by the military. When the quake hit, buildings collapsed, prisons collapsed. The woman's prison, down near the water in Banda, Aceh collapsed. Many of the victims were political prisoners. People who were in there only for the crime of expressing hatred against the government, which is actually prohibited. They were jailed without evidence. The thousands, many thousands of Aceh, even before the quake and tsunami were driven off the land by the military, and many were put into reeducation camps, where they were indoctrinated and sorted by the military. Now people are being dumped into mass graves. This has actually been going on for years in Aceh, except prior, the mass graves came from military bullets.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Aceh, this area, is the largest gas fields run by Exxon Mobile?

ALLAN NAIRN: There's a huge natural gas operation centered near the town of Lhoksumawe. It supplies much of the natural gas for Japan and South Korea. There's no good reason why Aceh should be poor. Even though most of the people living along the coast, who lost their homes and their belongings, and their farm animals, were living a very poor life. This massive natural gas operation, the revenues accrue to Exxon Mobil and the central government in Jakarta, and almost none finds its way back to the people of Aceh.

AMY GOODMAN: I remember reading several years ago a Business Week expose called, "What Mobil Knew." There was a picture of a man holding a skull. It was about allegations that Mobil had given excavating equipment to the Indonesian military to dig mass graves in Aceh. Suraiya I.T., what do you know about this? I was shocked yesterday hearing a journalist from CNN in Aceh saying, “We are seeing mass graves.” I thought he was talking about those uncovered from the occupation. Of course, he was talking about the newly dug graves where thousands of bodies are being piled in, bull-dozed over, piled in because of the natural catastrophe that has taken place.

SURAIYA I.T.: After the suffering from military occupation, now Aceh has been struck by a natural disaster. Today in the United States and yesterday -- yesterday in Aceh, the people bury mass graves in what they call blangbintang -- the government provided big area for thousands and thousands of mass graves there. For the Acehnese people, this is like hell for Acehnese -- after suffering from mass graves from the oppression, now they suffer from a natural disaster. We lost so many people. The brave people are journalists because more than 200 local journalists are gone and missing -- the most brave and dedicated activists are also gone, including Mohammad Ibrahim. He is the director of Walhi -- the executive of the Indonesian for whom – for the environment, and like Allan said, many women prisoners and political prisoners, woman activists are gone in the Lhok Nga Prison. And [inaudible], he is a political prisoner, he is [inaudible] inside the prison in Lhok Nga with the 39 women activists, [inaudible] is associate with the GAM member in Aceh. This situation is for the Acehnese people, particularly in Banda, Aceh, such a very, very sad thing because military operations, natural disaster, and this is -- how to say -- it's difficult to explain the situation. I call -- I called my family. My sister told me, everywhere the bodies are on the streets. It's very difficult to identify who belongs to whom family this body. Many of the Acehnese either in the United States, either in Jakarta -- why think about the news about their family. Such is the Acehnese in Washington DC. There is bad news now in Aceh, because not just his family gone, but his village is gone also with the --

AMY GOODMAN: The whole village.

SURAIYA I.T.: The whole village is gone. This is like a deep sorrow for the Acehnese, not just inside Aceh but outside Aceh also. Also, Acehnese in Pennsylvania, the Khalid family for example. He is in deep sorrow also right now because of his sister and five children in Banda, Aceh. So, the situation for the Acehnese now is not just support by what we called aid, but we need support for moral and aid support, particularly for this situation.

AMY GOODMAN: Do many Acehnese live in the United States?

SURAIYA I.T.: Many Acehnese live in the United States. More than 200 Acehnese live in the United States now.

AMY GOODMAN: 200?

SURAIYA I.T.: More than 200 Acehnese live in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Allan Nairn, the issue of what this means for the future for Aceh. People now, who run from the military, who are afraid of the military in Aceh, do they turn to the military for support, for finding family members?

ALLAN NAIRN: That's a good question. Lots of people will have to go to the military for food handouts, to get clean water. In some ways, it will be a situation somewhat comparable to Iraq during the sanctions, when Saddam's regime was able to control the welfare food handouts. I mean, there's already a tremendous amount of control, but this can consolidate it even more. On the other hand though, many of the communities are so shattered, the older people, traditional leaders dead, local officials dead, much of the population dead, that to a certain extent, society will have to be rebuilt in many Acehnese towns and that may offer some opportunities. That may offer some opportunities for people to put things back together in a better way than before, but that can only happen if the military pulls back and is not allowed to continue their extortion and their terror. We should put this in perspective. Now the world is looking at Aceh for the first time ever and will probably never again look at Aceh with this intensity, but as dramatic, as awesome as this act of nature is, let's say it kills 50,000, 60,000 in Aceh, that’s still far less than the death toll over just a couple of years due to hunger and poor nutrition, diarrhea, deaths mainly among children who live in poverty in Aceh. It's also dwarfed by the military massacres carried out by the Indonesian military in various places. They killed 200,000 in Timor. They killed anywhere from 400,000 to a million in Indonesia itself when they consolidated power in 1965 to 1967. So, the concern that the world has now for this disaster is appropriate, but we should have that concern all the time. When people are dying, not just from natural tsunamis, but from military or police bullets, often paid for by the United States, or dying from preventable hunger. 50 million, that's what the U.S. is giving. You compare it to Bush's inauguration, there are also thousands of American individuals who could sit down right now and write a check for $50 million. They could save tens of thousands of lives, but there's no social pressure on them to do that, because we live in a world where it's assumed that it's okay to let people starve while the dollar that can save them sits idly in your pocket.

AMY GOODMAN: In terms of aid right now, where can people help? How can people help the people of Aceh?

ALLAN NAIRN: There are grassroots groups on the ground in Aceh, and we didn't know until last night that the activists were still alive to carry on, but now we have learned they are, groups like the People's Crisis Center, which for years have been working with refugees driven off the land, people sent into reeducation camps, trying to give some education to the children, trying to feed. They are now accepting relief, donations. So, people can channel them through either ETAN, the East Timor Action Network in the U.S. The website is www.etan.org; or TAPOL, a human rights organization based in Britain. TAPOL - they're at www.tapol.gn.apc.org. This money will find its way to grassroots Acehnese activists who are also working for human rights, and will try to save people and build something better in the long run for Aceh.

AMY GOODMAN: Final comment, Suraiya I.T., as we wrap up this discussion to leave with the people who are listening to and watching this broadcast about your people, the people of Aceh.

SURAIYA I.T.: I think that to help the Acehnese people right now, we need support from international community, particularly to encourage Indonesian governments, to open more space for international aid and international journalists. Even right now, the government is opened in the international aid and international organizations, however, there are still regulations and rules, and besides that, we need financial aid from international communities, particularly from the United Nations, from the international community everywhere. They can give support to the mosques, to the churches. We establish the -- what we call a Fund Relief for Aceh. They can contact us, either to us or through the International Fund for Aceh.

AMY GOODMAN: We'll put the contact information on our Web site at democracynow.org. Again, one of those contacts, etan.org. The easiest to remember, etan.org. I want to thank you both for being with us. Suraiya I.T. of the International Forum for Aceh, and journalist and activist, Allan Nairn, who has just come from Indonesia.

East Timor Action Network

Tapol, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAceh: A Victim of Tsunami and Occupation``x1104370619,86135,world``x``x ``x"To you what is the basis of Pan-Africanism? Is it national self-interest or a powerful call to Black unity?"

By Ayinde

It is not either\or. It is about self-interest AND extending to other Africans and people in general who share or are interested in learning our values, locally and internationally.

Black unity is primarily about developing consciousness of our common African human origins as well as common identity and values that serve the best interest of us all. This also allows us to identify with the root causes of problems, and it further allows us to develop the correct focus and order for realizing justice. In doing this we will have to co-operate with others to share ideas, values and skills.

Africans have to take responsibility for their conduct immediately (where they are). This mobilizes and develops people and resources within their communities so they can bring more to the global movement.

It seems as if some are waiting on a sudden mass movement of Diasporan Africans to march off to Africa. I am saying that this body of Africans should be about people developing consciousness and skills, reaching out and making lasting ties to the wider community. Continental Africans also have to learn about Diasporan Africans so we can build on mutual respect.

It is quite easy for people to fake doing - claiming to be waiting to go back to Africa - while only paying lip-service to African causes here and now. People have to become better informed and set good examples, so more people around them will see the benefits of becoming involved. They have to develop personal and work ethics, business and other skills, while continually informing themselves. This is how it grows. Pan-Africanism is supposed to be about the development of individuals, all Africans and ultimately all people who choose to learn from the ideas. It is not just about Africans on the continent of Africa. The call for Black co-operation starts from right where we are. It takes conscious individuals to make a powerful Black body.

It is no use being a thief, deceiver, murderer, wasteful, with no working skills, and waiting for some day to be suddenly placed in a perfect state. African development allows individuals to personally improve while working for the benefit of the collective. The ideas of Pan-Africanism are supposed to be about individuals taking responsibility for informing themselves, developing resourcefully and extending outwards. Of course much of this can be done simultaneously, but really, people will still have to get informed and act on it where they are now, or else they are hypocrites who will 'learn' better values now and wait to put it into practice some other time and place.

I have already commented countless times about the role of Western powers in destabilizing Africa and African movements. Now I am specifically speaking about Africans taking responsibility for THE PART they play in allowing these western interests to destabilize us/them. It is not ALWAYS about western powers killing off leaders, or foreign armies marching on people. Much is related to the unreasonable western tastes (including greed), which many Africans have acquired. Much is related to past and present naïveté. The west is PART of the reason for the problems in Africa. Many Africans who find themselves in desperate situations have to also examine the choices they made. They have to examine what information they were acting upon, and then get better informed.

Africans on the continent can also seek help from more informed Diasporan Africans who have experience and examples of success.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xTo you what is the basis of Pan-Africanism?``x1104724800,81892,views``x``x ``xBy Robert Jensen - 1998

So, if we live in a world of white privilege--unearned white privilege--how does that affect your notion of a level playing field? I ask.

He paused for a moment and said, "That really doesn't matter."

That statement, I suggested to him, reveals the ultimate white privilege: the privilege to acknowledge you have unearned privilege but ignore what it means.

That exchange led me to rethink the way I talk about race and racism with students. It drove home to me the importance of confronting the dirty secret that we white people carry around with us everyday: In a world of white privilege, some of what we have is unearned. I think much of both the fear and anger that comes up around discussions of affirmative action has its roots in that secret. So these days, my goal is to talk openly and honestly about white supremacy and white privilege.

White privilege, like any social phenomenon, is complex. In a white supremacist culture, all white people have privilege, whether or not they are overtly racist themselves. There are general patterns, but such privilege plays out differently depending on context and other aspects of one's identity (in my case, being male gives me other kinds of privilege). Rather than try to tell others how white privilege has played out in their lives, I talk about how it has affected me.

I am as white as white gets in this country. I am of northern European heritage and I was raised in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the country. I grew up in a virtually all-white world surrounded by racism, both personal and institutional. Because I didn't live near a reservation, I didn't even have exposure to the state's only numerically significant non-white population, American Indians.

I have struggled to resist that racist training and the ongoing racism of my culture. I like to think I have changed, even though I routinely trip over the lingering effects of that internalized racism and the institutional racism around me. But no matter how much I "fix" myself, one thing never changes--I walk through the world with white privilege.

What does that mean? Perhaps most importantly, when I seek admission to a university, apply for a job, or hunt for an apartment, I don't look threatening. Almost all of the people evaluating me for those things look like me--they are white. They see in me a reflection of themselves, and in a racist world that is an advantage. I smile. I am white. I am one of them. I am not dangerous. Even when I voice critical opinions, I am cut some slack. After all, I'm white.

My flaws also are more easily forgiven because I am white. Some complain that affirmative action has meant the university is saddled with mediocre minority professors. I have no doubt there are minority faculty who are mediocre, though I don't know very many. As Henry Louis Gates Jr. once pointed out, if affirmative action policies were in place for the next hundred years, it's possible that at the end of that time the university could have as many mediocre minority professors as it has mediocre white professors. That isn't meant as an insult to anyone, but is a simple observation that white privilege has meant that scores of second-rate white professors have slid through the system because their flaws were overlooked out of solidarity based on race, as well as on gender, class and ideology.

Some people resist the assertions that the United States is still a bitterly racist society and that the racism has real effects on real people. But white folks have long cut other white folks a break. I know, because I am one of them.

I am not a genius--as I like to say, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have been teaching full-time for six years, and I've published a reasonable amount of scholarship. Some of it is the unexceptional stuff one churns out to get tenure, and some of it, I would argue, actually is worth reading. I work hard, and I like to think that I'm a fairly decent teacher. Every once in awhile, I leave my office at the end of the day feeling like I really accomplished something. When I cash my paycheck, I don't feel guilty.

But, all that said, I know I did not get where I am by merit alone. I benefited from, among other things, white privilege. That doesn't mean that I don't deserve my job, or that if I weren't white I would never have gotten the job. It means simply that all through my life, I have soaked up benefits for being white. I grew up in fertile farm country taken by force from non-white indigenous people. I was educated in a well-funded, virtually all-white public school system in which I learned that white people like me made this country great. There I also was taught a variety of skills, including how to take standardized tests written by and for white people.

All my life I have been hired for jobs by white people. I was accepted for graduate school by white people. And I was hired for a teaching position at the predominantly white University of Texas, which had a white president, in a college headed by a white dean and in a department with a white chairman that at the time had one non-white tenured professor.

There certainly is individual variation in experience. Some white people have had it easier than me, probably because they came from wealthy families that gave them even more privilege. Some white people have had it tougher than me because they came from poorer families. White women face discrimination I will never know. But, in the end, white people all have drawn on white privilege somewhere in their lives.

Like anyone, I have overcome certain hardships in my life. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I work hard to stay there. But to feel good about myself and my work, I do not have to believe that "merit," as defined by white people in a white country, alone got me here. I can acknowledge that in addition to all that hard work, I got a significant boost from white privilege, which continues to protect me every day of my life from certain hardships.

At one time in my life, I would not have been able to say that, because I needed to believe that my success in life was due solely to my individual talent and effort. I saw myself as the heroic American, the rugged individualist. I was so deeply seduced by the culture's mythology that I couldn't see the fear that was binding me to those myths. Like all white Americans, I was living with the fear that maybe I didn't really deserve my success, that maybe luck and privilege had more to do with it than brains and hard work. I was afraid I wasn't heroic or rugged, that I wasn't special.

I let go of some of that fear when I realized that, indeed, I wasn't special, but that I was still me. What I do well, I still can take pride in, even when I know that the rules under which I work in are stacked in my benefit. I believe that until we let go of the fiction that people have complete control over their fate--that we can will ourselves to be anything we choose--then we will live with that fear. Yes, we should all dream big and pursue our dreams and not let anyone or anything stop us. But we all are the product both of what we will ourselves to be and what the society in which we live lets us be.

White privilege is not something I get to decide whether or not I want to keep. Every time I walk into a store at the same time as a black man and the security guard follows him and leaves me alone to shop, I am benefiting from white privilege. There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privilege plays out in our daily lives, but it is clear that I will carry this privilege with me until the day white supremacy is erased from this society.

Frankly, I don't think I will live to see that day; I am realistic about the scope of the task. However, I continue to have hope, to believe in the creative power of human beings to engage the world honestly and act morally. A first step for white people, I think, is to not be afraid to admit that we have benefited from white privilege. It doesn't mean we are frauds who have no claim to our success. It means we face a choice about what we do with our success.

Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism in the University of Texas at Austin. Website: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/%7Erjensen/home.htm

Copyright Robert Jensen 1998
first appeared in the Baltimore Sun, July 19, 1998``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhite Privilege Shapes The U.S.``x1105668718,65503,world``x``x ``xBy Corey Gilkes

I really did not intend that my return to writing articles would start off with a subject this sensitive, but we are living in too perilous a time for people to be still harbouring nonsensical prejudiced views as if such views did not lead to even graver consequences.

The year 2004 closed with one of the most horrific disasters in history when an underwater earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed upwards of 170,000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and even as far away as the east coast of Africa. Now I am not going to get into the question of whether or not this disaster could have been avoided – you know, seismologists predicting that the earthquake itself was going to happen, inadequate funding for the placement of sensors and so on – oh no, we got an even bigger fish to fry.

From the minute news broke about the tsunami, I began to see comments (not totally unexpected) about this being yet another sign of the "last days" and the impending apocalypse and what not. That helpless resignation is in itself bad enough and we will open that bag of worms some other time; but what really irked me was something I read on a Caribbean oriented website www.Islandmix.com in which more than one individual made comments to the effect that "god" chose this region because it was predominantly Muslim and anti-Christian!

Here are a few choice pieces:

"look at the part of the world it happened (the tsunami) and the majority religion represented. Just an observation"

And in reply, another person said:

"Why are people afraid to say it? The Bible preaches everlasting life through Jesus Christ. Other Gods and idols shall perish!"

Now I don't know why I am so surprised that stupid, religiously bigoted statements like that are still being bandied about in this the so-called Age of Information; indeed, with the advent of mass communication, racist groups and religious fundamentalists were given even greater opportunities to reach much wider audiences. I certainly expected such nonsense to come from some bible-waving American citizen given the fact that the average US citizen is almost completely clueless about anything outside the borders of the USA and who has grown up in a culture that sees everyone who does not follow the "American ideal" as a hostile Other. I guess I was not expecting to see was such inanity emanating from people with Caribbean roots, even if they do reside in the United States. But then again, I suppose I should have expected it, given the manner in which Xianity was imposed on the Caribbean and, as anyone familiar with Caribbean social history would know, the one colonial institution that was embraced with almost puritanical zeal by the colonised and served as a foundation for many aspects of Caribbean life was religion, specifically Western Xianity, with all of its prejudices and ignorance.

Don't get me wrong, I am not making a case here, as say Kevin Baldeosingh would, for dispensing with spirituality. Religion, yes. A formal institution with rigid rules that often defines itself in opposition to the tenets of another religious or spiritual faith is not the way to bring about the kind of harmonious co-existence most of us would like to see one day. What I am calling for is a collective re-examination of what we have been made to believe for generations was the divine word of some god. Comments like that, if left unchecked eventually grows into something much bigger and before you know it, turns out to be the foundation for some act of violence or an organised atrocity. We have seen that happen over and over throughout history and in almost every case there were people who honestly and deeply felt that what they were doing was not wrong but was divinely sanctioned.

Most people do not accept that there is in Xianity – as well as Islam – an innate arrogant conviction that that faith is the one and only true faith. It is the only legitimate way of being "saved" and its sacred writings and rituals are the purest and everyone else's is corrupted, incorrect and downright heathen. And of course you can find passages saying as much in the Bible and the Qu'ran and many ardent devotees, even many of those who would not openly say that would quickly open their books and find those passages for you. Again, here is another thread from that same online discussion on Islandmix:

"...here is just a thought, no judgement but just a thought, What if God requires a certain type of worship, and by diverting and doing other than what is commanded is going against him. He is a God of love but he also passes out judgement".

Now this person may have said this in all innocence, but this type of outlook almost always leads to the most amazing displays of arrogance and contempt. Are people ever going to stop and listen to themselves? Will they ever pause and examine the things their religious leaders and books demand they believe? When are otherwise rationally thinking people going to examine this notion that the Almighty would choose one little region in the world, pick one ethnic group and use them as the model of how the rest of the world should behave, pray and exist regardless of culture, geography and ecological conditions? Are they aware that by accepting such nonsense they have in effect condoned the means by which the religion they hold so dear was spread throughout the world regardless of the fact that it meant the death, rape and enslavement of millions of people many of whom committed one offence and one offence only: treating total strangers with kindness? And someone is going to tell me that GOD ORDAINED THIS?

Now I know there are some who are going to read this or pass it on to some semi-literate religious type who will open his bible and extract this gem said to be uttered by Jesus: "If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother and wife, and children and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). It matters not that that passage was most likely not even what was originally written, or was meant to be taken out of context. It matters not that this passage may have been one of the numerous forgeries littering the Old and New Testament (Joseph Wheless' study is quite revealing in this regard). Oh no, none of that has any bearing on the issue at hand. It was written in the bible and so it is not open to question.

But perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh with Christians. In all probability those comments were made in all innocence and why not? A great many Xians and Muslims honestly believe that their religions came into being at a time when the "whole world" was steeped in sinfulness and iniquity; that the older ways of worshipping were not only out of date but outright barbaric. Xianity in particular is noted for proclaiming vociferously to everyone whether they want to hear it or not that Jesus came to "save mankind" and that he went against the customs of his time and all sorts of romanticised nonsense. Who's to say otherwise? It's not like comparative religious studies are taught to the laity. The average lay person knows nothing about the history of their faith because that is not taught in most places of worship and definitely not in any school I know of. Those who are able to tear themselves free from the powerful hold of religious indoctrination are amazed to learn that the notion of a "one true faith" and one form of worship originally had nothing to do with any god. Far from having anything to do with any divine injunction, the ideology of a one true faith, god, government, etc. really came out of primal responses to harsh ecological conditions. In other words, Xianity's claim to being the one true faith began as a psychological urge among some pre-Xian/Jewish hunter-gatherer tribes to come to terms with the harsh, hostile environment that characterised life in the Eurasian steppes. It would be further developed a couple thousand years later in Catholic (and Protestant Europe) in order to justify secular geo-political ambitions. I tried to throw some light on this in such essays as "Christianity and the Birth of European Nationalism" and "Bush, Religion and Eurocentric Geo-politics".

It's truly amazing to think that the seeds for the racism, ethnocentrism, religious bigotry, environmental degradation and before them the wars, pogroms, Inquisitions, and Middle Passage outings could have been sowed by little scattered hunter-gatherer tribes struggling to survive on icy windswept steppes thousands of years ago. But if we have any real intention of changing man's penchant for destructive and divisive behaviour, even in the face of crippling tragedy such as this tsunami, then we had better do some serious examining of the psychological defence mechanisms these societies developed and how they in turn coloured the evolution of what is now Western Europe and the many other cultures affected by them.

You see, I am no longer prepared to accept that people don't know any better. There was a time when we may have been able to get away with that since, because of (admittedly still extant) Eurocentric education, schooling and churching, we were not fully aware that there were alternative social, economic and spiritual systems. True, there were books but still, what little we did know of them was through the eyes of the coloniser. Instant accessing of information via the ‘Net however, has done a lot to change that. Academic works dealing with theology, philosophy and international politics are no longer tucked away in obscure university and church libraries or discussed in lofty academic conferences unheard of by John Public. The commoner on the asphalt can more than spar with the priest and s/he had better start getting on with it before these legal bandits have us destroying ourselves to hasten the arrival of an apocalypse of their own design.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xGod the father, the son, the holy bigot``x1105848000,52135,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde

There are two debates that remain a sore point with most Rastas on these boards: one, the clear Christian views expressed by Haile Selassie and his effort to change Jamaican Rastas, and second, understanding that some ethnic groups would have viewed Haile Selassie and the Amhara ethnic group as a colonizing power.

The responses to these two topics show some of the same western-type arguments made in defense of the European colonization of Africa. One argument suggests that the Oromos were better off under Haile Selassie's rule, as if they should be happy with that response. This is rather strange, really quite similar to Whites saying that Blacks are better off today because of European colonization. Of course, there are Whites and Blacks who believe this, but generally speaking we regard any form of forced assimilation as a denial of our basic rights. It should not be difficult to see that other ethnic groups would have a problem with Haile Selassie's moves, and people should not just casually dismiss these opposing views simply for the sake of 'unity.'

I would say that in principle, if we are against certain imperial moves, then to be fair we have to see them as bad for people across the board.

As I stated earlier on the board, Haile Selassie clearly did not understand the dynamics of Rastafari as a movement that developed in the Caribbean, and why would people not see or admit that simple fact? How can an Emperor be expected to fully grasp the feelings and desires of poor people, and the reasons for many things that they do to survive? How could he fully understand Blacks in the Caribbean under White rule, and the way Christianity was used to maintain the oppression of Blacks? Clearly he did not get that. He also did not fully appreciate why some Blacks choose to call him the new messiah or god.

Why is it difficult to simply say that 'I' disagreed with Haile Selassie? How does disagreeing with him make him any less than who he was? By the responses of some people, we are not supposed to disagree with Selassie because he is God. For those who believe that, no 'unity' with them is possible unless Haile Selassie is followed unquestioningly. I guess this is why some get so offended or feel insulted by some posts that question decisions that Haile Selassie made. I would say if people are speaking about unity, they had better start uniting with reality instead of their preferred projection of history.

Of course the Oromo poster on the board is biased. Why should he not be biased in favour of restoring what was denied to the Oromos? I don't know the poster and I am only going by the facts of history there; he is no more biased than we should be when dealing with restoring rights to Blacks. An aggressive move to return what was stolen from Blacks is not about appeasing ignorant Whites, or ignorant Blacks for that matter. It has to be a position in favour of seeking the interests of Blacks. The Black community has internal issues to work out, and these should not be pushed aside for the appearance of unity. Reasoning on race, colorism, and gender biases is not about dividing the community; it is about getting to the root of disunity. Reasoning about the negative effects some ethnic groups had on others is also about getting to the root of disunity. I would suggest that people do have the capacity to see all these wrongs for what they are, and to chart a new course that offers redress while building Black movements and communities.

I think many of the better posters on the board have to take a hard look at how they hold certain positions and see that denying or not properly engaging these fundamental issues is the real cause of disunity. People who say that we should put aside these differences to fight a common enemy are chasing a dream, and are not really striving for unity. These unaddressed issues are why all people are so divided.

It takes integrity to unite with reality/truth/ourselves.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xNo Unity Without Reality``x1105910015,85950,views``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
Taken from: Africa Speaks Reasoning forum

While I can easily agree with the many stated objectives of Black organizations, I do not necessarily agree with their methods.

There are too many concepts thrown around like clichés without real substantive meanings to go with them. One such concept is "African unity"; another is "African freedom". It is quite understandable that many feel that they are working towards these objectives, but without clear definitions and methods for attaining these objectives people can be in reality doing little to nothing for a long time.

It is quite in order for organizations to have objectives (however undefined they may be) but the methods or order for attaining such can show if they are really making progress. The order for doing things has to be realized.

How can people lead works for the freedom of people in general if they do not understand or experience personal freedom? How can people lead moves for Unity on a grander scale if they do not experience and understand Unity within their own selves? How can people ever expect to be in CONTROL if daily they demonstrate a lack of self-control?

Often we see individuals screaming for help for African causes when their real concerns are personal. They usually superimpose their personal dramas over the collective, and although the collective may have similar issues, their real focus is narrowly personal. It is for this reason we see when some reach a measure of comfort with their personal issues they no longer show an appreciation for the collective efforts.

Many people are aware that they have serious shortcomings but they casually accept them as being human. These same people then expect others to change. The hypocrisies thwart all works.

It is by the efforts of people who are working towards their own personal freedom, (unity with their selves, self-control etc.) that automatically allows the global objectives to be realized.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRe: Black Disorganization``x1109307600,81053,views``x``x ``xThe Last Poets Recalled

By Ron Jacobs

Summer 1971. Frankfurt am Main, Germany. I was hanging out with a friend in his room in the Westend section of the city. We were reading Zap Comix and some new underground papers he had brought back with him from the States. A bowl of hashish had set us up nice and the Grateful Dead's Anthem of the Sun was spinning on his turntable. The music was turned low so as not to disturb his neighbors on the other side of the paper-thin wall of the rooming house. The two men who lived there, one from some place in western Africa and the other a Black man recently discharged from the US Army, worked nights and needed their sleep. Just when Pigpen began the song "Alligator" on the Dead album, a loud, intense percussive beat came through the wall. My first thought was that one of the neighbors was playing a conga. Then came the chanting voices"When the revolution comes/some of us will catch it on TV/with chicken hanging from our mouths/you'll know it's revolution/because there won't be no commercials/when the revolution comes." My friend nodded. "It's The Last Poets again."

I had met the neighbors once before when they were selling the local Black Panther paper, Voice of the Lumpen. So, on my way out of the building I stopped at their room to say hello and inquire about the music I had just heard. The vet suggested I borrow the album to give it a better listen. I did. Six months later it was for sale in the base Post Exchange and I bought it. Soon thereafter, the Poets second album, This Is Madness, was available in the German record stores downtown. This album included their classic, "The White Man's Gat a God Complex." Later that spring, some African-American friends of mine formed a music group that performed songs by the Last Poets and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. The only times I saw them perform were at a Black Student Union assembly in our high school and at a concert at Goethe Universitat in Frankfurt, where they opened for the German rock band GURU GURU.

The Last Poets formed on May 19, 1968-Malcolm X's birthday. They borrowed their name from a line in a poem by South African poet Willie Kgositsile that goes:

When the moment hatches in time's womb there will be no art talk,
The only poem you will hear will be the spearpoint pivoted in the punctured marrow of the villain....
Therefore we are the last poets of the world.

Driven by the steady rhythm of the percussion instruments they played, this assemblage of artists chanted songs about life in the urban streets of black America and challenged its inhabitants to get off their butts and do something about it. Their masterpiece poem, "Niggers are Scared of Revolution," portrays a population that was looking for ways to be bought off by the corporate world as hard as those who populated its white counterpart. In a graphic description of Black America's version of the one-dimensional nightmare described by Herbert Marcuse that we all live in, the Last Poets satirized the susceptibility of their listeners to Madison Avenue's latest scam. In their case, it was the "Black is Beautiful" marketing then beginning to take over the world that African-Americans lived in. In the counter-culture's case, it was the commodification of everything from the music to the drugs and even to the politics. By 1970, the Poets had released their first album. Not until hip-hop came along would the world hear something like their sound again.

Primarily geared toward an African-American audience, the song poems on the record talked about life in the Black enclaves of the US. In a vein first explored by poet Langston Hughes, Omar Ban Hassen, Alafia Pudim, and Abiodun Oyewole pound out verses about riding the New York subway up to Harlem, making love and hanging out in Black America in the middle of the 20th century. Like Hughes, there is beauty and blemish, hope and hopelessness, and life and death in their rhymes. Interspersed among these vignettes of African-American street culture are calls for Blacks in the US to rise up against the white establishment and mockeries of this audience's refusal to throw out the system that has oppressed them for so long. Oyewole would be convicted of robbery soon after the album's appearance on the US album charts. He was sentenced to fourteen years and did four.

If I were to classify the politics of the Last Poets, I would place them in the same general sphere as the part of the Internationalist wing of the Black Panther Party that became the Black Liberation Army. This wing, which was nominally led by Eldridge Cleaver from his exile in Algeria, was best represented by the New York chapter of the Party. More nationalist than Marxist-Leninist, this philosophy held with the Panther argument that the only true African-American nationalism was a nationalism that understood that the economic oppression experienced by blacks in the United States was fundamental to their national identity. However, unlike the Panthers, the Last Poets were more separatist than the international wing or the wing led by the Oakland, CA. chapter. Other forms of Black nationalism, like that promoted by United Slaves leader Ron Karenga and others, ignored the economic oppression of African-Americans and focused more on the Black nation's African roots. In the language of the Panthers and their supporters, this was considered to be reactionary nationalism, as opposed to the revolutionary nationalism of the Panthers.

It was this reactionary nationalism that enabled the African-American struggle for liberation to be manipulated by the very marketplace that oppressed them. Without an understanding of the role that US capitalism played in their oppression, Black people in the US were led to believe that could express their identity by wearing dashikis, buying Jet magazine and using Afro-Sheen cosmetic products. In a manner quite similar to the marketplace's cooptation of the counterculture revolution among the young white citizens of the US, the ability of capitalism to co-opt the trappings of the Black liberation movement was spelling that revolution's death, too. Of course, the willingness of the adherents of these liberation movements to go along with the manipulations of the market made this process all the simpler. This verse from the Last Poets' song "Niggers Are Scared of Revolution," makes this case quite clearly:

Niggers are scared of revolution
but niggers shouldn't be scared of revolution
because revolution is nothing but change, and all niggers do is change.
Niggers always going through bullshit changes.
But when it comes for a real change
Niggers are scared of revolution.

(Replace N**ger with antiwar activist or some other term denoting a member of the non-electoral opposition in the US and the logic usually works just as well. It's the history that's different.)

The Last Poets' second album, This Is Madness, explores the themes of the first album even further. One difference, however, is a more explicit anger towards not only the system but towards the average white person who upholds that system. Unlike the first album, the Poets focus some of their rage on the ordinary white men and women who support the system, actively or tacitly. In other words, those of us who live within the dynamic of white privilege and do nothing to fight that dynamic. Conversely, other songs here are considerably more positive in their estimation of blacks than the songs on the first release. If the first album was the late 1960s version of Langston Hughes, then this album is the early 1970s version of Amiri Baraka-anger that is ready to explode at any time and at anyone who might even look like the enemy. In short, this album is representative of the time: cops and Feds killing and jailing radicals, Blacks and hippies; racists and reactionaries calling for a police state with Nixon and company happy to oblige; and revolutionaries blowing up buildings and attacking cops. Tolerance was not a word taken to heart by many because too many people felt that the time had passed for that sentiment.

In a song whose title is more figurative than literal (if only because the white man's also got some darker-skinned folks doing his dirty work), the Last Poets provide the listener with a succinct analysis of European-American imperialism. Titled "The White Man's Got A God Complex," this piece lays out the fundamental motivation for the mess of a world that colonialism and imperialism has made. It could easily have been written today. On the top of a syncopated rhythm that mixes the mood of the street with that of the African-American Sunday church service (and a little Howlin' Wolf thrown in), this poem's last verse provides the listener with their ten-line outline of the world's history ever since Columbus hit Hispaniola.

A'makin' guns. I'm God!
A'makin' bombs. I'm God!
A'makin' gas. I'm God!
A'makin' freak machines. I'm God!
Birth control pills, I'm God!
Killed Indians who discovered him. I'm God!
Killed Japanese with the A-bomb. I'm God!
Killed and still killin' black people. I'm God!
Enslaving the earth. I'm God!
Done went to the moon. I'm God!

Add a line or two (How about, Killed some Arabs and more Africans. I'm God! Put Bayview on the TV screens of the world. I'm God!) and the song works all too well for today, which may be why they still occasionally perform. George Bush and Bill Clinton still wouldn't get it, but the Last Poets weren't writing for them, anyhow.

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's new collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. Reprinted from counterpunch.org with permission from the author.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThis is Madness``x1109866252,13814,world``x``x ``xBy Kurt Nimmo, www.kurtnimmo.com

It's like a broken record: Israel will attack Iran, Israel will attack Iran. Iran is working on nukes, Iran is working on nukes, even though the International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran is not working on nukes. Now we are told the Israelis have created a mock version of Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment plant in order to practice assaults on the facility. Ha'aretz reports "Israel would use F-15 fighter planes and its air force's elite Shaldag [Kingfisher] unit in the attack." For months now, Israel has sent the same message over and over: Iran is close to finishing construction on a nuke (call it the George Bush effect; there is no evidence Iran is building a nuke; uranium enrichment is not the same thing as building a nuke, thus Israel is exaggerating and lying as a pretext to attack). Another part of the message is that Iran cannot be trusted, it is a nation of crazed Muslims who want to kill all Israelis. In fact, if Israel has said anything consistently, it is that every single Arab and Muslim wants to kill Jews and push them into the sea.

Last year it was figured the IAEA would be used as a cudgel to beat Iran into submission and impose Iraq-like sanctions on the country. But over the last few months the US and Israel have consistently beat the war drums. Every few weeks Israel comes out with another Iran nuke story. "Heading off Iran's attempt to attain nuclear capability is one of the Mossad's main missions, and the foreign media is one of the most important instruments utilized in this effort," Aluf Benn wrote in Haaretz in 2003. "Mossad agents supply foreign journalists with information about Iran's nuclear efforts; such foreign reports, the Mossad expects, support the international campaign to thwart Iran's nuclear weapons program." Lately, however, Iran has been telling the US and Israel to go suck an egg-it will not stop uranium enrichment, it feels uranium enrichment is in its national interest and Israel and the United States should butt out.

Now we have Mossad agents pulling fire alarms, telling the world they are actually practicing bombing Iran. Mossad, the Likudite faction in Israel, and the Strausscons in the United States want you to know they plan to bomb Iran very soon. If they do this all hell will break loose. Natanz is not Ain Saheb. Iran is not Syria. The Likudites and the Strausscons realize that any attack on Iran would solidify the position of the fundie mullahs. "Tehran, experts expected, could move Iraqi Shiite groups to launch attacks against US occupation forces, already facing a hellish situation amid a bubbling cauldron of chaos and anarchy in the war-scarred country. They can also provide these groups with human and logistic support," Islam Online reported last year. "The Islamic Republic could also use Southern Lebanon, controlled by the Lebanese resistance movement Hizbullah which can not stand neutral regarding an Israeli attack on Iran." As the experts cited by Islam Online see it, this "could spill over to a Syrian-Israeli confrontation."

Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah-three targets at the top of the Likudite-Strausscon mafia hit list. Israel wants to start a war-the Strausscons call it World War IV-and get the United States to fight it. The NED and Republican NGO engineered "Cedar revolution" in Lebanon will of course not pan out-not if the Muslim majority in Lebanon, who know a scam when they see it, have anything to say about it-and even if they do manage to get "moderates" (Christian Maronite fascists) back in power, this will not put an end to Hezbollah who understand the true nature of the Israeli colonialist settler state: Israel hungers for southern Lebanon, its land and water, and it will stop at nothing to pitch Lebanon-indeed, the entire region-into war and chaos. Fragmenting and balkanizing the Arab and Muslim world remains a long-held Zionist dream.

In the propaganda campaign for total war (and the Haaretz item above is simply the latest element of this on-going propaganda blitz) we are told "Israel is worried that a preemptive strike against Iran could provoke 'a ferocious response,' including attacks against Jewish and Israeli targets abroad, as well as Lebanese-based rocket attacks on northern Israel," which is of course precisely what the Likudites want, especially among the Shia in southern Iraq who will undoubtedly be agitated if Israel attacks Iran. A Shia jihad declared against the infidels is exactly what the Likudites and the Strausscons want. It will provide an excuse for even more military action on the part of the United States, possibly in Iran and Lebanon as well as in Iraq. Of course, this is completely insane, since the US cannot contain a couple hundred thousand Sunni resistance fighters in Iraq let alone an influx of possibly millions of Muslims from Iran. For the Strausscons and Israelis, bombing Iran is a way to up the ante and set in motion a series of events that will result in total war. In order to for the American people to find the "stomach" (as the Strausscon godfather, Norman Podhoretz, deems it) for total war, a few terrorist events closer to home may be required. Mossad has plenty of experience pulling off such events.

Israel, however, did not learn its lesson in southern Lebanon. "The increasingly effective operational capabilities of the resistance prove once more that it takes a small group of determined fighters armed with light arms and 'weighty' faith to expose zionist pretentious claims to invincibility and omnipotence as nothing short of a hollow myth," Khalil Osman wrote in 1998, before Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon.

It will be a "hollow myth" that drives the Likudite-Strausscon war against the Arab and Muslim Middle East. It is no longer 1920 and the Arabs are not so easily divided and ruled. If Israel attacks Iran, a Hezbollah-styled resistance will spread across the Middle East and may even join together with the Sunni resistance in Iraq, even though the corporate media loves to tell us the Shia want nothing more than to put down the Sunni rebellion. Regardless of what the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times says, at the end of the day the common enemy is the US-Israel alliance.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xIsrael's Broken Record - Attack Iran``x1111022727,92105,world``x``x ``xPianke Nubiyang said: "Black boys are DELIBERATELY AND SYSTEMATICALLY TAKEN FROM THEIR FATHERS' INFLUENCE AND CONTROL BY WOMEN WHO CARE ONLY ABOUT BEING 'STRONG BLACK WOMEN' AND WHO ARE BRAINWASHED BY FEMINIST TO TREAT BLACK MEN ANY WAY THE CHOOSE. Ironically and paradoxically, the same 'feminist' white women who have filled the heads of sisters with propaganda of abortion, divorce, 'strongism,' and materialism over raising good children and keeping families together....THESE WHITE WOMEN ARE THE SAME ONES RUNNING AFTER BLACK MEN."
Rastafari Speaks Message Board

Response by Ayinde

The basic premise behind what is being stated in Pianke Nubiyang's post is false in my view. Of course we know that the white system heavily contributed to the breakdown of the black family. So we are not debating this.

The white orchestrated breakdown in the black family resulted in a whole host of downstream abuses. The more transparent abuses include the beating of women, alcoholism, drug abuse, and males being away from their homes for long hours. They were/are generally out with the boys, chasing other females, having to work long hours to make some money to feed the family, or a combination of some or all of the above. Many females do some of this also. Wife and child beatings were common in both black and white families. Females were mostly dependant on the males for money, so in that regard, being subservient to the male, they tolerated much. One of the legacies of white male domination is that black males (not all) adopted a lesser but similar conduct towards black females and black children. The worst of it was felt by dark-skinned black females and children. Many males considered it their Christian oriented god given right to automatically be the dominant/forceful ones in homes. Reasonings between partners were few and far between, and the male was the lone authority figure. I am not even spelling out the depth of this.

Today things have shifted somewhat and we can say they were spurred on by the white feminist movement. But are you going to tell me that strong Black women are being instructed or manipulated by white feminists to degrade the black male? Well that is a serious stretch. Of course this argument would have to involve colorism, as the material advancement made by light-skinned black women in many quarters, is not a reflection of how the system impacts on dark-skinned black women. Like with colorism and racism in general, both ignorant males and females are worshiping lighter shades, so in that respect if one wants to say that light-skinned black females are more valued by the system, I can agree with that, especially as they are ‘valued' for sex by both dark-skinned black and white males. The system still does not favour dark-skinned black women, who simply get the residual benefit of being able to challenge some abuses through the courts.

"IT IS NOW TIME FOR THE BLACK WOMAN TO BECOME A RASTA WOMAN AND CHASE THE BLACK RASTAMAN AND HUMBLE BEFORE HIM." -- Fyahman Rastafari Speaks Message Board

You are giving the impression that the Rasta man in a general way is somehow better, while many cannot agree on what constitutes a Rasta man, besides the obvious dreadlocks, possibly smoking marijuana and hailing Selassie. But among many who are generally accepted as Rasta men, in my area at least, the conduct is the same male arrogance. Where I reside it is not uncommon to hear some Rasta men claim they are following in the footsteps of the biblical King Solomon, when they want to legitimize their many sexual partners. They do not accept that right for females. Of course, quite often they can hardly take care of the many children they have with multiple partners. Male domination is part of the general abuses to women. These issues in the 'Rasta family' are often no different than in any other family, and can be especially damaging as they are under the guise of 'liberation from oppression'. So I would not say in a general way that the Rasta man is better. Not even the ‘Rasta man' wants to stay where he is, no wonder some accept the white females for the material trappings that go with it. 'Humble to the Rastaman?' Well females should not automatically take guidance from any man, Rasta or otherwise. Having been involved in social work for years, I see the same type of abuses across the board when dealing with blacks, and it is mostly abuses at the hands of males.

The general stress that some males feel, now that the male dominated paradigm has shifted somewhat, is only because more females are employed, can pay their own way, and are not totally dependant on males. The discomfort has more to do with male insecurities and unwillingness to adapt to a more self-reliant woman. I am not saying that these self-determined women are right or wrong; I am saying they are liable to make mistakes just like males.

It is not like black females are deliberately getting into relationships with black males, making children and then running those males from their homes to bring up the children alone. The situation with black males is a combination of oppressive laws, low levels of awareness that reinforces male insecurities and the feeling of losing the little power/authority they exercised in the home. To claim that this is part of some black female and white feminist collusion to undermine black males is ludicrous. It is the corrupt racist system, combined with the ignorance and arrogance of both black males and females that contributes to this undermining of each other.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhite feminist women controlling Black Women?``x1112014126,24687,views``x``x ``xBy Ayinde

We must first keep in mind that the ongoing U.S./European attempt to demonize President Robert Mugabe is not just about Zimbabwe or President Robert Mugabe, but it is also a campaign that attempts to ensure all efforts to correct colonial wrongs in the interest of blacks will not succeed. They fear that if the campaign to return lands to indigenous Africans in Zimbabwe is allowed to succeed, then other African nations will follow suit. They are waging the same type of demonizing campaign on President Aristide of Haiti, President Chavez of Venezuela and other African countries. Intense 'white' media and political campaigns always tie back to the command or acquisition of the resources of non-white people.

Most of the U.S./European critics of President Robert Mugabe are not able to see what is taking place on the ground, and they are of the racist view that African nations cannot monitor other African nations. In their view, African nations need the U.S. and/or European powers to validate their political process, although the U.S. and Europe's election processes have proven to be corrupt.

They are using the structural deficiencies that most politicians usually exploit in all so-called democratic countries, as an excuse to demonize President Robert Mugabe. The same 'democratic deficient structure' exists in the U.S. The state media is usually dominated by the party in power, while they all seek the interest of their investors. Members from their party are appointed to the best government jobs. Bush and Blair are leaders in these type of party politics. The ruling party and opposition use scare tactics compounded by inflammatory statements.
(See: Judge quashes 'fraudulent' council elections -UK)
U.S. Presidents have used 'popular wars' sold to an unwitting public to increase their electibility. The United States of America holds the record when it comes to political scare tactics to further their agendas.
(See: US Crusade, U.S. Vote Fraud 2000 and U.S. Vote Fraud 2004)

The U.S. and U.K. are the world's leaders in manipulating 'democracies', so it is extremely hypocritical for them to criticise President Robert Mugabe for working the system in his favour. The western dominant idea of democracy, often being emulated or forced on nations, does not serve the best interest of the majority of people. What takes place in Zimbabwe cannot be viewed as either unique or exclusive to Zimbabwe.

In an Interview on Democracy Now, Margaret Lee made some good points, but her criticism of the politics in Zimbabwe, under the leadership of President Robert Mugabe, can apply to any number of countries and leaders who have embraced the capitalistic idea of Democracy. They are ALL shams. Margaret Lee gave the impression that these problems are exclusive to Zimbabwe, by her not clearly stating these same flaws exist in most, if not all, 'democratic' countries.
Full Article : raceandhistory.com``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xSloppy Criticisms of Zimbabwe Elections``x1112504400,13617,world``x``x ``xBy Edwin Krales

Whenever the question arises about the origin of AIDS, two positions are usually staked out. One is that AIDS was invented in a laboratory by a group of Western scientists in order to kill black people and gays. The other position is that it was an unexpected development, completely out of anyone's control, not intended to harm any group in particular. In the February/March edition of POZ, an HIV/AIDS magazine published in the U.S., Lucile Scott wrote that Nobel Peace Prize winner and Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai said that "AIDS is a tool to control [Africans and black people] designed by some evil-minded scientists." Because of the way her comment was presented, it was clear that POZ didn't share her view. POZ asked five people prominent in the AIDS field to comment on what she said. POZ did not say what criterion was used to pick the five.

Here are their comments.

1 - Marie Saint Cyr, executive director, Iris House, a center for women living with HIV, NYC. "We may remain suspicious about HIV's origins, but 48 million lives are infected. We have no time to focus on the mad-scientist theory."

2 - Cornelius Baker, executive director, Walker-Whitman Clinic, Washington, DC. "Maathai did not say anything that hasn't been said in the South Bronx or South Florida. I hope her comments will redouble efforts to investigate the origins of HIV and prove her wrong."

3 - Nguru Karugu, international program manager, Balm in Gilead, an international black AIDS service organization, NYC. "Many black folks believe that AIDS was created in labs. The fact that Maathai is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist gives it credence. Unless [the belief of] this theory is acknowledged, African intervention will be unsuccessful."

4 - Edward Hooper, author of The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS. "Her comments are unhelpful--both for those who insist HIV crossed accidentally from chimpanzees to humans and for those (like me) who believe it began with careless scientific experimentation. Carelessness and genocide are very different."

5 - Beatrice Hahn, MD, professor of medicine, University of Alabama-Birmingham. "Since my lab evidence that HIV came from chimp SIV may not seem convincing, we need to go into the forest and prove, using noninvasive approaches, that wild chimps with SIV could pass it on to the people who hunt and butcher them. Then lab-made HIV would seem stupid."

Even though I don't believe that any scientist had the ability to create and direct a life form, this belief isn't the main problem. The position that the virus developed without a plan in humans also sidesteps the key problem. The main problem is how the illness has been dealt with. This problem has to be confronted so that the origin of AIDS doesn't keep on popping up and interfering with our ability to defeat this plague.

To confront this problem, the first thing we have to do is realize that the origin of AIDS question has two parts. The first part of the problem is ethical. The second part is financial. The ethical problem is, Is the developed world vicious enough to want tens of millions of people in Africa and other parts of the developing world dead in order to control resources and maintain profits? The answer is a deafening yes. All one has to do is examine briefly the history of the relationship between the developed world and Africa before AIDS. This history includes 250 years of African slavery by Europe and the U.S., killing of millions of Congolese by the Belgians, the colonization and looting of the African continent by the Europeans, the support of apartheid in South Africa by Europe and the U.S., the endless debt burden imposed on Africa and the ongoing death of hundreds of thousands of African women in childbirth and the death annually from preventable causes of millions of African children under age 5. The history of the difference in the death rate between blacks and whites in the U.S. provides more evidence. In the December 21, 2004 edition of The Washington Post, January W. Payne wrote an article entitled "Blacks dying for lack of health care: Disparities cost 886,000 lives in the U.S. in '90s." The article is based on studies reported in the December 2004 issue of the American Journal of Public Health that examined the disparities in health care between blacks and whites in the U.S.

The origin of AIDS issue will not go away because the former genocidal policies of the developed world have not been abandoned in favor of humanitarian activities to defeat the AIDS plague. On the contrary. In a report released Friday, March 25, 2005, the UN said that AIDS could kill 80 million Africans by the year 2025 if the present AIDS policies remain in force in the developed world. Despite the concern of the World Bank that the current policies could lead to regional economic collapse, existing programs that could stop the spread of AIDS and dramatically reduce the death toll in Africa and the rest of the developing world are not adopted. The Cuban anti-AIDS program is an excellent model to help implement a successful fight-back. But rather than support and help to promote that life-saving program, the U.S. is constantly threatening to destroy it and destroy Cuba. Instead, the U.S. pays for a failed program of abstinence only as the prevention tool.

Additional scientific advancements are not necessary to dramatically reduce the death toll and infection rate in Africa right now. In 1996 when the anti-retroviral drug therapy (anti-HIV "cocktails" usually made up of 3 or more drugs) came into widespread use in the U.S. and Europe, there was a dramatic reduction in the death rate of 40 to 80 percent. Now we know more about defeating HIV, so the death rate from AIDS continues to drop. The use of condoms, medical nutrition therapy (a diet specifically tailored to meet the nutritional needs of HIV+ people), new anti-retroviral drug therapy, other medications needed to treat opportunistic infections (illnesses caused by the weakening of the immune system), and education to reduce the stigma of being HIV+ can make a huge difference. Safe, clean water has to be made available so that HIV- babies born to HIV+ mothers can be fed formula rather than breastfed since breastfeeding can transmit the virus to uninfected infants. Infants fed formula made with bad water may die faster than if they were infected with HIV.

The second part of the origin of AIDS question is financial. In order to protect its profits, the pharmaceutical industry in the developed world is fighting an ongoing battle to prevent the production of low cost, generic anti-HIV medications. In the March 24, 2005 edition of The New York Times, Donald G. McNeil Jr. published an article entitled "India Alters Law on Drug Patents." Although India was a primary source of inexpensive, generic AIDS drugs, the new law eliminated that source. India was forced to pass the law as a prerequisite for joining the World Trade Organization. Loon Gangte, an Indian living with AIDS who runs an AIDS program, said: "I am using generic AIDS drugs because I can afford the price. Since the bill has passed, when I need new drugs, I won't be able to afford them. I could become one of the casualties." Millions of other people also fear becoming casualties because India supplied drugs to about one half of the people with AIDS in the developing world.

Inexpensive medical nutrition therapy has not been adopted in the U.S. as an AIDS-fighting standard of care, so it's unlikely that it will be promoted in Africa. We must always remind ourselves that no medication works without adequate amounts of the "big three"-- air, water, and food. Without those three, life is over.

It's not an evil scientist or even HIV/AIDS that's killing off so many Africans. It's the developed world's dollar-based health care system that's doing the job. Pathogens will come and go through the natural history of the world. HIV/AIDS is just one of them. It was welcomed as an unexpected ally by the developed world in the effort to re-colonize and exploit Africa. Unless the world's progressive community intervenes to help defeat AIDS, those who want to exploit Africa's vast wealth will make the most of this plague, whether HIV was produced in a laboratory by a psychopathic scientist or developed by accident.

Edwin Krales is an HIV/AIDS Nutritionist and Health Educator in New York City. This article was published at counterpunch.org and reprinted here with permission from the author.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Origin of AIDS: an Ethical Inquiry``x1113278400,78464,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde

The US and British, as well as the mainstream media's concern are over one issue: Mugabe took back lands from whites and returned them to blacks. Black Zimbabweans will have other internal issues that are more about their day-to-day survival, but the Western interest is about controlling Zimbabwe's Land. They also want to destroy the Zimbabwean land reclamation example, before it takes hold throughout the continent.

There are Black Zimbabweans taking fair positions that can appear to be against Mugabe based on how things impact on them locally, but there are also those who are just regurgitating the White U.S. /Europe's demonizing propaganda in the hope of getting some economic rewards. If these elitist Whites cannot directly control something, they then settle for remote control, so some blacks position themselves to be willing puppets.

In Africa and the wider African Diaspora, the position many Blacks have taken, supporting the move to return lands to Blacks, is in the best interest of all Africans. This support is not limited to Mugabe and/or Zimbabwe but is about what many desire for all of Africa. So even if many Diasporan Africans do not understand the nuances of the local political issues in Zimbabwe, they do understand the West. They know the Western concern about Zimbabwe is over maintaining white control (remote control) of African resources. A few whites getting killed is their excuse to interfere. Their remote control program is simple. They fund misleaders who put elitist White interest over that of the indigenous population. Then they deny resources to countries as well as demonize the leaders who put the interest of the majority of their citizens first. Venezuela and Haiti are recent examples of this.

There are detractors who want us to believe that the anti-Mugabe sentiment is widespread among Blacks in Zimbabwe. They distort what is taking place there to project a dissenting image. Some Zimbabweans are also making bogus anti-Mugabe claims to get to stay in foreign countries (at least one poster explained how this is being done in Britain).

Here is a quote from Margaret Lee, who is definitely no friend of Mugabe:

"Now one of the problems right now, I think, in the country with respect to the opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change is that just like many other opposition movements, it has compromised itself. So one of the things that was very clear when I was in Zimbabwe in January was that there was not the same level of fear about the MDC that existed at the end of 1999 going into the elections of 2000. When I say compromised itself, specifically it aligned itself with the white farmers, many of the white farmers who had a vested interest in making sure that the land was not returned to the indigenous African population. It aligned itself with many individuals in South Africa that were not deemed to be pro-post-apartheid South Africa. It even aligned itself with RENAMO in Mozambique and that was the so-called liberation movement that was involved in incredible atrocities against the indigenous population in Mozambique. So there exist a lot of problems within the MDC."
(Source: The Zimbabwe Elections)

The anti-Mugabe demonizing campaign was also about promoting the MDC as the alternative - a party that has shown its willingness to return to IMF policies. Most Black Zimbabweans feared this, and it directly contributed to past elections violence in Zimbabwe. It is not simply about Mugabe attacking the opposition; poor blacks in Zimbabwe did not trust the MDC because of their alliances. Many Blacks experienced the hardship under the IMF policies in the 90's before Mugabe abandoned the program, and they do not want to repeat the destructive past. This recent election was more peaceful because ordinary blacks did not feel the MDC was a threat; they did not feel the MDC could win because their pro western allegiances were exposed.

Truly free and fair elections do not exist anywhere as yet, and the US and Europe are not election role models. The US and Europe do not promote democracies. They manipulate/further corrupt the politics in vulnerable countries to get misleaders who will serve their interest first. That is not democracy. It will be a good idea for these 'leaders' to develop democratic principles in the U.S .and Europe.

There can be no democracy when the volume of information and critical issues we cover on these Websites are not given fair media space that would allow people to vote after considering the effects of their choices on ALL of us.

As I said earlier,

"We must first keep in mind that the ongoing U.S./European attempt to demonize President Robert Mugabe is not just about Zimbabwe or President Robert Mugabe, but it is also a campaign that attempts to ensure all efforts to correct colonial wrongs in the interest of blacks will not succeed. They fear that if the campaign to return lands to indigenous Africans in Zimbabwe is allowed to succeed, then other African nations will follow suit."
(Source: Sloppy Criticisms of Zimbabwe Elections)

The West has no problem manipulating to create brutal African misleaders, who they supply with weapons in abundance to protect and serve elitist White interest. Supplying weapons to poor nations is not about protecting their sovereignty from foreign threats. These arms are supplied specifically to allow the misleader to subdue ordinary citizens as protection for Western interest. That is their unspoken policy the world over. Africans who are taking a position on what is in the best interest of Africa as a whole have every right to be concerned about who wants to profit from Africa's misery; who is creating the misery; who wants to choose our heroes; who wants to demonize another African in order to promote their interest.

Most of these anti-Mugabe critics are not simply local Zimbabweans playing for the hearts and minds of Zimbabweans over their local politics. They are not local Zimbabweans who are sharing with the international community while welcoming views and ideas from Diasporan Africans. They have one mission and they come over like this: 'I am from Zimbabwe, and this is how it is. You should believe me because I said I am from Zimbabwe.' Their 'worldview' dictatorial tendencies are so evident, which turns their criticisms of Mugabe into massive displays of hypocrisy.

Rarely do White misleaders demonize each other over their massive brutality and genocides of non-white peoples. Bush and his cronies are the obvious mass murderers today. We are not seeing European misleaders telling it like it is. France played the game of being opposed to the invasion of Iraq, but not on principle. The U.S. knew that. France had no problem instigating more violence in Africa. They were key players in removing the first democratically elected leader of Haiti. Conflicts in Africa are proxy wars; they will disagree over sharing the spoils, but at the end of the day their White elitist solidarity remains intact.

No country has an open door policy, particularly to hostile countries. It is common knowledge that in every country there will be those who put their narrow material interest ahead of the well-being of the majority. These are the weak links that White interest exploit, arm and then promote as good Black leaders. For most of Zimbabwe's young 'independence' it has been held in the trenches of a hostile White controlled environment, first from attacks during the Apartheid Era, then the IMF. Even when they claimed Zimbabwe was doing so well, it was mostly for the economic prosperity of Whites in and out of Zimbabwe. Cuba and North Korea are not open to much western influences, media etc. because of the ongoing threat to their sovereignty. There is action and reaction, and we cannot come down on the effect, and ignore or play down the cause.

Many Whites pay lip-service from the comfort of knowing that they are not first in line to be slaughtered. Many are too weak and do not even try to do better. So they can protest one day and then go back to their jobs. They can try to tell blacks how to think, but they are not first in line to be killed. They want to preach patience to blacks, and try to tell those who are most affected and/or sensitive how to speak, and what measure of urgency to place on issues that directly impact on Africans in general, and dark-skinned-kinky-hair Blacks the most.

What gives anyone the right to determine the language, and urgency to be placed on addressing issues that are not negatively affecting them the most? The answer is arrogance. There are serious issues in Africa that demand more attention than trying to make all of Africa seem to be about Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe Criticism Unfair``x1113392078,75705,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde

As is common among Africans, many Rastafarians are uninformed about African history and current affairs in Africa. Also, most Africans on the continent seem to be uninformed about the history and issues in other parts of Africa, and of Africans outside the continent. Caribbean and African issues are integral aspects of Rastafari as a Black Movement.

Ethiopia is not the only focal point of Africa. The views and cultural forms in Ethiopia are quite diverse. Most of the more Middle Eastern looking Blacks in Ethiopia are a mixture of Arabs and dark-skinned Blacks. Some of this came about as a result of rape and other forms of deliberate disrespect to Black Africans. We may all share a common ancestry but our attitudes and awareness are not the same. It is not peace and love among different ethnic groups in Ethiopia. They have to work out the same issues (racism, colorism, gender issues, white manipulations etc.) that we reason on this site.

Most of the history of Ethiopia and the rest of Africa often are not considered when Rastafarians move with a faultless version of Haile Selassie. Along with the limited idealized concept of Ethiopia, Rastafarians leave the impression this is the only important aspect of African awareness. Many do much leapfrogging, and dismiss too many of the events that took place along the way to claim originality. It is here many don’t get the importance of racial issues. The tendency is to embrace anyone who claims to agree with the Haile Selassie beliefs of Rastafari, and measure the growth of Rastafarians by how many sport dreadlocks. The general direction of Black Rastafarians will be right, but if they remain ignorant of the broader African issues, they will not be able to work out day-to-day issues. They will evolve quite similar to fundamental Christians who dismiss serious issues in favour of blind belief. In this type of narrow-mindedness, White manipulation thrives. That is why there are whites claiming repatriation to Shashemane, and they cannot see how wrong that was all along.

From the views some share, they cannot make bonds with the larger, diverse range of simple indigenous Africans. They unwittingly disrespect the ancestors of a whole range of Africans. Africa is the home of diversity, and by not paying attention to a variety of cultural forms as well as current affairs they cannot make good judgments. They cannot make a serious contribution to world reform, and they certainly will lack the creativity and confidence to rise out of the basic bread and butter survival struggle.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xEthiopia is not the only focal point``x1113598480,46147,views``x``x ``xby Tafataona P. Mahoso

Those who grew up during the peak years of the Cold War are struck by an emerging pattern in US foreign policy. The pattern suggests that throughout those Cold War years, the US projected on the Soviet Union its own intentions and inclinations, accusing the latter of seeking to set up a world government, seeking to spread the Soviet version of communism to every corner of the globe, when in fact it was the US which sought to impose its form of corporate cannibalism on the whole world.

Now that the US and its allies succeeded in subverting and causing the collapse of the Soviet Union itself instead, they now boast of having achieved what they once accused the Soviet Union of trying to achieve. And it seems clear to historians of the Cold War that it was the US and its allies who sought world domination after tasting it during the fight against Hitler.

A re-reading of the book called Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy by Carl Friedrich and Zbgniew Brzezinski is telling in this regard.

However, we start with recent stories in the Press which provide immediate indicators of this historical reality.

The top of the list should be John Perkins' book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man which was summarised in the interview which the US "economic consultant" had with a US radio station called Democracynow which The Sunday Mail reprinted under the title "Economic 'hitman' bares all" on May 1 2005.

Essentially, Perkins is saying that as a US economic "consultant" for the last 50 years, his real function was that of an economic saboteur and manipulator on behalf of the US transterritorial empire. Perkins says in the interview:

"Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring — to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country (the US), to our corporations, and our government and, in fact, we've been very successful . . . This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through economic hitmen."

But the most revealing part of Perkins' interview is about the ladder of escalation of subversion methods used by this empire. At the lowest level it looks benign and friendly. It uses "civil society" means such as missionaries, NGOs, volunteers and other apparent do-gooders to soften up the society ideologically.

If this level does not accomplish the mission, intervention is raised to level two, where "the private sector" of the US carries out the US government's mandate with very little mention of the government or government intentions. Some of the private sector people become advisors to client governments. John Perkins himself rose to become the government's chief economist in some of the countries he helped to subvert and destroy. Zimbabwe also once hired a chief economist, Norman Raynolds, who now travels around the world agitating for Western military intervention in this country.

If level two fails, level three involves using what Perkins calls "CIA jackals". These are spy activists who whip up resentment and division within state and social institutions in order to provoke civil strife, civil war, coups d'etat or insurrection.

If level three fails, the US intervention escalates to level four, which involves the use of hired assassins to eliminate key leaders of the country. That is what happened in Rwanda in 1994 and Congo in 1961. It failed in Cuba, however. The killings of Samora Machel and Chris Hani perhaps need further investigations in terms of the Perkins scenarios.

If assassins' plots fail, the US resorts to direct military intervention in the style of the US-UK invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

A second recent story appeared on the same Sunday, May 1 2005, in The Sunday Mirror. It was called "The rise of disaster capitalism". It suggested that the US government, as a world government, has set up the Office of the Co-ordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilisation.

Its purpose is to help the US government to recycle the economies which it succeeds in destroying. This means that after the economic hitmen have succeeded in wrecking an economy, this office will move in to award contracts to US multinational corporations to start a new cycle of exploitation and entrapment called "reconstruction and stabilisation".

The creation of the office means that in the post-1989 era the number of successfully wrecked economies has increased to the extent that a reconstruction plan is now needed long before the country and its economy are destroyed, meaning that even economies which are successful in their own ways but not under US control are seen from the US point of view as economies waiting to be destroyed, reconstructed and recycled for the benefit of the empire.

The third significant story was about the new president of one of the instruments of global economic manipulation and sabotage, the World Bank. It was called "The Truth about the World Bank" and it appeared in the same Sunday Mirror as story number two above. Here, George Monbiot was saying that it was a good thing for victims of US corporate totalitarianism that the US had appointed a rightwing extremist, Paul Wolfowitz, to head the World Bank. Why? Because, for those who have eyes, it may become clear that the World Bank is part of the global infrastructure making it possible for economic hitmen of John Perkins' type to subvert, wreck, rebuild and recycle countries for the benefit of the US and its allies.

With this Wolfowitz at the helm, there will be no more illusions about "poverty reduction" as one of the missions of the World Bank. It is mostly a conduit through which the West deploys its economic hitmen.

The fourth story worth mentioning here is The New African's cover story: "Can this man (Tony Blair) Save Africa?" in the April 2005 issue of the magazine. With this example we cross the Atlantic Ocean from the US to its staunchest ally, the United Kingdom. Both these countries consistently accused the former Soviet Union of harbouring a "saviour" mentality and seeking to subjugate the world under the guise of saving it from oppression and poverty.

The emergence of unipolarism and neo-liberal capitalism confirms the US and UK as the ones most afflicted with this saviour mentality. North America's key partner, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, not only put together a so-called Commission for Africa, he also proceeded to author a Commission for Africa Report reporting to himself and declaring: "I fear my own conscience on Africa. I fear the judgment of future generations, where history properly calculates the gravity of the suffering. I fear them asking: but how could wealthy people, so aware of such suffering, so capable of acting, simply turn away to busy themselves with other things?"

Yet at an earlier time when he visited Africa, Blair reduced the continent to "a scar on the world's conscience".

What all this means is an extreme form of political narcissism whereby Blair 's conscience equals the conscience of the whole world and a committee set up at Number 10 Downing Street, London, automatically becomes a Commission for all of Africa and proceeds to report to itself about Africa and the Africans.

What do these stories mean? One explanation is that they reveal a North American and North Atlantic struggle to establish unipolarism as hegemony, to make the rest of the world accept an Anglo-Saxon dictatorship over the whole world as self-evident, inevitable and commonsensical. The ideology was always there and always implied in US anti-communism. But in the Cold War it was inverted as a projection through which the US attacked the former Soviet Union for pursuing the very same totalitarian objectives which the US itself actually pursued with much greater effectiveness, including its effectiveness in undermining the Soviet Union as the only real challenge to US totalitarianism at the time.

To understand how the projected ideology in fact reflected US ambitions and intentions, we look at Chapter 7 of Carl J. Friedrich and Zbgniew K. Brzezinski's book Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy.

Chapter 7 tries to explain what the authors considered to be the most typical aspects of a totalitarian ideology. We are suggesting here that these typical aspects should not have been projected on the Soviet Union, far away, but on the US military industrial complex and the class interests it serves. This has become more obvious since 1989 than it was so soon after the Hitler wars.

The first claim Friedrick and Brzezinski made about the totalitarian state but which they would not associate with their own state and society is the demand and struggle for ideological unity.

Yet one can now see that this is very much a US demand as well. The Bush dictum that you are either with us or with the terrorists is a culmination of that ideological thrust. Historian Howard Zinn has also referred to a symmetrical ideology between the US Democratic Party and the US Republican Party. The ideas of the Programme for a New American Century refer to that insistence on ideological unity far beyond the borders of the US itself.

The symmetrical treatment of Zimbabwe by Britain, the US, Australia and the European Union demonstrates ideological unity which Gerald Horne referred to as "sythentic whiteness", which claims to be far superior to apartheid and other forms of ethnic-based white nationalism. Anti-communism used to give this synthetic white supremacy its rigour. Without anti-communism the racist nature of US hegemony has become more apparent.

The second claim Brzezinski and Friedrich made was that the totalitarian state manipulates and marshals ideas as ideological instruments and weapons without much historical and local content to make them credible, palpable, consistent and tangible in the real lives of people.

Yet the same allegation can be sustained against the US and its allies after looking at the ways they have selectively and inconsistently marshalled the rhetoric of human rights, good governance, democracy, freedom of expression, free Press, accountability and transparency against states targeted for demonisation, stigmatisation, isolation, destruction and recycling.

Professor Raymond Kent of the University of California at Berkeley pointed out in June 2000 that the US-Nato doctrine of human rights treated as humans only those people who served the strategic interests of the US and Nato and those who are seen as potentially useful in US designs for global power. Kent titled his contribution: "A Tragi-Comedy in (Judicial) Robes".

It is true that the US has framed its human rights propaganda selectively and differently for each region. In Southern Africa the propaganda will seek to downplay the US role in the history of apartheid and white settler racism. In the Middle East it will seek to downplay the state terrorism of Israel, the illegality of the US-UK occupation of Iraq and the role of the US in propping up corrupt monarchies in countries such as Saudi Arabia.

For each region, the US will try to develop separate literature. For Eastern Europe it developed a booklet called "Human Rights and You", which states clearly that this is for Eastern Europe.

In short, it is the US today, which deploys ideas as mere tools and weapons, which are meant to restrain, stop or weaken everyone else except the US itself. The third important claim which Friedrich and Brzezinski made about a totalitarian ideology was that:

"Finally, a totalitarian ideology would be one that is concerned with total destruction and total reconstruction, involving typically an ideological acceptance of violence as the only practicable means for such total destruction. It might accordingly be defined as 'a reasonably coherent body of ideas concerning practical means of how totally to change and reconstruct a society by force, or violence, based upon an all-inclusive or total criticism of what is wrong with existing or antecedent society.' This total change and reconstruction in its very nature constitutes a 'utopia', and hence totalitarian ideologies are typically utopian in nature."

These authors believed they were describing the ideology of a strange country quite alien to the "American way".

We note that the aspect of ideology described here seeks to undermine other states, turn them into what is now termed "failed states" and use the perceived failure to invade and destroy them before engaging in their "reconstruction". And the US is not guilty of this behaviour, according to Friedrich and Brzezinski.

When the US invaded Grenada and Lebanon in the early 1980s and sponsored terrorists against Nicaragua, historian Michael Parenti published an article called "US Intervention: The World as Our Oyster". That article pointed out that the US used armed intervention outside its borders 215 times between January 1 1946 and December 31 1975. By 1984 the US had violently intervened more than 265 times outside its borders since 1 January 1 1946.

Recently the United States has violently intervened in Colombia, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. The myth that the orgy of violence and carnage going on in Iraq is a process of uprooting Moslem fanaticism and replacing it with transplanted democracy clearly fits the Friedrich and Brzezinski topology of a totalitarian ideology.

Reprinted from:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MAH505A.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xUS Totalitarian Tendencies exposed``x1115673283,90864,world``x``x ``xTriniVew.com

Molefi AsanteThe Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad and Tobago launched the first lecture of the Kwame Ture Memorial Series yesterday evening with a lecture delivered by the Molefi Kete Asante. Professor Molefi Asante who chairs the African-American Studies Department at Temple University, is credited with having coined the word 'Afrocentrism'. He is the author of a number of books including The Afrocentric Idea, Erasing Racism and The Egyptian Philosophers: Ancient African Voices from Imhotep to Akhenaten, Classical Africa and The Painful Demise of Eurocentrism.

Tracey Wilson, committee member of the ESC, in his introductory remarks, invoked the name of famous historical personalities such as Yaa Asantewaa, Hapshepsut and Nzinga. Wilson highlighted the contributions of Dr Mark Dean, Phillip Emeagwali and Lewis Latimer, African inventors who revolutionized modern technology and warned against the inadequate intake of history.

Speaking to a packed audience at City Hall, the feature speaker Professor Molefi Kete Asante outlined his interactions with Kwame Ture and the lessons that he was able to learn from him. He revealed to the appreciative audience that, in addition to Ture's unwavering dedication to the struggle, one of the important lessons from Ture's life was the way he linked the continent of Africa to the Diaspora.

Professor Asante informed the audience that Afrocentricity is a misunderstood term especially as whenever the media tries to explain it they get it wrong. He defined Afrocentricity as being about explaining the world from an African viewpoint. "This means that African people, i.e., people of African descent, have the right and the responsibility to view the world through their own eyes, to interpret the world through their own analysis, to study and teach world history from their viewpoint as subjects and not objects of history, and to approach the study of history as makers of history, not victims of history."

Asante emphasized that Afrocentricity is not the opposite of Eurocentricity as widely believed and that explaining things from an African perspective is not about being against other peoples. He described Eurocentricity as an ethnocentric perspective that places its worldview, tastes and attitudes above others and imposes itself on everybody else. As an example he mentioned how European formal dress (suit and tie) is often seen as the only acceptable formal wear. In contrast to Eurocentricity, he explained that Afrocentricity is not about imposing but rather is focused on locating the beginning of humanity and human civilization in Africa.

Emphasizing that no one is born a slave, Asante explained that no African slaves were brought to Trinidad, Barbados, Haiti, Virginia, Georgia, but rather Africans were enslaved on their arrival to the New World. Brutality, the banning of African names, culture and ancestral memories were all part of the process of making a slave, he noted. Delving into history, he refuted the notion that the few Africans who collaborated with the Europeans in kidnapping and enslaving Africans, diminishes the responsibility of Europeans for the slave trade. He stressed the importance of teaching African children about the painful experiences of the Middle Passage so that they can understand upon whose shoulders they stand. "Our children must have an appreciation for history" he said.

He made mention of the thousands of years of African achievements in African before the advent of the European slave trade. Africans were fishermen/women, priests, artisans, blacksmiths and makers of history. Asante called attention to the fact that long before Greece existed African were building pyramids. He made mention of Tutmoses, Ramases and the Queen Hapshepsut who sent a delegation to Punt (Somalia) during her reign. He rebutted the mainstream view that Egypt (Kemet) is not part of Africa, and highlighted the intent of Western scholars to separate Kemet from Africa. He further outlined evidence that showed that Kemet was essentially a Black nation, quoting the observations of the European historian Herodotus who documented his observations of the Egyptians as black with wolly hair.

Other events leading up to the 2005 Emancipation Day celebrations on August 1st include a Trans-Atlantic Expo, an International Business Forum, a Youth Day, a pan night and a reggae concert featuring Bunny Wailer, Freddy McGregor and Gregory Issacs. The official website for the Emancipation Celebrations is www.panafricanfestival.org. The theme of this year's Emancipation celebration is "Discarding Broken Chains... Discovering Unbroken Connections."

View pictures from the lecture at:
www.triniview.com/album/Molefi-Kete-Asante``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xMolefi Asante lectures at Kwame Ture Series``x1118635200,34356,world``x``x ``xMalawi accused over tear gas for Mugabe
AN African government whose people are receiving financial aid from Scotland has been accused of flouting sanctions in supplying the Zimbabwean police force with tear gas.

~~~~~

Comment by Ayinde

This is how European 'Aid' works. European leaders intend to create more divisions among African leaders and nations. Today, European/ American 'Aid' is tied to getting African leaders to alienate President Mugabe and Zimbabwe. Among other methods, such as sanctions, this is often accomplished by adding restrictive control measures before aid is released.

Of course, European and American leaders want to determine what good governance in Africa is. The African countries that they would claim are practicing good governance will be those that cheaply sell their assets to European/American investors and countries that maintain colonial inequities. They also want African countries to continue allowing a minority of whites to occupy and profit from the best agriculture lands in Africa.

Bob Geldof and Bono may not be aware of Blair's motives, but Blair's entire 'Aid for Africa' drive is intended to get African nations distracted from examining and attempting to correct colonial injustices as part of resolving poverty and wars. They fear the infectious Land Reclamation exercise in Zimbabwe can spread to other parts of Africa. So 'Aid' today is to work just as AIDS; it is to ensure that Africans do not develop immunity from European/ American trinkets and control.

Also Read:

'A truckload of nonsense' by George Monbiot

World Bank "Conditionalities" by Greg Palast

Re: A truckload of nonsense by Linda Edwards

International Aid by Evans Munyemesha

New Millennium, Same Old Foreign Aid by Rep. Ron Paul

Africa - debt, aid and race by Gwynne Dyer

How Western Aid Helped Destroy Somalia by George Ayittey``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAid in exchange for alienating Mugabe``x1119100547,54198,world``x``x ``xThis is a classic case of what happens when people who lack direct experiences of the negative effects of white domination and white privileges try to lead movements for change. Very often they overshadow ones in the struggle who are more informed and sensitive to the negative effects of white domination/privileges. Their limited sensitivities make it difficult for them to stay the course for change. They accept tokens, and in the long run do more harm than good. Their arrogance blocks them from understanding how to support and not lead.

In this case the situation is worse because Bono and Bob Geldof are white celebrities with the ability to command widespread media attention for their pet projects. This leaves little room for informed Black Africans to make their own case for change on the world stage. The abuses and impoverishment of Black Africans remain because of white domination, white privileges and white arrogance, together with the ignorance and naivety of many Black Africans. Whites who try to help but have not addressed their racism and privileges are generally paternalistic when dealing with Black Africans. Bono and Bob Geldof remain part of the problem.

- Ayinde

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bards of the powerful
by George Monbiot
Far from challenging the G8's role in Africa's poverty, Geldof and Bono are giving legitimacy to those responsible
"The danger is that we will follow the agenda set by Bono and Bob Geldof. Take their response to the debt-relief package for the world's poorest countries that the G7 finance ministers announced 10 days ago. Anyone with a grasp of development politics who had read and understood the ministers' statement could see that the conditions it contains - enforced liberalisation and privatisation - are as onerous as the debts it relieves. But Bob Geldof praised it as "a victory for the millions of people in the campaigns around the world" and Bono pronounced it "a little piece of history". Like many of those who have been trying to highlight the harm done by such conditions - especially the African campaigners I know - I feel betrayed by these statements. Bono and Geldof have made our job more difficult."
Full Article : guardian.co.uk``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe danger in following Bono and Bob Geldof``x1119353972,7344,world``x``x ``xA War Waged by Liars and Morons
"Cynical Americans say the answer is oil. But $300 billion would have bought the oil without getting anyone killed, without destroying America's reputation in the world and without stirring up countless terrorist recruits for al Qaida."

Comment by Ayinde
Updated: June 23, 2005

Yes, America as a nation 'could afford' to purchase the oil in Iraq. But this war is not about benefits for the ordinary people in the United States of America. It is about protecting and enhancing the financial interest of a few. The bulk of tax money being allocated for this war is lining the pockets of a few corporations, especially Halliburton.

Disenfranchising and victimizing foreigners creates more enemies and this feeds the 'us against them' negative discrimination that keeps ordinary Americans distracted from the fact that the whole exercise is also to exploit them. The Government creates the enemies then tells the U.S. people that it needs funds to defend them and protect their way of life. The war on terror is a smoke screen to also take tax dollars to organize countries to serve the financial interest of a few U.S. corporations. It allows then to remote control the economies of other countries.

Bombing creates the need to rebuild so they need more funds for this exercise. All of this is part of the scam that adds an illusion of legitimacy to plunder the U.S. Treasury.

These illusions keep U.S. taxpayers from realizing that the bulk of their tax dollars for this 'war' is going to the Bush government's selected corporations. Oil is a part of the entire exercise. None of this really benefits the average American. They are robbing all sides, including ordinary Americans, for the material enrichment of a few white males.

U.S. citizens are not aware that they are the collateral that the government uses to get access to the money in the treasury. In the end they too will become collateral damage.


Also Read:

The War To Save The U.S. Dollar
The Americans could live with Saddam until he started selling oil for euros instead of U.S. dollars. Then the Europeans could live with him.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWar to also plunder the U.S. Treasury``x1119437396,13860,world``x``x ``xZimbabwe Currency Stabilizes as Informal Market Dwindles
The Zimbabwe dollar has regained some ground against the U.S. dollar since the start of Harare's offensive against the black market in foreign exchange. At one point the U.S. dollar fetched 30,000 Zimbabwe dollars, but has slipped to Z$20,000 per U.S. dollar.

The Zimbabwe dollar's recovery won't last, though, according to Lucy Sibanda, who has worked in the parallel currency market for six years. Before Operation Restore Order she operated from a stall in the Bulawayo forex mart known as the World Bank. But she has adapted to the new circumstances for informal traders.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reply by franksta

About two or so years ago a US senator or congress man said that it was the intention of his government(Bush II) to make the economy of Zimbabwe " scream" as a result of Mugabe's land policy. So it comes as no surprise to me when my good friend Masimba states that Mugabes has run the economy into the ground , he is oblivious to the shenanigans of europeans who make it their bussiness to meddle in Africa's and black nations affairs . Due to the fact that I am unable to find or remember the individuals name or the occassion where the speech was delivered , i have not used it in my reasoning with our lost and confused brother .

As head of the government of Zimbabwe , the responsibility lies with Mugabe , that is undeniable . It is my opinion , in this regard naive and simplistic , to not take into consideration the manipulation be done be european powers against the elected government and the people of Zimbabwe .

Thanks for that encouraging bit of news

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reply by Ayinde

"The Zimbabwe dollar's recovery won't last"

I share that view for the very reasons you gave. What is happening with Zimbabwe is quite deliberate and any move Mugabe makes will, in many ways, anger some people in Zimbabwe. The opposition, in cahoots with the U.S. and other European powers, intend to exaggerate and exploit that anger to force regime change. That is part of their entire plan.

Imagine they want us to believe that white people in Zimbabwe liked having poor blacks with their shacks and slums hustling around their businesses. The white business interest is the main player in the opposition party. These whites are pretending to be on the side of the vendors. We know whites are exploiting the situation and really want the black vendors removed.

The government's motive may be to try to stamp out the black market that is driving the Zimbabwe dollar down. The claim that President Mugabe is clearing the slums to persecute the opposition is just foolishness. The government's reason for their actions makes the most sense.

Most countries in the world would not be able to maintain the illusion of successful economies without trading with European nations, and them having access to European financial institutions. European financial institutions remote control other countries and success is largely measured and reported from their point of view. If they deem the success too much to the benefit of the country/indigenous people, they manipulate using sanctions and threats of military intervention. If the governments do not agree to their unfair policies, they are targeted for removal.

That is the nature of modern so-called democracies that developed out of slavery and colonialism. Elite whites in these African countries and foreign white business interests, are the ones who profit the most from the land and Black labour. White power intends to keep it that way.

Along the way, African leaders and a few other Black businessmen, just funnel the 'riches' to elite whites, and for that they got more material wealth than the average person. Of course, they never got enough to set up viable challenges to elite European hegemony. They got just enough to want to protect the status quo, and they were armed by European powers to do so.

So when we speak about Zimbabwe's prosperous times, we are talking about a time when more of the basics were available to Blacks, just enough to get by. We are talking about when whites felt secure to continue reaping most of the profits from stolen resources. A country is branded a success when whites are prospering and the local government can at least take care of the basics. Elite Whites do not see Blacks as anything other that subsistence labourers and consumers.

The nostalgia that some are displaying on this board for what existed before in Zimbabwe is very Eurocentric. They are fighting for white control... never seeing Blacks as being able to claim their own space and economic direction.

Most post colonial societies moved along similar lines and that is how we have neocolonialism today. I feel none of these leaders really thought out the entire system enough to realize a better way forward. Some experimented with change, but as history showed, they were either killed or removed from power by European orchestrated coups.

Real change is not possible, unless the majority of people in Zimbabwe are educated about themselves throughout history and the evil in the European systems they inherited. Only an educated majority can withstand the aggression of European powers.

The White leaders loudly proclaim that they want to protect their way of life. Their way of life is exactly the problem. They will pay poor people to fight and kill as many people as possible who oppose them to protect their greed.

Reprinted from:
www.rastafarispeaks.com/cgi-bin/forum/config.pl?read=57398``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe and Eurocentric Nostalgia``x1120930762,76421,views``x``x ``xBy Oscar Heck, vheadline.com

It is a matter of life or death! Venezuela must keep the US military at bay...

VHeadline.com commentarist writes: Before reading this article, I would like to ask readers to be prepared to come face to face with some highly disturbing photos and information ... information which is finally coming to the forefront ... information which people such as myself have been aware of for some time ... information that has been intentionally hidden ... information that every single human being on this planet should be aware of.

It is a matter of life or death!

Please read attentively and most importantly, please take the time to follow the links (click of the underlined blue text). Once you have finished reading this article and the links provided, please pass on the information to as many people as you can. It is critical for the future of humanity. If we sit by and do nothing about it, we will be ensuring the death of this planet and its inhabitants.

This article deals with nuclear weapons.

I worked in Kuwait city during the Gulf War (1991) when the daytime skies were black and orange from the many oil-well fires. The city was partially destroyed and the airport had sustained heavy damage. I stayed at the International Hotel, across from the US Embassy compound near the waterfront and at the bullet-riddled Crown Plaza Hotel on Airport road.

During the several months I worked in Kuwait and in the subsequent months when I worked in Saudi Arabia I met many US soldiers. Certain images of US soldiers have been deeply engraved in my mind.

The most striking thing was the age of the soldiers ... they appeared to be children, 18,19,20,21 year-olds. Many were very sick, physically, emotionally and psychologically. Almost all of them felt that their own government had betrayed them and lied to them about why they were there. Many of the soldiers were traumatized ... they recounted their horror stories and the fact that many (many!) innocent people were killed by the US military, themselves.

For a period of time during the war, the only television station we were able to see was CNN. What CNN was airing/reporting was very far from reality. In the same way as CNN covered the recent invasion of Iraq, CNN was then portraying US soldiers as being "happy" heroes, when in fact most of them were scared to death, sick ... and complete emotional wrecks. CNN was portraying the Iraqi soldiers as "the enemy" ... as despicable people who raped and killed innocent people. This was far from being the case. Most Iraqi soldiers were poor young men who followed orders ... in the same way as the young US soldiers did. Young men shot at young men, not knowing why they were fighting.

This is when I began to question the integrity of CNN and of the US government.

Previous to 1991 I was, as most of us, just another person who believed what I was told ... and never really questioned it. I believed in good faith and in the honorability of governments and the media. After 1991, it all changed for me ... as it did for most Gulf War Veterans, many of whom to this day continue to suffer from an unknown illness, a "mystery illness." I witnessed first hand how sick some of the soldiers were in Kuwait.

Before I proceed, I would like to present readers with quotes of what some people have written me recently.

"Anyone who blames America for Iraq's poverty is totally uninformed ... If you were an opponent of his regime, you weren't prosperous at all -- you were in prison, tortured, or dead. His son's favorite method of execution was to throw people into a wood-chip making machine. We've dug up 400,000 bodies in mass graves so far. By my estimate Saddam was murdering about 25,000 Iraqis a year in order to maintain his grip on power and keep everyone else frozen with fear. So, you extrapolate those numbers over the next ten or 15 years and you come up with the numbers of lives we saved by getting rid of Saddam."

"Again, a lot of these allegations never turn out to be true when you actually start digging around. Some US soliders have experienced problems from the Gulf War and there has been a massive amount of attention paid to the problem in Congress, led my John McCain, who is one of the best politicians we have and a former POW."

"The bottom line is when it comes to America you can see what you want to see."

"There are things we've done wrong and mistakes made that have resulted in tragedy. There are also millions of people walking around the globe today that owe their lives and their freedom to US intervention."

"So, my assessment is that we are a country that does believe in high ideals."

"Your allegations are, again, uninformed, and DO NOT reflect the reality on the ground."

"You need to wake up and understand how the global economy really works today."

"This is a serious accusation. Is such information available? Were nuclear weapons used in that invasion? Depleted uranium munitions were, but that's a different story."

According to several sources, including a site called globalsecurity.org, the US government admitted to using weapons similar to Napalm in the recent invasion of Iraq. Although these weapons are not called "Napalm," they basically are napalm.

"The Pentagon said it had not tried to deceive. It drew a distinction between traditional napalm, first invented in 1942, and the weapons dropped in Iraq, which it calls Mark 77 firebombs. They weigh 510lbs, and consist of 44lbs of polystyrene-like gel and 63 gallons of jet fuel. ... You can call it something other than napalm but it is still napalm. It has been reformulated in the sense that they now use a different petroleum distillate, but that is it. The US is the only country that has used napalm for a long time. I am not aware of any other country that uses it ... Marines returning from Iraq chose to call the firebombs "napalm"."

According to several sources, the US government tested Agent Orange and depleted uranium (DU) weapons in Puerto Rico.

"Test trials of Agent Orange were carried out in Puerto Rico. The US imposed a military government on Puerto Rico a century ago when it was seized from the Spanish. The island of Vieques (40 miles off the coast, population 5,500) has been used for target practise by the US military for the last 60 years. Since 1980 it has been used for test firing of depleted uranium munitions, chemical contaminants have found their way into ground water, local crabs have 20 times the normal levels of heavy metals, cancer rates amongst the island's population is twice the national average ... In a locked room of Tu Du Obstetrical and Gynaecological Hospital in Saigon are rows of formaldehyde-filled jars containing deformed foetuses, a grotesque illustration of Man's inhumanity to Man. The level of poverty in Vietnam prevents the preservation of further examples. Many of the living have fared little better, limb deformities, cancers."

The USA is using nuclear weapons.

In order to bypass laws and to allow for the use of napalm weapons against Iraqis in the recent invasion of Iraq, the US military (or someone) simply changed the name of the weapon and slightly modified the ingredients. In much the same way, the US government has been deceiving us regarding depleted uranium ... which has been used in weapons against Iraqis and Afghanis in the recent US invasions.

Depleted uranium weapons are apparently not categorized as nuclear weapons.

This is where we have been fooled, once again. We have been led to believe that DU is basically harmless. It turns out that this is not the case. DU is very dangerous and there is reliable information to support this. Weapons that contain DU are essentially nuclear weapons ... and the USA has been using them in large quantities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The US government is using nuclear weapons!

Please read the following short article. It is written by Leuren Moret who is an international radiation specialist and environmental commissioner for the City of Berkeley, California. Below are sections of the article:

"I have worked in two U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, and in 1991 I became a whistleblower at the Livermore lab. Depleted uranium is very, very, very nasty stuff: Depleted uranium (DU) weaponry meets the definition of weapon of mass destruction in two out of three categories under U.S. Federal Code Title 50 Chapter 40 Section 2302."

"Since 1991, the U.S. has released the radioactive atomicity equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs into the global atmosphere."

"The U.S. has permanently contaminated the global atmosphere with radioactive pollution having a half-life of 2.5 billion years."

"The U.S. has illegally conducted four nuclear wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and twice in Iraq since 1991, calling DU 'conventional' weapons when in fact they are nuclear weapons."

"DU is the Trojan Horse of nuclear war - it keeps giving and keeps killing. There is no way to clean it up, and no way to turn it off because it continues to decay into other radioactive isotopes in over 20 steps."

"Terry Jemison at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs stated in August 2004 that over 518,000 Gulf-era veterans (14-year period) are now on medical disability, and that 7,039 were wounded on the battlefield in that same period. Over 500,000 U.S. veterans are homeless. "

"In some studies of soldiers who had normal babies before the war, 67 percent of the post-war babies are born with severe birth defects - missing brains, eyes, organs, legs and arms, and blood diseases."

"In southern Iraq, scientists are reporting five times higher levels of gamma radiation in the air, which increases the radioactive body burden daily of inhabitants. In fact, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan are uninhabitable."

"After Vietnam, Henry Kissinger said, 'Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. . .'(from Chapter 5 in the "Final Days" by Woodward and Bernstein)."

Leuren Moret is part of a new documentary called "Beyond Treason." It is about the history of treason by the U.S. government against its own soldiers ... about Atomic veterans, MK-Ultra, Agent Orange and DU. The documentary is co-written by Joyce Riley, spokesperson for the American Gulf War Veterans Association ... and several Gulf War Veterans are featured in the film.

I think it is important for readers to take the time to visit their site here. Scroll down to the bottom and you can click to watch "a two minute theatrical trailer." Please watch the trailer ... and then spread the news to others.

It is a matter of life or death!

Although I have not yet seen the documentary, I have a strong feeling that everyone should watch it. I am ordering my copy.

The documentary website states: "From the first Gulf War the VA has determined that 250,000 troops are now permanently disabled, 15,000 troops are dead and over 425,000 troops are ill and slowly dying from what the Department of Defense still calls a 'mystery disease.' How many more will have to die before action is taken?"

This "mystery disease" appears to be caused by the use of nuclear weapons, DU weapons included.

Another site states: "Decades of Nuclear Testing has demonstrated the effects of 1200 nuclear weapon tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site; and the US Government admitted in Nov. 2002, that every living person in the US between 1958-63 was exposed to this fall out resulting in cancer, gene mutation, heart disease, autism, diabetes, Parkinsons, ALS, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome , hypothyroidism in new-borns, obesity and learning disabilities. One out of twelve children in the US is disabled. The fall out did not stop at the US borders. It travelled around the world, as atmospheric dust and remains even in the biosphere/ sub-orbital space today. High breast cancer rates have been co-located in the proximity of nuclear power plants in the west and more so in the east coast areas of the US"

"The long-term effects from over a decade of DU exposures are emerging in Southern Iraq. They are devastating. The increased quantities of radio-active material ( including non-depleted uranium), used in Afghanistan are 3 to 5 times greater than Iraq 199. In Iraq 2003 they are already estimated to be 6 to 10 times 1991 and will travel through a larger area and affect many more people, babies and unborn. Countries within a 1000 mile radius of Baghdad and Kabul are being affected by radiation poisoning ..."

"Testimonies of fathers and mothers are horrifying. What else do the Americans want ? They killed us , they turned our new-borns into horrific deformations, and they turned our farm lands into grave-yards, and destroyed our homes. On top of all this their planes fly over and spray us with bullets.. we have nothing to lose..."

(Note: Water supplies seems to be one of the main vehicles to deliver radiation to humans!)

What is now happening in Afghanistan and Iraq is what will happen in Venezuela if the US government attacks Venezuela. Children will be born dead and disfigured or worse yet, alive and horribly deformed (as seen in the 2 minute trailer above). People will become sicker and sicker. Cancer will be rampant, soil and water supplies will be contaminated and people will be dying from radiation-induced diseases for generations.

Venezuela must keep the US military at bay...

... but, more importantly, the people of the USA must themselves do something about their own government. The people of the USA have been lied to by their own government ... and the US government continues to lie.

If the people of the USA do nothing, the entire world will be contaminated within a few short years and, in the future, people will no longer look human ... humans in the future will be mutants. It has already begun.

This is not science fiction. This is reality. Take another look at the movie trailer. 340 tons of DU were used in the Gulf War. 2400 tons of DU were dumped into Iraq during the recent invasion of Iraq by the USA. (On a similar note, the US government is proudly collaborating with the Colombian government -- and perhaps Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador -- in a program to eradicate coca plantations by spraying the plantations with chemicals ... which are apparently -- and no doubt -- getting into the local drinking water supplies!)

I will now repeat one of the quotes from the beginning of this article. Astoundingly, the reader who made the comment (repeated below), made it after I sent her/him the links to "Beyond Treason."

"There are things we've done wrong and mistakes made that have resulted in tragedy. There are also millions of people walking around the globe today that owe their lives and their freedom to US intervention."

Free to live in nuclear contamination for generations to come?

Free to eat, drink and breath radiation?

Free to live as brain-damaged twisted pieces of flesh?

As I finish writing this article, the same person sends me another letter. Here are parts of it:

"Okay, Oscar, here's Chavez latest insult to my country. He called the United States the 'most savage, cruel and murderous empire that has existed in the history of the world' ... First of all, it's clear Mr. Chavez doesn't know the history of Stalin and Mao who were collectively responsible for ... second, his assertion that America is going to invade Venezuela is completely idiotic ... third, he says Iran is a regime under attack by imperialism and expressed solidarity with the Islamic fascist regime in Tehran ... I've had it with this lying, ignorant, sociopath, Oscar. Hugo Chavez just made an enemy of me, and I am a formiddable opponent."

What kind of person would state that someone is now their enemy simply because that person is speaking the truth?

* It is because of people who think this way, and react this way, that DU is being dropped on "enemies."
* It is because of people who think and react this way that the world, as we know it, will come to an end ... sooner than later.

This is no joke!

Reprinted from:
www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=45533``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xVenezuela must keep the US military at bay``x1123819200,94955,world``x``x ``xColourism, Black Movements and African Nationalism

By Ayanna Gillian

"From early history to the present, we learn of men and women who have emerged from their environment and so far outdistanced their contemporaries in thought and action that in their day they were apt to be called 'mad, dangerous or fools'. Long after their death, when the truths were espoused or the experiments they conducted validated... then they who have been convinced by experience are prone to admit that the visionary was right and must have been inspired to be so persevering."

These words of Garvey's wife, Amy Jacques Garvey aptly encapsulate the ideology, achievements and mixed public perception of Marcus Garvey. They also underscore the far-reaching and unprecedented nature of his legacy of black self-determinism and the critical importance of black enterprise. It is on the shoulders of Garvey that tenets of political, social and economic self-determination for Africans and the creation of a global African nation were built. In fact the widespread influence of Garveyism as a Pan-Africanist and liberation ideology far outstripped his actual achievements in his lifetime.
Full Article : rootswomen.com``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xGarvey's Legacy in Context``x1124314773,62250,world``x``x ``xRe: Arab Masters--black Slaves

Posted By: rasdavid simmonds

Are black people still assisting in these atrocities.if they are what should rasta do unto them when ini hold dem,give dem the fire blaze as what ini giving to the white devils or should we powder puff them.
http://www.rastafarispeaks.com/cgi-bin/forum/config.pl?read=60383

_______________________________

Posted By: Ayinde

I can see Black folly, which is derived from the dominant white miseducation system (including the media), and/or Arab/Islamic historical hegemony and brutality. Of course, dark-skinned Blacks, no matter their conduct, cannot get white privileges. They will always have to deal with the system that is against them. They are never really accepted in the white community, and when they do crap they are also alienated from better informed Black communities. Ultimately they do pay in the short-term for their folly. My attitude towards misinformed Blacks reflects my awareness of the contributing factors to their poor conduct and the fact they never get 'the privileges' in the system.

However, White supremacy (White privileges and arrogance) is an automatic conduct with Whites and so most Whites think they are normal, they think that they are always right and they think that they do not have to change. That arrogance makes them especially dangerous. The only way they will shift from that position is when better informed ones dismiss their arrogance at every turn. Being firm with ignorant and arrogant Whites is the best we can do to help them. It is also the best self-defense. You see, even when Whites are proven to be wrong, they still get White privileges, which is an affront to Blacks twice. They are wrong and are rewarded in countless ways for being wrong. My attitude towards arrogant Whites reflects my awareness of the contributing factors to their poor conduct and the fact they get 'the privileges' in the system. ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xIt is Still Black and White``x1128089689,66946,views``x``x ``xPosted By: Eja

Ayinde, Akymanah and Bantu Kelani have re-stated the ORIGINAL definition and the reason behind the iception of Rastafari. The questions I am posing now, with unreserved humility, ARE NOT addressed to everybody on this message board. Just to the hypocrites (i.e. unkkkles tom and sam) who are presently posing as African liberators.

Some of these questions have been asked before, but, the ones directly in the line avoided the point. They danced onto other things in order to distract from the kernel of the matter. So, I will come again.

Why do you find it easier to relate to the explanation of the semites than to that of indigenous Africa?

When you speak of your African heritage, why do you omit the indigenous people of Africa from amongst whom diaspora Africans in the west came? Your family tree (it seems) grew from east Africa, into the western dispora. You know (or say little) about the cultures of the Mandinka, Wolof, Kru, Mossi, Hausa, Kongo, Ashanti, Ibo, and other nations along THE WESTERN COASTLINE OF AFRICA from whom you are DIRECTLY descended. You are not descended from the Amhara so, why do you find it easier to identify with thier culture?

Is it because you see the civilizations of the west coast as being inferior to the Amhara civilization? Could it be that you have no wish to identify with the evil animals who sold your ancestors into captivity? Or, is your preference only based on the fact that the Amhara are 'fair-skinned' and have 'good hair'? (I have noticed that dictionaries defines 'fair' as 'good').

I mentioned the outer attributes of the Amhara because I have also noticed that you seem to have little interest in the darker peoples of East Africa, you say nothing about the Dinka, the Nuba, the Kikuyu or even the Oromo. You say NOTHING about the people ORIGINALLY identified as Ethiopians. It is like to you, they do not exist. The mixed race nations within the borders of Africa are recent creations. The Fula, the Tutsi and the Amhara are people descended from the mixture of semite and African. Which means, they are even younger than the 'semites'. Yet, we know that African civilization existed thousands of years before ANY of these were created.

You, like the european colonialist before you, seem to find it easier to relate to the mixed race nations. Do I lie?

Is'nt your insistence on holding the Amhara so tight sourced in an earlier rejection of your UNDILUTED African root? "We are all mixed" they say. But, even if one were to agree with that opinion, even if one were to acknowledge that not all his/her ancestors were 100% Black African, one could still identify oneself totally with the first ancestor. The source. The perfect Black. One could say , "When I see God in a human form, I see one who is BLACK. Pure, TOTAL BLACK."

So, is'nt your DOGGED assertion of the primacy of the Amhara explanation, not in fact a way of you disguising your SHAMEFUL desire to hold on to the semite? Your desire to dethrone BLACKNESS?

And, why are you so afraid of the perfect Black? Why do you refuse to let go of the semite? Is it that you see the UNDILUTED indigenous culture as being too inpenetrable (i.e too 'alien')? Is this why is judeo-christianity the DEFAULT position of your spiritual sense?

Now, to the one who claims to be from the continent, why do you come on here muttering prayers in Amhara/hebrew? Is your African language incapable of constructing a prayer or, do you believe that the Power to whom your prayers are addressed only understands Amhara/hebrew?

And I will not leave out the one who comes on here and calls himself a 'ras' (even though the foundation belief behind most of his posts seems to be from the war he is waging against 'black devils', 'alien replacements' etc.).

He is saying nothing new. I know where he is coming from. I have heard this type of talk before. It was coming from ones who called themselves the followers of something called 'zadok'. They also claimed to be Rastafari and the main thrust of thier arguement was this : "What is called the atlantic slave trade was a conspiracy between aliens (black and white devils) whose plan was to rid Africa of it's original inhabitants. The white alien devils waited on the coast while thier black alien devil brothers went into the interior to hunt down the original Africans (who were also the original hebrews in the bible). Over the centuries of the trade, every single one of these original hebrew Africans was hunted down, placed on a slave ship and sent to America and the Caribbean. And when they were done, only ALIEN BLACK DEVILS were left in Africa....."

Now, it may be that this person arrived at his theory independent of 'zadok', but, then again, there are millions of 'whites' who hold the same views as the ones promoted by neo-nazis without ever joining up, attending a meeting or even reading a neo-nazi journal. They hold the same views, and given a chance, would do thier best to bring about the same desired outcome.

And I have said before that when I hear a person state a belief, I ask what this belief can be used for, and, it did not take long to work out the purpose behind the devising of this 'black and white alien devils' theory. The intention is to create an effective explanation for why diaspora Africans should stay away from continental Africans. Because, not only did they (continental Africans) sell the real hebrews(diaspora Africans) into captivity, they did it as part of a conspiracy. Now, who knows if that conspiracy is still going on? In fact, it probabaly is, therefore, best to avoid them. Yes.

So, who would this dis-unity benefit? Who are the ones peddling ideologies that would seperate Africans really working for?

When I say one man is not the Almighty, one language is not the language of the Almighty, and, other roads lead to the truth, what am I saying? Then, when you say, all roads lead to one man, his language is the holy word and only he ever attained to (and will ever attain to) the status of 'God', what are you saying?

Like it or not, you are ultimately headed in the direction of the followers of 'zadok'. That is where your logic will lead you (if you are not already there). Then, what?

Reasoning on Rastafari Speaks Message Board``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xQuestions about Rastafari``x1128744000,9191,views``x``x ``xFraming the Poor

By Tim Wise

During the flooding of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, many a voice praised the media for its supposedly aggressive coverage. The fact that Anderson Cooper cried on camera, or that Geraldo evinced outrage (imagine that), or that even Fox's Shepard Smith waxed indignant at the suffering in the streets, was taken as evidence of some newfound courage on the part of the press.

Standing up to FEMA's Mike Brown, and making him appear every bit as incompetent as he was -- a task about as difficult as making Paris Hilton look underfed -- inspired plaudits for any number of network anchors and reporters in the field. So too, Cooper's upbraiding of an utterly hapless Mary Landrieu, she of the U.S. Senate, just to show that both parties were fair game in this brave new world of independent media, no longer willing to be led around by the neck on a leash, as it had been with, say, Iraq, for starters.

But just as surely as the media went after those in positions of power, and sought to expose them as witless in all respects, it was even more adept at framing (pun very much intended) low-income black folks in the streets of New Orleans as a collection of deviant criminals. In other words, the more things changed, the more they ultimately stayed the same, with the press presenting images of the desperate and left behind that reinforce negative and racist stereotypes, to the utter exclusion of accuracy and fair-mindedness.

Case in point, the constant repetition of the same five or six video loops of so-called looters. The fact that most of these were taking water, food and medicine didn't seem to matter to camerapersons or, ultimately, a viewing public quick to condemn what they saw. That the relative paucity of such video suggests theft wasn't particularly representative of the crowds on Canal Street -- after all, if looting had been that common, there would have been more than the same half-dozen clips to present -- also mattered not it appears.

An even better case in point, the repetition of unfounded rumors -- later proven false -- to the effect that Children's Hospital had been raided by drug addicts looking for a fix; or that gang rapes were occurring in the Superdome or Convention Center, or that babies were being molested and then having their throats slit, only to be stuffed like trash in abandoned freezers and garbage cans. False, false and false; and for none of these stories had there ever been a first hand witness who had actually seen any of the supposed carnage taking place.

Or consider the reports of thugs shooting on first aid helicopters: fact is, there are no first hand witnesses who claim they saw anyone shoot at the helicopters, as if hoping to bring them down or harm relief workers. Rather, those who were actually there, and saw the gunfire in question, report that it was intended to get the attention of the helicopters, which seemed to be repeatedly passing people by, looking at the catastrophic conditions, but refusing to land and save people in most instances. Perhaps those in the air didn't see those on the ground? Or perhaps they didn't understand the magnitude of the suffering below them? Either way, the gunfire was a desperate attempt to get people to take things seriously and do their jobs: perhaps not the best way to get attention, but hardly the act of mindless, violent thugs aiming indiscriminately at everyone in sight, as reports made it seem.

Yet the media, feeling no need to find witnesses or to verify claims of black deviance (because, after all, what's not to believe?) simply went along. The result? Rescue efforts were delayed because rescue workers had been scared for their lives by a press that led them to think New Orleans was a war zone; the Governor and Mayor actually told law enforcement to stop saving lives and start arresting and shooting lawbreakers on sight; and the public, which rarely needs reasons to think the worst of poor black people, found its stereotypes confirmed. Not only whites, it should be pointed out, but black folks too, like Mayor Nagin and his crony police chief Eddie Compass, both of whom apparently think so little of their own people that they too assumed the stories were true, in spite of no evidence, and repeated the charges on national TV.

Within just a few days, urban legends began zipping around the Internet, in the form of e-mails recounting utterly fabricated events, but all of them -- however false -- fit perfectly within the narrative developed by the media during the catastrophe.

First there was the one about the crack dealer who refused to be evacuated to a hospital because he wouldn't be able to sell his wares there; then there was the one about the thugs (black and poor of course) who destroyed a rest area on the Louisiana/Texas border, during a stop on the way to Houston, even urinating on the walls to show their disregard for civilized norms of behavior; then there was the one from the guy claiming to have volunteered at the Astrodome to feed and help evacuees, all to be shocked by how ungrateful they were--supposedly demanding beer, liquor, cigarettes and four-star restaurant meals. That hundreds of others refuted these nonsensical claims, and noted how unbelievably gracious the evacuees had been did nothing to damper the enthusiasm with which the lies were circulated.

And in each case, the authors of these fantasies made sure to throw in something about how racist the blacks were (calling white aid workers "crackers" and "honkies" of course), and ending with the admonition that those displaced by Katrina deserved no respect or assistance, seeing as how they were a bunch of spoiled brats who should be left to their own devices. In other words, no need to be compassionate, no need to contribute to relief funds, and certainly no need to challenge one's already negative views towards the kinds of people left behind in the flood. They had, ultimately, gotten what they deserved.

Though the mainstream media hadn't created these phony and vicious stories (and indeed, one has to wonder what kind of evil mind and heart would have done so), it is certainly true that they created the conditions that made such tripe believable to a lot of people. Had the media focused less on looters and supposed gang raping murderers, and more on the efforts by thousands to help one another in the midst of hellish conditions -- stories that are only trickling out in the corporate press, but which those who lived through them have been trying to get told via their own accounts from the flood zone -- it would have been impossible for such vile trash as this to have gained traction. But once the climate had been created and the frame set -- one that said, these are bad people, who do bad things -- it took no effort at all for racists to concoct lies and peddle those to a willing and gullible public that never seems to challenge stories of black perfidy, so easily do they fit within their pre-existing racist biases in the first place.

Which brings us to the other big lie told about the poor in New Orleans: one that has yet to be addressed in the media, despite how easily it can be disproved by a mere five minutes worth of research. It is one repeated daily for the past eight weeks by conservative talk show hosts and columnists, and one to which I am exposed many times a day in my email inbox, thanks to the efforts of right wing louts without the seeming desire to do their homework. Namely, it is the argument that the reason 130,000 poor black folks were unable to escape the flooding was because they had grown dependent on the government to save them, thanks to the "welfare state," and that was why they lacked the money and cars to get out before disaster struck.

In other words, liberal social policy had rendered the black poor unable or unwilling to work, content to collect a government check, and thus, had made them incapable of saving themselves. This lie -- and it is just that, not an exaggeration or simplification or overstatement, but a flat-out falsehood -- has been parroted by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Shawn Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Charles Murray (of "Bell Curve" fame), not to mention such viciously self-loathing black conservatives as Star Parker, John McWhorter and the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, all despite the lack of evidence to sustain it, and the amazing amount of evidence, both contemporary and historical, to refute it.

But of course the media, having long ago decided not to challenge the mainstream public's view of folks on welfare -- and indeed to collaborate with the framing of such persons by politicians of both major parties -- has done nothing to set the record straight, suggesting either that they are incredibly inept at research, or just as incredibly craven in their attitudes towards the poorest of this nation's citizens.

But the facts, however unsettling they may be for conservative mythmakers, are clear.

To begin with, as of 2004, according to the Census Bureau, there were only 4600 households in all of New Orleans receiving cash welfare from the nation's principal aid program, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, formerly Aid to Families With Dependent Children, or AFDC). That is not a misprint: 4600 out of a total of 130,000 households in the black community alone. Which means that even if every welfare receiving household in Orleans Parish had been black (which was not in fact the case), this would have represented only a little more than four percent of black households in the city.

According to the same Census data, the average household size in a welfare receiving family in New Orleans is the same as the citywide average for non-recipients: roughly 3.5 persons. So the number of individuals receiving welfare in New Orleans, by the time of Katrina would have been about 16,000.

Thus, even if we assume that all of the 130,000 persons left behind were poor, and that no persons receiving welfare managed to escape before the flooding with friends or family, this would mean that at most, perhaps twelve percent of the persons left behind (and whose faces we may have been seeing on national TV) would have been welfare recipients at all, let alone persons who had been rendered dependent on such benefits for long periods of time.

And speaking of dependence, or the notion that the city's welfare recipients had grown content to sit back and collect government checks instead of doing for self, this hardly seems likely when you consider that the average annual income received from TANF, for those small numbers actually getting any such benefits at all, was only a little more than $2,800 per year, in New Orleans prior to the catastrophe.

Indeed, such paltry amounts explain why most of the poor in New Orleans, far from being happy to receive so-called handouts, work whenever they can find steady employment, which admittedly, is not often the case.

For example, in the ninety-eight percent black and forty percent poor Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardest hit communities (and one about which many negative things were said in terms of so-called welfare dependence), seventy-one percent of families prior to the flooding reported income from paid employment, while only eight percent received income from cash welfare. In other words, folks in this community were almost nine times more likely to earn their pay than to receive government benefits. Forty percent of workers from the community worked full-time, and the average commute time for Ninth Ward workers was over 45 minutes each day, suggesting that the work ethic was quite common to the folks who lived there, irrespective of commonly held and utterly false stereotypes.

Even food stamps -- a program with much more lenient terms and where even the near poor can often qualify for minimal benefits -- were only received by eleven percent of New Orleans households as of last year: hardly indicative of a general mindset of welfare entitlement. As for public housing, far from being the location of residence for most poor blacks in New Orleans -- let alone those in the streets in the wake of Katrina -- fewer than 20,000 people lived in such units at the time of the flooding: this representing no more than five percent of black New Orleanians. In the Lower Ninth Ward, for example, few lived in public housing and nearly six in ten families owned their own homes.

Even in the city's poorest communities, like the Iberville or Lafitte housing developments, or parts of Central City, at least a third, and often a majority of households report income from paid employment. What's more, tenants in the B.W. Cooper development have been managing their own housing for years, teaching job and leadership skills to the persons who live there.

Likewise, in the mid-90s, several public housing developments participated in a national Jobs Program, funded by the Annie B. Casey Foundation: a successful effort that matched low-income black residents with businesses looking for employees. In the former St. Thomas development -- the first public housing "project" funded by the federal government under the Roosevelt Administration -- residents had started their own coffee shop and bookstore, and had created innovative teen pregnancy prevention and safe sex initiatives.

When St. Thomas was torn down a few years ago, residents were told there would be mixed-use economic development in its place, and although they mourned for the loss of their neighborhood, many looked forward to participating actively in the economic lifeblood of the community. Then the city reneged on its promises and offered the land to Wal-Mart, which then placed a superstore on the property--the very store whose gun supply was looted during the flooding (an ironic turn of events if ever there was one). Poor folks wanted economic opportunity and jobs; the city's elite (black and white alike) gave them a gun supply shop.

Bottom line: the stereotype of poor blacks in New Orleans (and elsewhere) as lazy and dependent on government is false. In Louisiana, it should be noted that only a very small share of those receiving TANF benefits, and AFDC before that, are able-bodied adults. Indeed, even prior to welfare reform, only eleven percent of those receiving AFDC in the state were able-bodied adults who did no work: the rest were vulnerable children, the elderly, the disabled, or adults who were already working (mostly part-time), but earned too little to come off assistance.

It should also be noted that even when persons do receive so-called welfare, there is still a predicate to doing so: one that is rarely explored, but is simply assumed to be personal incompetence, bad choice-making, laziness or other personal pathologies. So, for example, we are to believe that for those who live in public housing, it was their own lack of initiative or willingness to take personal responsibility for their lives that rendered them so vulnerable to the likes of Hurricane Katrina and the collapse of the city's levees.

Yet what this commonly-repeated claim ignores is what came before folks ended up in public housing, in overcrowded communities, with concentrated levels of extreme poverty; and what came before had nothing to do with the welfare state, or liberal social policy more generally. Rather, what happened was the deliberate and calculated destruction of the inner-city in the name of economic "development" (which benefited only the elite) and to meet the needs of middle-class and above whites.

So, for example, consider the Treme (pronounced truh-may): the oldest free black neighborhood in the United States, home to Congo Square and Louis Armstrong Park. Located on the outer edge of the French Quarter and Central Business District, the Treme is more than ninety percent black and over half of its residents are poor, when you include those in the Iberville and Lafitte housing developments. Though it had long been a lower-income community, with the attendant issues that often emerge in such spaces, the Treme had also been, for the most part, functional. It was the site of dozens of successful black-owned businesses, and hundreds of stable middle-class families, where few lived in the so-called projects. The same was true for the 7th Ward: the base of the city's old-line Creole community.

But beginning in the early 1960s, the city of New Orleans, as with every major city in the United States, began taking federal funds to extend interstate highways through their urban centers, which meant the heart of those places black communities. In New Orleans, plans to extend the interstate through the French Quarter met with stiff opposition from affluent (and mostly white) historic preservationists and business owners. Once their political clout was deployed so as to block construction through the main tourist artery, planners opted to take the I-10 through the Treme and 7th Ward, whose lower income and black residents lacked the power to stop their property from being destroyed in the name of progress.

It was a story repeated throughout the U.S. during this time: by the mid-1960s, interstate construction in urban areas was destroying roughly 37,000 residences annually; this, in addition to the 40,000 more that were being torn down each year in the name of "urban renewal," which translated into the building of shopping malls, office parks and parking lots. By 1969, nearly 70,000 homes, mostly occupied by blacks and Latinos, were being destroyed for the interstate program alone, in virtually every medium and large city in the country.

Although some had argued for financial assistance to help relocate the low-income families displaced by this process, rarely did such help materialize. Indeed, less than ten percent of those displaced by urban renewal had new single-resident occupancy housing to go to afterward: instead, they had to double up with relatives in small, crowded apartments, or move into public housing projects, which became something akin to concentration camps for the poorest and most vulnerable citizens of the nation.

These policies, known euphemistically as "slum clearance" by those who implemented and supported them, actually created slums, in places where previously had been low-income, but largely working class and stable communities. In New Orleans, this also extended to the Central Business District, including the very land where the now infamous Superdome sits.

Beginning in 1971, construction began on the facility, on which ground had previously existed yet another mostly black and largely low-income and working class neighborhood. But in a contest between the needs and lives of those New Orleanians on the one hand, and the mere wants of wealthy developers, concert promoters, the New Orleans Saints and Tulane University boosters on the other (the latter of which wanted to move their pathetic team's games there, away from the old and decrepit Sugar Bowl), which side can we guess, ultimately prevailed? And so the Dome was completed, in 1975, at a public cost of tens of millions of dollars, and the loss of yet another patch of homesteads for the city's black majority.

All of this "slum clearance," it should be noted, was done for the benefit of whites, and not only the rich developers. Indeed, the primary reason for the interstate highway program was to help facilitate daily movement from the cities where most people still worked, to the suburbs, where large numbers were beginning to live. But of course, it was only whites who could live there in most cases. Blacks were still subject to regular discrimination in housing (indeed, most types of housing bias weren't even illegal until 1968), and had been largely unable to take advantage of the government's FHA and VA home loans for the first 30 years of their existence, thanks to racially discriminatory lending criteria built into this government program.

So while nearly 40 percent of white mortgages were being written on the extremely favorable FHA and VA terms by the early 1960s, (making home ownership possible for some 15-20 million white families who wouldn't have otherwise been able to own their own place), virtually no blacks had access to this form of economic opportunity. To then tear down black neighborhoods so as to build highways that would help whites get to their new and growing communities (like Bill O'Reilly's boyhood Levittown), was an especially pernicious and racist combination of anti-black neglect and white racial preference.

Beyond housing issues, even regular "welfare" receipt is something predicated on history: specifically the history of low-wage employment and inadequate job opportunities, particularly in urban centers. One study from Harlem in the 1990s, found that for every job opening in the area, there were as many as fourteen people looking for work. Nationally, data has long suggested that there are between 7-10 people out of work at any given time, for every above-poverty wage job opening. In other words, there is not enough opportunity in the modern American economy, irrespective of the claims made by conservatives and believed by millions.

In fact, it has long been the official monetary policy of the United States, under the leadership of the Federal Reserve, to raise interest rates whenever unemployment drops "too low," and suddenly the nation is faced with having too many people working. The fear is that too many people working will tighten the labor market, thereby pushing up wages, and then causing a spike in prices, to the detriment of economic well being. By raising the cost of borrowing money, the Fed hopes to cool off business expansion (and thus any attendant and related hiring sprees), and thereby, hold inflation in check.

Putting aside the validity (or lack thereof) of this particular theory, the result of such thinking should be obvious, especially when it is regularly employed to maintain unemployment at around four percent by raising interest rates whenever joblessness drops below that level: namely, it means that millions of people will be out of work at any given time, not because they are lazy, and certainly not because government handouts appear so luxurious to them; but rather, because it is desired by the government and the nation's economic policymakers that they be out of work.

Indeed, since the official unemployment rate fails to count all who are jobless, such as those who have grown so discouraged by their prospects that they've simply stopped looking (or those who are near jobless, able to pull down only a few hours of work each week, but who are still considered fully employed for the sake of the data), administering monetary policy this way results in as many as 10-12 million people being out of work or seriously underemployed at any given time. They and their dependents will then be (surprise, surprise) poor, and require some type of assistance so as to survive. None of this is a reflection on the values of the poor themselves, though it speaks volumes about the values of the rich who have supported this kind of policy for decades.

But of course, in a media culture incapable of looking deeper than the next 30-second, 100-word soundbite, none of this matters. Indeed, most reporters, news anchors, or journalists of any stripe would be unlikely to even know any of this in the first place. All that matters is the here and now: no need for context, background, or history. And so they give us poor people, stealing from stores, carless, penniless and homeless: how they became poor and why they stayed that way doesn't matter, apparently. And by remaining silent on that issue, the mainstream press leaves venal ideologues to fill in the blanks, for an eager public all too willing to believe the worst about people who, for the most part, none of them have ever met.

Thus do we repeatedly plant the seeds for each new round of victim blaming, poor-folks bashing and racism, all the while thinking that just because Anderson Cooper cried on camera and Fox momentarily turned on Bush (but only for a nanosecond), the Earth's center of gravity moved.

In fact, just as with the aftermath of 9/11, and quite contrary to conventional wisdom, nothing at all has changed.

Tim Wise is the author of two new books: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He can be reached at: timjwise@msn.com

Reprinted from:
http://counterpunch.org/wise10292005.html ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xKatrina, Conservative Myth-Making and the Media``x1130734984,21356,world``x``x ``xby Ayinde

When I am speaking about privileges in relation to Racism and Colorism, I am speaking about unmerited benefits that a group of people get based on false stereotypes about their superiority over people of other races and/or color. Privilege also occurs in relation to gender.

The benefits received by wealthy people or people with above average incomes, can be based on privilege, but this is not necessarily so. All privileges are unearned.

If different people who make similar amounts of money can buy similar things, there is no privilege there. If all people who are in a similar position get special treatment or gifts, those are not privileges, those are perks.

Anything a dark-skinned Black person earns in the system, together with any benefits received as a result of that earning, is not privilege. The system (those in charge and people in general) does not operate on the assumption that dark-skin Blacks are generally superior to people of other races and/or colors. The system does not automatically and/or unconsciously accommodate Black people, and least accommodated are dark-skinned Blacks.

If a dark-skinned Black male is earning more money than a light-skinned Black male, he is still viewed with the same preconceived unconscious suspicions. A dark-skinned Black male is less likely to be believed; he will not be given the same courtesies given to a White, and to a lesser extent, a light-skinned one. He has to work harder than light-skinned ones in a similar job. Everywhere he goes he has to constantly navigate people's poor perceptions about him in relation to his race and color.

As 'wealthy' as Oprah is, she does not get privileges. If people do not recognize Oprah for her celebrity status, she is treated like any other dark-skinned Black person. Getting attention and perks as a result of her celebrity status is not a privilege. All people in a similar situation get those 'perks'. Dark-skinned blacks have to ensure people recognize them as celebrities just to get basic courtesies, if any at all.

Privilege is unmerited benefits that a group of people get based on false stereotypes about their race and/or color.

Here is a link to what some Privileges are.

"How I Benefit From White Privilege" by Laura Douglas
www.rootswomen.com/articles/whitebenefits.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRacism, Colorism and Privileges``x1130907600,81674,rasta``x``x ``xby Darice Jones

Africans have been held underwater again by the big hand of US hypocrisy that has no love in reserve for us and never has - but that has love unlimited for those considered family.

But we Africans do not drown under water, we transform into sea creatures - we breathe anyway - and we swim into the arms of our common bond. In the aftermath of the storm and the government/media crimes committed against black people in and around New Orleans, the necessary next step is to transform our excruciating sadness and our fierce rage into collective action. In addition to the common color hatred we face, we descendants of Africans enslaved in the Americas share a common history of very real power. This power is manifest through our ability to step over, to dig under, to somehow make our way around the physical obstacles of oppression placed in our path every day since the Maafa. We are more than survivors of these institutionalized forms of racism, we have managed to thrive in the face of them.

You understand this only if you have broken bonds with the rhetoric of the self-proclaimed power brokers of this country. Coalitions between white supremacists, government, corporations, media, and religious institutions are nothing new - although many of us continue to believe that if we gain acceptance within them, we will be safe and comfortable, and able to help our people.

The problem with this approach is that ascension within the current power structure requires you to leave any analysis of history, any understanding of oppression, and any allegiance to the black mass behind you. To do this, you must view yourself and your fellow Africans through the eyes of the elite. That view says that there are worthy blacks (i.e. those able to garner wealth and leave their communities - or - "make it out of the hood"). It also says there are worthless blacks: those who are not wealthy, who are wrapped up in the criminal "justice" system, those who are not Christian, not straight, those with disabilities, and those who do not identify with the claimed white majority.

We are living with the results of these views. People who could easily be any one of our grandfathers, grandmothers, our parents, our siblings, our good friends, our children have been killed in the streets - not by the storm but by the "authorities." It is our folks who laws are designed to capture. The laws are designed so that affluent white corporatists cannot be punished for the same acts. The media, including print news, television, film and advertising, participates by using words and images to associate crime with black people. It’s a successful campaign, considering that many of us can barely say hello to each other on the street - either afraid or ashamed to see ourselves reflected.

Despite this, we Africans are powerful. It is because of this power, our folks are being forcibly separated and dispersed. If the people of those New Orleans communities had been able to stay together, they might have broken ranks with the socialization that told them to submit to "authority." The outcry may not have been segregated voices from around the country or sympathy from those in the mainstream media whose humanity was dug up by the widespread death and suffering. It might have been the undeniable collective outrage of a black people who had been publicly maimed and murdered by the government under which they lived. The voice that has gone up so many times before in the history of this country.

But now, communities have been separated. Children from parents, parents from grandparents and so forth. And every one of us black folks knows, that could have been us, and was in fact our family. Present within this insane situation is an opportunity for African Americans to re-see each other and ourselves, to remove the lens presented to us by those who uphold our systems of oppression.

There are many steps we as individuals and small chocolate communities around the country can take. Step one is to really begin to reunite with our collective African power by understanding ourselves not just as survivors, but as innovators, creators, artists, storytellers, healers, and educators. We have roots steeped in overcoming obstacles, but also of determining what is needed, and creating sustainable options to answer those needs.

Harriet Tubman was not just a survivor, she was a risk-taker, innovator, and problem solver. It was a completely illegal act for her to run away from her enslaver and to help others run away from theirs. Nowadays, the news would tell us she had "looted" the plantations and the treatment that led her and others to "loot" would be completely irrelevant - as it is today. But we should look to this ancestor with pride and understanding - as we should look at ourselves today. She was not beholden to laws that would prevent her from living a full life - and neither should we be. This nation has never been cleansed of its racism - although the civil rights era certainly forced people to change the rhetoric around race. Despite those changes, the institutions which were built upon race hate have not been analyzed and re-constituted to expunge them of racism. Most importantly, the criminal justice system, the same one that made it illegal for enslaved Africans to run, has never been cleansed. If anything, more race-based statutes and practices have been incorporated over time. And there is no mechanism to keep the system in check.

So as we take the step of re-seeing ourselves, we should stop separating ourselves with distinctions between those of us who have spent time in jail/prison and those who have not. Many of our great leaders became such by breaking unjust laws.

A second step we can take is to become better risk-takers by realizing ourselves as one big family. The same way we wouldn’t leave our little sons and daughters in the hands of foster care or the youth authorities, we must start pulling our extended family out of these systems and into our homes. This, whether we know the children or not. There is such a wealth of information in the black community about good practices around raising a family. From the college educated, to the self educated we have folks around us who know how to create healthy homes. Now, we need more volunteers among us to take our children in and raise them well.

A final step we can take is to become reacquainted with our history - before and after the enslavement - and combine those values which we bring forward with those which we have innovated for today. We must read those researchers and historians from within the black diaspora, whose views reflect a deep love of black people. Then we must continue to translate what we have read into other, accessible, storytelling forms like poetry, film, plays, dance, and song. As we honor and understand the legacy we have been given, it will be easier for us to work as a collective despite our differences. It will be easier for us to build with and for each other. It will be easier for us to live together, with no longing to live apart or to join some other community to feel important.

When you walk down the street in West Oakland or whatever chocolate city you live in or near, remember that whatever you see in the eyes of the black people you pass is a reflection of you. So love what you see my people, and turn that love into real, sustained, healthy action.

Darice Jones is a West Oakland artist/storyteller with a journalism background. She can be contacted at daricemjones@yahoo.com

Reproduced with permission from Darice Jones. Originally publiched at:
www.blackcommentator.com/156/156_think_jones_seeing_ourselves.html ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xSeeing Ourselves Through Our Own Black Eyes``x1130994000,3341,world``x``x ``xFirst Genocide, Then Lie About It

By Mitchel Cohen
November 29, 2003

With much material contributed by Peter Linebaugh and others whose names have over the years been lost.--MC

The year was 1492. The Taino-Arawak people of the Bahamas discovered Christopher Columbus on their beach.

Historian Howard Zinn tells us how Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. Columbus later wrote of this in his log. Here is what he wrote:

"They brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned. They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of sugar cane. They would make fine servants. With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

And so the conquest began, and the Thanotocracy -- the regime of death -- was inaugurated on the continent the Indians called "Turtle Island."

You probably already know a good piece of the story: How Columbus's Army took Arawak and Taino people prisoners and insisted that they take him to the source of their gold, which they used in tiny ornaments in their ears. And how, with utter contempt and cruelty, Columbus took many more Indians prisoners and put them aboard the Nina and the Pinta -- the Santa Maria having run aground on the island of Hispañola (today, the Dominican Republic and Haiti). When some refused to be taken prisoner, they were run through with swords and bled to death. Then the Nina and the Pinta set sail for the Azores and Spain. During the long voyage, many of the Indian prisoners died. Here's part of Columbus's report to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain:

"The Indians are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone." Columbus concluded his report by asking for a little help from the King and Queen, and in return he would bring them "as much gold as they need, and as many slaves as they ask."

Columbus returned to the New World -- "new" for Europeans, that is -- with 17 ships and more than 1,200 men. Their aim was clear: Slaves, and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But word spread ahead of them. By the time they got to Fort Navidad on Haiti, the Taino had risen up and killed all the sailors left behind on the last voyage, after they had roamed the island in gangs raping women and taking children and women as slaves. Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold." The Indians began fighting back, but were no match for the Spaniard conquerors, even though they greatly outnumbered them. In eight years, Columbus's men murdered more than 100,000 Indians on Haiti alone. Overall, dying as slaves in the mines, or directly murdered, or from diseases brought to the Caribbean by the Spaniards, over 3 million Indian people were murdered between 1494 and 1508.

What Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas and the Taino of the Caribbean, Cortez did to the Aztecs of Mexico, Pizarro to the Incas of Peru, and the English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and the Pequots. Literally millions of native peoples were slaughtered. And the gold, slaves and other resources were used, in Europe, to spur the growth of the new money economy rising out of feudalism. Karl Marx would later call this "the primitive accumulation of capital." These were the violent beginnings of an intricate system of technology, business, politics and culture that would dominate the world for the next five centuries.

All of this were the preconditions for the first Thanksgiving. In the North American English colonies, the pattern was set early, as Columbus had set it in the islands of the Bahamas. In 1585, before there was any permanent English settlement in Virginia, Richard Grenville landed there with seven ships. The Indians he met were hospitable, but when one of them stole a small silver cup, Grenville sacked and burned the whole Indian village.

The Jamestown colony was established in Virginia in 1607, inside the territory of an Indian confederacy, led by the chief, Powhatan. Powhatan watched the English settle on his people's land, but did not attack. And the English began starving. Some of them ran away and joined the Indians, where they would at least be fed. Indeed, throughout colonial times tens of thousands of indentured servants, prisoners and slaves -- from Wales and Scotland as well as from Africa -- ran away to live in Indian communities, intermarry, and raise their children there.

In the summer of 1610 the governor of Jamestown colony asked Powhatan to return the runaways, who were living fully among the Indians. Powhatan left the choice to those who ran away, and none wanted to go back. The governor of Jamestown then sent soldiers to take revenge. They descended on an Indian community, killed 15 or 16 Indians, burned the houses, cut down the corn growing around the village, took the female leader of the tribe and her children into boats, then ended up throwing the children overboard and shooting out their brains in the water. The female leader was later taken off the boat and stabbed to death.

By 1621, the atrocities committed by the English had grown, and word spread throughout the Indian villages. The Indians fought back, and killed 347 colonists. From then on it was total war. Not able to enslave the Indians the English aristocracy decided to exterminate them.

And then the Pilgrims arrived.

When the Pilgrims came to New England they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indians. The story goes that the Pilgrims, who were Christians of the Puritan sect, were fleeing religious persecution in Europe. They had fled England and went to Holland, and from there sailed aboard the Mayflower, where they landed at Plymouth Rock in what is now Massachusetts.

Religious persecution or not, they immediately turned to their religion to rationalize their persecution of others. They appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." To justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."

The Puritans lived in uneasy truce with the Pequot Indians, who occupied what is now southern Connecticut and Rhode Island. But they wanted them out of the way; they wanted their land. And they seemed to want to establish their rule firmly over Connecticut settlers in that area.

In 1636 an armed expedition left Boston to attack the Narragansett Indians on Block Island. The English landed and killed some Indians, but the rest hid in the thick forests of the island and the English went from one deserted village to the next, destroying crops. Then they sailed back to the mainland and raided Pequot villages along the coast, destroying crops again.

The English went on setting fire to wigwams of the village. They burned village after village to the ground. As one of the leading theologians of his day, Dr. Cotton Mather put it: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day." And Cotton Mather, clutching his bible, spurred the English to slaughter more Indians in the name of Christianity.

Three hundred thousand Indians were murdered in New England over the next few years. It is important to note: The ordinary Englishmen did not want this war and often, very often, refused to fight. Some European intellectuals like Roger Williams spoke out against it. And some erstwhile colonists joined the Indians and even took up arms against the invaders from England. It was the Puritan elite who wanted the war, a war for land, for gold, for power. And, in the end, the Indian population of 10 million that was in North America when Columbus came was reduced to less than one million.

The way the different Indian peoples lived -- communally, consensually, making decisions through tribal councils, each tribe having different sexual/marriage relationships, where many different sexualities were practiced as the norm -- contrasted dramatically with the Puritan's Christian fundamentalist values. For the Puritans, men decided everything, whereas in the Iroquois federation of what is now New York state women chose the men who represented the clans at village and tribal councils; it was the women who were responsible for deciding on whether or not to go to war. The Christian idea of male dominance and female subordination was conspicuously absent in Iroquois society.

There were many other cultural differences: The Iroquois did not use harsh punishment on children. They did not insist on early weaning or early toilet training, but gradually allowed the child to learn to care for themselves. And, they did not believe in ownership of land; they utilized the land, lived on it. The idea of ownership was ridiculous, absurd. The European Christians, on the other hand, in the spirit of the emerging capitalism, wanted to own and control everything -- even children and other human beings. The pastor of the Pilgrim colony, John Robinson, thus advised his parishioners: "And surely there is in all children a stubbornness, and stoutness of mind arising from natural pride, which must, in the first place, be broken and beaten down; that so the foundation of their education being laid in humility and tractableness, other virtues may, in their time, be built thereon." That idea sunk in.

One colonist said that the plague that had destroyed the Patuxet people -- a combination of slavery, murder by the colonists and disease -- was "the Wonderful Preparation of the Lord Jesus Christ by His Providence for His People's Abode in the Western World." The Pilgrims robbed Wampanoag graves for the food that had been buried with the dead for religious reasons. Whenever the Pilgrims realized they were being watched, they shot at the Wampanoags, and scalped them. Scalping had been unknown among Native Americans in New England prior to its introduction by the English, who began the practice by offering the heads of their enemies and later accepted scalps.

"What do you think of Western Civilization?" Mahatma Gandhi was asked in the 1940s. To which Gandhi replied: "Western Civilization? I think it would be a good idea." And so enters "Civilization," the civilization of Christian Europe, a "civilizing force" that couldn't have been more threatened by the beautiful anarchy of the Indians they encountered, and so slaughtered them.

These are the Puritans that the Indians "saved", and whom we celebrate in the holiday, Thanksgiving. Tisquantum, also known as Squanto, a member of the Patuxet Indian nation. Samoset, of the Wabonake Indian nation, which lived in Maine. They went to Puritan villages and, having learned to speak English, brought deer meat and beaver skins for the hungry, cold Pilgrims. Tisquantum stayed with them and helped them survive their first years in their New World. He taught them how to navigate the waters, fish and cultivate corn and other vegetables. He pointed out poisonous plants and showed how other plants could be used as medicines. He also negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and Massasoit, head chief of the Wampanoags, a treaty that gave the Pilgrims everything and the Indians nothing. And even that treaty was soon broken. All this is celebrated as the First Thanksgiving.

My own feeling? The Indians should have let the Pilgrims die. But they couldn't do that. Their humanity made them assist other human beings in need. And for that beautiful, human, loving connection they -- and those of us who are not Indian as well -- paid a terrible price: The genocide of the original inhabitants of Turtle Island, what is now America.

Let's look at one example of the Puritan values -- which were not, I repeat, the values of the English working class values that we "give thanks for" on this holiday. The example of the Maypole, and Mayday.

In 1517, 25 years after Columbus first landed in the Bahamas, the English working class staged a huge revolt. This was done through the guilds. King Henry VIII brought Lombard bankers from Italy and merchants from France in order to undercut wages, lengthen hours, and break the guilds. This alliance between international finance, national capital and military aristocracy was in the process of merging into the imperialist nation-state.

The young workers of London took their revenge upon the merchants. A secret rumor said the commonality -- the vision of communal society that would counter the rich, the merchants, the industrialists, the nobility and the landowners -- would arise on May Day. The King and Lords got frightened -- householders were armed, a curfew was declared. Two guys didn't hear about the curfew (they missed Dan Rather on t.v.). They were arrested. The shout went out to mobilize, and 700 workers stormed the jails, throwing bricks, hot water, stones. The prisoners were freed. A French capitalist's house was trashed.

Then came the repression: Cannons were fired into the city. Three hundred were imprisoned, soldiers patrolled the streets, and a proclamation was made that no women were allowed to meet together, and that all men should "keep their wives in their houses." The prisoners were brought through the streets tied in ropes. Some were children. Eleven sets of gallows were set up throughout the city. Many were hanged. The authorities showed no mercy, but exhibited extreme cruelty.

Thus the dreaded Thanatocracy, the regime of death, was inaugurated in answer to proletarian riot at the beginning of capitalism. The May Day riots were caused by expropriation (people having been uprooted from their lands they had used for centuries in common), and by exploitation (people had no jobs, as the monarchy imported capital). Working class women organizers and healers who posed an alternative to patriarchal capitalism -- were burned at the stake as witches. Enclosure, conquest, famine, war and plague ravaged the people who, in losing their commons, also lost a place to put their Maypole.

Suddenly, the Maypole became a symbol of rebellion. In 1550 Parliament ordered the destruction of Maypoles (just as, during the Vietnam war, the U.S.-backed junta in Saigon banned the making of all red cloth, as it was being sewn into the blue, yellow and red flags of the National Liberation Front).

In 1664, near the end of the Puritans' war against the Pequot Indians, the Puritans in England abolished May Day altogether. They had defeated the Indians, and they were attempting to defeat the growing proletarian insurgency at home as well.

Although translators of the Bible were burned, its last book, Revelation, became an anti-authoritarian manual useful to those who would turn the Puritan world upside down, such as the Family of Love, the Anabaptists, the Diggers, Levellers, Ranters, and Thomas Morton, the man who in 1626 went to Merry Mount in Quincy Mass, and with his Indian friends put up the first Maypole in America, in contempt of Puritan rule.

The Puritans destroyed it, exiled him, plagued the Indians, and hanged gay people and Quakers. Morton had come over on his own, a boat person, an immigrant. So was Anna Lee, who came over a few years later, the Manchester proletarian who founded the communal living, gender separated Shakers, who praised God in ecstatic dance, and who drove the Puritans up the wall.

The story of the Maypole as a symbol of revolt continued. It crossed cultures and continued through the ages. In the late 1800s, the Sioux began the Ghost Dance in a circle, "with a large pine tree in the center, which was covered with strips of cloth of various colors, eagle feathers, stuffed birds, claws, and horns, all offerings to the Great Spirit." They didn't call it a Maypole and they danced for the unity of all Indians, the return of the dead, and the expulsion of the invaders on a particular day, the 4th of July, but otherwise it might as well have been a Mayday!

Wovoka, a Nevada Paiute, started it. Expropriated, he cut his hair. To buy watermelon he rode boxcars to work in the Oregon hop fields for small wages, exploited. The Puget Sound Indians had a new religion -- they stopped drinking alcohol, became entranced, and danced for five days, jerking twitching, calling for their land back, just like the Shakers! Wovoka took this back to Nevada: "All Indians must dance, everywhere, keep on dancing." Soon they were. Porcupine took the dance across the Rockies to the Sioux. Red Cloud and Sitting Bull advanced the left foot following with the right, hardly lifting the feet from the ground. The Federal Agents banned the Ghost Dance! They claimed it was a cause of the last Sioux outbreak, just as the Puritans had claimed the Maypole had caused the May Day proletarian riots, just as the Shakers were dancing people into communality and out of Puritanism.

On December 29 1890 the Government (with Hotchkiss guns throwing 2 pound explosive shells at 50 a minute -- always developing new weapons!) massacred more than 300 men, women and children at Wounded Knee. As in the Waco holocaust, or the bombing of MOVE in Philadelphia, the State disclaimed responsibility. The Bureau of Ethnology sent out James Mooney to investigate. Amid Janet Reno-like tears, he wrote: "The Indians were responsible for the engagement."

In 1970, the town of Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts held, as it does each year, a Thanksgiving Ceremony given by the townspeople. There are many speeches for the crowds who attend. That year -- the year of Nixon's secret invasion of Cambodia; the year 4 students were massacred at Kent State and 13 wounded for opposing the war; the year they tried to electrocute Black Panthers Bobby Seale and Erica Huggins -- the Massachusetts Department of Commerce asked the Wampanoag Indians to select a speaker to mark the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims' arrival, and the first Thanksgiving.

Frank James, who is a Wampanoag, was selected. But before he was allowed to speak he was told to show a copy of his speech to the white people in charge of the ceremony. When they saw what he had written, they would not allow him to read it.

First, the genocide. Then, the suppression of all discussion about it.

What do Indian people find to be Thankful for in this America? What does anyone have to be Thankful for in the genocide of the Indians, that this "holyday" commemorates? As we sit with our families on Thanksgiving, taking any opportunity we can to get out of work or off the streets and be in a warm place with people we love, we realize that all the things we have to be thankful for have nothing at all to do with the Pilgrims, nothing at all to do with Amerikan history, and everything to do with the alternative, anarcho-communist lives the Indian peoples led, before they were massacred by the colonists, in the name of privatization of property and the lust for gold and labor.

Yes, I am an American. But I am an American in revolt. I am revolted by the holiday known as Thanksgiving. I have been accused of wanting to go backwards in time, of being against progress. To those charges, I plead guilty. I want to go back in time to when people lived communally, before the colonists' Christian god was brought to these shores to sanctify their terrorism, their slavery, their hatred of children, their oppression of women, their holocausts. But that is impossible. So all I look forward to the utter destruction of the apparatus of death known as Amerika -- not the people, not the beautiful land, but the machinery, the State, the capitalism, the Christianity and all that it stands for. I look forward to a future where I will have children with Amerika, and they will be the new Indians.

Mitchel Cohen is co-editor of "Green Politix", the national newspaper of the Greens/Green Party USA,, and organizes with the NoSpray Coalition and the Brooklyn Greens.

In memorium. Lest we forget. The First Thanksgiving

From the Community Endeavor News, November, 1995, as reprinted in Healing Global Wounds, Fall, 1996

The first official Thanksgiving wasn't a festive gathering of Indians and Pilgrims, but rather a celebration of the massacre of 700 Pequot men, women and children, an anthropologist says. Due to age and illness his voice cracks as he talks about the holiday, but William B. Newell, 84, talks with force as he discusses Thanksgiving. Newell, a Penobscot, has degrees from two universities, and was the former chairman of the anthropology department at the University of Connecticut.

"Thanksgiving Day was first officially proclaimed by the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 to commemorate the massacre of 700 men, women and children who were celebrating their annual green corn dance-Thanksgiving Day to them-in their own house," Newell said.

"Gathered in this place of meeting they were attacked by mercenaries and Dutch and English. The Indians were ordered from the building and as they came forth they were shot down. The rest were burned alive in the building," he said.

Newell based his research on studies of Holland Documents and the 13 volume Colonial Documentary History, both thick sets of letters and reports from colonial officials to their superiors and the king in England, and the private papers of Sir William Johnson, British Indian agent for the New York colony for 30 years in the mid-1600s.

"My research is authentic because it is documentary," Newell said. "You can't get anything more accurate than that because it is first hand. It is not hearsay."

Newell said the next 100 Thanksgivings commemorated the killing of the Indians at what is now Groton, Ct. [home of a nuclear submarine base] rather than a celebration with them. He said the image of Indians and Pilgrims sitting around a large table to celebrate Thanksgiving Day was "fictitious" although Indians did share food with the first settlers.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhy I Hate Thanksgiving``x1132635600,55015,world``x``x ``xBy ASSOCIATED PRESS

TAMPA, Florida (AP) - Wal-Mart has apologized to a black man who was accused of trying to pass a bad check as he was buying thousands of dollars in holiday gift cards to distribute to his company's employees.

Employees of a Wal-Mart Supercenter called deputies last week to apprehend Reginald Pitts after he handed over a $13,600 (?11,627) check to pay for 520 gift cards that were to be given to employees at GAF Materials Corp., a roofing materials manufacturer where Pitts is a human resources manager.

The company, which had $1.6 billion (?1.37 billion) in revenue last year, had been spending about $50,000 (?42,746) a year on Wal-Mart gift cards and never had a problem when it sent a white employee to pick them up.

Full Article : freenewmexican``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWal-Mart apologizes to black man for bad check accusation``x1133499600,89117,world``x``x ``xby Alan Cantwell, M.D
December 05, 2005

There is no doubt that AIDS erupted in the U.S. shortly after government-sponsored hepatitis B vaccine experiments (1978-1981) using gay men as guinea pigs. The epidemic was caused by the "introduction" of a new retrovirus (the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV for short); and the introduction of a new herpes-8 virus, the virus that causes Kaposi's sarcoma, widely known as the "gay cancer" of AIDS. The taboo theory that AIDS is a man-made disease is largely based on research showing an intimate connection between government vaccine experiments and the outbreak of "the gay plague"

The widely accepted theory is that HIV/AIDS originated in a monkey or chimpanzee virus that "jumped species" in Africa. However, it is clear that the first AIDS cases were recorded in gay men in Manhattan in 1979, a few years before the epidemic was first noticed in Africa in 1982. It is now claimed that the human herpes-8 virus (also called the KS virus), discovered in 1994, also originated when a primate herpes virus jumped species in Africa. How two African species-jumping viruses ended up exclusively in gay men in Manhattan beginning in the late 1970s has never been satisfactorily explained.

Researchers who claim AIDS is a man-made disease believe it is much more likely that these two primate viruses were introduced and spread during the government's recruitment of thousands of male homosexuals beginning in 1974.

Large numbers of gay men in Manhattan donated blood for the experimental hepatitis B vaccine trial, which took place at the New York Blood Center in Manhattan in 1978. Extensive evidence supporting the man-made theory of AIDS is easily found on the Internet by Googling: man-made origin of AIDS; and in my two books, "AIDS and the Doctors of Death" and "Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot."

Government interest in "gay health" before the AIDS epidemic

Beginning in the mid-1970s, government scientists became interested in the health of gay men, particularly in the realm of sexually-transmitted diseases, and specifically in the sexual transmission of the hepatitis B virus. The early 1970s was a time when large numbers of gays come out of the closet and identified themselves as homosexuals at government-sponsored health clinics. Organizations such as the Gay Men's Health Project were formed at this time. Promiscuous gays were avidly sought as volunteers to test the efficacy of a newly-developed hepatitis B vaccine manufactured by Merck and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

By 1977 over 13,000 Manhattan gays were screened to secure the final 1083 men who would serve as guinea pigs to test the hepatitis B vaccine. The vaccine was manufactured from the combined plasma of 30 highly selected gay men who carried the hepatitis B virus in their blood. Developed over a period of 65 weeks during 1977-1978 and tested for six months in chimpanzees (the primate in which HIV is thought to have originated), the first group of gay men were inoculated at the New York Blood Center in November 1978.

That same year a final cohort of 6875 homosexual men at the San Francisco City Clinic was assembled to study hepatitis B virus sexual transmission in that city. By the end of the decade gays in clinics in Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, and St. Louis, also came under surveillance by the Centers for Disease Control. An additional 1402 volunteers were finally selected to participate in similar vaccine experiments in those cities beginning in March 1980.

Before 1978 there was no stored blood anywhere in the U.S. that tested positive for HIV or the KS virus. There were no cases of AIDS and no cases of "gay cancer" in young men. The first cases of AIDS appeared shortly after the experiment began in Manhattan. In June 1981 the epidemic became official and was quickly labeled the "gay ­related immune deficiency syndrome", later known as AIDS.

The gay community was the most hated minority in America. After the experiments ended, the gay community was decimated by the "gay plague." In the first years of AIDS, the epidemic was largely ignored by the government (see Randy Shilt's best-seller, "And the Band Played On") and the disease was blamed on gay anal sex, drugs, and promiscuity. Gays were immediately labeled "high risk."

In my view, what made gay men "high risk" was the fact that they were the exclusive volunteers for government medical experiments that undoubtedly put them at "high risk." The evidence for this conclusion is outlined in this report. Further evidence can be obtained from abstracts of scientific reports available on the Internet at the PubMed website of the National Library of Medicine.

The gay hepatitis B experiments (1978-1981)

The experimental hepatitis B vaccine injected into gays was unlike any other vaccine previously made. As stated, it was developed in chimpanzees and manufactured in a year-long process of sterilization and purification of the pooled blood of 30 gay men who were hepatitis B virus carriers.

The final group of 1083 selected for the first experiment at the Blood Center were inoculated from November 1978 until October 1979. At one point, there was great concern that the vaccine might be contaminated. According to June Goodfield's Quest for the Killers, p 86, "This was no theoretical fear, contamination having been suspected in one batch made by the National Institutes of Health, though never in Merck's." Each gay man was given three inoculations of the vaccine over a period of three months. The vaccine proved successful with 96% of the men developing protective antibodies against the hepatitis B virus.

It has been assumed by some that these men might have been already immunosuppressed due to promiscuity and venereal disease. Although the young men in the study were indeed "promiscuous" (this was a requirement for entrance into the study), they were in excellent health. Despite many previous sexual partners, these volunteers had never been infected with the hepatitis B virus, which was a requirement for participation in the experiment. Furthermore, the 96% success rate would not have been accomplished if the men were immunosuppressed, because such people often do not respond to the vaccine.

When Robert Gallo's blood test for HIV became available in the mid-1980s, the New York Blood Center's stored gay blood specimens were reexamined. Most astonishing is the fact that 20% of the gay men who volunteered for the hepatitis B experiment in Manhattan were discovered to be HIV-positive in 1980 (one year before the AIDS epidemic became "official" in 1981). This signifies that Manhattan gays in 1980 had the highest incidence of HIV anywhere in the world, including Africa, the supposed birthplace of HIV and AIDS. In addition, we now know that one out of five gay men (20%) tested positive for the new KS herpes-8 virus in 1982 when stored blood samples from an AIDS trial in New York City were re-examined by epidemiologists at the NCI in 1999.

Never mentioned by AIDS historians is the fact that the New York Blood Center established a chimp virus laboratory for viral vaccine research in West Africa in 1974. One of the purposes of VILAB II, in Robertsfield, Liberia, was to develop the hepatitis B vaccine in chimps. The lab also prides itself by releasing "rehabilitated" (but virus-infected) chimps back into the wild, perhaps accounting for some of the ancestors of HIV and the KS virus found in the jungle by some government researchers.

The Virus Cancer Program and the birth of AIDS

In the decade before AIDS the Virus Cancer Program (1968-1980), sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, attempted to prove that viruses caused human cancer. Ultimately the Program was unsuccessful in providing proof, yet it succeeded in building up the field of animal retrovirology, which led to a more complete understanding of how cancer-causing and immunosuppressive viruses in animals might cause disease in humans. The VCP was also the birthplace of genetic engineering, molecular biology, and the human genome project. As the VCP was winding down in the late 1970s, the gay experiments began in New York City.

The introduction of HIV and the KS herpes virus into gay men during this period (along with some "novel" and now-patented mycoplasmas discovered at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology) miraculously revived the career of Robert Gallo and made him the most famous virologist in the world. And, of course, turned the "failure" of the VCP into a triumph by providing proof that these primate-derived viruses could cause disease in humans.

The fear of the hepatitis B vaccine

When AIDS began there were scattered reports in the medical journals questioning whether the "gay plague" might have its origin in the hepatitis B experiments. It was well-known in medical circles that the vaccine was made from the pooled plasma of gay men - and there was fear that the AIDS agent might be in the vaccine. As a result, when the hepatitis B commercial vaccine became available in July 1982, many people refused to be injected with it.

The fear of the vaccine was readily admitted by the CDC. Nevertheless, in detailed reports the CDC concluded that the vaccine was safe. Although it was clear the hepatitis B vaccine eliminated all "known" viruses, this obviously did not apply to "unknown" viruses at the time, such as HIV and the KS virus.

After HIV was discovered in 1984 some of the vaccine was retested and declared free of HIV. Of course, it was impossible to say whether the vaccine contained the KS virus, because this virus was undiscovered until 1994. I am unaware of any subsequent testing of the vaccine for this herpes KS virus.

Possible contamination problems with the hepatitis vaccine was the impetus that led Luc Montagnier to hunt for a virus in the new gay disease in the autumn of 1982. He began testing batches of human plasma for "reverse transcriptase activity", a biochemical sign indicating the possible presence of a retrovirus. (See page 46 of his book "Virus"). Montagnier's research eventually led to the first discovery of the AIDS virus at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

Although the CDC and the New York Blood Center claimed it was safe, many health professionals refused the hepatitis B vaccine. In 1985, only 23 out of 162 Rhode Island dentists agreed to take the vaccine because of concerns about AIDS. As late as 1990, 13 out of 14 black nurses at a university hospital refused to take the vaccine for the same reason.

The fate of the gay men in the gay experiments

The purpose of the gay experiments was to test a vaccine that could immunize people against hepatitis B virus. Infection with this virus could lead to severe liver disease and sometimes to liver cancer. Ironically, an unprecedented explosion of cancer took place in male homosexuals after the experiment. Reports of the fate of these men attest to the fact that participating in the government's experiments was clearly injurious to the health of gay men.

Significantly, there were no reported blood specimens anywhere in the U.S. that were HIV-positive prior to the epidemic in 1979, except in the samples stored at the NYBC.

In a May 12, 1983, letter to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, Cladd Stevens (who supervised the NYBC experiment) wrote : "No cases haves occurred in the vaccine recipients from populations at low risk of AIDS, and there is no excess incidence in the high-risk population." But this proved to be incorrect in later reports co-authored by Stevens.

In a 1985 report Cladd Stevens et al. claimed that seven men (out of 1083) were HIV-positive before they received either vaccine or placebo. If true, this indicates that HIV (and possibly the KS virus) was already present in the blood of Manhattan homosexuals and could have contaminated the pooled blood of gays whose plasma was used to make the vaccine in 1977.

As stated previously, a 1986 report in JAMA showed 20% of the men in the experiment were already infected with HIV by the end of 1981; and by 1984, more than 40% of the men were HIV-positive and doomed to death.

Another follow-up study of 8,906 gay men who donated blood for the hepatitis experiments in Manhattan was released in 1992. Statistical analysis of this group showed that mortality rates for men aged 25-44 began to rise in the 1980s, with AIDS the leading cause of death among young men in New York City. Remarkably, "The all-cause mortality in this cohort in 1988 was 24 times higher that the mortality rate in the cohort before the beginning of the AIDS epidemic."

Was the hepatitis B vaccine contaminated with HIV and the KS virus?

Largely forgotten in AIDS history is the hepatitis B vaccine trial that also took place with 685 gay Dutch volunteers in Amsterdam between November 1980 and December 1981. Unlike the American vaccine makers, the Dutch researchers heated their experimental hepatitis B vaccine for added safety.

A 1986 report of the trial clearly states the AIDS virus "was not transmitted by the heat inactivated hepatitis B vaccine." Of the 685 participants, five were already infected with HIV when the trial began. The researchers theorized that HIV entered the Dutch gay population at the end of the 1970s.

Another follow-up Dutch report of this trial in 1993 again suggests the efficacy of heating the vaccine for safety. (The experimental vaccine was not heated in the U.S. until after all the gay experiments were completed.) At the end of 1982, one year after the Dutch experiment had ended, only As stated previously, a 1986 report in JAMA showed 20% of the men in the experiment were already infected with HIV by the end of 1981; and by 1984, more than 40% of the men were HIV-positive and doomed to death.

7.5% of the Amsterdam men were infected. In contrast, 26.8% of the men in the New York experiment were HIV-positive; and a whopping 42.6% of the San Francisco men were HIV-positive. These statistics showing many men infected in the American trials in 1982 further prove that Cladd Stevens of the NYBC, and the CDC, were incorrect in declaring there was no excess incidence of AIDS in the "high-risk" gay male population.

The fate of all the men who participated in the hepatitis B vaccine trials in six U.S cities has never been revealed. However, it is likely from the statistics presented in JAMA in 1986 that many, if not most, of the men eventually died of AIDS. The actual number of AIDS deaths has never been revealed, nor have the individual medical records been studied. Attempts to secure this information have been rebuffed by the Blood Center, due to the "confidential" nature of the experiment.

"Gay Cancer" and the origin of AIDS

After the introduction of HIV and the KS virus into the U.S. gay male population in the late 1970s, the incidence of KS skyrocketed.

A 1989 report by Biggar found no cases of KS in young men in New York City during the years 1973-1976. But by 1985 the incidence of KS in "never-married men" in Manhattan had increased 1850 times. In San Francisco the rate of KS increased over 2000 times!

KS is now 20,000 times more common in AIDS patients than in the general population. A 1985 autopsy study by Lee Moskowitz of 52 AIDS cases (23 Haitians, 19 gays, 5 intravenous drug abusers, 2 hemophiliacs, and 3 persons at unknown risk) showed that 94% of AIDS patients from the various risk groups had internal KS. The CDC claims KS now occurs in only 15% of gay men (down from 30% at the beginning of the epidemic), but these statistics are not based on current autopsy studies.

KS was never a sexually-transmitted disease before the introduction of HIV into gays. For a century after the first reported KS cases were discovered in Vienna in 1872, there was no evidence that KS could be transmitted from person-to-person.

By 1950, a more aggressive "endemic" form of KS was uncovered in African blacks. Still, there was no evidence the disease was transmissible or contagious. Suddenly with the introduction of HIV into the homosexual community, scientists began to view KS as a contagious "gay cancer" out of Africa.

The new KS virus is closely related to a monkey tumor virus, known as herpes virus saimiri, that was extensively studied by researchers in the VCP in the decade before the epidemic. Initially found only in KS from AIDS patients, the new KS virus has also been found in non-AIDS-related KS tumors and in other forms of cancer, such as lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

HIV is a cancer-causing virus. Infection with HIV (with or without the KS virus) has resulted in a noticeable increase in various forms of cancer. A 2005 study of over 4000 AIDS patients showed higher rates of melanoma, basal and squamous cell skin carcinomas, anal carcinoma, prostate carcinoma, and Hodgkin disease, when compared with age-adjusted rates for the general United States population.

The KS virus is now in the U.S. blood supply; and blood is not screened routinely for this virus. A 2001 study indicated that 15% of normal Texas blood donors showed evidence of KS virus infection in the blood. A 2002 study of healthy children (ages 4-13) in South Texas showed that 26% had antibodies to the KS virus in their blood.

Is AIDS a man-made disease?

How did these two viruses of primate origin get into the gay male population to cause AIDS and a contagious form of cancer? AIDS experts blame monkeys and chimps in the African jungle. My research indicates it is much more likely these viruses were introduced during government-sponsored hepatitis B experiments using gays as unsuspecting guinea pigs. Extensive documentation of past "secret medical experiments" by the government can be found on Google. A recent BBC news report (30 Nov 2004) uncovering unauthorized and dangerous HIV drug experiments on infants and children in New York City orphanages can be found by Googling: BBC + guinea pig kids.

Until proven otherwise, a "new" HIV retrovirus and a "new" KS virus could easily have been developed in a laboratory as part of the Virus Cancer Program. In the decade before AIDS it was common to transfer and adapt primate retroviruses and herpes viruses into human cells in genetic engineering experiments. Such viruses were deemed potential "candidate human viruses," as clearly stated in the annual progress reports of the VCP. For further details on the relationship of the VCP to the introduction of HIV, Google: virus cancer program + AIDS.

The connection between the hepatitis experiments and the AIDS epidemic was quickly dismissed by government authorities two decades ago. However, it is clear from a review of the scientific literature that the "gay plague" began immediately after the government experiments; and the experiments permanently damaged the health of the gay community, and led to continuing spread of HIV into the "general population."

Are we to believe that all this is merely a coincidence -and that AIDS in America resulted simply from two viruses jumping species in the African jungle? Or is the origin of HIV and AIDS -and the KS virus- related to secret medical research and covert human testing, as suggested here.

Dr. Alan Cantwell is a retired dermatologist; and the author of five books on the man-made origin of AIDS and the infectious origin of cancer, all published by Aries Rising Press, PO Box 29532, Los Angeles, CA 90029 (www.ariesrisingpress.com). Email: alancantwell@sbcglobal.net. Abstracts of 30 published papers can be found at the PubMed website. Many of his personal writings can be found on www.google.com by typing in key words "alan cantwell" + articles. His latest book is Four Women Against Cancer: Bacteria, Cancer and the Origin of Life. His books are available on www.amazon.com and through Book Clearing House @ 1-800-431-1579

References:

Cantwell A. AIDS and the Doctor of Death: An inquiry into the origin of the AIDS epidemic. Aries Rising Press, Los Angeles, 1988.

Cantwell A: Queer Blood: The secret AIDS genocide plot. Aries Rising Press, Los Angeles, 1993.

Miller M.KS enters Y2K still riddled with many questions. J Natl Cancer Inst. 1999 Oct 6;91(19):1612-4.

Szmuness W. Large-scale efficacy trials of hepatitis B vaccines in the USA: baseline data and protocols. J Med Virol. 1979;4(4):327-40.

Szmuness W, Stevens CE, Harley EJ, Zang EA, Oleszko WR, William DC, Sadovsky R, Morrison JM, Kellner. Hepatitis B vaccine: demonstration of efficacy in a controlled clinical trial in a high-risk population in the United States. N Engl J Med. 1980 Oct 9;303(15):833-41.

Szmuness W, Stevens CE, Zang EA, Harley EJ, Kellner A. A controlled clinical trial of the efficacy of the hepatitis B vaccine (Heptavax B): a final report. Hepatology. 1981 Sep-Oct;1(5):377-85.

Yacovone JA, Weisfeld J. Acceptance of hepatitis B vaccine by Rhode Island dental practitioners. J Am Dent Assoc. 1985 Jul;111(1):65-7.

Spence MR, Dash GP. Hepatitis B: perceptions, knowledge and vaccine acceptance among registered nurses in high-risk occupations in a university hospital. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 1990 Mar;11(3):129-33.

O'Brien TR, Kedes D, Ganem D, Macrae DR, Rosenberg PS, Molden J, Goedert JJ. Evidence for concurrent epidemics of human herpesvirus 8 and human immunodeficiency virus type 1 in US homosexual men: rates, risk factors, and relationship to Kaposi's sarcoma. J Infect Dis. 1999 Oct;180(4):1010-7.

Dollard SC, Nelson KE, Ness PM, Stambolis V, Kuehnert MJ, Pellett PE, Cannon MJ. Possible transmission of human herpesvirus-8 by blood transfusion in a historical United States cohort. Transfusion. 2005 Apr;45(4):463-5.

Sacks HS, Rose DN, Chalmers TC. Should the risk of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome deter hepatitis B vaccination? A decision analysis. JAMA. 1984 Dec 28;252(24):3375-7.

Stevens CE, Taylor PE, Zang EA, Morrison JM, Harley EJ, Rodriguez de Cordoba S, Bacino C, Ting RC, Bodner AJ, Sarngadharan MG, et al. Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type III infection in a cohort of homosexual men in New York City. JAMA. 1986 Apr 25;255(16):2167-72.

Stevens CE, Taylor PE, Rubinstein P, Ting RC, Bodner AJ, Sarngadharan MG, Gallo RC. Safety of the hepatitis B vaccine. N Engl J Med. 1985 Feb 7;312(6):375-6.

van Griensven GJ, Hessol NA, Koblin BA, Byers RH, O'Malley PM, Albercht-van Lent N, Buchbinder SP, Taylor PE, Stevens CE, Coutinho RA. Epidemiology of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 infection amonghomosexual men participating in hepatitis B vaccine trials in Amsterdam, New York City, and San Francisco, 1978-1990. Am J Epidemiol. 1993 Apr 15;137(8):909-15.

Biggar RJ, Burnett W, Mikl J, Nasca P. Cancer among New York men at risk of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Int J Cancer. 1989 Jun 15;43(6):979-85.

Moskowitz LB, Hensley GT, Gould EW, Weiss SD. Frequency and anatomic distribution of lymphadenopathic Kaposi's sarcoma in the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome: an autopsy series. Hum Pathol. 1985 May;16(5):447-56.

Barahona H, Melendez LV, Hunt RD, Daniel MD. The owl monkey (Aotus trivirgatus) as an animal model for viral diseases and oncologic studies. Lab Anim Sci. 1976 Dec;26(6 Pt 2):1104-12.

Koblin BA, Hessol NA, Zauber AG, Taylor PE, Buchbinder SP, Katz MH, Stevens CE. Increased incidence of cancer among homosexual men, New York City and San Francisco, 1978-1990. Am J Epidemiol. 1996 Nov 15;144(10):916-23.

Burgi A, Brodine S, Wegner S, Milazzo M, Wallace MR, Spooner K, Blazes DL, Agan BK, Armstrong A, Fraser S, Crum NF. Incidence and risk factors for the occurrence of non-AIDS-defining cancers among human immunodeficiency virus-infected individuals. Cancer. 2005 Oct 1;104(7):1505-11.

Baillargeon J, Deng JH, Hettler E, Harrison C, Grady JJ, Korte LG, Alexander J, Montalvo E, Jenson HB, Gao SJ. Seroprevalence of Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus infection among blood donors from Texas. Ann Epidemiol. 2001 Oct;11(7):512-8.

Baillargeon J, Leach CT, Deng JH, Gao SJ, Jenson HB. High prevalence of human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) infection in south Texas children. J Med Virol. 2002 Aug;67(4):542-8. ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Gay Experiment That Started AIDS In America``x1133758800,81367,world``x``x ``xPosted By: Ayinde
Date: Thursday, 15 December 2005, at 8:17 p.m.

Colorism and African American Wealth: Evidence from the Nineteenth-Century South

Abstract:

Black is not always black. Subtle distinctions in skin tone translate into significant differences in outcomes. Data on more than 15,000 households interviewed during the 1860 federal census exhibit sharp differences in wealth holdings between white, mulatto, and black households in the urban South. We document these differences, investigate the relationships between wealth and the recorded household characteristics, and decompose the wealth gaps into treatment and characteristic effects. In addition to higher wealth holdings of white households as compared to free African-Americans in general, there are distinct differences between both the characteristics of and wealth of free mulatto and black households, whether male- or female-headed. While black-headed households' mean predicted log wealth was only 20% of white-headed households', mulatto-headed households' was nearly 50% that of whites'. The difference between light- and dark-complexion is highly significant in semi-log wealth regressions. In the decomposition of this wealth differential, treatment effects play a large role in explaining the wealth gap between all subpopulation pairs.
http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11732.html

The African-American Dilemma: Colorism - Real or Imaginary?
http://africanamericancontext.blogspot.com/

Skin-Deep Discrimination
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2005/03/skindeep_discri.php

* Some of the comments to this article are rather interesting.

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Posted By: Eja
Date: Friday, 16 December 2005, at 5:38 a.m.

Ayinde
Honour

You are right. I read all the comments to the article in the last link and they were just what you would expect. It is strange how some people would like us to carry on as if things have changed, lessons have been learnt and we are all moving towards harmony now so, "leave the past behind".

The majority of the comments to that article represent the dominant mind state of 'whites'. Even the ones who go on about how 'liberal' they are still have this poison deep inside and it only requires the right circumstances and you will see it come to the surface.

Someone once said, people never change, they just learn to control (or hide) those parts of thier persona that put them a disadvantage in thier CURRENT environment. And, if that is true, it explains how unrepentant 'white' supremacists (and the African correspondents of 'white' supremacy) can comfortably have dealings with Africans (or claim to represent Africans).

If people never change, then it is essential that we recognise people for what they are, not what they claim to be or what they claim to be doing (as these might all simply be for current convenience).

As in : when the river current changes, the one paddling a boat changes his strokes.

Wisdom and Strength

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Posted By: Ayinde
Date: Friday, 16 December 2005, at 9:13 a.m.

I will share some of my views based on some of what you said here with which I basically agree.

I have been looking at what it takes for people to change/improve for a number of years. I became my first test case and change is no easy thing. One can lose much materially during conscious changes. They can lose all their 'friends' when they make a shift. One has to be first committed to oneself and be clear on the correctness of one's actions.

Most people who appear to be improving rarely go past talking about it. You are quite correct; they just try to hide the disgusting aspects of their persona. It is quite common and acceptable in most societies for people to say the right things while doing the opposite. People do not think much of integrity. They accept it as being human if they do not live up to their best understanding.

Real change comes after tremendous effort when it becomes easier for an individual to do what he/she understands to be the truth while always being ready and willing to change when they reason out a better position. Essentially, truth cannot be compromised. Attempting to compromise truth is one of the reasons it sounds easier to change than it really is for most people.

All people have the potential to be good and bad. Specific historical experiences contributed to some characteristics that we can see as bad today, becoming active in people, and more universally positive characteristics becoming recessive. This type of poor character development usually takes place when people are preoccupied with their physical survival while having a very limited awareness of who they are on an essential level (this will take a while to fully explain … so that's for another time). The point is, all people have the potential to be good and bad, and not just either good or bad in a general sense, but on a micro level - good in some respects and bad in others (I use good to mean actions that are in all of our best interest, and bad to mean actions that are against our common best interest).

It takes personal work to shift from a poor character to a better character. It takes uncompromising dedication to doing the better actions to allow the shift to take place, where a poor habit becomes recessive and a better habit is allowed to become active. This makes it more difficult for someone to revert to a poor habit because to revert involves tremendous stress. It is easier to do what is right when the transformation takes place. Often people revert before they transform so they just remain with an awareness of fundamental right and wrong. Of course, they will come up with all types of excuses in an attempt to justify their lack of commitment to change.

Fundamental change requires one to work from one's genetic level. Change from the genetic level means to be working on the nucleus of one's being. If people are out of touch with their nucleus (self) then they just don't get it. Those who were/are in touch with their nucleus (self) know the tremendous work involved, especially when they go against the very things they worked out as better conduct.

I know few people who are committed to improving themselves. There are many others who feel they can improve and are trying various ways, but most people appear to be cool with lip-service. They hunt down the words to this song of life but cannot make the music, let alone dance to it.

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Posted By: karibkween
Date: Friday, 16 December 2005, at 2:48 p.m.

Education is key. This site is one of the few places where Africans can come to be re-programmed. Its the reason why I believe that Africans need to find the means to control their image, their message and their history. We need to do it for our children, who by their exposure to western media and its predominance of negative African stereotypes are losing their identities and their self-esteem, even before their fledgling personalities has a chance to develop.

We need to tell the truth about the culture of "white supremacy." We need to expose the lies of the European. We need to methodically and logically disect the construct that is "white supremacy" and call its architects by their true names, only then can we reverse these trends and end the cycle of self-hate and personality conflicts in the African population.

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Posted By: Eja
Date: Friday, 16 December 2005, at 7:05 p.m.

Honour

Great insights. I especially like the one about fundamental change occuring at a genetic level. There are some heavy implications in those words.

Language is the vehicle that carries the concepts that embody a civilization. To elaborate, if we compare a civilization to a healthy body, the concepts (philosophical, religious/moral) that nourish this body can be compared to blood and the language through which these are expressed can then be likened to arteries.

So, what happens when something that postures as a civilization falls victim to cancer? Specifically, leukemia.

Two sayings : "a picture is worth a thousand words", and, "actions speak louder than words".
Both mainly correct but slightly misleading because, just as there are singular words that are worth more than all pictures, there are also words which can put actions into a truer context. These words have, within thier meanings/etymology, deep philosophy; these are singular words that a textbook could be written on.

So, when a so-called leader stands up to make a public speech during which words like 'freedom', 'prosperity', 'justice', 'opportunity', and 'development' are heavily featured, then we would be correct to expect that all the deeds that will follow these fine words will be with the intent of reinforcing the high moral standards contained within the speech. When this does not happen, when this repeatedely does not happen, then, some who are less well informed as to the true meaning of words will start to get a false idea about the actual concepts represented by those words. This is how standards are lowered instalmentally, and, as generations pass, a new breed of 'leaders' pick up the baton, do thier job and standards are further lowered. This is an ongoing phenomenon in Africa right now.

Which is why it is not at all strange to see, (in the larger world that is overseen by the corporate 'mainstream' media, holeywood, and whatever incarnation of leopold/hitler is sitting in the 'white' house) how the war on words continues. Now, we have words like "liberal", "independent", and "aggressor" currently undergoing modification. These are some from the new set of words that have been deliberately targeted as a way of continuing the incremental corruption of the spirits of the ones who are constantly (willingly) being fed on illusions. And, as usual, the scams are working. Especially in amerikkka, where there is now a sizeable segment of the population who think "liberal" is a dirty word. These, we must never forget (in spite of the efforts of the likes of morgan freeman) are people whose ancestors firmly believed that populations of indigenous people would have to be exterminated as a first step to bringing 'civilization' to the land. People who sat down in the morning to pontificate with thier rotten jaws on the subject of 'human liberties' before returning home in the afternoon to resume the feverish dehumanisation of thier so-called slaves.

A pattern that was not new, a domineering hypocrisy that went right back into the beginnings of wastern 'civilization' (i.e. the greeks). So, if it is clear that from the time the 'white' project got underway, certain words (and the ideas they were meant to seed in the human mind) had already been corrupted, what is the point in still seeking to find meaning FROM these same sources? We have clearly seen what these words 'Humanity', 'Justice', 'Love', mean to the 'whites' and we now need to look elsewhere. So, I say this in agreement with what Karibkween was saying : if we are TRULY seeking meaning, where would be the logical place to start from? We must ask this question repeatedely (and in as many ways as possible) until the ONLY answer that returns is the right one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Posted By: Ayinde
Date: Saturday, 17 December 2005, at 9:30 a.m.

One of the key points I am trying to make is that I do not buy it when most people try to peddle themselves as being above many of these issues. Based on my personal experiences and my ongoing observations of what people go through when they really change, I have a fairly good idea what to expect from people who really change. They cannot regurgitate Black Revolutionary Words and Ideas and feel that can fly by I. I do not take their word that they are above many of these issues. With patience and time the truth always comes out.

Of course, Western Leaders and those who follow them, continually distort the meaning of words in an attempt to justify their greed, wars and other corruptions. Ones can always develop to detect and expose their lies. The meanings they give are not necessarily what they are. Many Black Africans speak English and many more are drawn to it because of their idea that it offers them better economic opportunities. It is from here many Black Africans need help, so understanding English (and its innuendos) is important for helping Black Africans. Over time, as more Black Africans become conscious, many will see value in incorporating many more words from our various African dialects to convey meaning.

You asked:
"So, if it is clear that from the time the 'white' project got underway, certain words (and the ideas they were meant to seed in the human mind) had already been corrupted, what is the point in still seeking to find meaning FROM these same sources?"

~ Although I speak and write in English I do not depend on those corrupt white institutions as sources for meaning. The English language was not developed on its own by whites. It is a combination of newly developed words and meanings together with more ancient words that are indigenous to a whole range of cultures. Often their pronunciation and current spelling is a corruption of something that is more ancient, but still we can derive and give meaning based on our own sources and values. You and I communicate our ideas here, and we do so in English. We do understand our meaning. So too, many other people understand my meaning and see the difference to what whites say. I am not corrupted along with their corrupt use of English so I can use it to our benefit.

You asked:
"If we are TRULY seeking meaning, where would be the logical place to start from?"

~ One's self is the place to start. I would say that one needs to get a good definition of/for self - the part of a person that is immortal. This concept of an Immortal self may sound fanciful but that was the key for I. Once one is motivated from there then one is automatically drawn to fresh truths. One can tap into the truths that are relevant for their development as well as the truth in others. The corruption in the world does not prohibit one from finding more and more truths. One can easily see the truth and falsehood in the words and actions of others. But to bring real change one must be able to see truth and falsehood in one's own actions and make the necessary changes from there.

Self is the key, and what ideas of self people have in their minds will determine how they interpret everything around them. If people think their self is their body they operate like there is no tomorrow. They remain overly protective of their physical aspects; they become vain and paranoid. But still if one feels self is their body, it is a place to start to greater discoveries if they have a measure of integrity.

If one feels their self is limited to race, then that too limits them from grasping a universal concept of who they are. Race is quite important in relation to navigating and discerning to realise more of one's self, but self encompasses a whole lot more. Understanding race in these times is the most important aspect to greater self-discovery to include righteousness (thoughts, words and deeds for redress in the right order). One's concept of self must encompass race but not be limited to it. One's concept of self must also encompass universal attributes derived from both masculine and feminine genders.

Once one gets the idea of their self that existed before humans and before the earth evolved, they can capture the essential part of all living things that generate life. They can be in constant touch with the essential part of humans that is always seeking and discerning, the part that evolved into and through different bodies. One can see their relation to every living organism, every chemical, every mineral and the stars. Their ideas of themselves can become bigger than any person or corrupt society. With that knowledge they can cultivate more of themselves by embracing all what they discover to be true from their past and present. They can tap into the essence of our ancestors. Empowered with such knowledge they can be pillars for change in societies. They can speak our Black African truths and have it resonate through everyone.

Being Black African can give immense pride as one discovers that every waking day and night, every dream is filled with symbols and lessons from our ancestors; ancestral lessons that have become timeless and immortal because of the tremendous truths they encompass. Every color, every shape, every word and sound can be a stimulation to remember and/or discover. One can literally grasp and share meaning that is not yet known to others. That is the power from within.

Books can help and other people can help. Realizing the corruption taking place on this earth can be the greatest motivator to search for deeper meaning. But the truth must start from within the individual who is searching and is nourished by the better ideas drawn from others who have discovered. Then one is spun into a life of greater self-discovery and meaning, where integrity is the guide to more and where Black African history is the rod of correction. They can discover their own immortality and fearlessness, to become their own living saviours.

Each individual must start with their own self-examination, although many will have to be motivated by others to so do. They must be encouraged to make the difference with their own lives. If they do that well, they become the better example for others. As Black Africans, we must start by improving our own lives with our own values. Our words and actions must resonate with the timeless truths of our existence. Nothing is more infectious than an example. As much as people are constantly being misled by poor examples, more of us need to become the better examples of life. It should be the only way for people who remember and respect our ancestors.

Reprinted from:
The Rastafari Speaks Message Board
``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xFundamental Conscious Change``x1134860189,95185,views``x``x ``xBy Ayinde

Eja asked: "Do we Africans have procedures that we can use in order that we may achieve a high degree of consciousness?"

All of us have the ability to assist others to achieve high states of consciousness. People can continually learn about ourselves (oneself) and act on every truth that we discover (after research and reasoning). Our ability to help each other depends on the quality and quantity of truths that we discover in ourselves. People should try to get a direct experience with themselves to move from understanding to knowing.

Eja asked: "How can these procedures be disseminated to the ones who need it most of all (i.e. the youth)?"

People disseminate these abilities when they consistently act on everything they realize is true, while continually evaluating their positions for improving. If you are as honest as you can be, given what you know, then you speak and act in a manner that will be the best example to others.

Eja asked: "Is it not true that until a majority of us have the same aim, we will never realise our potential as a people?"

You are correct. Fortunately the majority of people have the same innate aim. They just do not all realize it at the same time. As more people choose to live better and share their experiences, a greater number of people will come into consciousness. People should share what they realize is the best way forward, but should not infringe on the rights of others while doing so. People can only get conscious by choice, not force.

Eja asked: "Is it not true that this lack of a common/autonomous focus is what has enabled our enemies to play one sector off against another?"

Lacking self identity fragments people. Regaining self identity reconciles people to their inner higher selves, then to the truth in all else.

Eja asked: "So, should'nt our main purpose at this time be searching for (and implementing ways) through which an influential majority will have our interests as one people first and foremost in thier minds?"

Yes. My opinion about the way to do this is multifaceted but one work really. People should continually work at raising their consciousness towards reuniting with the ultimate influential majority in the Universe and on earth.


Reprinted from:
The Rastafari Speaks Message Board``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xOne Mind in Many - Many Minds in One``x1135918800,59691,views``x``x ``xIMF Occupies Iraq, Riots Follow
In December, the International Monetary Fund, in exchange for giving a loan of $685 million to the Iraqi government, insisted that the Iraqis lift subsidies on the price of oil and open the economy to more private investment.

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Economic Hit Men in Iraq

By Ayinde

The U.S. invaded Iraq, killing tens of thousands of people and destroying infrastructure.

The U.S. promised it will rebuild Iraq.

The U.S. takes Iraq Oil revenue and pays U.S. companies exorbitant sums to build in Iraq.

The U.S. selects an Iraqi government (fake elections).

The Iraq (U.S.) government 'borrows' money from the IMF. In return Iraqi assets will be sold cheaply to U.S. businesses (open the economy to more foreign private investment). The Iraq government has to ensure that local salaries do not rise and subsidies are removed.

U.S. corporations will control all the prime assets in Iraq.

The money borrowed from the IMF will mostly go to U.S. corporations to 'work' and 'rebuild' in Iraq.

Iraqis have to repay the IMF loan plus interest while losing their vital assets.

Welcome to Democracy U.S.A. Style!``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xEconomic Hit Men in Iraq``x1136667665,82565,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
April 13, 2006

Absolute truths are usually comprised of bits of truths (facts) that act as building blocks to bigger ideas and truths. Bits of truths (facts) can also be assembled to distort and mislead. Because of the multilayered and very dynamic nature of absolute truths that addresses a wide range of questions and interpretations, they are best grasped through direct experiences and reasonings, and not by some edict. Even if one gets an edict that is absolutely true it still has to be reasoned and experienced to grasp the fullness of it. As one arrives at the fullness of truth, they know if for themselves.

There is also a notion that an absolute truth would be easily understood by all. But that is not really true. People are at different levels of sensibilities, experiences and awareness allowing a variety of perspectives, so not all would understand the same way. Since an absolute truth is usually conveyed through experience and language, then those who lack the experience do not get it. People interpret words differently (than what is being communicated), so information could be understood differently, thus altering the intended meaning in the mind of the listener. Also, an absolute truth can be comprised of many facts and this means the people who are trying to grasp that absolute truth have to be sufficiently informed about the many facts. They may not even agree on the facts. That does not mean the absolute truth cannot be accurately conveyed.

Transcendent truths have to be experienced and reasoned to fully grasp. That is the reason I see no need to extensively debate such truths. There is no other way to prove a transcendent truth to another who does not want to experience that truth that "transcends normal or physical human experience."

People often receive information initially and just do not get it, and then many years later, after more experiences, they finally discover the meaning. In other words, all people are not at the same sensibilities, resulting in reaching certain understanding and knowledge at different times after getting the necessary experiences. If all people believe the world is flat, the world would still be round. Truth is not a democracy.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAbout Absolute Truths``x1144900822,85819,rasta``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
April 21, 2006

I know the Universal Life Force or Essence, which to I is the heart of all that exist. Jah and God are not my terms of choice. If I ever happen to use them it would be in the same context as when I say Universal Essence or Universal Life Force. This force is the essential knowledge of life.

All aspects of nature contain bits of this essence but in their fragmented state they are not the Universal Essence/Life Force. These fragmented bits of essence are developing through many stages to grasp (or connect up with) more of itself. Through essentially reconnecting to the Universal Life Force, then that aspect (conscious person) has become an extension of that Universal Life Force.

An analogy:

Houses have to connect to the main water system (source) so people get running water within their houses. You can use the supply of water when you want (you have to know how to 'turn on' the main). Your house remains unique to your personal experiences and taste but you share the common water supply. That water supply is comparable to our common Universal Self/Essence/Life Force.

All the connections that allow the water to be collected, purified and distributed constitute the mind of the water system. Once connected you automatically become part of that vast network.

The work with humans is to reconnect thus harmonize with the Universal Essence/Life Force. In that way conscious beings do not lose their individuality while they share the same Universal Essence and Mind. Essential truths would be easily grasped by all reconnected people, as truths are experienced and make sense on many more levels than just the gross intellectual and emotional ones. Individual minds harmonize with the Universe so ones have access to a whole range of truths, thoughts and experiences.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhat I perceive 'Jah' to be``x1145592022,55993,rasta``x``x ``xBy G. Dunkel, workers.org
Published Apr 27, 2006

It has been more than two years since Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was elected with the overwhelming support of the people, was forced out of the country by U.S. officials and a right-wing "de facto" government was installed. Haitians are now waiting to see if their choice in the first election since then, President-elect René Préval, will be seated on May 14 as promised.

Conditions in this impoverished country have only grown worse since the "coup-napping."

Because they had not been paid for five months, and are expected to work without gloves, brooms, buckets and other supplies, the support staff of the Hospital of the State University of Haiti (HUEH) went on strike April 7. Doctors, nurses and other medical personnel followed a few days later, unable to work in the unsanitary conditions produced as blood, wastes and all kinds of debris piled up throughout the HUEH, the main public hospital in Port-au-Prince.

Workers at other public hospitals throughout the country—in Cap-Haitien, Gonaïves, Jacmel and Cayes—have also walked out. Some haven't been paid for seven months. In some areas outside Port-au-Prince, local authorities came to an agreement with the strikers, who then went back to work.

But the agreements were broken, so the strikers went out again, even angrier. Observers say this attack on public health care may be one way that the de facto government is putting pressure on Préval. It wants to enmesh him in big problems from day one.

Electricity and water are also sporadic in Port-au-Prince, with some poor neighborhoods nearly completely deprived.

The public health crisis in Haiti made a visit by Préval to Cuba from April 14 to 19 particularly important. As Preval told the media there, Cuban doctors "have held more than 8 million office visits and done more than 100,000 operations. In Haiti, we say after God comes Cuban doctors."

He also held warm talks with Cuban President Fidel Castro on a range of subjects from economic development to electric generation and education. Cuba has a major program to train Haitian doctors. Some 120 Haitians have already graduated from medical school there and 600 are enrolled. Besides the normal quota of Haitian business leaders in his entourage, Préval also brought Haitians who needed medical care. He himself extended his visit to get a hernia operation.

Préval's next visit before his inauguration will be to Venezuela. The current autho rities in Haiti, who are hand-picked by imperialism, turned down Venezuela's offer to join Petrocaribe, a program run by Venezuela to provide cheap gasoline to poor Caribbean countries. They say it's because they don't have a government-owned distribution center and don't want to build one in competition with Haitian businesses. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, in his weekly television broadcast on April 23, announced Préval's visit and said Venezuela would donate a distribution center to Haiti after it joins Petro-caribe, some time after the inauguration.

A major reason why so many cities and towns in Haiti don't have electricity is that they don't have the money to buy fuel to run their generators.

Runoff elections for parliament were held on April 23. They came off without the contention that marked the February election for president. However, thousands of people with valid voter cards were turned away from polling stations where they had voted in February. They were told to check the Internet for places where they could vote—an onerous task for poor people without computers who get only a few hours of electricity a week.

While the de-facto government says it doesn't have the money needed to run hospitals, generate electricity and provide clean water, it got millions of dollars from "donor countries" to run elections and create photo IDs for those registering.

The United States and Canada, the two countries with the biggest "aid" programs in Haiti, don't just deny Haiti the economic aid it deserves.

Jeb Sprague, a freelance journalist writing for Haïti-Progrès (April 12 to 18), charges that "In the years leading up to Haiti's 2006 presidential and legislative elections, ... the International Republican Institute (IRI) helped form and coach three coalitions of right-wing and social-democratic parties, which were all partisans of the Feb. 29, 2004, coup d'état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide."

IRI is an international agency of the U.S. Republican Party that gets its funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), whose funds in turn come from the U.S. Congress, with a mandate "to promote democracy throughout the world."

IRI charged Fanmi Lavalas, Aristide's party, with not being "democratic." But it guided some FL breakaways into the Movement for the Installation of Demo cracy in Haiti (MIDH), whose candidate for president was former World Bank official Marc Bazin. Bazin received only got 0.68 percent of the Feb. 7 vote.

Washington has been pushing Bazin as Haiti's leader for a long time. In 1990, when Aristide was elected for the first time, the New York Times predicted Bazin would defeat him because only the poor, who "don't vote," were for Aristide. Bazin got 14 percent of that vote.

IRI and USAID even went so far as to assist a "socialist" coalition to contest the recent vote. Most of the candidates for this "socialist" coalition had supported the coup against Aristide and in reality represent the left wing of the Haitian bourgeoisie.

Préval's party, Lespwa, did not take any IRI or USAID money. His election was assured only after tens of thousands of Haitians came out into the streets and demanded that their votes be counted and respected.

The Haitian people are going to support Préval as long as they see him trying to resolve the huge problems affecting their country. The help he gets from Cuba and Venezuela will be a key element in this struggle to improve the condition of the Haitian people.

This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011

Reprinted from:
www.workers.org/2006/world/haiti-0504/``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xHaiti: Préval turns to Cuba, Venezuela``x1146110422,86408,world``x``x ``xby Ras Tyehimba

The term 'globalisation' has its origins in the latter half of the 20th century, referring to, in a very general sense, the movement of the world's nations towards some sort of global village, characterized by advanced technology, and rapidly expanding economic and political interdependence. However, for the Caribbean, globalisation is nothing new (Brown, 2002; Sankatsing; Watson, 2003; Klak, 1998, Boodhoo, 2002; Singh, 2002, Girvan, 1999; Pantin, 2001; Sylvester, 2002). Despite the technology, and other unprecedented aspects of the present phase of 'globalisation', it is a process that can be traced to Christopher Columbus' arrival in the New World in the latter 15th century and the subsequent 500 plus years of European conquest, colonization and exploitation of the Caribbean region. From a Caribbean perspective, the essential nature of globalisation translates into a continuation of Euro-American political, economic, intellectual and cultural imposition on the region, albeit more effectively via modern technology, and the activities of multinational corporations and international organizations such as the WTO, IMF and the World Bank. Despite the seemingly overwhelming global forces, these immense challenges do not negate the opportunities available for the Caribbean to navigate the turbulent geo-political economy to bring benefit to the region.

According to Norman Girvan, the early impact of globalisation on the Caribbean was the extermination of the majority of the indigenous population, mercantilism, slavery, the plantation system, and centuries of rivalry and wars among the colonial powers. He implicates these factors as part of a legacy of political and linguistic fragmentation that continues to be a obstacle to regional integration. This legacy, however, not only impedes regional cooperation, but stifles the internal development of Caribbean states.

During the period of colonial rule, the institutions and the socio-economic arrangements were constructed to maintain the status quo of European domination that allowed for exploitation of the enslaved (and indentured) labour force towards maximum extraction of natural resources, in most cases sugar. The struggle for Independence was intimately linked to hopes of ending the centuries long pattern of subjugation, whereby the Caribbean as sovereign nations, could take control of its own social, political and economic destiny. With Independence achieved, however, within the geopolitical climate of the Cold War, the Caribbean turned to the world's ex-colonial powers for financial, technical and infrastructural assistance, and they were only to happy to comply, thus maintaining the relationships of dependency and exploitation. Thus, these newly formed states remained bound to the values, institutions, paradigms, and economic and political dictates of their former colonial rulers under the guise of 'modernization' and 'development' and Multi-National Corporations replaced the plantation as the mechanism of exploitation.

In addition, there has been, "a continuing trend on the part of the developed countries to move decisions away from democratic forums such as the UN and to locate decision-making functions in institutions such as the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank- which are under the control of developed countries (Benn, 2000)." For instance, the debt crisis of the 1970's brought about by the world recession forced some countries of the Caribbean to turn to the IMF and the World Bank to borrow money that came with neo-liberalist conditionalities attached. In Jamaica, in the 1970's Manley's socialist-democratic regime after being critical of the US and the IMF was forced to go cap in hand to the IMF after Washington engineered economic and social destabilization which rocked the country (Chin, 1997).

The 'Banana Wars' is another prime example that underscored the nature of the relationship between Transnational Corporations, International Organisations, and the United States. Chiquita, a large Transnational Corporation with extensive banana plantations in Central and South America, and a contributor to campaign funds of both the Democratic and Republican parties, pressured the US to take action via the WTO against the EU's preferential treatment accorded to Caribbean banana producers (Girvan, 1999). The WTO, to which the US is the largest financial contributor, ruled in favor of the US. Given that banana is the main export of the small eastern Caribbean states who cannot compete with Chiquita's large plantations that reap not only bananas but economies of scale, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that the WTO, like the IMF and World Bank, acts to preserve the interests of powerful nations and their homegrown Multi-National Corporations.

Endemic in the neo-liberal shaping of the world order is the notion of superiority of American and Western European society inclusive of religion (Christianity), values and culture, intellect, economic systems, general lifestyle/world view and their consequent right and even duty to shape the world order to force all others to conform to the globalised ethnocentric norms. The Caribbean has suffered from the West's dominance in the production of information as it inevitably reinforces the patterns of psychological dependency, the myth of 'Third World' inferiority and provides the justification for the hegemonic actions of the 'developed' world and their agents. The production of knowledge is one of the ways in which the West attempts to exercise political, economic, and cultural control over the Caribbean.

The so-called developed countries, particularly the US, disseminate a high quantity of books, academic journals, magazines, television programmes, music and computer software that is increasingly becoming elements of the global popular culture (Bernal, 2000). These mediums convey American perspectives on society, love, wealth, success, education, style, right, wrong, gender, justice, etcetera, that ultimately are a part of the ideological foundation of the global American empire. Caribbean researchers and media professionals have long been expressing concern over the potential threat to indigenous Caribbean culture by the unprecedented penetration of new age media technologies (Brown, 1995). For instance, Nettleford (1993) criticizes, "the hijacking of the region's media, the invasion of the Caribbean people's intellectual space and the cultural bombardment of the entire region by every means possible from North America."

The United States' so-called 'War on Terror' since the events of 9/11 has deep implications for the Caribbean as the globalizing world is accompanied by increasing militarization which threatens fragile Caribbean sovereignty. Watson (2003) observes that, "the hidden hand of the Market will not work without a hidden fist." The US and France, the two veto-wielding permanent members of the 15-nation Security Council who played a role in President Aristide's removal from Haiti, signaled to CARICOM that they did not want a U.N. probe of the matter. France, who refused to support the US's invasion of Iraq on supposedly moral grounds, had no problems (moral or otherwise) in collaborating with the US to kidnap President Aristide. Aristide had earlier demanded that France pay Haiti over 21 billion U.S. dollars, which he said was the equivalent in today's money to the 90 million gold francs Haiti was forced to pay France after its successful revolution against colonial rule that saw it becoming the hemisphere's first independent black nation in 1804. Historians say that the massive toll that France exacted on Haiti coupled with international isolation has played a significant part in the impoverishment and underdevelopment presently seen in Haiti.

The government of Trinidad and Tobago's misguided thrust towards 'developed country status' embodied in the Visionless 2020 project, shows the role of the local elite in keeping the country locked in the grip of foreign control, in so far as it meets their political and/or economic desires. Is it the Western miseducation that many have been subjected to that, is responsible for the inability to craft meaningful national development outside of mass industrialization and subservience to multi-national corporations (ALCOA, Digicel, SuperPharm, PriceSmart, BPTT, etc), which are no more interested in local social development than local big businesses? What is the sense of the increased revenue and access to goods and services if it means compromising national sovereignty, the environment and the health and wellbeing of the general population? ALCOA's proposed aluminum smelter plant in the Cedros peninsula which threatens the community and their environment is one such industrialization project that must not be allowed to happen. The distorted understandings of 'progress' and 'development' championed by the national political and economic elite must be challenged.

Some points are worthy to mention for consideration:

The US and Europe champion the neo-liberalist agenda, yet the US Farm Bill 2002 approved multi-billion US dollars of subsidies to American grain and cotton farmers. Though the EU expressed disapproval, their subsidy payments to their farmers are even higher.

UNDP reports that draw attention to the narrow distribution of benefits from globalisation has created huge disparities of wealth and power within states.

Environmental threats posed to Caribbean countries not only by industrialization and destruction of natural habitats but by foreign ships loaded with radioactive waste passing through the Caribbean Sea.

The impunity with which the Unites States deports American bred criminals back to the Caribbean.
Although much can be said about the negative impact of 500 years of the Caribbean's experience with globalisation, it is an oversimplification to suggest that it is merely an issue of Euro-American powers imposing themselves on the Caribbean. While powerful global forces have deeply penetrated Caribbean societies, human agency cannot be negated and thus it is important to recognize that domination is never complete. The legacy of imposition has also been accompanied by a legacy of resistance on the part of Caribbean peoples for 500 plus years. The struggles of the indigenous Caribbean people, the Haitian Revolution as well as the numerous other slave revolts are all important aspects of this legacy of anti-colonial resistance.

In spite of the challenges there have been some benefits to the Caribbean. These benefits have been particularly in terms of the increased access to a wide range of both consumer and industrial goods and services. A wide range of technology including computers, transportation, and communication is accessed by the Caribbean populace. This has helped the Caribbean to access and develop limited scientific expertise. The advances in inter and intra island communication as well as the harsh geo-political landscape has increased the potential for cooperation between the countries of the Caribbean and the other nations of the Global South.

The experiences of the Caribbean overwhelmingly suggest that neo-liberal globalisation is the new face of colonialism, imperialism and neo-colonialism (Sankatsing, 2002) and as such it is synonymous with Americanization, Westernization and imposition. Globalisation can be seen as a concept in the mainstream as an ideological weapon (Girvan, 2000; Held and McGrew, 2004) that masks the mechanisms of hegemony, injustice and control that underlie the neo-liberal globalised world order characterized by free trade instead of fair trade, advanced modern technology, power and wealth disparities between and within nations, unbridled hegemonic aggression, and Multi-national corporations and International Organizations acting as agents of G7 nations. The implication of the hegemonic forces that impinge on Caribbean sovereignty is that Caribbean nations are not free to adopt certain developmental orientations nor are they free to form deep relationships with some countries (such as Venezuela and Cuba) without incurring the wrath of the United States. U.S. interventions in Guyana, Jamaica and Grenada in the latter half of the 20th century demonstrate this. In the Caribbean, having both the definition of 'progress' and the pathway towards it imposed by external forces overshadows the benefits (including increased efficiency, expanded access to consumer goods and services, increased technology and communications and the movement towards deeper Caribbean cooperation) of 'globalisation' but it does not extinguish the potential for resistance and innovation on the part of Caribbean peoples.

Bibliography``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xGlobalisation is as old as Colonialism``x1148875222,58052,world``x``x ``xTriniview.com Article
Trinidad and Tobago

In Yoruba tradition, as indeed in many other eastern and pre-western societies, the change of seasons is of tremendous importance and is a time for much jubilee and inner reflection. This is especially so during the time when the seasonal rain cycle begins and new life has a chance to assume physical vessels and roam the earth. Traditionally, in Yorubaland, Africa, the rainmaking rituals were some of the most formal ceremonies that were held there. The revered rainmaker would even call on the deities responsible for the rain to bless the earth during periods of extreme drought. This reverence and deep appreciation for the coming of the rainy season has been transplanted from the mainland, Africa, to Trinidad and Tobago and by extension, other nations of the west that have been directly influenced by African people and culture.

The Annual Rain Festival held at Shrine Gardens in Santa Cruz has attempted, and successfully so, to formally revive this ancient African tradition and has been doing so for the past seven years. The 7th Annual Rain Festival took place from Friday, 9th June, and was concluded on Sunday, 12th June, 2006. This three day festival was filled with many activities that highlighted many of the successes that Africans and African descended people have made in the world.

Friday, which was the formal opening of the festival, kicked off at moonrise and was introduced by the Master of Ceremonies, Awo Orunmilla Chief Akoda Babalawo Oluwole Abiomi Ifakunle Adetutu Alagbede. Essential to the opening, as it was throughout the three day festivity, was the prayer/libation by Awo Ifakunle. Also significant in the opening ceremony was the official welcome by Iya Sangowunmi, the Spiritual Head of the Ile Eko Sango/Osun Mil'Osa, and the blessing of Honorees: Oscar Pyle, Baba Sam Phills, Earl Lovelace, Ishmael 'Penco' Best, Lazaro Ros, Baba Falokun Fatunmbi and L' Antoinette Osun Ide Stein. Greetings were then given by the Nigerian High Commission and the feature address, "Preparation for Repatriation", was presented by Sis Eintou Pearl Springer. Also present to commence the opening of the Annual Rain Festival 2006 was the Minister of Community Development, Culture and Gender Affairs, the Honorable Joan Yullie Williams.

On Saturday, there were displays of art, craft, clothes, jewelry and books, all with African and African spiritual themes. Moreover, the audience was blessed by local entertainers such as Arshad "Ifaniyi" Salandy who delivered the Calypso entitled, "A Mother's Call", 'Disciple' who sang, "I Never Thought" and "Flags" and 'Composer' who sang, "Child Training" and "Head Tie". Another well received performer was Pearl Eintou Springer who recited the poems, "Ode to Oshun" and "Loving the Skin I'm In." The WITCO Desperadoes Steelband Orchestra and the Courts Sound Specialist Steelband Orchestra also moved the crowd with their beautiful melodies on pan.

During the course of the three day event there were performances by Drum Xplosion led by Oba Ofun Vereen and several dances by L'ACADCO Caribbean Dance Force choreographed by L'Antionette Osun Ide Stines. Also, there were various lectures that occurred several times throughout the festival educating guests about Yoruba spirituality.

Guests were blessed with Orisa Cuisine on Sunday, and witnessed the Maypole Dance by the Maracas Youth Group and a ceremony dedicated to Ogun, who was instrumental in the evolution of the African drums to the steelpan instrument. The close of the festival was ended with a final ritual to thank the Gods and the Ancestors for the past proceedings and to ask for further blessings for all the participants of the event.

This revival of the Rain Celebrations was done successfully by Iya Sangowunmi and members of the shrine at Shrine Gardens in Santa Cruz and shows that things lost can always be rediscovered through dedication and perseverance.

Seventh Annual Orisa Rain Festival in Pictures``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xSeventh Annual Orisa Rain Festival``x1150257622,64836,world``x``x ``xTriniview.com Article
Trinidad and Tobago

In Yoruba tradition, as indeed in many other eastern and pre-western societies, the change of seasons is of tremendous importance and is a time for much jubilee and inner reflection. This is especially so during the time when the seasonal rain cycle begins and new life has a chance to assume physical vessels and roam the earth. Traditionally, in Yorubaland, Africa, the rainmaking rituals were some of the most formal ceremonies that were held there. The revered rainmaker would even call on the deities responsible for the rain to bless the earth during periods of extreme drought. This reverence and deep appreciation for the coming of the rainy season has been transplanted from the mainland, Africa, to Trinidad and Tobago and by extension, other nations of the west that have been directly influenced by African people and culture.

The Annual Rain Festival held at Shrine Gardens in Santa Cruz has attempted, and successfully so, to formally revive this ancient African tradition and has been doing so for the past seven years. The 7th Annual Rain Festival took place from Friday, 9th June, and was concluded on Sunday, 12th June, 2006. This three day festival was filled with many activities that highlighted many of the successes that Africans and African descended people have made in the world.

Friday, which was the formal opening of the festival, kicked off at moonrise and was introduced by the Master of Ceremonies, Awo Orunmilla Chief Akoda Babalawo Oluwole Abiomi Ifakunle Adetutu Alagbede. Essential to the opening, as it was throughout the three day festivity, was the prayer/libation by Awo Ifakunle. Also significant in the opening ceremony was the official welcome by Iya Sangowunmi, the Spiritual Head of the Ile Eko Sango/Osun Mil'Osa, and the blessing of Honorees: Oscar Pyle, Baba Sam Phills, Earl Lovelace, Ishmael 'Penco' Best, Lazaro Ros, Baba Falokun Fatunmbi and L' Antoinette Osun Ide Stein. Greetings were then given by the Nigerian High Commission and the feature address, "Preparation for Repatriation", was presented by Sis Eintou Pearl Springer. Also present to commence the opening of the Annual Rain Festival 2006 was the Minister of Community Development, Culture and Gender Affairs, the Honorable Joan Yullie Williams.

On Saturday, there were displays of art, craft, clothes, jewelry and books, all with African and African spiritual themes. Moreover, the audience was blessed by local entertainers such as Arshad "Ifaniyi" Salandy who delivered the Calypso entitled, "A Mother's Call", 'Disciple' who sang, "I Never Thought" and "Flags" and 'Composer' who sang, "Child Training" and "Head Tie". Another well received performer was Pearl Eintou Springer who recited the poems, "Ode to Oshun" and "Loving the Skin I'm In." The WITCO Desperadoes Steelband Orchestra and the Courts Sound Specialist Steelband Orchestra also moved the crowd with their beautiful melodies on pan.

During the course of the three day event there were performances by Drum Xplosion led by Oba Ofun Vereen and several dances by L'ACADCO Caribbean Dance Force choreographed by L'Antionette Osun Ide Stines. Also, there were various lectures that occurred several times throughout the festival educating guests about Yoruba spirituality.

Guests were blessed with Orisa Cuisine on Sunday, and witnessed the Maypole Dance by the Maracas Youth Group and a ceremony dedicated to Ogun, who was instrumental in the evolution of the African drums to the steelpan instrument. The close of the festival was ended with a final ritual to thank the Gods and the Ancestors for the past proceedings and to ask for further blessings for all the participants of the event.

This revival of the Rain Celebrations was done successfully by Iya Sangowunmi and members of the shrine at Shrine Gardens in Santa Cruz and shows that things lost can always be rediscovered through dedication and perseverance.

Seventh Annual Orisa Rain Festival in Pictures``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xSeventh Annual Orisa Rain Festival``x1150368300,54841,rasta``x``x ``xBy discipleofthenile
Rastafari Speaks Forum

It is amazing that as Rastafari there are those that refuse to acknowledge higher truths that are presented as a result of making a conscious CHOICE to seek/grasp more than what has been released by mainstream teachers and dogmas.

Rastafari is about one thing (should be). It is about experiencing and grasping absolute truth. But since their is an obstacle/blockade to this path, it becomes paramount to remove that blockade. So unfortunately, the mission of Rastafari is on two fronts: (self/truth attainment AND lie/oppression removal)

The most unadulterated, purest experience of truth is NATURE. Nature is not just the jungle or the brook or the park or trees, birds and lions. Nature is EVERYTHING that is under the auspices of energy and matter's communion. In other words NATURE is EVERYTHING. Even "Super-natural" is a oxymoron/misnomer. Because there is nothing that is above nature...there are only "mysteries" (to some of us) that are classified as above nature, especially by the clueless who now rule the planet. The accurate term would be "above our understanding of nature". Let us not allow our limits to define something. So I hope it is understood that supernatural refers to hidden (occult - that which is hidden) nature.

The question is why are certain things "hidden" in nature...who does the hiding...who does the revealing.

I sight that many things are hidden in order to establish or continue mass control by the manipulators. The manipulators retain their power status by control of information. Which means that the information that is regulated is purposely released/diclosed so that it poses no threat. So automatically my mind must click when I think of a king (James) releasing "the ultimate" truth.

I must conclude one of two things;
-either this truth is powerless
-or it isn't ultimate truth

When we think of historical Christianity, which I must give a birthdate of 325 AD (Constantine/Nicea), how has this "empowered" or "liberated" Afrikans. The evidence is overwhelming that it has done the EXACT opposite. In fact, not only does it damage and suppress Afrikans, it damages and suppresses feminine energy [No mystery that the original loop of the ankh has been closed shut [spiritual symbolic hysterectomy]...no mystery that the circular/cyclical truths of femininity (universality) has been made into a linear representation.]

The origin of oppressive mindset starts with the tampering/dpwnpressing of feminine aspects/energies which is a clear and present desecration to goddess Ma'at. ["GODDESS" Ma'at]. In other words RACISM is born of the "oedipal"/psychotic suppression of the female womb and its powers/energies. It is a cancer that just spread to anyone or anything other than a white male.

But the real irony is that here we are as "truth detectives" and we fail to sight the evidence that is right under our noses.

As Ras Tyehimba stated in one of the article in the archives, the system is set up so that racism and sexism does not require personal applications by individuals. In other words, the oppression is now standard and engrained more in habit and psychology than by "ugly" hatred or mean words. The "political correctness" dogma sent racist and sexist manueverings into the underground, which makes it just as if not more powerful because it is hidden (As Morgan Freeman thinks - it will "go away"). Notice people are not criticized for thinking like a bigot, they are criticized for "speaking" like a bigot. So "P.C." requires no mindset change it just requires more tact or underhandedness.

Political correctness is the "backflow" valve for racism and sexism. Backflow valves ensure that sewage does not return to the source. (it just goes away) Now that the positions of Blacks and Women are inferiorly established, it now becomes "out of line" or "babylon-esque" to speak in terms of color (complexion) or gender. (very clever my enemy, very clever)

But if we are to truly dismiss our demons, we must CONFRONT them, not try and deny or ignore them. And the only effective way to exorcise anything is to purge it. Completely extract it. This means that just as the girl in the Exorcist movie kept twisting her head around, a prudent solution is not to brace her head. Just as the girl's skin turned colors, the solution is not to put a facial scrub and make-up on her. You must attack the attacker.

We must search ourselves.

Self-denial is complicity to anything that goes on within our sights.

We have been made to fear loaded code-words such as "Black supremacy", "reverse brown bag test" and "matriarchal supremacy". Those three politically incorrect terms are guardians of the status quo.

But since we already OVERstand that racism and sexism are absolute lies and the most destructive/disastrious implementations in the universe...why would the possibility of THE EXACT OPPOSITE (in accordance to Ma'at) be so stricken from our minds and lips.

Truths that are hidden in Nature are just as hidden within ourselves.

We refuse to discuss and highlight BLACKNESS and FEMININITY, even BLACK/EMPRESSES...

Very clever my enemy, very clever.

Reprinted from:
Rastafari Speaks Forum``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xInstilled Protectionism of White/Male Supremacy``x1150395579,45947,views``x``x ``xBy Dr. Kwame Nantambu
June 22, 2006

This article seeks to unlock the door to Afrikan-Trinbagonians' misconception, misuse and bastardization of vital Afrikan concepts/terms.

One : B.C.E. versus A.D.

The general consensus is that B.C.E. means Before Christ, Before the Coming Era and/or Before the Christian Era, while A.D. means Anno Domini, that is, "In the year of the Lord".

However, in terms of European supremacy and from an Afro-centric perspective, B.C.E. now means Before Contamination of Afrika by Europeans, while A.D. means Age of Domination, Destruction and Death of Afrikans by Europeans.

Guyanese erudite historian and anthropologist Dr. Ivan van Sertima calls this age "the five hundred year curtain" of European global dominance and control.

Two: Ancestors versus Forefathers

Afrikan ancestors built the pyramids and over 104 stone monuments in ancient Kemet (Egypt) in B.C.E.

They are the world's original, powerful master thinkers and teachers. Afrikan ancestors invented mathematics (including geometry, quadric equations and quadric formulae, logarithms, "combinations of integers with an irrational number and an infinite geometrical progression having many unique properties"), theory of opposites, medicine, female make-up procedure, paper, writing called Medu Netcher, fire, backgammon, wigs, world's first moral code of ethics by which to live, architecture, cardinal points- North-South-East-West, astronomy/astrology, world's original Zodiac signs, philosophy, psychology, chemistry, physics, freemasonry, town and country planning (including districts which they called Nomes), world's first 365 and 1/4 day Stellar calendar, agronomy, domestication of animals, mummification process, and built the world's first university, the Temple of Waset (later called Luxor) in the XVIIIth Dynasty, 1405-1370 B.C., among other things.

They also invented the concepts of a coffin (which they called Nb Ankh), a system of governance (which they called a dynasty), beauty, library, mirror, bed, folding chair, progressive tax collection system with the use of a Nilometer and the mathematical measurement called Pi. Pi was known as the "Golden Number."

According to Cheikh Anta Diop in his book titled, 'The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality' (1974): " Universal knowledge runs from the Nile Valley toward the rest of the world, in particular Greece, which served as an intermediary. As a result, no thought, no ideology is foreign to Africa which was the land of their birth."

Afrikan ancestors' history represents 99.9% of the history of Afrikan people on this planet. They are the world's original people with original ideas.

On the other hand, Afrikan forefathers were stolen and brought kicking and screaming, involuntarily by different European powers from Afrika to the Diaspora (Caribbean, South America and American South) in the A.D. era.

They then picked cotton, coffee and cut sugar cane as powerless slaves for powerful European slave masters on plantations in the Diaspora. Their history represents only .01% of the history of Afrikan people on this planet.

In other words, in B.C.E., Afrikans were powerful and Europeans were powerless; in A.D., Afrikans are now powerless and Europeans are powerful.

As such, there should be no confusion between Afrikan ancestors and Afrikan forefathers. These historical Afrikan concepts/terms are neither comparable, substitutable nor interchangeable.

They both represent the totality of Afrikan history on this planet.

Three: Originality versus Nationality

Originality refers to our inherited Afrikanness; it is a gift from Mother Afrika - "the cradle of civilization."

Nationality is an accident of birth as a direct result of European enslavement or the European slave trade; it represents an indictment from Father Europe.

In other words, the only reason why Afrikans here are Trinbagonians is because their European slave ship landed and unloaded them on the plantations in Trinidad. Their TnT nationality is a mere accident because if their European slave ship had landed and unloaded them on plantations in another Caribbean country then they would have had a different nationality today.

In sum, Afrika is our Home, our Originality; TnT is our Destination, our Nationality. Ergo, the descendents of our Afrikan forefathers are Afrikan-Trinbagonians. The ahistorical, Eurocentric label "Afro-Trinbagonian" does not apply to them.

Afrikan forefathers were brought from the Continent of Afrika. In the history of the world, there has never been a Continent named "Afro." We are Afrikans first - originally, then we have been transformed into being Trinbagonians, Jamaicans, Brazilians, Cubans, etc. by accident.

As the Afrocentric historian Dr. Marimba Ani correctly admonishes: "You're not an Afrikan because you're born in Afrika. You're an Afrikan because Afrika is born in you. It's in your genes, your DNA, your entire biological make-up. Whether you like it or not, that's the way it is. However, if (Afrikan-Trinbagonians) were to embrace this truth with open arms my, my, my what a wonderful thing (that would be)."

Four: Spirituality versus Religion

Spirituality represents a direct connection/ interrelatedness with nature, the cosmos, universe and that spiritual god force, Amun-Ra ("the giver of life" or" Sun-God") whose birthday was celebrated in ancient Kemet (Egypt) on 25 December in B.C.E.

Spirituality means a way of life and being 24/7/365 and is predicated upon the seven principles of Goddess Ma'at. This ancient Kemetic/Afrikan spiritual belief system embodied the "42 Negative Confessions", "Admonitions of Ma'at" and/or "Declarations of Innocence."

It was a way of life that took 1,200 years and 50 generations to develop. In other words, in the B.C. era, when some one dies, the soul/spirit of the deceased confesses as follows: "I have not killed", "I have not committed adultery", "I have not stolen" and so on, forty-two times.

However, the reverse is true in the case of religion.

Religion represents the deification of a people's cultural experiences, politics and political control intent. Religion is all about power and control. Hence, under the Christian/Roman Catholic religion, the Ten Commandments exist to reflect its power and control modus operandi.

These religious Ten Commandments are just a derived, new and improved version of the original, spiritual ancient Kemetic/Afrikan "Negative Confessions."

More specifically, since he was dealing with illiterate, ignorant people/followers, Moses, the Kemetic/Afrikan high priest, had to change the voluntary confessions into commandments in order to control them.

It must be recalled that Moses was the high priest of the Kemetic Pharaoh Akhenaten; ergo, Moses was well learned in the Negative Confessions. All Moses did was to collapse 42 Confessions into 10 Commandments. And it was very easy for Moses to do so because at that time, there were 10 categories of sins in ancient Kemet.

As a result, the spiritual confessions "I have not killed", "I have not committed adultery" and "I have not stolen" automatically became religions commandments as follows: "Thou shalt not kill", "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and "Thou shalt not steal."

In addition, the concept of monotheism or belief in one God, was invented by Pharaoh Akhenaten. This one God was called Atum.

Thus, all Moses did was to incorporate this ancient Kemetic spiritual belief system as the first commandment in the Christian religion as follows: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

It must be inserted here that Amun-Ra (the "Sun God") in the spiritual belief system of ancient Kemet is now known as and/or called the "Sun of God" in religious Christianity. In B.C.E., he was Black; in A.D., he is White.

The fact of the matter is that it is total insanity to associate spirituality with Christianity. Christianity is devoid of any scintilla of spirituality. Roman Catholics are not a spiritual people; they are a religious people "to D bone."

Five: 15th Century Afrikan Slave Trade versus European Slave Trade

The concept of the Afrikan Slave Trade is ahistorical and Eurocentric, while the European Slave trade is historical and Afrocentric.

The Afrikan Slave Trade not only implies that the idea of this exercise started/originated with Afrikans but also that Afrika and Afrikans benefited from the slave trade. Of course, history totally disproves this.

The fact of the matter is that the Portuguese were the first Europeans to go into Afrika to get gold and slaves in 1441. However, this initial European genocidal onslaught was illegal, unauthorized and unsanctioned.

This most brutal, inhumane onslaught or MAAFA ("great disaster") or what deceased Afrocentric scholar, Dr. John Henrik Clarke calls "the greatest single crime in the world" became legal, authorized and sanctioned on 8 January, 1455, when the European Christian Pope Nicholas V in his Papal Bull titled "Romanus Pontifex" authorized the Portuguese "to subject to servitude all infidel peoples."

In other words, the Euro-Christian Pope of the Roman Catholic Church legalized, authorized and sanctioned the European Slave Trade and the enslavement of Afrikan people in the name of God.

Slave ships left European countries (Britain, France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Portugal) and sailed with European captains in charge to Afrika to get slaves. No slave ships left Afrika with Afrikan captains and slaves on board and sailed to the Diaspora.

Thus, Afrikans did not start/originate this slavery experience although the "great men" of Afrika (tribal chiefs, kings, nobles, subchiefs, headmen) colluded with Europeans to sell their own people into slavery.

Assassinated Guyanese scholar/historian, Dr. Walter Rodney has proven that it was Europe not Afrika who benefited from the slave trade. In his magnum opus, 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa' (1971), Dr. Rodney states quite unequivocally as follows: "The European slave trade and overseas trade in general had what are known as 'multiplier effects' on Europe's development in a very positive sense. This means that the benefits of foreign contacts extended to many areas of European life not directly connected with foreign trade and the whole society was better equipped for its own internal development. The opposite was true of Africa not only in the crucial sphere of technology but also with regard to the size and purpose of each economy in Africa." (pp.108-109).

The fact of the matter is that Britain (who entered the slave trade in 1562) was the European country that benefited the most from the slave trade because the Industrial Revolution took place in Britain 1750-1850.

The bottom line then, is that "many Africans were taken by Arabs and were sold to Arab buyers. This is known as the 'Arab Slave Trade'. Therefore, let it be clear that when Europeans shipped Africans to European buyers, it was the 'European Slave Trade' from Africa." (Rodney, p.95).

Shem Hotep ("I go in Peace").

Dr. Kwame Nantambu is a part-time lecturer at Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies and University of the West Indies.

http://www.trinicenter.com/kwame``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xCorrecting Afrikan concepts in TnT``x1150997632,50572,world``x``x ``xBy Rosemary Ekosso, ekosso.com

I remember in my boarding school Fatima House sang a song during the school feast celebrations. It was called Zimbabwe is Free. It was a rousing tune with a resonating bass element. I loved it. My father had told me all about Rhodesia changing hands when I was not yet ten years old, and we were happy that one more "racist bastion" as Radio Cameroon used to call them at the time, had crumbled into dust.

And all was well. Then in 2002, the Zimbabwean Land Issue became news.

But what really happened in Zimbabwe? It is a story like that of the rape of Lebanon we see today, told by the Western media for their willingly brainwashed audiences. Mugabe is a fairly corrupt leader who is clinging to power. That cannot be denied. But when did his tyranny come to light? In 2002? And what choices did he actually have in the land business?

Let us go back in time. Under British colonial rule, the black owners of the land were restricted to tribal reserves. You can find a very good paper on on this and violence in Zimbabwe here.

In 1930, the Land Apportionment Act restricted access of black people to land. In the years that followed, there was increased pressure on the land, and of course the Africans were blamed for what was inaccurately and condescendingly referred to as "slash and burn" cultivation. That this method of farming was entirely appropriate in situations where there was enough land for shifting cultivation must have escaped the notice of colonial observers.

The settlers kept coming in, rising to 140.000 in 1945. But there were 4 million Africans. The Europeans decided that Africans kept livestock for the wrong reasons: "status and prestige". So they decided to de-stock the land and herd the "natives" into more reserves to create more space for themselves. From 1946 to 1979, more than a million head of cattle were disposed of. By disposed of, I mean killed or stolen by white farmers.

Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980. Part of the talks/negotiations leading up to independence included the Lancaster House Agreement, which provided that from 1980 to 1990, a fund provided by Britain would be used to buy land from those white settlers who could not, in effect, stand being ruled by black Zimbabweans. Before that, less than 1% of the population, being the whites, owned 70% of the land. What the agreement actually did was protect white farm owners from redistribution of their land and put off possible nationalization for ten years. It was one of the conditions of Zimbabwe being granted (that's the right term) independence.

In 1981, the Brits pledged more that 630 million pounds in aid for the land reforms. London now claims to have contributed £44m, but Timothy Stamp, Zimbabwe's finance minister, says it was only £17m.

In 1985, the Land Acquisition Act was enacted, against staunch white opposition. The act was gave the Zimbabwean government first refusal, as it were, over land to be ceded by whites, which it would then purchase for the landless. But the white farmers did not want to sell their land and the Zimbabwean government did not have the money to buy. So what happened to the promised British aid, eh?

According to Human Rights Watch and others, 4.500 large-scale commercial farmers still held 28 percent of the total land at the time the fast track program was instituted after 2000; meanwhile, more than one million black families eked out an existence in overcrowded, arid "communal areas". Native reserves, they mean.

Then the veterans of the war of liberation said they wanted land. Then Messrs. IMF and World Bank came in with a Structural Adjustment package. Then there was a drought from 1990 to 1993. Mugabe was in trouble. The grassroots needed land, and the white people were not willing to share. He took the land from the white people and gave it to the black ones.

But which black ones? That is the purported source of all the noise you hear today.

Despite their pious claims, Britain and the others are not angry because Mugabe is a corrupt dictator. They sponsor corrupt dictators when it suits them. They are not angry because ordinary Zimbabweans are suffering under Mugabe. They don't care about ordinary Zimbabweans. They were quite happy to herd them into reserves when it suited them.

No, what they care about is the expropriation of white farmers. They express indignation at Mugabe's cronies acquiring the land. That is a bad thing, of course. I myself come from an area where government or government-affiliated bigwigs are buying up all the prime sea-front locations because they can afford them. But in the case of Zimbabwe only 0.3% of people settled on land have acquired it through undue influence or corruption. So 99.7% of Zimbabweans got their land fair and square. With Enron and cash-for-peerages scandals, who are these people to talk about corruption? Besides, the government has investigated and found that some four hundred people got their hands on land by dishonest means. It has investigated.

So we agree that Mugabe is doing a BAD THING. The bad thing is not, however, the fact that he has taken land that should go to poor landless Zimbabweans and given it to his friends. The bad thing is that he has taken the land from white people.

Now, don't get me wrong. For some of those white farmers, Zimbabwe is their country. It is their motherland. There have been great personal tragedies as a result of the land expropriation. People have lost what they worked for over decades.

But.

Let them taste the pain of loss too. What did they think they were doing when they took the land of Africans in the first place? When the land was seized from the Africans and given to their parents and grandparents, why did they not say: "Oh no, don't do that, it's not cricket"? What did they think? That Africans do not have strong feelings of attachment to land, being only a kind of speaking ape? What did they think when they had armies of black servants to cater to their every whim in addition to farming the land that had been stolen from them, and being forced to sow fields they would never reap? Did they ever feel pain for the Africans? Did they acknowledge the fundamental injustice of the system? When Mugabe began to centralize power and silence political enemies, did they stand up and tell him to stop?

No. They had their beasts of burden. That is all they needed. Now they tell you that they inherited the land, and they were not the ones who stole it. But they knew it was stolen. And when you see the child of a man from whom your father stole wallowing in mud, what should be the nice human reaction?

Hm?

Why is it that the white man's pain is always greater than that of the black man?
They have trotted out the spectre of Africans who do not know how to run the huge farms: "You know, er, just leave the farms with us, because we're better at running them and you guys are hopeless, everyone knows". The farms have lost some revenue. But is it because the Africans have no talent for farming? No. Here's a quote I like:

"Temporary economic dislocation is an unavoidable byproduct of land reform, but the only path to genuine and lasting progress is through land redistribution. There can be nothing efficient about a gross concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, while millions are condemned to lives of hopeless despair and poverty. No mainstream journalist has ever described the grotesque inequality of the situation inherited from colonialism and what this meant for those on the bottom."

You can read the whole article here. I have also just found out that after the reforms, cereal planted actually rose by at least 9%, according to the World Food Programme. So what are those racist lies about how Africans cannot work the farms?

But why were the white people living in a dream world where they thought they'd always own the farms and Africans would only work for them? The Africans will learn one day, as they have often learnt. The hard way.

Another aspect of this disinformation concerns what has actually happened to bring the Zimbabwean economy to its knees. It is true that a there is degree of corruption in Zimbabwe. It is true that the farms do not contribute as much as they did in terms of employment and revenue. Actually, that's not even true. Smaller, less mechanised farms mean more labour-intensive methods and increased employment.

But it is no less true that there has been a severe drought in Zimbabwe and all of Southern Africa. That is what has brought down grain production. Plus the IMF, plus the World Bank. Plus the media telling lies about Zimbabwe.

The veterans of the war of liberation were pressing for compensation. Mugabe paid up. He had no choice. It precipitated a financial crisis in 1997, but Mugabe at least had neutralized a looming threat to his power. Do George Bush and Tony Blair not neutralize looming threats to their power?

Mugabe has in fact, settled quite a few people on land. I am not saying his cronies have not got their fat, be-ringed fingers on some prime land. But so have at least 134.000 other people, who were settled between 2000 and 2002. So let's not exaggerate here. And no, they were not all from ZANU-PF, Mugabe's party. People from MDC, the opposition party, also got land.

Nor is it less true that the white world has decided to punish Mugabe for daring to take land from white farmers. But this is a long and different story. I will deal with it one day in an article on puppet masters.

This article is too long already, so I'll stop here. But I have said this before, and I'll say it again: we should not believe all the lies we read.

Reprinted with permission from:
www.ekosso.com/2006/08/i_remember_in_m.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe: White Lies, Black Victims``x1154632234,40775,world``x``x ``xby Julie Masiga

KENYA

Just recently, the Ministry of Health announced a ban on smoking in public places, including among others, residential areas. Ignoring the contradiction, I do believe it's about time somebody regulated another area of public nuisance in the residential domain. Television commercials. And one genre of TV ad in particular, the kind that promises to 'restore the vibrant color of youth.' One commercial suggests that one way to brighten up your day is to lighten up your skin. Another claims that a certain skin-bleaching product has now been infused with Ayurvedic herbs, as if to say that ancient Indian medicine somehow places a stamp of approval on light as opposed to dark skin. As far as I know, the enlightenment sought by Asian gurus was a process of the mind not the pigment. Nevertheless, if we take our cue from the blatant advertisement of skin-bleaching products on the local market, we find that we live in a black African society that places a premium on light skin. Never mind that in 2001, the Kenya Bureau of Standards announced a Product Ban via a Public Notice that outlawed the sale of cosmetics that have a bleaching effect on skin. Anyone selling the banned products should face prosecution as prescribed under the Standards Act. The banned cosmetics, including among several others, Palmer's Skin Success Fade Cream, Cleartone, Venus, Black Opal and Clere, contained mercury, hydroquinone, oxidizing agents or hormonal preparations. These substances have been found to cause damage to the mouth, kidney, liver and even the brain. Ultimately, prolonged use can lead to death. However, a cursory glance at several supermarket shelves in the city revealed that all the products mentioned here are back on sale. Indeed, a few new members have joined the flock, for example, Naturally Fair, a product that lightens the skin through an 'oxygenation action', Fair & Lovely, which contains the ominous sounding 'titanium dioxide' and Fairever, which comes branded with a 'no hydroquinone, no mercury' label, presumably to boost consumer confidence in the bleaching industry. Obviously, the business is back with a bang. Not surprising, given that it is a multi-billion dollar industry that crosses continental divides.

And in keeping with international trends, here in Kenya the market for skin lightening agents has persisted. "You have to hold back the years," one woman says, "when I was young I would just wash my face and people would comment about brown I was. Nowadays, I need to use something to even out my skin." Here 'even out' is a euphemism for 'bleach', as is the word 'fair' when used by manufacturers. But from one woman who looks upon light skin as a barrier to the aging process, to a young girl who believes that it is a mark of beauty. Despite her chocolate brown good looks, Stella Mugendi is fully subscribed to the conventional standard of beauty, which dictates that light is right. "Guys don't notice you if you're dark, even if you're pretty," she says, "if I could make my skin lighter I would." And with some skin bleaching products retailing at as little as 10 shillings, she probably can. In fact, at that price, she is well within the group targeted by the local industry. To further illuminate this near obsession with light skin, are the comments from a former model who explains, "Men started looking for me from a very early age just because I am mixed and my skin is very light. They would say I looked like a mzungu."

On a similar note, recently I accompanied the reigning Miss Kenya, Cecelia Mwangi on a charity mission to the Kibera slum. Her beauty compliments her golden skin and not the other way round but regardless, she stood out like a beacon of light, one time attracting the passionate remark, "You are so beautiful!" from a passerby. But there are some who disagree with the light, lighter, lightest theology, well ostensibly anyway. Frida Maua, a female friend and colleague, has this to say; "I find brown people lying a lot. They look good from far but when they come closer they are not pretty. Dark people might not look good at first but when you get to know them you start seeing they are beautiful." Referring to the light skinned population, Lauryn Kazai says, "They think they are all that but they ought to imagine themselves dark, the mirror would even reject their faces." Sound familiar? I've been guilty of a similar sentiment myself, and such is the sentiment among many women, albeit mostly the darker skinned variety; women born into dark skin and therefore forced to live in it.

Much like closet romantics who masquerade as feminists, they are card carrying "black is beautiful" activists but wouldn't mind being a few shades lighter. As self-denigrating as that sounds, it's no wonder that many of us fantasize about being yellow yellow. Here's why; behind every aspiring yellow yellow there's a man who wants to see the light. According to Isaac Odida, a young man just starting out in the hospitality industry, "[Light girls] look flyer and you get a lot of respect from the boys...[light girls] get more attention." He qualifies that statement however by adding that, "But it doesn't really matter, I've been there done that and it's the same difference." Isaac's perspective suggests that light skinned girls are a kind of prize, a mark of achievement. You could draw a parallel with star athletes in the celebrity sports world, the kind who've made the money, gotten the fame and married the leggy blonde with the ample bosom. Steven Njoroge, a thirty something businessman, puts in his two cents worth, "Light skin is for play, dark skin is for life, besides I'm light myself, why would I want to settle with a light woman?" So as if it were not bad enough to objectify women as a species, it would now seem that light skinned girls have been singled out for unique objectification as a sub-species. We might all be Barbie dolls in the male play pen, but the lighter ones get to go out and get played first. For Ken Shipiri, a gentleman on the darker side of the color spectrum, "Light women are prettier and they look better in makeup...I'm dark myself, so I prefer light skinned women." Ken believes that if dark women bleached their skin, they would be more beautiful.

However some men don't bother to dress their preference for light skin in the garment of philosophy. I came across a light skin vs. dark skin debate on an African website. "The truth is that most guys prefer light skinned girls to darker ones whether we admit it or not. I don't know what to attribute it to but most guys are naturally attracted to fair skinned girls," said one man. And this from another male, "I must admit that I have a certain "thing" for yellow ladies just as all of us tend to prefer more beautiful ladies." And finally, one gentleman had this to say, "No man hates black skin, but I personally prefer white women to black women." The last commentator throws a spanner in the works because where the first two have what seems to be a purely cosmetic preference for 'yellow ladies', the last one doesn't mind dark skin; he simply prefers the white individual over the black individual.

The so called 'white man's burden' was to civilize the primitive and brutish African. In the post-slavery, post-colonial era, the black man bears the burden to 'un-civilize' his mind, removing the false notion that only white is right. In the late 1950's, John Howard Griffin, a white man in segregated America, darkened his skin and entered the world of the Negro in America's Deep South. He then published a novel titled Black Like Me in 1960 documenting his experience. In the novel, Griffin asks a 'fellow black man' what he would consider to be the biggest problem facing the race, the man had this to say; "We work against one another instead of together...you have to be almost a mulatto (mixed race and very fair skinned), have your hair conked and all slicked...then the Negro will look up to you." "[The white man] uses this knowledge to flatter some of us, to tell us we are above our people, not like most Negroes." This manipulation of a race has its roots in slavery, when light skinned blacks were 'house slaves' while the 'darkies' were put to work in the fields. The yellow yellows were considered good enough for the more gentile household tasks while the dark skinned slaves were relegated to the back breaking and menial kazi ya mkono. So the white man raised himself up as the standard of sugar and spice and all things nice. To be in good standing, black folk not only had to act white, but look white. Curly, natural hair was straightened, then short locks extended and ultimately, dark skin lightened.

In Kenya, being mixed race is an automatic stamp of beauty. So called point fives are considered aesthetically superior regardless of the symmetry of their features. We tend to describe beauty or lack thereof using skin colour as a focal point. I recall asking a friend about a girl he was seeing. In my opinion, they were totally incompatible, but among his several, thoroughly politically incorrect reasons for dating her was the fact that she was light, short and slim. Of course the height and weight issue opens up a whole other can of worms! But it would appear to me that we've already gotten enough flack for being black from external sources, it baffles the mind to think that we would subject ourselves to more abuse internally. The 'house slave' mentality has left an indelible stain on the black psyche. Colonialists used it to great success to divide and rule the African people. In Rwanda, they elevated the fair skinned Tutsi minority over the dark skinned Hutus. In Angola, it was the light skinned mesticos over the largely dark skinned population. Right here in Kenya it has been alleged that the Kikuyu can attribute their skin tone and entrepreneurial talents to the fact that many are of mixed heritage. But it is not only black people who struggle with their pigmentation. In India, pale skin is a sign of caste superiority while dark skin relegates a person to the lowest class of humanity. Similarly, in Latin America - refer to any 'Mexican' soap – the lighter skinned, fair-headed sorts are automatically upgraded to the higher echelons of society while those on the darker end of the spectrum are considered lowly and best suited to lives of servitude.

While the African predilection towards fair skin has historical undertones, our obsession with it as evidenced by the easy availability of skin bleaching products on the local market, is reinforced by current standards of beauty. We are surrounded by beautiful images and beauty tends to come in a light skinned package. From way back in the day, models on the covers of Viva and DRUM Magazines, and women featured in cosmetic commercials set the yellow standard. Nowadays it's the girls in the rap videos, the girl who gets the guy on TV and in the movies and the models on international catwalks where dark skin, like that of supermodel Alek Wek, is considered acceptable only insofar as it is an exotic novelty. We have readily and without question assimilated the "light is beautiful" ideal.

As the black man said in Black Like Me, "...you have to be almost a mulatto, then the Negro will look up to you...[then] you've got class. Isn't that a pitiful hero-type?" Indeed. The real issue ought not to be the color of your skin, but as one man put it, the color of your mind.

Our Trip to Kenya
``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Color Divide``x1155268822,5867,world``x``x ``xSkin tone more important than educational background for African Americans seeking jobs

Writer: Philip Lee Williams
Source: University of Georgia

Everyone knows about the insidious effects of racism in American society. But when it comes to the workplace, African-Americans may face a more complex situation--the effects of their own skin tone.

For the first time, a study indicates that dark-skinned African-Americans face a distinct disadvantage when applying for jobs, even if they have resumes superior to lighter-skinned black applicants.

Matthew Harrison, a doctoral student at the University of Georgia, presented his research today at the 66th annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Atlanta. Along with his faculty supervisor, Kecia Thomas, a professor of applied psychology and acting director of UGA's Institute for African American Studies, Harrison undertook the first significant study of "colorism" in the American workplace.

"The findings in this study are, tragically, not too surprising," said Harrison. "We found that a light-skinned black male can have only a bachelor's degree and typical work experience and still be preferred over a dark-skinned black male with an MBA and past managerial positions, simply because expectations of the light-skinned black male are much higher, and he doesn't appear as 'menacing' as the darker-skinned male applicant."

While there have been other studies of effects of colorism socially, this is the first study designed specifically to examine how it operates in hiring and in the workplace.

In America especially, Harrison says, when people think of race or race relations they commonly think of black and white. In fact, skin tone differences are responsible for increasing differences in perceptions within standard racially defined groups such as "blacks." This diversity within races based on skin complexion has a long history but only recently have researchers begun to understand what these differences can mean.

Participants in the study that Harrison, himself an African American, directed for his master's thesis included 240 undergraduate students at the University of Georgia, some of whom participated in the study voluntarily, while others got class credit for their involvement. While there were a disproportionate number of females in the study (72 percent), this was due to the high percentage of women majoring in psychology at UGA and was adjusted for in reporting the research.

Each student was asked to rate one of two resumes that came with one of three photographs of a theoretical job applicant (one man, one woman) whose skin color was either dark, medium or light. Harrison manipulated the skin tones of the applicants with Adobe Photoshop so facial characteristics could not be included in how the students rated the job applicants.

"Our results indicate that there appears to be a skin tone preference in regards to job selection," said Harrison. "This finding is possibly due to the common belief that fair-skinned blacks probably have more similarities with whites than do dark-skinned blacks, which in turn makes whites feel more comfortable around them."

Harrison refers in his paper to numerous studies that show that light skin is almost universally valued among all racial groups. Hierarchies based on light skin are prevalent in Hindu cultures in India, for example, and in Asian and Hispanic cultures as well.

"While the respondents in this study were University of Georgia students, we think we would find the same response no matter where such a study was done in the country," said Thomas. "When you consider that probably no more than 1 percent of industrial and organizational psychologists are black, you can see why a study like this just hasn't been done before regarding colorism in the workplace. There are real-world consequences to these issues."

Harrison said he was surprised that skin hue was even more important than education in evaluating job applicants.

"Given the increasing number of biracial and multiracial Americans, more research similar to this study should be performed so that Americans can become more aware of the prevalence of color bias in our society," he said. "The only way we are going to begin to combat some of the inequities that result due to the beliefs and ideologies that are associated with colorism is by becoming more aware of the prejudices we have regarding skin tone due to the images we are exposed to on a regular basis."

Society, he said, equates lighter skin with attractiveness, intelligence, competency and likeability, while we are often given a "much more dismal and bleak picture" of those who have darker skin.

"The more we challenge these images and our own belief systems," said Harrison, "the greater the likelihood we will judge an individual by his or her actual merit rather than skin tone."

###

The Academy of Management is a leading professional organization for scholars dedicated to creating and disseminating knowledge about management and organizations. Founded in 1936 by two professors, the AOM is the oldest and largest scholarly management association in the world. Today, the group has more than 16,000 members from 97 nations.

Reprinted from:
www.uga.edu/news/artman/publish/060815_SkinToneStudy.shtml``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xSkin tone more important than educational background for African Americans seeking jobs``x1155707797,39415,world``x``x ``xMatthew Harrison: I think that this study illustrates at that level of discrimination which Blacks receive varies depending on their skin tone

August 24, 2006

Leslie from AfricaSpeaks.com interviewed Mr. Matthew Harrison on Tuesday 22nd August, 2006 to get more insight into his research about colorism in the workplace.

Mr. Matthew Harrison, a PhD student at the University of Georgia in the field of Industrial Organizational Psychology, along with his faculty supervisor, Kecia Thomas, a professor of Applied Psychology and acting director of UGA's Institute for African American Studies, has zeroed in on the issue of colourism in the workplace. Mr. Harrison has determined in his research that colour discrimination caused people with lighter skin tones to get preferential treatment over those with darker skin tones in the areas of hiring and promotion in the work system. Such research, in this regard, is very useful in understanding the prospects of job applicants in the United States and indeed all over the world in getting employment and promotion based on the colour of their skins.

More detail of the information provided in the interview was presented at the 66th annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Atlanta and can also be seen in the release from the University of Georgia, "Skin tone more important than educational background for African Americans seeking jobs".

In the interview, Mr. Harrison provides critical views showing that the issue of colourism is a serious one and should be considered before the selection of workers in a work environment. He notes the fact that employers tend to select those of lighter tones before those of darker tones, even with equivalent or higher qualifications, which affects the darkest skin people the most and questions the principle of meritocracy in the workplace.

Mr. Harrison describes this and more in detail below.




TRANSCRIPT

LESLIE: What prompted you to do this research?

MR. HARRISON: Actually I had another research idea in mind but I came across a study when I was doing that Literature review that showed that gap in educational payment in such an economical status between light and dark-skinned Blacks is equivalent to the gap between Whites and Blacks in America and so, from the research that I have done in regards to diversity, power and privilege and so forth, I figured that there must be some type of system in America in place where lighter skinned Blacks must be privileged or preferred in order for that to be the case. I wanted to look at whether or not that was present in the workplace and if we live in a society where lighter skinned Blacks were afforded privileges even if they had the same qualifications as a darker skinned Black. That's how I got the idea.

LESLIE: What was the racial composition of the participants of the survey?

MR. HARRISON: 87.5% were White, 6.3% were Asians or Pacific Islanders, 5% were Black and 1.2% were other minorities.

LESLIE: What was the main objective of the survey?

MR. HARRISON: The main objective of the survey was to find out whether or not a lighter skinned Black applicant was better off in the job selection process. It ended up just being a surprising finding to see that, for the male conditions, that a dark-skinned male with an MBA would still receive significantly lower results than a light-skinned male with a bachelor's degree. I was a little bit surprised by that but I had definitely thought that if you had equivalent resumes that the lighter skinned Black would still receive more preferential ratings. That was the prime area. The purpose was just to look at if everything else was held constant. You have two Black individuals going into a job where all of their qualifications and everything were equivalent to one another and the lighter skinned Black would get the job over their darker skinned counterparts.

LESLIE: Are you aware of any other survey being done like this before?

MR. HARRISON: There have been studies on colorism before, but I, in my Literature review was not able to come across any surveys that had looked at the colorism implications in the workplace or looking at whether or not the whole light-skinned/dark-skinned issue allowed someone to be more likely to be selected or for him to be hirable, given a promotion or be paid more. Looking at it in the context of the working environment, I had not seen prior studies.

LESLIE: I noticed in the article about your research that the term colorism was used. I want to find out from you what is your definition of colorism?

MR. HARRISON: I feel that a lot of people define colorism as discriminating against one skin tone but they look at it as if having to be a within-group thing so that colorism can only exist when a Black person discriminates against another Black person because he or she is light or dark-skinned. I personally feel that colorism extends beyond that and I think that when we look at it as just a within group phenomenon, we limit its actual prevalence. A lot of people are saying that the study really isn't anything but a study on racism and I think that is completely not the truth. I think it is definitely colorism. We know that Whites discriminate against Blacks to a certain degree. But I think that this study illustrates at that level of discrimination which Blacks receive varies depending on their skin tone, and I think that if people extend the definition of colorism to be a between-group phenomenon and realize that it's not just Blacks who adhere to this preferential system of light-skinned being favoured and that even Whites do it towards Blacks as well, that we can begin to have a better understanding of it. I also think that given that Whites are the ones who seem to be privileged and the ones in power in American society, it's important to know that they had this preferential system in place because they are the ones who are making these selections, decisions and things to that nature, in different HR (Human Resource) departments in companies and so forth.

LESLIE: Given that, how would you describe or what is your definition of racism?

MR. HARRISON: Racism to me is discrimination against a race: anyone discriminating against someone because of their racial grouping; and I think colorism is someone discriminating or giving preferential treatment to one's skin tone.

LESLIE: What is the relationship if any, between racism and colorism in your view, given this?

MR. HARRISON: I guess the relationship would be that colorism, if you are looking at it as a between-group phenomenon, is a more detailed or specified version of racism. So racism exists, but I think to look at something as being solely racist and therefore assuming that if someone is racist that they hold the exact same views about an entire group of people, particularly about an ethnic minority group that has members whose skin tone vary, I think is incorrect. And so I think colorism gets at how even if someone is racist, they may very well treat members of that one racial group differently based on how their skin tone varies.

LESLIE: The reason why I asked that is because I am very aware that many people, when they hear "colorism" they leave out the aspect of racism. They think that colorism is devoid somehow of racism. Do you have any more comments or anything else you would like to ask?

MR. HARRISON: No, I do not think so.

LESLIE: What was the response after the survey that you conducted so far?

MR. HARRISON: Do you mean the responses that I have gotten from other individuals?

LESLIE: Yes.

MR. HARRISON: Most people are not terribly surprised by it. Most of the respondents I got emails from are a lot of individuals who are dark-skinned and have been like, "This is what I have been living the last ten to fifteen years of my professional career." They are appreciating that the study is getting publicity and hope that dialogue begins to come of it. For the most part people have been very supportive of it. I have had a few people who have questioned the whole lack of discussion of racism. I guess they are assuming that I am thinking that racism is non-existent, so I have had that questioned. But beyond that, most people have pretty much not really been terribly surprised by the results.

LESLIE: Why did you choose the workplace to conduct your study? Why did you select that area to try to find out more about colorism in the workplace and so on?

MR. HARRISON: Two reasons. I am a PhD student in the field of Industrial Organizational Psychology. What pretty much my field does is different things related to HR policies and procedures as well as a number of other things. We do executive coaching, relationship development, team building; things of that nature. But usually the research that I am primarily focused on and the research that I work with my Major professor on is in the area of workplace diversities. Anything dealing with the workplace and creating a more inclusive, diverse working environment are things that I am interested in, so that is the primary reason. The secondary reason would be, again from that study that I read about, "Economic and Educational disparity between light and dark-skinned Blacks." I figured that if that is the case, there must be disparities within the working environment and how one is preferred for these lighter skinned Blacks to be at a higher socio-economic status than their darker skinned co-workers.

LESLIE: After you conducted your survey and you got results and so on, did you make any recommendations, and if so, what were they?

MR. HARRISON: I did not make any recommendations simply because it was a student-being participant, so it's not really anything I could recommend in this instance; they are not really HR practitioners. I did see to it in my thesis report, in just talking about how because this does seem to be the case, organizations need to be a lot more cognizant of it, especially given the number of biracial and multiracial Americans and how more and more corporations in America have affirmative action policies and therefore hiring more minority workers and I think that they may unknowingly be hiring more light-skinned minority workers. HR departments in companies need to be more aware of this issue and a bit more cognizant of when they are hiring minorities that they think about it as this is something that they have been doing. I think in a lot of ways it is not extremely a conscious decision. I think a lot of times, with people's preferences, it's not something that we really think about - why is it that we prefer something over another - we just do. I think a lot of times these decisions are not made with a lot of thinking, especially in cases where two people are equivalent. It's like, "Oh, it's just something about him I like better," and they may not be able to put their finger on it. But I think maybe this study will raise their awareness as to what it is that they like and I think that it is that they have a different level of comfort around someone who is lighter because that person is ultimately or seems to be more similar to them than someone darker.

LESLIE: Thank you Mr. Harrison for taking the time to share your research with all of us.

Reprinted from:
www.africaspeaks.com/articles/2006/2408.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xMatthew Harrison Speaks on Colorism Research``x1156438346,72137,world``x``x ``xBy Hugo Chavez
Address to the UN New York: September 20, 2006

Madam President, Excellencies, Heads of State, Heads of government and other government's representatives, good morning.

First, and with all respect, I highly recommend this book by Noam Chomsky, one of the most prestigious intellectuals in America and the world, Chomsky. One of his most recent works: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project). [Waves the book in front of General Assembly.] It's an excellent work to understand what's happened in the world in the 20th Century, what's currently happening, and the greatest threat on this planet; the hegemonic pretension of the North American imperialism endangers the human race's survival.

We continue warning about this danger and calling on the very same U.S. people and the world to stop this threat, which resembles the Sword of Damocles over our heads. I had considered reading from this book, but for the sake of time, I shall just leave it as a recommendation. It reads easily. It's a very good book. I'm sure, Madam, you are familiar with it.

The book is in English, in Russian, in Arabic, in German.

I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States, because their threat is in their own house. The devil is right at home. The devil -- the devil, himself, is right in the house.

And the devil came here yesterday.

(APPLAUSE)

Yesterday, the devil came here. Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.

Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.

I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday's statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.

An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: "The Devil's Recipe."

As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.

The world parent's statement -- cynical, hypocritical, full of this imperial hypocrisy from the need they have to control everything.

They say they want to impose a democratic model. But that's their democratic model. It's the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that's imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.

What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize it or others who are at the root of democracy.

What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?

The president of the United States, yesterday, said to us, right here, in this room, and I'm quoting, "Anywhere you look, you hear extremists telling you can escape from poverty and recover your dignity through violence, terror and martyrdom."

Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother -- he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there's an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.

The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It's not that we are extremists. It's that the world is waking up. It's waking up all over. And people are standing up.

I have the feeling, dear world dictator, that you are going to live the rest of your days as a nightmare because the rest of us are standing up, all those who are rising up against American imperialism, who are shouting for equality, for respect, for the sovereignty of nations.

Yes, you can call us extremists, but we are rising up against the empire, against the model of domination.

The president then -- and this he said himself, he said: "I have come to speak directly to the populations in the Middle East, to tell them that my country wants peace."

That's true. If we walk in the streets of the Bronx, if we walk around New York, Washington, San Diego, in any city, San Antonio, San Francisco, and we ask individuals, the citizens of the United States, what does this country want? Does it want peace? They'll say yes.

But the government doesn't want peace. The government of the United States doesn't want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war.

It wants peace. But what's happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? In Palestine? What's happening? What's happened over the last 100 years in Latin America and in the world? And now threatening Venezuela -- new threats against Venezuela, against Iran?

He spoke to the people of Lebanon. Many of you, he said, have seen how your homes and communities were caught in the crossfire. How cynical can you get? What a capacity to lie shamefacedly.

The bombs in Beirut with millimetric precision? Is this crossfire?

He's thinking of a western, when people would shoot from the hip and somebody would be caught in the crossfire.

This is imperialist, fascist, assassin, genocidal, the empire and Israel firing on the people of Palestine and Lebanon. That is what happened. And now we hear, "We're suffering because we see homes destroyed.'

The president of the United States came to talk to the peoples -- to the peoples of the world. He came to say -- I brought some documents with me, because this morning I was reading some statements, and I see that he talked to the people of Afghanistan, the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran. And he addressed all these peoples directly.

And you can wonder, just as the president of the United States addresses those peoples of the world, what would those peoples of the world tell him if they were given the floor? What would they have to say?

And I think I have some inkling of what the peoples of the south, the oppressed people think. They would say, "Yankee imperialist, go home." I think that is what those people would say if they were given the microphone and if they could speak with one voice to the American imperialists.

And that is why, Madam President, my colleagues, my friends, last year we came here to this same hall as we have been doing for the past eight years, and we said something that has now been confirmed -- fully, fully confirmed.

I don't think anybody in this room could defend the system. Let's accept -- let's be honest. The U.N. system, born after the Second World War, collapsed. It's worthless.

Oh, yes, it's good to bring us together once a year, see each other, make statements and prepare all kinds of long documents, and listen to good speeches, like Evo's yesterday, or President Lula's. Yes, it's good for that.

And there are a lot of speeches, and we've heard lots from the president of Sri Lanka, for instance, and the president of Chile.

But we, the assembly, have been turned into a merely deliberative organ. We have no power, no power to make any impact on the terrible situation in the world. And that is why Venezuela once again proposes, here, today, September 20th, that we re-establish the United Nations.

Last year, Madam, we made four modest proposals that we felt to be crucially important. We have to assume the responsibility, our heads of state, our ambassadors, our representatives, and we have to discuss it.

The first is expansion, and Lula talked about this yesterday right here: The Security Council’s expansion, both regarding its permanent and non-permanent categories. New developed and developing countries, the Third World, must be given access as new permanent members. That's step one.

Second, effective methods to address and resolve world conflicts, transparent decisions.

Point three, the immediate suppression -- and that is something everyone's calling for -- of the anti-democratic mechanism known as the veto, the veto on decisions of the Security Council.

Let me give you a recent example. The immoral veto of the United States allowed the Israelis, with impunity, to destroy Lebanon. Right in front of all of us as we stood there watching, a resolution in the council was prevented.

Fourthly, we have to strengthen, as we've always said, the role and the powers of the secretary general of the United Nations.

Yesterday, the secretary general practically gave us his speech of farewell. And he recognized that over the last 10 years, things have just gotten more complicated; hunger, poverty, violence, human rights violations have just worsened. That is the tremendous consequence of the collapse of the United Nations system and American hegemonistic pretensions.

Madam, Venezuela a few years ago decided to wage this battle within the United Nations by recognizing the United Nations, as members of it that we are, and lending it our voice, our thinking.

Our voice is an independent voice to represent the dignity and the search for peace and the reformulation of the international system; to denounce persecution and aggression of hegemonistic forces on the planet.

This is how Venezuela has presented itself. Bolivar's home has sought a nonpermanent seat on the Security Council.

Let's see. Well, there's been an open attack by the U.S. government, an immoral attack, to try and prevent Venezuela from being freely elected to a post in the Security Council.

The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but they are the extremists.

And I would like to thank all the countries that have kindly announced their support for Venezuela, even though the ballot is a secret one and there's no need to announce things.

But since the imperium has attacked, openly, they strengthened the convictions of many countries. And their support strengthens us.

Mercosur, as a bloc, has expressed its support, our brothers in Mercosur. Venezuela, with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, is a full member of Mercosur.

And many other Latin American countries, CARICOM, Bolivia have expressed their support for Venezuela. The Arab League, the full Arab League has voiced its support. And I am immensely grateful to the Arab world, to our Arab brothers, our Caribbean brothers, the African Union. Almost all of Africa has expressed its support for Venezuela and countries such as Russia or China and many others.

I thank you all warmly on behalf of Venezuela, on behalf of our people, and on behalf of the truth, because Venezuela, with a seat on the Security Council, will be expressing not only Venezuela's thoughts, but it will also be the voice of all the peoples of the world, and we will defend dignity and truth.

Over and above all of this, Madam President, I think there are reasons to be optimistic. A poet would have said "helplessly optimistic," because over and above the wars and the bombs and the aggressive and the preventive war and the destruction of entire peoples, one can see that a new era is dawning.

As Silvio Rodriguez says, the era is giving birth to a heart. There are alternative ways of thinking. There are young people who think differently. And this has already been seen within the space of a mere decade. It was shown that the end of history was a totally false assumption, and the same was shown about Pax Americana and the establishment of the capitalist neo-liberal world. It has been shown, this system, to generate mere poverty. Who believes in it now?

What we now have to do is define the future of the world. Dawn is breaking out all over. You can see it in Africa and Europe and Latin America and Oceania. I want to emphasize that optimistic vision.

We have to strengthen ourselves, our will to do battle, our awareness. We have to build a new and better world.

Venezuela joins that struggle, and that's why we are threatened. The U.S. has already planned, financed and set in motion a coup in Venezuela, and it continues to support coup attempts in Venezuela and elsewhere.

President Michelle Bachelet reminded us just a moment ago of the horrendous assassination of the former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier.

And I would just add one thing: Those who perpetrated this crime are free. And that other event where an American citizen also died were American themselves. They were CIA killers, terrorists.

And we must recall in this room that in just a few days there will be another anniversary. Thirty years will have passed from this other horrendous terrorist attack on the Cuban plane, where 73 innocents, in a Cubana de Aviacion airliner, died.

And where is the biggest terrorist of this continent who took the responsibility for blowing up the plane? He spent a few years in jail in Venezuela. Thanks to CIA and then government officials, he was allowed to escape, and he lives here in this country, protected by the government.

And he was convicted. He has confessed to his crime. But the U.S. government has double standards. It protects terrorism when it wants to.

And this is to say that Venezuela is fully committed to combating terrorism and violence. And we are one of the people who are fighting for peace.

Luis Posada Carriles is the name of that terrorist who is protected here. And other tremendously corrupt people who escaped from Venezuela are also living here under protection: a group that bombed various embassies, that assassinated people during the coup. They kidnapped me and they were going to kill me, but I think God reached down and our people came out into the streets and the army was too, and so I'm here today.

But these people who led that coup are here today in this country protected by the American government. And I accuse the American government of protecting terrorists and of having a completely cynical discourse.

We mentioned Cuba. Yes, we were just there a few days ago. We just came from there happily.

And there you see another era born. The Summit of the 15, the Summit of the Nonaligned, adopted a historic resolution. This is the outcome document. Don't worry, I'm not going to read it.

But you have a whole set of resolutions here that were adopted after open debate in a transparent matter -- more than 50 heads of state. Havana was the capital of the south for a few weeks, and we have now launched, once again, the group of the nonaligned with new momentum.

And if there is anything I could ask all of you here, my companions, my brothers and sisters, it is to please lend your good will to lend momentum to the Nonaligned Movement for the birth of the new era, to prevent hegemony and prevent further advances of imperialism.

And as you know, Fidel Castro is the president of the nonaligned for the next three years, and we can trust him to lead the charge very efficiently.

Unfortunately they thought, "Oh, Fidel was going to die." But they're going to be disappointed because he didn't. And he's not only alive, he's back in his green fatigues, and he's now presiding the nonaligned.

So, my dear colleagues, Madam President, a new, strong movement has been born, a movement of the south. We are men and women of the south.

With this document, with these ideas, with these criticisms, I'm now closing my file. I'm taking the book with me. And, don't forget, I'm recommending it very warmly and very humbly to all of you.

We want ideas to save our planet, to save the planet from the imperialist threat. And hopefully in this very century, in not too long a time, we will see this, we will see this new era, and for our children and our grandchildren a world of peace based on the fundamental principles of the United Nations, but a renewed United Nations.

And maybe we have to change location. Maybe we have to put the United Nations somewhere else; maybe a city of the south. We've proposed Venezuela.

You know that my personal doctor had to stay in the plane. The chief of security had to be left in a locked plane. Neither of these gentlemen was allowed to arrive and attend the U.N. meeting. This is another abuse and another abuse of power on the part of the Devil. It smells of sulfur here, but God is with us and I embrace you all.

May God bless us all. Good day to you.

[FOLLOWING THIS SPEECH, PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ RECEIVED A FIVE MINUTES STANDING OVATION.]``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xHugo Chavez's Address to the United Nations``x1158840841,71713,world``x``x ``xA Step Towards the African Revolution

By Leslie
October 05, 2006

LeslieThe session at the last Moonlight Gathering in September was highly profound and without a doubt, edifying and interesting. Usually, after a period of song, poetry, drumming and other chosen activities, the group at the Moonlight Gathering would engage an issue; any issue that we feel worth discussing and for whatever reasons. However, the last gathering was the first time that the discussion was so heated; so much so, that some chose to 'stay out of the kitchen'.

The issue discussed was the controversial topic, colourism. This subject had never been talked about so openly at the gathering before and some were stunned that it would have ever been brought up. Members of the gathering were knocked out of their positions of comfort and were forced to come to terms with this issue; at least those who were courageous enough to stay within the circle to discuss it. Seeing that many were largely unfamiliar with the term and issues surrounding colourism, I attempted to briefly explain it as I would do now. The word colourism is a recent term that has entered into our vocabulary which has arisen in an attempt to address the deeper complex of race discrimination which is a critical and largely unaddressed aspect of racism.

Colourism is an offshoot or a product of racism and is intricately linked with it. It is a form of discrimination which occurs worldwide and is based on the colour or shade of one's skin and how close or far away it is from the perceived white ideal. It is distinguished by how lighter skin tones are preferred, and darker skin tones are considered to be less desirable. This is a problem within all communities: The Indian community, the Chinese community, the Hispanic community, the Japanese community, the Native American community, the Arab community, the African community and yes, even within the white community. However, because the blonde hair, blue eyed, thin, tall female/male is the accepted aesthetic ideal and the Black, fat, short woman/man is considered unattractive and ugly, it is those within the African community that face the brunt of colourism. This is especially so for the darkest, most kinky haired, flat nose, thick lipped, fattest, shortest African woman who suffers on all levels in this system that one individual in the last gathering wrongly described as "meritocratic".

Some feel that when we talk about colourism that we are diminishing the potency of the word racism. I would disagree whole-heartedly because this word forces us to deal with the intricacies of racism. Now, don't get me wrong, colourism is in no way devoid of racism as some would like to believe but it helps in dissecting the deepest layers of the beast which would normally be overlooked by just labeling it all as "racism". Some believe that colourism is simply a form of Black on Black racism where Blacks discriminate against others based on their skin tone. This is not totally the truth because other races deal with Blacks based on their skin tone as well and do show preference for lighter-skinned individuals within the Black group.

Colourism affects every aspect of society and at all levels: the home, the school, relationships between that of mother/father, brother/sister, friends, husband/wife, boss/employee and the work place which was a factor developed by PhD student at the University of Georgia, Mr. Michael Harrison, in his study on how colourism affects the workplace. To quote him,

"You have two Black individuals going into a job where all of their qualifications and everything were equivalent to one another and the lighter skinned Black would get the job over their darker skinned counterparts."

Even the so-called African revolutionaries within Black organizations treat Blacks based on their colour. People have a tendency of selecting their leaders and members of the upper hierarchy of these organizations based on how close they are to whiteness. Not taking away from the contributions of these individuals, we see examples of this in leaders such as Huey Newton of the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass, Elijah Muhammad, Booker T. Washington and others. Even when there are examples of Black African leadership, who are usually males, you are almost sure to find them with light-skinned women at their sides as if the true Black African Queens are not worthy of standing at their sides. Eldridge Cleaver, Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Martin Luther King Jr. and even within organizations in Trinidad and Tobago such as the Emancipation Support Committee and the National Joint Action Committee are clear examples of this.

At the last gathering, someone mentioned W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey in the same sentence arguing that the economic betterment of Black people was critical to the Black revolution. "Marcus Garvey say so…" the gentleman stressed. But he forgot that Marcus Garvey was despised and his message dismissed by other so-called Blacks and Black leadership all over the world. He too was a victim of colourism and size discrimination. The well loved Du Bois even had this to say about Garvey in an article in "The Crisis" which echoed the general attitude towards dark-skinned Blacks at the time and even now, "[Garvey] suffered from serious defects of temperament and training" and went on to describe him as "… a little, fat, black man, ugly...with a big head." Apparently Garvey was too Black to lead a "Black" movement. So stating that we need to gain control of the economy or whatever still does nothing to change the inherent and disgusting attitudes prevalent even within the Black community and these must be addressed if not before, concomitant with these other issues.
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/peopleevents/p_dubois.html

As a matter of fact and although few like to admit it, there have existed many so-called 'Black' organizations such as "The Blue Vein Society" which discriminated against Blacks on the basis of their hue. Unless blue veins were visible through clear skins, persons were denied entry into such societies. 'Brown bag parties' which disallowed entry of persons darker than the brown paper bag were also very popular in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, as one writer pointed out, this type of practice was more common than one thought. The unnamed writer went on to explain, "Even before then, in the 1920s, "color-tax" parties were another means for alienating blacks. At these parties, men would have to pay a tax on the scale of how dark their dates were, the darker the date, the higher the tax." These attitudes continue to live on today and people, whether they are cognizant of it or not, discriminate and treat each other differently based on the colour of their skins. It is also clear, even today, that light skin is preferable; even our heroes seem more heroic when they are lighter skinned.
http://students.ou.edu/M/Craig.A.Marroquin-1/colorism.html

Now I have met many people within and outside the bounds of the university (UWI) who claim to be revolutionaries/non-conformists or wish for a total or partial overthrow of the system. [Cool.] They talk of economic reformism, change in the political system and even a revamp or the creation of Black based movements to deal with the ills of the system. However, whenever the topic of addressing colourism comes up people tend to back away from the discussions or if involved, distort or distract from the discussions. Some, especially the lighter-skinned individuals tend to personalize the discussions and act as victims of separatism while their darker skinned friends try their best to "tone-down" these discussions to protect the egos of their light-skinned friends. They have accepted the notions of their inferiority and seem afraid to challenge the status quo with the hope that they too would one day ascend the rungs of socio-economic privilege or rather descend into the pit of lies and deception where most are happy to dwell. The funny thing about this is that they deny the truth and their own experiences so as to appease their fellow light-Black friends. Ask them, "When you and your girls/ boys were discussing good looking Black males and females in the entertainment industry, who'd be your pick?" I am certain without any doubt, (because I too engaged in these discussions) Halle Berry, Vanessa Williams, Jada Pinkett, Aaliyah, Shante Moore, Beyonce, Mariah Carey, Rhianna, Tyra Banks, Janet Jackson, Allison Hinds, Alicia Keys, that light skin dude on Soul food, Shemar Moore, and the list goes on. But the question was asked about Black entertainers and so far no dark-skinned Blacks were mentioned. Then they might say, "Whitney Houston with her polished features , Erykah Badu because of her light eyes and maybe Lauryn Hill." They, would even, without proper consideration, boast of their support of media such as BET, MTV, Synergy TV, Tempo, Essence magazine etc. which promote light-skinned people and not dark-skinned Blacks as symbols of beauty, power and leadership.

Some even state boldly that they prefer a lighter skinned or white or non African male or female because they don't want their children to have nappy hair or dark skin or that they could possibly have blue or green or even hazel brown eyes or other fantastical expectations. Some, particularly the females, are not afraid to hide their self-loathe and straighten their hair, add hair extensions, dye their hair (especially blonde) which is the 'in thing' now, grow fashion dreads for the long hair look, bleach their skins, wear colored contact lenses, utilize make up tricks to appear lighter or whiter - take the makeup Oprah Winfrey wears, for example - diet to gain the 'ideal' figure and so much more. Some, like their Asian counterparts, stay indoors and wear long sleeved shirts to avoid the sun; use skin lightening creams just as those in India and Japan do; or like those in China, surgically remove the slant in their eyes to appear less Asian and more European; or like the Jewish and Arab folk remove the characteristic hump from their noses. Members of the Black race who support these actions are enemies of the revolution because their actions also contribute to the genocide of the African race. And the term genocide is quite accurate and legitimate even though many cowards claim that it is too harsh. It is what it is and I refuse to use the language of the conformists and the assimilationists who are insensitive to the urgency of Black Africans addressing their issues.

It is evident therefore, that they too have bought into the system. And if they don't deal with the issue of colourism then it is further proof that it is not a revolution that they want but merely a chance to assimilate into the same corrupt, white, male-dominated capitalist system that oppressed them and continues to oppress them.

I think that some people come here (to the Moonlight Gathering) and expect some type of 'hippie' get-together. If that is the trend that some of you wish to follow, you are free to do so - without my involvement of course. But those who are serious about change for the better must examine their conduct and demonstrate courageousness and deal with the issues that affect us frankly and honestly. Putting the issue of colourism on the backburner wouldn't work either because of the very reason that we deal with each other, even here, based on skin colour biases. Those who are most affected must step up and demand that these issues are discussed. Others should respect our rights and allow us space to work out these issues.

The time for a world-wide revolution is now and it begins with the African revolution. Without first addressing colourism it is impossible to fight racism and without tackling racism then we are nothing but conformists and supporters of the system.

www.africaspeaks.com/leslie/051006.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xDealing with Colourism``x1160134870,73120,views``x``x ``xby Ras Tyehimba
October 17, 2006

Recently, I read in the media of the incident involving Anita Lutchmepersad, who was forced to leave her home because of the threatening abuses of a 'close male relative'. After she left, he burnt down the house and drank detergent in an apparent suicide bid. According to one newspaper report, the male relative had seen a text message from one of Anita's co-workers and misinterpreted it, getting in to a fit of rage. Another newspaper report told of Devica Mahabir who survived being poisoned, beaten and burned but was left horribly disfigured by her husband who killed himself after murdering her lover. What are the factors at play in such scenarios? How do so many relationships which SEEM to start off so good and which are supposedly based on 'love' be filled with so much mistrust, pain and abuse?

Such incidents of jealousy, insecurity and abuse (verbal and/or physical abuse) with the context of intimate male/female relations are common place, although only from time to time does it reach to such proportions as to reach the attention of the media. This is usually when someone gets killed or badly physically damaged. Often abuse is conceptualized in terms of physical abuse, but many times abuse in relationships may not be physical but will be verbal and/or emotional. This abuse is no less damaging than outright physical abuse. The many cases of persons who experienced so much trauma and pain from the circumstances of their intimate relationships that they had to seek psychological or psychiatric help are less heard about.

Notwithstanding the ignorance and complicity of offending partners, the deep and persistent problems that people encounter in the context of intimate relationships can be traced to poor ideas and attitudes, and while these may provide temporary 'feel-good' feelings, the end result is enslavement, rather that FREEDOM and UPLIFTMENT.

Despite the good intentions of partners, insecurity, jealousy and enslaving possessiveness are inherent in the mainstream model of male/female relations. “You are mine and I am yours,” as the saying goes. Placing one person at the center of one's universe, and depending on that person to supply attention and bring happiness is not a healthy thing to do. If that person decides to leave or pursue an intimate relationship with another, then the blow of having the 'center of your universe' gone is enough to send one in a fit of jealousy or cause a nervous mental breakdown. Just the very threat of a break-up can do this.

All the good intentions or pronouncements of 'love' cannot make the ill effects of such flaws in the way people conceptualize relations disappear. The dramas and issues that have not been worked out by the individual will inevitably block him or her from being able to move properly with their partner. The disconnection that individuals suffer because of poor social conditioning will affect the nature of their relationships.

Many of the love songs that play on the airwaves contain sentiments such as 'you are the light of my day' or 'without you I can't go on' or 'I cannot live without you'. Following from this type of thinking, a male may kill his spouse (and himself) if he suspects she is having an affair or is wishing to leave the relationship, all because, in his mind, he cannot live without her.

How people construct relationships are a result of the attitudes and values that they learn and are taught. The basis of which people generally interact with each other in the context of male/female relations is more on the basis of this social conditioning rather than on reasoning or understanding of some truth. Nor is the mainstream model for male/female interaction the only way persons can interact, rather it is the only way most people have been accustomed to behaving in their existence. The male Eurocentric biases that are inherent in social institutions and processes are also very present in the values that underlie how males and females interact with each another.

As such, male/female relations are often very patriarchal in nature. In other words, male domination is very present, especially in terms of the ideas and values inherent in relationships. Males are generally expected to take the lead and dictate the pace of the relationship. For many persons, the male is automatically the head of the household, regardless of how foolish and ignorant he is. The male takes satisfaction in possessing and controlling his partner and conversely the female gets satisfaction at being possessed by her mate. The nature of this possession may range from being overt in some cases to be being very subtle in others. Since the relationship has a strong male bias, females receive the brunt of the poor ideas and values underlying the interaction, even though males will themselves be trapped by such.

Quite often the female will be bound more strongly to the expectations and desires of her partner than he will be bound by her expectations. For example, I have observed instances where males generally expect their partners to tell them where they are going, who they are going with etc., but those same males are not required to tell their females partners where they are going or who they are going with. Such is the nature of male hypocrisy within a society based on male constructs.

Recently, I got into a discussion with a friend of mine, who related that she had always wondered why females in abusive relationships do not just leave, but it was only when she got involved in an abusive relationship herself that she gained a greater insight into the emotional and psychological issues involved in such scenarios. After some time and after really digging into her inner strength did she find the courage to end the relationship. It would have been harder still, if she had had children with the male, was financially dependent on him or had their relationship institutionalized through legal marriage.

The emotional ties are highlighted in the experiences of one female who experienced physical abuse at the hands of her husband on a number of separate occasions. After each incident he apologized and made it up to her by doing such things as taking her out to dinner and buying flowers. Although she is still very unhappy with such incidents, she hopes that the relationship will get better. After all, they have been together for 5 years and he promised to never hit her again. She spoke with such hope and belief in the relationship working out that I did not have the heart to tell her that it is likely that he will hit her again. If the root cause of such behavior is not addressed, it will manifest eventually, even if it is suppressed temporarily.

Many feel stifled and unhappy within the context of their relationships but stay in it for a number of reasons. Some may have a financial interest in continuing the relationship, have a biological interest (a child) or may be afraid of navigating life's challenges without an intimate partner close by. Insecurities about one's own self-worth and attractiveness by both parties give rise to unhealthy relationships, and even make it harder to leave such relationships. The longer the duration of an unhealthy relationship, the more a person is compromised and the harder it is to break free.

There has been some limited exploration of how the processes of history has affected our social and economic development, but there has been even less attention paid to how the circumstances of history have affected how males and females relate to each other. The lack of understanding as well as the denial of history has contributed to the self-weakening relationships that many find themselves in. On top of this are the poor evaluations, which people make in choosing intimate partners, which are responsible for their problems. People's biases in choosing partners inevitably reflect the biases seen in the wider society, so it is no surprise that these choices, which are not based upon the character and integrity of the individual do not lead to happiness. Addressing all these factors can give individuals, both males and females, the courage and opportunity to break free of conditioned male arrogance as well as their deep insecurities, reaching a greater level of understanding and confidence that is needed to form healthier relationships.

Reprinted from:
www.rastaspeaks.com/tyehimba/2006/171006.html``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xMale Arrogance, Abuse and Intimate Relationships``x1161220506,69445,views``x``x ``x
Saddam Hussein was executed by the U.S government

Remember that this execution was carried out by a U.S. installed government in Iraq while the U.S. is also occupying Iraq. The U.S. illegally invaded Iraq and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Simply put, Saddam Hussein was executed by the U.S. government no matter how they try to spin it.

--Ayinde

¤ Saddam was Right and Bush was Wrong

Flashback NO PROOF SADDAM GASSED THE KURDS!

¤ Where Were the Mass Graves?

¤ Executing Saddam, Protecting the Rackets

¤ Official Lies, Dogma and Unaccountable Power
¤ At the End of My Rope

¤ Saddam at the End of a Rope
It was symbolic that 2006 ended with a colonial hanging--- most of it (bar the last moments) shown on state television in occupied Iraq. It has been that sort of year in the Arab world. After a trial so blatantly rigged that even Human Rights Watch---the largest single unit of the US Human Rights industry--- had to condemn it as a total travesty. Judges were changed on Washington's orders; defense lawyers were killed and the whole procedure resembled a well-orchestrated lynch mob. Where Nuremberg was a more dignified application of victor's justice, Saddam's trial has, till now, been the crudest and most grotesque. The Great Thinker President's reference to it 'as a milestone on the road to Iraqi democracy' as clear an indication as any that Washington pressed the trigger.

¤ A Nation Soaked in Blood Tears Itself Apart
¤ Storm Rages Over Trial, Sentence

¤ Bush Lies Again After Saddam Executed
Saddam Hussein had barely stopped dangling when George W. Bush revved up the lie machine.
His idea of justice is "rough justice" or "frontier justice" or "the King's justice," whereby if he calls it justice, it is justice. If he deems it a fair trial, it is a fair trial.

"Today, Saddam Hussein was executed after receiving a fair trial," he said in the very first sentence of his rushed statement, a claim Bush repeated, in case you missed it, in his second sentence and then again in his third.

But Bush, as powerful as he is, does not make a trial fair by declaring it fair.

¤ So Long to 'Our' Tyrant
¤ Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein

Seven New Orleans officers indicted in post-Katrina killings

Iraq poll: U.S. troops departure is asset
BAGHDAD, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- About 90 percent of Iraqis feel the situation in the country was better before the U.S.-led invasion than it is today, according to a new ICRSS poll.

Top Ten Ways the US Enabled Saddam Hussein
The tendency to treat Saddam and Iraq in a historical vacuum, and in isolation from the superpowers, however, has hidden from Americans their own culpability in the horror show that has been Iraq for the past few decades. Initially, the US used the Baath Party as a nationalist foil to the Communists. Then Washington used it against Iran. The welfare of Iraqis themselves appears to have been on no one's mind, either in Washington or in Baghdad.

Hanging Saddam
The execution of Saddam Hussein is another grim chapter in the catalogue of war crimes perpetrated against the Iraqi people. It is a gratuitous act of barbarism devoid of justice.

Bombings Kill at Least 68 in Iraq
Bombings killed at least 68 people in Iraq on Saturday, including one planted on a minibus that exploded in a fish market in a mostly Shiite town south of Baghdad.

BBC - Saddam Hussein executed in Iraq (with Iraqi TV images)

Saddam Hussein 'executed in Iraq'
Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been executed by hanging at an unspecified location, reports say. Iraqi TV said the execution took place just before 0600 local time (0300GMT). It was witnessed by a doctor, lawyer and officials. It was also filmed.
Full Article : news.bbc.co.uk

Reports: Saddam Executed in Baghdad
Some Arab media, including Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya and the U.S.- financed Al-Hurrah, reported about an hour before daylight Saturday (about 10 p.m. EST Friday) that Saddam had been executed. There was no confirmation from the Iraqi government.
Full Article : breitbart.com

Saddam Hussein hanged, says Al Hurra TV station
U.S.-backed Iraqi television station Al Hurra said Saddam Hussein had been executed by hanging shortly before 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Saturday.
Full Article : news.yahoo.com

Saddam Hussein was hanged just before 10 p.m. EST.
Full Article : talkingpointsmemo.com

It's a hornet's nest. But I'm game. So why not jump in.
"Bush administration officials" are telling CNN that Saddam Hussein will be hanged this weekend. Convention dictates that we precede any discussion of this execution with the obligatory nod to Saddam's treachery, bloodthirsty rule and tyranny. But enough of the cowardly chatter. This thing is a sham, of a piece with the whole corrupt, disastrous sham that the war and occupation have been. Bush administration officials are the ones who leak the news about the time of the execution. One key reason we know Saddam's about to be executed is that he's about to be transferred from US to Iraqi custody, which tells you a lot. And, of course, the verdict in his trial gets timed to coincide with the US elections.
Full Article : talkingpointsmemo.com

Robert Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by America
But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime ministers - what about the other guilty men?
Full Article : independent.co.uk


Arab haj pilgrims outraged at Saddam execution

Taliban says Saddam's execution to intensify jihad

The Execution of Saddam Hussein
The execution of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein serves not justice, but the political purposes of the Bush administration and its Iraqi stooges. The manner in which the execution was carried out—hurriedly, secretively, in the dark of night, in a mockery of any semblance of legal process--only underscores the lawless and reactionary character of the entire American enterprise in Iraq.
Full Article : trinicenter.com

Saddam Hussein's execution: Your views``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Execution of Saddam Hussein``x1167451222,67106,world``x``x ``xRemember that this execution (assassination) of Saddam Hussein was carried out by the U.S. installed government in Iraq while the U.S. is illegally occupying Iraq. The U.S. had physical control of Saddam up until the time of his execution and transported the body after wards. Simply put, Saddam Hussein was executed by the U.S. government. It is also important to remember that the U.S. illegally invaded Iraq and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. --Ayinde

On the Gallows, Saddam Curses U.S. and 'Traitors'
By Marc Santora, NY Times
BAGHDAD, Dec. 30 — Saddam Hussein never bowed his head, until his neck snapped. His last words were equally defiant. "Down with the traitors, the Americans, the spies and the Persians."

Robert Fisk: He takes his secrets to the grave.
Our complicity dies with him
How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal
We've shut him up. The moment Saddam's hooded executioner pulled the lever of the trapdoor in Baghdad yesterday morning, Washington's secrets were safe. The shameless, outrageous, covert military support which the United States - and Britain - gave to Saddam for more than a decade remains the one terrible story which our presidents and prime ministers do not want the world to remember. And now Saddam, who knew the full extent of that Western support - given to him while he was perpetrating some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War - is dead.

Robert Parry: Bush Silences a Dangerous Witness
Like a blue-blood version of a Mob family with global reach, the Bushes have eliminated one more key witness to the important historical events that led the U.S. military into a bloody stalemate in Iraq and pushed the Middle East to the brink of calamity.

Hold these grotesque executioners to account
Stop all the clocks. He is dead. Saddam Hussein had a rather good death, and dictators shouldn't have good deaths. He went to the gallows in dignity, holding the Koran, urging reconciliation, his head uncovered amid his captors' balaclavas. The grotesque exercise turned a brutal tyrant into something like a martyr, a victim of a victor's justice. After what Human Rights Watch called a "trial by ambush", because of the conduct of the defence and the rush to judgment, the execution was overhasty too, as if his captors felt they had to dispatch him before 2006 was out. Was this intended as a kind of new year message from George W Bush? For Auld Lang Syne?

Saddam told them to 'go to hell'
"Executions are generally expected to be solemn affairs –- certainly not opportunities for thugs to score some final sectarian points before the "enemy" is disposed of. The video itself seems quite distasteful –- but it is informative to the extent that it reveals the political baggage that the current government carries on its shoulders. It does not add up to a pretty picture."

Press fears over Saddam execution
Arab commentators are angry about the timing of the execution on one of the holiest days of the Muslim calendar. Some argue Washington rather than Baghdad dictated the timing and ask why Americans have not been brought to justice for all the Iraqis killed since the 2003 invasion.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xOn the Gallows, Saddam Curses U.S. and 'Traitors'``x1167537622,41917,world``x``x ``xIraq govt to probe filming of Saddam hanging
The Iraqi government launched an inquiry on Monday into how guards filmed and taunted Saddam Hussein on the gallows, turning his execution into a televised spectacle that has inflamed sectarian anger.
Full Article : khaleejtimes.com

These Lying Brutes: The U.S. with the U.S. installed Iraqi puppet government wanted the execution "unofficially" filmed and released publicly with the intent to show Saddam being humiliated then killed. No one could have been "inside" with a camera phone without authorization. The plan could have been to release the camera phone footage, and if it backfired then to claim that it was unauthorized and they would "launch an investigation".

In the short term the Bushes got what they wanted out of this exhibition (one less major witness to U.S.'s crimes against humanity), while the Iraqis would be more fragmented over the humiliation and killing of Saddam, with the added twist of it occurring on the holiest day (Eid al-Adha that marked the end of the annual Hajj pilgrimage) of the Muslim year.

The spectacle of the hanging backfired and now we will see the fall guys. - Ayinde

How one mobile phone made Saddam's hanging a very public execution
Those close to him said he had wanted to die with dignity. Within a day, a million people had seen an illicit film of his last moments``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xSaddam's very public execution``x1167624022,41327,world``x``x ``xUS Seeks to Prevent Escape of al-Qaida Figures From Somalia
The United States said Wednesday it is patrolling Somalia's coast and consulting with its neighbors to try to prevent the escape of terrorist suspects after Ethiopia's military rout of Islamist militias there. A top State Department official is in Addis Ababa to discuss the Somali situation. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.
Full Article : voanews.com

This is the usual dishonest propaganda. At no time did the U.S. or Ethiopia state emphatically or offer any evidence that the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) was harboring terrorists. The talk of "terrorists" in Somalia is an attempt to justify the invasion while instilling fear in the gullible. - Ayinde

America Changes Tactics As It Guards Interests in Somalia
"Under fire at home for costly military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US government has managed to achieve a major policy goal in strategic Somalia without firing a shot - thanks to Ethiopia."
"Washington encouraged Addis Ababa to go ahead. They provided the same sort of diplomatic cover they did for Israel going into Lebanon last summer, and for similar reasons - to keep a foothold in the region," said analyst Michael Weinstein."
Full Article : allafrica.com

America's interests in Somalia:
Four major U.S. oil companies are sitting on a prospective fortune in exclusive concessions.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAmerica's interests in Somalia``x1167796822,21567,world``x``x ``xReturn of the Warlords

By Amina Mire, counterpunch.org
January 03, 2007

Somaliyaay toosoo
Toosoo isku tiirsada ee
Hadba kiina taag daranee
Taageera waligiinee.

(Somalia wake up,
wake up and join hands together
and we must help the weakest of our people
all of the time.)

--Somali national anthem.

For the average western person, the current Ethiopian invasion of Somalia is just another military operation taking place in a distance land in the war against Islam terror. For Somalis, this invasion is nothing short of humiliating catastrophe. Somalis are deeply nationalistic; yet their nationalistic passion to towards their country did not prevent them from committing self-inflected genocidal civil wars which weakened their cultural fabric, political institutions and central authority so that after 16 years without functioning state, Somalia is today under the occupation of their most hated historical enemy, Ethiopia.

The latest Ethiopian invasion of Somalia is a conflict between the Islamic Courts Uni0n (ICU) and US-sponsored Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT), a group of Somali warlords backed by Ethiopia and the US. After the 1991 collapse of central authority in Somalia and ensuing civil war, the ICU emerged as a grassroots organization in response to the lawlessness, violence in the country. In the absence of central political authority and using ,primarily, Sharia law and other traditional Somali values (xeer and dhaqan), the ICU were able to bring law and order throughout the country. They were also able to provide essential services such as healthcare and education. In this way, ICU courts were the only source of stability for civil society while warlords continue to terrorize ordinary Somalis. Whilst the ICU were able clean drugs and guns from the streets in their communities, many attempts to forge transitional government failed because squabbles over power sharing. The current Transitional Federal Government is the latest of many such fruitless efforts.

In June 2006, the Islamic Uni0n Courts assumed centralized control over many parts in the South, including the capital city capital, Mogadishu. This move came about partly after it was revealed that the CIA was secretly working with Somali warlords and Ethiopia to occupy Somalia. In the context, of post September 11, 2001 political stigmatization the Bush Administration had identified the IUC as a terrorist group. Many Somalis saw such rhetoric as a thinly disguised pretext for the US's desire to avenge the 1993 defeat of US Forces in Somalia. Despite U.S. cash payments to various warlords none was able to assert their authority over the population and bring law and order and security to the Somali people.

On the other hand, the ICU was able to clear big urban centers such as Mogadishu, of guns and drugs off the street and also clean up the city. Seaports and airports opened for commercial business again after 1995. The Bush administration continued to treat the ICU as a terrorist organization and started courting its overthrow by using Ethiopia as a proxy state to do its dirty work in exchange for cash incentives for the warlords and for Ethiopia's leader, Meles Zenawi.

Somalis have suffered so much already. Their country has been without central authority since 1991. There is not a shred of evidence that Somalia pose a security threat to the US nor there is any evidence that Islamists are providing safe heaven for Al Qaida or other terrorist groups. In the context of utter humiliation in the hands of their historical enemy, Ethiopia, the current US support of the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia will, most certainly, fan hatred toward the US.

Meles Zenawi faces fierce opposition from various opposition groups inside Ethiopia who accuse him of illegal usurpation of political power, rigging election results, arresting his critics, in some cases, killing hundred of people taking part in peaceful protests against his political misrule. Thus, the sudden invasion of Somalia is a perfect strategy, for him to buttress his legitimacy as a national leader who can defend Ethiopia against Islamic terrorism. Internationally, he is able to position himself and his nation as a friend of the U.S .and Bush's strong man in the Horn of Africa in the US global war against Islamic terror. It is in this context, that Bush administration was able to quickly push through the Security Council the rather dubious resolution which gave Zenawi the green card to invade Somalia.

Resolution 1725 on Somalia authorizes a regional force from the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Uni0n (AU) to protect the weak Transitional National Government in Baidoa and provide training for its forces. It also authorizes partial lifting of the Somalia Arms Embargo of 1992.

Many Somalis, who are not religious, saw their own safety and security improved under the rule of IUC. In addition, many Somalis in the worldwide Somali Diaspora support IUC for the same pragmatic reasons. Most Somalis were willing to give the IUC sufficient time to clean the streets of guns and violence. After restoring law and order back into the streets, it would have been possible, albeit slowly, to modernize some of their interpretations and the applications of Islamic Sharia. Besides, Sharia laws are already part of the Somali cultural value system.

A large number of Diaspora Somalis were willing to return to Somalia, and rebuild the country, once peace and security were ensured. But now, we are back into the old, ugly days where teenage boys toting AK47s in the back of pick up trucks, used to terrorize the local population. It is hard to predict what future hold for Somalia; I can easily predict the following scenario. Meles Zenawi is a Christian, who draws most of his political power and military support from his Tigre tribe. As a result, his invading soldiers in Somalia are largely from his Tigre Christian tribe. These soldiers do not speak the Somali language; once deep inside Somalia, they will be exposed to attacks by the locals.

Ironically, Zenawi's invasion of Somalia has killed any chance the weak transitional federal government might have had to rule Somalia. The warlords were hated before by all Somalis for their corruption. Now they will be despised as traitors and stooges for the number one enemy of the Somali people, Ethiopia. The history of the animosity between Somalia and Ethiopia is long. In this humiliating condition, Somalis will turn on each other; there will be endless recrimination, revenges and counter-revenges. The clan-based cloak and dagger power struggles will continue.

Amina Mire's last article here was "A Somali Woman Discusses the Sharia Court and Her Cousin Who Leads It". She lives in Ottawa, Canada and can be reached at filsanidilhooyo@yahoo.ca

Reprinted by consent of the author from:
www.counterpunch.org/mire01022007.html

--------------------------------

COMMENTS:

by KebraWilyahmz

Wednesday, January 03 @ 18:32:46 EST

The country of Iran has said that it feels threaten by America, because of its occupation of Iraq on its western border and Afgahnistan on its eastern boarder. Does not anyone feel that Ethiopia might feel threaten by Sudan a muslim nation on its northwest border, Eritrea a muslim nation on its northeastern border and Somalia for the last 6 months on its southern border. Should not Ethiopia, who is the First and oldest Christian Empire on earth feel threaten. The Fact is the Government of Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudans loyatly is not for Africa But for the muslim cause and Arabia. Eritrea and Sudan was once part of Ethiopia or the proper term "Cush". The muslim's have united their strength and countries to take over Ethiopia past. They took Sudan, Egypt, libya and practicly all of North Africa. So I think Ethiopia has alot of reasons to be concerned about The ICU taking over Somalia.

--------------------------------

by Ayinde

Thursday, January 04 @ 04:09:30 EST

Feeling threatened by those around you who are of a different religion to you is no reason to illegally invade another country. A threat can be real or imagined so proof of a real threat is first necessary before we should sanction invasions and killings.

Not because Ethiopia is near and dear to Rastafarians means that I will support any and every action of the Ethiopian government. Some operate like that but I will not.

Being the "first and oldest Christian Empire on earth" does not mean Ethiopia today is godlier than any other nation. Ethiopia is not a unified nation and the indigenous Oromo and Anuak people (among others) are still discriminated against and brutalized.

I am not sympathetic to Muslims as those under that banner have traditionally persecuted and enslaved dark-skin kinky-hair Africans while racism is not addressed in Muslim nations. However, Ethiopia is no different. Racism is ripe in Ethiopia and the blackest and most indigenous people experience the worst of the system there.

Having said that, the Ethiopian government is not popular and they were quite willing to use this invasion, much like Bush in the U.S., to get Ethiopians rallying behind their weak government. In my opinion they did not invade based on some real threat, but based on a request and support from the U.S.

Somalia does not have a standing army, there is no way they would be trying to invade Ethiopia. So while I am not on the side of Muslims, I am also not on the side of the Ethiopian government. The Ethiopian government does not have moral superiority over other parts of Africa and African people in general.

Check out:

State Terror Against Indigenous Peoples in Ethiopia
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Jun2004/snow0604.html

Reflections on the Anuak Genocide
www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article19254

Ethiopia's Genocide of the Anuak Tribe Broadens After December 13 Massacre www.genocidewatch.org/EthiopianGenocideof
AnuakContinuesMcGillReport6May2004.htm

Reprinted from:
www.rastafarispeaks.com/community/
modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=268``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xDeath and Destruction for Somalis``x1167796822,96734,views``x``x ``xOfficial held in Saddam hanging video
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The person believed to have recorded Saddam Hussein's raucous execution on a cell phone camera was arrested Wednesday, an adviser to Iraq's prime minister said.
Full Article :yahoo.com

Saddam hanging threatens al-Maliki government's neck
The hanging of former dictator Saddam Hussein could not have gone more wrong for the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Instead of ending a dark chapter and making a fresh start, the execution has only managed further to widen the gulf between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites.
Full Article : playfuls.com


Saddam hanging nearly halted over jeers-prosecutor
As the Iraqi government mounted an investigation into how officials smuggled in mobile phone cameras, he also challenged the accounts of the justice minister and an adviser to the prime minister who said the film was shot by a guard -- Faroon said one of two people taking video was a senior government official.
"Two officials were holding mobile phone cameras," said Faroon, who was a deputy prosecutor in the case for which Saddam was hanged and is the chief prosecutor in a second trial that will continue against his aides for genocide against the Kurds.
"One of them I know. He's a high-ranking government official," Faroon said, declining to name the man. "The other I also know by sight, though not his name. He is also senior.
"I don't know how they got their mobiles in because the Americans took all our phones, even mine which has no camera."
Full Article : yahoo.com``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xOfficial release of Saddam hanging video``x1167883222,40513,world``x``x ``xby Charlie Kimber, socialistworker.co.uk
January 04, 2007

Map of SomaliaThe recent Ethiopian invasion of Somalia is a direct product of the US-British "war on terror". It threatens to further destabilise a region which has repeatedly been torn apart by war and famine.

Ethiopia's rulers ordered the war on behalf of George Bush in order to prosecute their own regional interests, to deflect Western criticism of their own repressive regime, and to collect the pay off from being a top US ally in a strategically crucial area. Somalia is just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

But the rejoicing in Ethiopia and the US at the defeat of the Islamic militias in Somalia may prove short-lived.

Certainly Bush does not feel secure. He has already prepared for the next phase of fighting by phoning Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni, urging him to send his troops to Somalia. Kenya's forces are also on stand-by.

The background to the invasion is the takeover of almost all of Somalia by the militias of the United Islamic Courts (UIC) last year. The militias drove out the warlords who had dominated Somali politics for the last 15 years.

The militias' victory was based on genuine popular support. Many people were weary of the violence and brutality of the warlords' rule. In addition several key leaders of Somalia's clans were prepared to back the UIC in order to stabilise the country.

The UIC's success was a blow to US plans for the region. The Bush regime had been growing ever closer to those warlords who were prepared to act as agents in the "war on terror".

The bloody record of these warlords, and the fact they had bitterly divided Somalia, were forgotten – so long as they would boost the US presence in the region.

Takeover

The UIC's takeover was also a defeat for Somalia's "transitional government", formed in 2004 in Kenya after long peace negotiations. This was a government in name rather than fact.

As even the BBC says, "President Abdullahi Yusuf's administration, made up of former warlords, often struggled to control its own members, let alone the country. Its first 18 months in office were spent squabbling about where to set up its base, eventually settling on the town of Baidoa as the capital, Mogadishu, was considered too dangerous."

The US and the transitional government vowed to destroy the UIC, and the Ethiopian government of Meles Zenawi was the chosen instrument.

Meles has long been a favourite of the West. He was part of Tony Blair's Commission for Africa in 2005 and supports the march of neoliberalism across the continent.

Ethiopia was one of only two African countries named as part of the US's "coalition of the willing" supporting the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

For all the West's denunciations of repressive African governments, Meles's crimes have been strangely overlooked. Attacks on students' and workers' demonstrations during the 2005 elections, removal of basic democratic rights and much else received only the mildest rebukes from Britain and the US.

In July, when the US and Britain backed the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Meles felt able to send his troops across the border into Somalia. And since then Ethiopian troops have been testing the ground for a complete offensive.

Last week Meles ordered a full scale invasion backed by thousands of troops, heavy artillery, tanks and aerial bombing. On 26 December US officials proclaimed the Bush regime's support for the invasion, claiming that Ethiopia had "genuine security concerns".

Ethiopian forces did meet some resistance, taking heavy casualties in clashes with young Somalis at Mood Moode, Daynuuna, Idale, and Bandiiradley.

But the vast superiority of Ethiopian arms – supplied over the decades by the US, Russia and Israel – meant that they easily won in set piece battles. Now they have taken the capital Mogadishu and the UIC's stronghold in Kismayo.

However, the war may be far from over. The UIC fighters cannot openly confront tanks and planes but, as the US discovered in Iraq, irregular resistance can be very effective against unpopular occupiers.

The new government will rely heavily on Ethiopian support. The warlords who will now return to power have little popular base and can survive only with external backing.

And the US's green light to Ethiopian expansion could tempt Meles to renew pressure on Eritrea – the two countries came close to war last year.

Regime

If the Somali people turn strongly against the new regime it will be left battling its own people – a battle it may well lose.

One of the first areas of Mogadishu seized by the invading Ethiopians was the site of the former US embassy compound. The US was driven out of Somalia in 1993. US troops, backed by the United Nations (UN), had carried out a "humanitarian intervention" which was claimed to be about ending famine and violence.

Many of Somalia's people initially welcomed the US, but they were soon disillusioned. The US and its UN allies shot down demonstrators in the streets and were repeatedly shown to have carried out torture and murder. The population rose against the US and drove them out.

Ordinary people's interests have been submerged beneath the US's desire to ramp up its control of the Horn of Africa. US military planners have underlined how its base in Djibouti, presently home to 1,800 US troops, is hoped to be the centre of one of the "lily pads" from which mobile US forces can intervene in "hot spots".

Instead of dealing with Somalia's terrible poverty and the present flood emergency, resources have been poured into arms and war.

The Stop the War demonstration on 24 February will not just be about Trident and Iraq – but also against the way imperialism devastates areas such as East Africa.

© Copyright Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original and leave this notice in place.

Reprinted from:
www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=10416

Also Read:

A New War in Africa
The misconception was the US government's belief that the Islamic Courts, local religious authorities backed by merchants in Mogadishu who wanted someone to curb the warlords, punish thieves, and enforce contracts, were just a cover for al-Qaeda. So the US instead backed the warlords who were making Somalis' lives a misery.

America's new puppet
By its ill-judged invasion of Somalia, Ethiopia has become an accomplice in Bush's war on terror

U.S.-Backed U.N. Resolution Risks Wider War
WASHINGTON, Nov 28 (IPS) - Fearful that Islamist forces are transforming Somalia into a safe haven for al Qaeda, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush is pushing a new U.N. Security Council resolution that experts here believe could well spark a wider war in the Horn of Africa.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xEthiopia joins Bush's imperialist crusade``x1167938049,57706,world``x``x ``xAbout 1,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops launched a major offensive at dawn Thursday in Diyala province, an increasingly violent zone east of Baghdad that has become a haven and training ground for Sunni Arab insurgents.
Full Article : latimes.com

If Iraqis study African history, they would see how easily the colonizing powers militarize indigenous people to join armies and local police forces to eliminate their closest relatives who are resisting colonial domination. - Ayinde``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xU.S.-Iraqi forces launch assault on Sunni haven``x1168000194,75630,world``x``x ``xRobert Fisk: The whole bloody thing was obscene
"The lynching of Saddam Hussein - for that is what we are talking about - will turn out to be one of the determining moments in the whole shameful crusade upon which the West embarked in March of 2003. Only the president-governor George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara could have devised a militia administration in Iraq so murderous and so immoral that the most ruthless mass murderer in the Middle East could end his days on the gallows as a figure of nobility, scalding his hooded killers for their lack of manhood and - in his last seconds - reminding the thug who told him to "go to hell" that the hell was now Iraq."
"And just who exactly were those leather-jacketed hangmen last week, by the way? No one, it seemed, bothered to ask this salient question. Who chose them? Al-Maliki's militia chums? Or the Americans who managed the whole roadshow from the start, who so organised Saddam's trial that he was never allowed to reveal details of his friendly relations with three US administrations - and thus took the secrets of the murderous, decade-long Baghdad-Washington military alliance to his grave?"


The most ruthless mass-murderer in the Middle East is undoubtedly George W. Bush. He is followed by previous U.S., Israeli and British governments that caused, directly and indirectly, all the killings in the Middle East. Saddam comes in way below the Bushes and other Israeli, U.S. and UK governments. --Ayinde``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe whole bloody thing was obscene``x1168085035,72521,world``x``x ``xThe U.S. is "recruiting" citizens and governments from other African countries to fight their proxy war, thus avoiding the intense scrutiny of many. They have not transparently sent in U.S. military personnel into Somalia, but they are directing and financing the invasion. Their war ships are there. They want it to appear as if this is just another one of those African conflicts. Of course, some African nations that are eager to get aid from the U.S. would support another chapter in the U.S. crusade.

- Ayinde

Somalia: New Hotbed of Anti-Americanism
The U.S. foreign policy blundering has created a new violent hotbed of anti-Americanism in the turbulent Horn of Africa by orchestrating the Ethiopian invasion of another Muslim capital of the Arab League, in a clear American message that no Arab or Muslim metropolitan has impunity unless it falls into step with the U.S. vital regional interests.

Anti-Ethiopian protests rock Somali capital
Somali police killed a man in an exchange of fire with a crowd protesting against Ethiopian troops and a government disarmament drive in Mogadishu, an official said, as residents fear a return to clan violence.

Incidents in Somalis protest against Ethiopian troops
Ethiopian soldiers fired in the air to disperse crowds who chanted "Down with Ethiopia" as hundreds of Somalis marched through Mogadishu on Saturday.

Somalis warily adapt to changing capital
By Stephanie McCrummen, Washington Post
Among the first things Mohamed Abtidon did when the Islamic Courts movement came to this city in June was to buy a fancy cellphone, a slim $360 Motorola. Streets once ruled by thieving, bribing warlords finally felt safe, he said, and he walked around talking on the phone with abandon.

Ethiopia: Meles Zenawi's Delusions of Grandeur
The Tigrayan minority regime in Ethiopia, which waged an unprecedented propaganda campaign exalting its prowess and might as it conducted its illegal war of aggression and invasion against the Union of Islamic Courts militia using various pretexts, including "defending Ethiopia's sovereignty", "routing terrorists", "crushing extremists", etc. etc. in violation of international law, UN Security Council Resolution 1725, the African Union Charter and boasting of "victory against Islamists", now wants the "international community" to bail it out of its self made quagmire and finance its illegal occupation of sovereign Somali territories.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAnti-Ethiopian protests rock Somali capital``x1168094831,89513,world``x``x ``xForgive slavery, forget reparations

by Barbara Makeda Blake Hannah, Jamaica Gleaner

"I have been an ardent supporter of the Rastafari call for reparations, ever since becoming a Rastafarian 30 years ago. In recent years, especially after attending the 2001 United Nations Conference Against Racism in Durban, I became one of the leading Jamaican spokespersons on reparations, and part of the large international group calling attention to the crime of African enslavement in the Americas and the still-existing trauma that resulted across the diaspora."

"I know this will seem shocking to many, but I see that as Jesus of Nazareth recommended, I should forgive those who did us wrong and even 'turn the other cheek' if necessary.

This enlightenment came after a meeting with a white Jamaican friend with whom I have been doing business happily for more than 10 years. As we chatted, waiting for a document to be copied by his assistant, he took up my copy of The Gleaner and read the Letters Page. Two letters caused him to comment explosively: "Apologise? For what?" and "Black apology for slavery? Hogwash!" (December 11, 2006). His angry agreement with the opinion that whites today have nothing to apologise for, and that Africans bore greater responsibility for our enslavement, caused me to start my customary reply when confronted with these arguments."
Full Article : jamaica-gleaner.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Comment by Ayinde

She is clearly deluded and lacks consciousness of the issues surrounding Reparations.

Very few people have the insight to see the big picture within the Reparations issue.

People often promote people to the frontline of a struggle only to have them use their position of influence to betray the movement.

It is common to have people in the frontline of Black Movements who do not understand the issues because most people themselves are not sufficiently informed to ask the right questions and challenge the leadership in all Black African organizations.

Very often these organizations are not addressing important issues like colorism and the role of whites in their movements. They prefer to just put on a show of togetherness. People need to especially challenge those organizations with Black African and white alliances, Rastafarian or otherwise, that claim to be working for the well being of Black Africans.

Blind support is dangerous support.
``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xForgive slavery, forget reparations?``x1168097402,77079,rasta``x``x ``xIsrael plans nuclear strike on Iran
ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear "bunker-busters", according to several Israeli military sources. The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

This story is repeated over and over, back and forth between the U.S. and Israel. With all the media bravado about this inevitable nuclear strike against Iran, including endless distortions about Iran's position on Israel, where are the calls for nuclear containment of Israel? --Kae

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Democrats: Nuclear Iran unacceptable
Iran with nuclear weapons is unacceptable, new House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told The Jerusalem Post hours after entering the party leadership position. He also said that the use of force against Teheran remained an option.

It is either nuclear weapons ARE unacceptable in the hands of the U.S.A., Israel, Russia, China and Britain as well as the intimidation factor that goes with it and they all must disarm immediately, or all other nations should have nuclear weapons as a deterrent against being bullied by nations that have weapons of mass destruction. --Ayinde``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xDemocrats: Nuclear Iran unacceptable``x1168136848,69410,world``x``x ``xBush $1bn jobs plan to draw Iraqis into fold
President George Bush will this week announce a renewed reconstruction package for Iraq costing up to $1bn (£500m) and a fresh push by a reinforced Iraqi army to quell the insurgency in Baghdad to sweeten the pill of his decision to dispatch up to 20,000 more US soldiers to the fray.

It appears George Bush is hell bent on trying to convince the world that he knows what he is doing, pretending he has some legitimate plan that will benefit the Iraqi people. Whatever he is scheming now, it is sure to meet with failure since this whole ill conceived war is unjustifiable no matter how much money he tries to throw out there. The U.S. will take back tenfold from the Iraqi oil reserves any money they spend in Iraq. But then that is typical in white supremacist colonialism. They steal and give back tokens; they destroy the lives of people along with the means to care for themselves and their families then offer them menial jobs and expect them to be satisfied. The Democrats fear of appearing antimilitary is shameful as that was one of the issues they used during the recent elections that gave them a majority in both houses of the U.S. government. --Kae

How The West Will Profit From Iraq's Most Precious Commodity``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xBush $1bn jobs plan to draw Iraqis into fold``x1168296022,73820,world``x``x ``xUS launches air strike in Somalia Guardian UK
A US air strike on a Somali village, thought to be the hideout of an al-Qaida cell, has left "many dead", reports said today. The attack yesterday, by a heavily armed gunship, allegedly targeted Islamists wanted for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in other African countries. The suspects were spotted hiding on the remote Badmadow island on the southern tip of Somalia, close to the Kenyan border. The area of the island that was attacked is known as Ras Kamboni and is suspected of being a terror training base.

The term Al Qaeda is applied to desensitize people to the atrocities being committed by the U.S. government. The U.S. is so brazen with it now that they bomb people who they claim are Al Qaeda SUSPECTS. One does not have to actually be a threat to the United States of America to warrant their aggression. In fact, once Muslims do not support the U.S. government's agenda they are automatically branded as Al Qaeda suspects and are targeted for assassination. --Ayinde

US launches air strike in Somalia BBC

"This is a war founded on a misconception and driven by paranoid fantasies. The misconception was the US government's belief that the Islamic Courts, local religious authorities backed by merchants in Mogadishu who wanted someone to curb the warlords, punish thieves, and enforce contracts, were just a cover for al-Qaeda. So the US instead backed the warlords who were making Somalis' lives a misery.

American support is the kiss of death in Somalia, so the warlords were finally dislodged in Mogadishu last June by an uprising led by the UIC and supported by most of the population." --Gwynne Dyer

US seizes its opportunity in Somalia
The rout of Somalia's radical Islamist movement at the hands of Ethiopian forces has presented America with an extraordinary opportunity. For years, Somalia has been the despair of US policy-makers.
The disastrous "Black Hawk Down" intervention in 1992-93, which ended when a Mogadishu mob killed 18 US Rangers, has become a byword for the dangers of foreign intervention. This failed operation left Somalia in the grip of anarchy, allowing international terrorists to penetrate the country.
After the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in 1998, the CIA concluded that some of those behind the attacks were at large in Somalia.
When the Islamists captured Mogadishu last June, America feared that a large area of southern Somalia would become a haven for al-Qa'eda.

Somalia leader spurns U.S. approach
NAIROBI, Kenya – In a rebuff to the United States, Somalia's interim president, Abdullahi Yusuf, on Monday rejected U.S. requests to bring moderate Islamists into his weak transitional government.

Also Read:

Ethiopia joins Bush's imperialist crusade

Death and Destruction for Somalis

A New War in Africa``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xUS launches air strike in Somalia``x1168340343,72257,world``x``x ``xBy Kurt Nimmo, kurtnimmo.com
January 09, 2007

It is simply amazing how many times the transparently bogus "al-Qaeda" has been used as an excuse to unleash violence against largely innocent Muslims and yet so few people here in America catch on, preferring to believe the corporate media fed illusion, now hammered firmly into place and accepted as political reality.

Earlier today, we learned a "U.S. Air Force gunship has conducted a strike against suspected members of al Qaeda in Somalia," CBS reports straight from a Pentagon script. "The targets included the senior al Qaeda leader in East Africa and an al Qaeda operative wanted for his involvement in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in Africa," apparently reason enough to kill around 200 people. "The gunship flew from its base in Dijibouti down to the southern tip of Somalia... where the al Qaeda operatives had fled after being chased out of the capital of Mogadishu by Ethiopian troops backed by the United States."

In other words, it was a turkey shoot, and the targets were not necessarily "al-Qaeda" but rather members of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), Muslims who not long ago ruled Somalia under the Sharia, or Islamic law. CBS does not bother to mention the fact ICU was popular in Somalia, a Muslim nation.

Here in America, they are called the Somali Islamists--granted, a simplistic term, but then we here in America like our simplistic terms--and thus the Somali version of a Muslim is lumped in with all the other Islamists, including those we are told are fascist, never mind European fascist movements of the early 20th century have nothing to do with Islam, and the word "Islamofascists" is little more than a meaningless and rather crude political epithet.

Of course, the word and nonsensical idea is strictly for domestic consumption, as evil Nazis are part of the firmly entrenched cultural landscape and it is apparently easy to associate Hitler and Nazism with people--indeed, entire cultures and religions--one does not like or understand (remember, "al-Qaeda" is a magnet for Hitler types like Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, or so the corporate media, with their neocon reading scripts in hand, tell us).

Last December, the popular ICU lost control after Ethiopia, with U.S. backing and encouragement, invaded and sent them packing to the southern-most tip of the country. According to CBS, the fleeing ICU are "al-Qaeda" to the man and, as such, fair game for an AC-130 gunship, sent from a U.S. airbase (at Camp Lemonier) in Dijibouti.

Of course, this is little more than a facile and threadbare excuse to kill Muslims, as Bush's "minds" from the American Enterprise Institute are big on slaughtering large numbers of them on ice-thin pretext.

For instance, take the neocon Vance Serchuk, a scribbler at the Weekly Standard, who specializes in making excuses for the Ethiopia invasion, an affair wholly rigged by the United States. According to Serchuk and the neocons, the "Somalia problem came to metastasize over the past six months," and Somalia is not simply "a failed state that could be occasionally exploited by terrorists," but "an active and steadfast ally of the global jihadist movement," thus the "Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa... at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti.... constitutes the U.S. military's first post-9/11 outpost in sub-Saharan Africa."

As Serchuk readily admits, this task force fits "squarely with what last year's Quadrennial Defense Review" proposed, that is a "shifting emphasis" toward the use of "surrogates" in the war on terror, that is to say proxies will do the bidding of the neocons in the hundred or more year "war" planned for us and our children, and our children's children.

Thus the attack against "al-Qaeda" may be considered yet another in a series of attacks against "Islamofascists" in Africa, as effete and bilious chicken hawks, hiding out in their comfy academic and think-tank lairs, are keen to chase Muslims hither and thither--or have National Guard kids from Nebraska chase them--as the neocon "clash of civilizations" plan dictates.

Oh, coincidentally, the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips hold concession rights in Somalia. According to the Los Angeles Times, "corporate and scientific documents disclosed that the American companies are well positioned to pursue Somalia's most promising potential oil reserves the moment the nation is pacified," that is to say after a suitable number of Muslims are killed and a requisite dictatorship takes hold, as the rule of Mohammed Siad Barre didn't exactly work out as planned back in the 90s.

"Somalia is of geostrategic interest to the Bush administration, and the focus of operations and policy since 2001," writes Larry Chin. "This focus is a continuation of long-term policies of both the Clinton administration and the George H.W. Bush administrations. Somalia's resources have been eyed by Western powers since the days of the British Empire."

"A new US cleansing of Somalian 'tyranny' would open the door for these US oil companies to map and develop the possibly huge oil potential in Somalia," notes F. William Engdahl. "Yemen and Somalia are two flanks of the same geological configuration, which holds large potential petroleum deposits, as well as being the flanks of the oil chokepoint from the Red Sea."

No doubt, as kissing cousins to the neolibs, who are primarily interested in "free trade" fire sales, the neocons have taken note of the potential for a Somalian oil and gas bonanza, especially with China eager to get in on the game with its insatiable thirst for petroleum. However, neocons are known primarily for their sociopathic hatred and fear of Muslims, be they Arab or African, and that is the immediate impetus behind their current fascination with the impoverish "failed state" (failed because it was ruled by Muslims) of Somalia.

"And even when the media are looking the other way, our enemies are not," rants Vance Serchuk, AEI research fellow. "Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's number two, has already issued a recording calling Somalia 'one of the crusader battlefields that are being launched by America ... against Islam,' a message that will no doubt resonate in the Muslim world."

But of course, as the neocons believe, or rather expect us to believe, such messages, issued by documented intelligence assets, "resonate" in Islamic "failed states," that is to say states inching up the neocon target list, as should be expected so long as these career criminals remain on the loose and are not forced to do the perp walk in orange jumpsuits.

Reprinted from: http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=713``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xNeocons Attack 'al-Qaeda' in Somalia``x1168363706,95882,world``x``x ``xOne cause of the crisis is Zimbabwe's agricultural decline. Satellite photos show that vast expanses of fertile land portioned out to Mugabe loyalists are fallow. Despite good rains, Zimbabwe faces another bad harvest of maize, according to the regional Famine Early Warning System. The country will need to import grain for the sixth consecutive year, say experts.
Full Article : guardian.co.uk


Zimbabwe is being punished for daring to reclaim the land

The Guardian UK, like many other white-owned or controlled media worldwide, has been consistent in reporting on the woes in Zimbabwe and attributing all the blame to President Mugabe. Of course, they hope that readers would not research the cause of the crisis in Zimbabwe to see how it is rooted in racist UK and US attempts to ensure that the best land in Zimbabwe remains in the hand of Whites. They mean to ensure that all efforts to reclaim some of the best agricultural land for Black Africans fail as a means to discourage other African countries from reclaiming their land.

See: RaceandHistory.com Zimbabwe Watch``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe heads for economic meltdown``x1170915834,43256,world``x``x ``xTheir aim is to ensure that Zimbabwe collapses under President Robert Mugabe and that this collapse serves as a deterrent to other African leaders and nations from reclaiming lands that were seized from Black Africans during colonial rule.
Continue to: 'U.S. and Britain are Fueling Violence in Zimbabwe'``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xU.S. and Britain are Fueling Violence in Zimbabwe``x1174007390,14572,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
rastafaritimes@yahoo.com
March 17, 2007

It appears that Desmond Tutu, among others, have bought the stories of what transpired in Zimbabwe from Morgan Tsvangirai and the Western media, all of whom are against President Mugabe's land reclamation exercise. How else can one explain Tutu's strong condemnation of Zimbabwe's government?

There is evidence that the clash between Morgan Tsvangirai, together with his small band of supporters and the police was orchestrated by Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai has been trying to position himself centre stage, despite his defeat at the 2005 polls. He and his cohorts provoked a violent confrontation with the police, then cried abuse. This incident was staged. Little is being said about the police officers that were beaten by this small band of protesters. BBC's Eyewitness account of what transpired shows how youths are being coerced to wreak havoc on the country.
Continue to: 'Lack of Support for Zimbabwe's Land Reform is Africa's Shame'``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xLack of Support for Zimbabwe's Land Reform is Africa's Shame``x1174143896,26503,world``x``x ``xHow do we know that the U.S. and Europe are behind the efforts to overthrow President Robert Mugabe?

According to William Blum: "Same way we know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. That's what it's always done and there's no reason to think that tomorrow morning will be any different."

What is going on in Zimbabwe that has brought the western media out in full force? The stories being bandied about and manipulated by the media seem to be focusing on some claims of abuse to Morgan Tsvangirai. According to articles in the media, the opposition party MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai has been operating to take down the current government of Zimbabwe for some time. As far back as 2000, Tsvangirai was threatening violence against Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe. These are calculated activities taking place in Zimbabwe on an ongoing basis.
Continue to: 'All the Signs of US/European Government Interference in Zimbabwe'``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAll the Signs of US/European Government Interference in Zimbabwe``x1174178098,48849,world``x``x ``xI have a bold claim to make: that nothing but the economic sanctions imposed on our country by the "Western world", with the complicity of the MDC, accounts for the economic decline that we have witnessed. As such, the MDC's connivance with the West to ferment the economic collapse takes away their legitimacy as a Zimbabwean political party. The MDC may legitimately and credibly be against Zanu (PF), but when they deliberately, or unwittingly courted Western sanctions that now render the living conditions of an ordinary Zimbabwe at Machipisa shopping centre insufferable, they downgraded to a much lower and sinister plane where they can never claim any legal, political or moral right: being anti-Zimbabwe.
Continue to: 'Zimbabwe: The MDC Must Renounce the Sanctions'``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe: The MDC Must Renounce the Sanctions``x1174241817,14688,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
rastafaritimes@yahoo.com
March 18, 2007

There are some opposition forces in and out of Zimbabwe whose only response to any alternative view is to send racially denigrating attacks via email. Some also have the false assumption that because my email address is rastafaritimes@yahoo.com, it somehow means I must be as delusional as many Whites... some marijuana smoking hippie.

In response to the article, 'Lack of Support for Zimbabwe's Land Reform is Africa's Shame', not one email so far has substantively addressed any of the points I raised. Several have pointed out that the Africans in Zimbabwe cannot utilize the land (of course, not worded so nicely).

One responder's reaction was even to foolishly ask, "Why have Africans not been able to grow sufficient food for themselves although colonialism ended many years ago?" while implying that the reason is some characteristic that is lacking in Africans that makes them unable to be productive. He (the respondent) cannot see that the efforts for land reform in Zimbabwe, which he thoroughly opposes, is about addressing this very issue. The reason many Africans cannot grow sufficient food for themselves is because WHITE SETTLERS OCCUPY THE BEST LAND.

All of this is part of the racist, dishonest propaganda that clouds the minds of the gullible and ignorant about the real issue of reclaiming lands that were stolen from Africans in Zimbabwe. What is taking place with Zimbabwe is similar to what the Western powers have done with Haiti. They have continually punished Haiti for being the first Black republic after a successful slave revolt. The European powers would never allow Haiti to be a success story because Haiti could become a model and a motivation to Africans to resist White domination.

In a similar manner, these White, Western powers know fully well that if Zimbabwe is allowed to succeed with its land reform, then other African nations would follow suit resulting in Western powers having less of a remote control on Africans who may suddenly choose to utilize the land in ways that first serves their own interest.

The White dominance agenda depends on the fictional image that Africans in Zimbabwe are unable to utilize their own land productively. Even if that image were true, that is still absolutely no reason for Whites to continually hold on to land that was unjustly handed down to them. If these White farmers feel they should be compensated then they should look to their colonial powers for any compensation. But the argument of unproductive Africans is absolutely false, "as black small farm owners account for the majority of maize grown in Zimbabwe" (See: Zimbabwe Under Siege). This White superiority complex reigns in the minds of many and it is clearly evident in the majority of news reports and email responses from those trying to give the impression that they are concerned with the plight of Africans in Zimbabwe.

The West is not concerned with human rights in Africa: they support brutal dictators around the world as long as these dictators do their bidding.

How come this same westernized media did not put forth a concentrated campaign to restore Africans to the more productive agricultural lands that they were driven from during colonial rule? How come they were contented with 70% of the best agricultural lands in Zimbabwe being held by Whites and used for growing tobacco and other crops for Europe? Why were they not concerned about all the racist imbalances that remain in Africa as the legacy of slavery and colonialism?

The mainstream media, which is mostly White-owned, have defended the status quo of White domination to such an extent that many today actually believe that the Africans, who they see in poverty, are in such a state because of some inherent flaw in their Blackness.

Many of these commentators are either ignorant, dishonest or both.

Email: zimbabwecrisis@yahoo.com

Visit: Zimbabwe Watch``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe: Racist anti-Mugabe Assault``x1174245497,85432,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
rastafaritimes@yahoo.com
March 19, 2007

Face it: the West is not concerned about the human rights and the well-being of Africans. Their biggest concern is to protect the status quo of White land control in Africa. All this commotion from the western media over Zimbabwe is an orchestrated effort to remove President Robert Mugabe from office. Again. For those who might not recall, here is a refresher on the U.S. position in 2002:

"The United States government has said it wants to see President Robert Mugabe removed from power and that it is working with the Zimbabwean opposition to bring about a change of administration." (US admits plan to bring down Mugabe August 2002)

These are Morgan Tsvangirai words as reported by BBC (2000):

"What we would like to tell Mugabe is please go peacefully. If you don't want to go peacefully, we will remove you violently" (Opposition warning to Mugabe)

Without a doubt, there are Zimbabweans with legitimate complaints about their government as is the case with all countries, but there is a functioning democracy in Zimbabwe by which the opposition can attempt to gain office. The opposition cannot be unsuccessful at the polls, resort to violence and then want our sympathies. Morgan Tsvangirai threatened violence and was not condemned by Western governments and the media. That proves they have no problem with violence in Zimbabwe as long as it is to advance their own agenda.

It is not like Africans the world over are stupid and do not know what is at stake in Zimbabwe. In a 2004 survey for New African magazine, President Robert Mugabe was voted history's third-greatest African and this should have informed the world how Africans feel about the entire issue of land ownership and the efforts to redress this historical injustice in Zimbabwe. (Mugabe voted history's third-greatest African)

Although some African leaders may feel to kowtow to the "West" for aid, all African leaders know that land is central to the liberation struggle in Africa. Most African leaders know the West relentlessly goes about demonizing President Robert Mugabe for daring to reclaim land from White settlers. They have done all in their power to punish the Zimbabwe people through sanctions for supporting President Robert Mugabe's land reclamation campaign.

We should not support the White settlers, the U.S. and Europe in their campaign to force African nations to ostracize President Mugabe. The West must not be allowed to choose our friends and enemies for us.

If the minority opposition groups are embarking on a violent campaign of resistance in Zimbabwe, then it is expected that the police will defend themselves and the state.

Email: zimbabwecrisis@yahoo.com

Visit: Zimbabwe Watch``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe: Africans Know Whose Agenda the West Serves``x1174340007,1279,world``x``x ``xBy Stephen Gowans
Stephen Gowans's Blog
March 20, 2007

One thing opponents and supporters of Mugabe's government agree on is that the opposition is trying to oust the president (illegally and unconstitutionally if you acknowledge the plan isn't limited to victory at the polls.)

So which came first?

Attempts to overthrow Zimbabwe's ZANU-PF government, or the government's harsh crackdown on opposition?

According to the Western media spin, the answer is the government's harsh crackdown on opposition. Mugabe's government is inherently authoritarian, greedy for power for power's sake, and willing do anything – from stealing elections to cracking skulls — to hang on to its privileged position.

This is the typical slander leveled at the heads of governments the US and UK have trouble with, from Milosevic in his day, to Kim Jong Il, to Castro.

Another view is that the government's authoritarianism is an inevitable reaction to circumstances that are unfavorable to the attainment of its political (not its leaders' personal) goals. Mugabe's government came to power at the head of a movement that not only sought political independence, but aspired to reverse the historical theft of land by White settlers. That the opposition would be fierce and merciless – has been so – was inevitable.

Reaction to the opposition, if the government and its anti-colonial agenda were to survive, would need to be equally fierce and merciless.

At the core of the conflict is a clash of right against right: the right of White settlers to enjoy whatever benefits stolen land yields in profits and rent against the right of the original owners to reclaim their land.

Allied to this is a broader struggle for economic independence, which sets the rights of investors and corporations abroad to profit from untrammeled access to Zimbabwe's labor, land and resources and the right of Zimbabweans to restrict access on their own terms to facilitate their own economic development.

The dichotomy of personal versus political motivation as the basis for the actions of maligned governments recurs in debates over whether this or that leader or movement ought to be supported or reviled. The personal view says that all leaders are corrupt, chase after personal glory, power and wealth, and dishonestly manipulate the people they profess to champion. The political view doesn't deny the personal view as a possibility, but holds that the behavior of leaders is constrained by political goals.

"Even George Bush who rigs elections and manipulates news in order to stay in office and who clearly enjoys being 'the War President,' wants the presidency in order to carry out a particular program with messianic fervor," points out Richard Levins. "He would never protect the environment, provide healthcare, guarantee universal free education, or separate church and state, just to stay in office." ("Progressive Cuba Bashing," Socialism and Democracy, Vol. 19, No. 1, March 2005.)

Mugabe is sometimes criticized for being pushed into accelerating land reform by a restive population impatient with the glacial pace of redistribution allowed under the Lancaster House agreement. His detractors allege, implausibly, that he has no real commitment to land reforms. He only does what's necessary to stay in power.

If we accept this as true, then we're saying that the behavior of the government is constrained by one of the original goals of the liberation movement (land reform) and that the personal view is irrelevant. No matter what the motivations of the government's leaders, the course the government follows is conditioned by the goals of the larger movement of national liberation.

There's no question Mugabe reacted harshly to recent provocations by factions of the MDC, or that his government was deliberately provoked. But the germane question isn't whether beating Morgan Tsvangirai over the head was too much, but whether the ban on political rallies in Harare, which the opposition deliberately violated, is justified. That depends on whose side you're on, and whether you think Tsvangirai and his associates are simply earnest citizens trying to freely express their views or are proxies for imperialist governments bent on establishing (restoring in Britain's case) hegemony over Zimbabwe.

There's no question either that Mugabe's government is in a precarious position. The economy is in a shambles, due in part to drought, to the disruptions caused by land reform, and to sanctions.

White farmers want Mugabe gone (to slow land redistribution, or to stop it altogether), London and Washington want him gone (to ensure neo-liberal "reforms" are implemented), and it's likely that some members of his own party also want him to step down.

On top of acting to sabotage Zimbabwe economically through sanctions, London and Washington have been funneling financial, diplomatic and organizational assistance to groups and individuals who are committed to bringing about a color revolution (i.e., extra-constitutional regime change) in Zimbabwe. That includes Tsvangirai and the MDC factions, among others.

The timing of the MDC rally was suspicious (it coincided with the opening of the latest session of the UN Human Rights Council.) Its depiction as a prayer meeting is flagrantly disingenuous. Those of an unprejudiced mind will recognize it for what it was: a political rally, held in already volatile conditions, whose outcome would either be insurrection or a crackdown that could be used to call for tougher sanctions, even intervention.

For the Mugabe government, the options are two-fold: Capitulate (and surrender any chance of maintaining what independence Zimbabwe has managed to secure at considerable cost) or fight back.

Some people might deplore the methods used, but considering the actions and objectives of the opposition – and what's at stake – the crackdown has been both measured and necessary.

Email: zimbabwecrisis@yahoo.com

Visit: Zimbabwe Watch
``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe: ZANU-PF Fights Back``x1174433765,27967,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
rastafaritimes@yahoo.com
March 21, 2007

African nations have been silent too long while Zimbabwe slides into economic ruin.

In this hour of contrived turmoil in Zimbabwe it is time for decisive words and actions.

African nations need to tell Tony Blair, the rest of Europe and the U.S. that they would not be dictated to. Tony Blair is leaving office soon and would like to force the democratically elected President of Zimbabwe out of office before he himself leaves office.

African nations need to send an unambiguous message to the 'West' that they are not buying the European and White settlers propaganda and that they want all sanctions lifted on Zimbabwe. These sanctions have mostly affected the ordinary people in Zimbabwe (See: The MDC Must Renounce the Sanctions by Tadios Chisango).

They should boldly declare that African nations are not colonies of the U.S. and Britain, and would not be pressured to stand against the democratically elected President of Zimbabwe who commands the majority support in Zimbabwe.

African nations should also call on the opposition in Zimbabwe to renounce violence and to desist from using violence in Zimbabwe. If they are resorting to breaking the laws and using violence then the government and the police are right to use brute force to stop such activities.

Let us see how many African leaders have the courage to stand for freedom instead of making backdoor deals with Tony Blair and the U.S. for aid in exchange for their conscience.

Africans globally are watching... It is your move now.

Email: zimbabwecrisis@yahoo.com

Visit: Zimbabwe Watch``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAfrican Nations Need New Approach to Zimbabwe``x1174496654,91740,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
rastafaritimes@yahoo.com
March 23, 2007

MOST White liberals and their media (including websites) are useless when it comes to evaluating issues from a Black point of view. They are not only useless when African nations and leaders have to be defended against the aggression of the US and Europe, but some go a step further and are more dangerous by how they spread the racist lies of the West. I guess they only view racism as when someone stands in a crowded place and shouts the "N" word.

I did not expect them to be able to evaluate issues from an African point of view, especially as most of them could not even get it right on Venezuela during the coup attempt in 2002.

For all the distrust they have of their governments, they are more than ready to believe those same governments when they attack African leaders and nations.

A prime example, Haiti. Most of the antiwar and anti-Bush media were quiet on that issue. They did not see the US, France and Canada having a major role in illegally forcing the first democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of office and into exile. (Read: The Ouster of Democracy by Gary Younge, March 2004)

White liberals who just did not get it can read articles on the Haitian Coup at africaspeaks.com. Some Whites understood the issues in part, but they were not so moved as to sustain a campaign for the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as the legitimate, democratically elected president of Haiti, who commands the support of the majority of Haitians along with wide support from Black Africans abroad.

Next on the list is Zimbabwe.

The US and Britain have been involved in an effort to oust the democratically elected leader of Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe, ever since he turned away from the intangible and unjust IMF and World Bank policies and started reclaiming illegally obtained land from White settlers for redistribution to Black Zimbaweans. They were not against Mugabe for reports of human rights abuses, as in the past, when such reports surfaced, they were still praising Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe as a model country in Africa. For more information, although long, this article is worth reading: Zimbabwe Under Siege by Gregory Elich. There is a comprehensive list of additional articles for further reading on raceandhistory.com.

Next on the list is Somalia.

The US and Ethiopia illegally invaded Somalia and ousted the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) which had popular support. The ICU brought a measure of stability to Somalia for the first time in sixteen years.

In the article "A New War in Africa" Gwynne Dyer explains:

"This is a war founded on a misconception and driven by paranoid fantasies.

The misconception was the US government's belief that the Islamic Courts, local religious authorities backed by merchants in Mogadishu who wanted someone to curb the warlords, punish thieves, and enforce contracts, were just a cover for al-Qaeda.

So the US instead backed the warlords who were making Somalis' lives a misery.

American support is the kiss of death in Somalia, so the warlords were finally dislodged in Mogadishu last June by an uprising led by the UIC and supported by most of the population."

Visit africaspeaks.com for more on the crisis in Somalia.

Although some Whites do take the time to examine issues from an African point of view, they are too few and far between. If you doubt me, simply check your favorite antiwar, anti-Bush, anti-imperialism websites and you will see the absence of pro-African commentaries on any or all of these issues. (Even the considerably rated Comedy Central's "Today Show" hosted by John Stewart lacks substance in dealing with African issues.)

To informed Africans, most of these so-called liberal Whites are not liberal at all. White Supremacy still comes first to them and has to be first addressed before they can see the truth from a Black perspective.

We understand the circumstances that keep many from researching issues properly and not easily breaking away from colonial institutions and neocolonial policies. Many are struggling with bread and butter issues on a daily basis and do not yet appreciate why they MUST make time for informing themselves.

Understanding the issues is also about addressing poverty. Those with the means and especially those involved in the media have no excuse for misleading many.

Martin Luther King saw the problem with White liberals and in his letter from the Birmingham jail he wrote:

"...First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

Email: zimbabwecrisis@yahoo.com

Visit: Zimbabwe Watch``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhite Liberals Cannot See Truth in Africa``x1174655086,56675,views``x``x ``xThis is a response to Raffique Shah's article "No place for monster Mugabe" that was published in the Trinidad Express on March 25, 2007 and also reproduced on Raffique's website at Trinicenter.com.

From the onset let me say that given the sources of information most people are basing there opinions on, I am not surprised by nor am I opposed to people criticizing President Robert Mugabe or anyone else for that matter. It seems that, for the most part, many of Mugabe's critics resist any other views than the sordid ones they are presented and that is what they share. I receive hate-filled emails from them and from the tone of the emails most are from a White point of view.

I am acutely aware that the West's interest in condemning and demonizing President Mugabe is motivated by their racist desire to ensure that the example Zimbabwe set by reclaiming land is not followed by other African nations and also to punish Zimbabwe for moving away from the IMF and World Bank policies.
Continue to: 'Mainstream Media Demonizes Mugabe'``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xMainstream Media Demonizes Mugabe``x1175016630,63793,world``x``x ``xThe hypocrisy of these Western leaders, all of whom have the blood of hundreds of thousands on their hands, makes hollow their outrage over Zimbabwe. Having already demonstrated the disregard they have for the lives of ordinary people, they cannot now be the moral authority for anyone.

Even if African nations wanted to make statements opposing President Mugabe's governing, the US, UK and Australia are making it difficult for them to do so with their constant demands and interferences. The leaders in these Western countries are demanding that leaders of African nations react harshly to President Robert Mugabe, as if the African leaders cannot see the tactics they are using in their attempts to remotely control them. Which African leader really wants to appear as US and Europe's lacquey?
Continue to: 'Zimbabwe: US and Europe's Disinformation Campaign'``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe: US and Europe's Disinformation Campaign``x1175173098,19974,world``x``x ``xZimbabwe Watch
March 29, 2007

African leaders agreed that President Thabo Mbeki should facilitate dialogue between the government and opposition political parties in Zimbabwe amid calls from Western leaders for strong actions to be taken against President Mugabe and the government of Zimbabwe.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) also called for western sanctions on Zimbabwe to be lifted and appealed to Britain to honour its commitments to assist with financing land reforms in Zimbabwe.

This may seem to be a slap in the face of Western leaders' calls for tough words and actions from African leaders against Robert Mugabe.

It is quite obvious that African leaders are not dependant on western sources for news and reports on what is taking place in Zimbabwe.

"Of course the appeal to parties is to be cooperative and give this initiative a chance, also for the parties to exercise restraint and avoid anything that's going to inflame the situation," Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete told reporters at a news conference.

"The extraordinary summit mandated his Excellency President Thabo Mbeki to continue to facilitate dialogue between opposition and government and report back ... on progress," a statement at the end of the two-day summit said.

"The extraordinary summit reiterated its appeal to Britain to honour its compensation obligations with regard to land reforms," the summit statement said.

Also Read:

Africa summit calls for Zimbabwe dialogue

Email: zimbabwecrisis@yahoo.com

Visit: Zimbabwe Watch``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe: Africa Summit Calls for End to Sanctions ``x1175194571,52151,world``x``x ``xHow do people feel knowing that Western powers have been paying people to criticize the Zimbabwe government? They should feel duped; especially if they actually believed most of the anti-Mugabe news that has been pushed by the Western media ever since the land reclamation exercise that forced some Whites to stop occupying large tracts of land that were to be distributed to Blacks.
Continue reading: 'Zimbabwe: U.S. Agenda Against the Nation Exposed'``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe: U.S. Agenda Against the Nation Exposed``x1176091222,98920,world``x``x ``xWe are witnessing an attempt to portray Don Imus as a victim of a Black conspiracy and hypocrisy. Apparently many commentators want to make Africans complicit in Don Imus' racist, sexist and homophobic conduct.

Don Imus is a racist and not much different from most other Whites.
Continue reading, 'Imus and White Privilege: Don't Blame Rap Music'``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xImus and White Privilege: Don't Blame Rap Music``x1176645233,68502,views``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
rastafaritimes@yahoo.com
April 19, 2007

Yesterday the people of Zimbabwe celebrated their nation's 27th year of independence and the US and other European powers are not pleased. They hoped that the White minority settlers in Zimbabwe could have continued controlling the vast amount of land that was taken during colonial rule.

Despite the increasing pressure from the US and other European powers, the majority in Zimbabwe remain strongly aligned to the ruling ZANU-PF party and their president, Robert Mugabe. It was hoped that economic hardship fueled by sanctions and the ongoing campaign by Western countries to demonize President Robert Mugabe could have been enough to turn the majority of people in rural areas against Mugabe. So far that has failed.

The life expectancy of an average Zimbabwean, as reported by the White House Deputy Press Secretary, Dana Perino, is 36 years old and the White Western powers are doing all they can to increase the pressure on the ordinary people through sanctions and rhetoric that is designed to scare away investors and financers from Zimbabwe. In other words, if the common folks in Zimbabwe do not force their government from power, allow Whites to control the most and best agricultural land, and accept western neocolonial polices, then they deserve to suffer and die.

Many in the African-American community join Africans in the international community in supporting those in Zimbabwe who bravely speak out against sanctions, for Britain to honour the agreement to finance the land redistribution exercise and for Zimbabwe to move further way from neocolonial policies.

Zimbabwe should also be calling for compensation from colonial powers for the theft of land, the hardship that Africans endured, and the wealth that the West derived from the unjust and illegal acquisition of land in Zimbabwe.

Many Zimbabweans understood that maintaining political freedom and reducing poverty required a new direction. They understood that the government was right to move away from the IMF and World Bank policies. They also understood that the government was right to fast track the process of reclaiming lands from White settlers and returning them to the indigenous African population.

We in the African community support Zimbabwe's efforts to develop true independence, free from the dictates of western powers and poverty.

Email: zimbabwecrisis@yahoo.com

Visit: Zimbabwe Watch``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe Independence Day - An African Statement``x1176997577,33361,world``x``x ``xTo Whom It May Concern:

Greetings in the name of the most high, HIM Rastafari, Blessed;

I have been perusing your site and while I believe it to be a positive expression of our faith and the concerns of people of colour, I found one heading I considered a bit disturbing. The term "Black African" as noted in your 'More Features' section. Just who is a Black African?

If we delve a bit deeper it becomes evident that the White Man with his words is again trying to displace the black race. If Africa is our home, then there is only African period. As there is no white Rastafarians, neither are there any White Africans, they (the whites in Africa) are merely foreigners as we the Black Race are considered foreigners after 500 years in the West.

This phrase should not be perpetrated by People of Colour as it tells our young that we, as a race, have no history and no place of origin. If the phrase 'Black African' is allowed to become a part of our vocabulary, then our history will be further distorted with lies concerning the Black Race and our rich history. Understand one thing, when ever the white man hyphenates a word; it is affirming that, that particular person or thing does not belong or that its/his origin is not of the place of residence.

Have you ever wondered why there is no White European? or White Americans? This is because the white man understands the power of words. In fact I have traveled through out Sub-Sahara Africa and have met many Ex-Apartheid people and their off-springs and never have I met one with an African tribal name even though their family has been raping that land since the 1600.

All I am saying is that words are powerful, be careful of their underlined meaning.

Ras Bebe

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AYINDE'S REPLY:

I understand your point of view quite well. Over the years many have questioned my use of the terms 'Black African' and 'dark-skin kinky-hair Black African'.

However, when I use the term 'Black African', I mean the dark-skin kinky-hair Black African who, in my view, is different to the mixed-race, light-skin or brown-skin African.

I draw distinctions among Africans because many Africans are not dark-brown or Black in complexion and do not have kinky hair. There are light-skin and other mixed race people who are also considered Africans, and not all people who are classified as Africans experience the system the same way.

The issue of colorism speaks to how Whites treat Africans differently based on the shade of their skin (which is still racism) and also how Africans (generally speaking) treat each other differently based on differences in skin tones.

It is my view, that while we are about addressing racism, colorism should be simultaneously addressed. It is my experience that Africans in general do not like examining colorism. By not addressing colorism, Africans are not discerning and treating each other based on merit, so instead, unconscious and unaddressed color prejudices often place the blackest of folks at a disadvantage.

Even dark-skin kinky-hair Black Africans fantasize about being lighter in complexion and having straighter hair. They fantasize about getting involved with lighter-skinned folks. Skin bleaching and hair straightening are common within the African community.

I have often been advised by well-intended people that I should drop discussions on Colorism to keep the focus on racism. I find such thinking to be disadvantageous to the community, especially to the people who are most negatively impacted in the system. So, in my efforts to address the ills in the system, I am about uplifting from where the system negatively impacts the most. Generally speaking, dark-skin, kinky-hair Black Africans experience the worst forms of negative discrimination.

When I use the term Black African I want it to be known that I want all to focus on how the system impacts the dark-skin, kinky-hair Black African - the Black African generally considered less intelligent and ugly in comparison to the light-skin African.

Ayinde``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xJust who is a Black African?``x1180840603,5158,rasta``x``x ``xBy Amina Mire
June 13, 2007

On 26 December, 2006, Ethiopian tanks supported by US AC 130 helicopter gun ships invaded Somalia in order to install a puppet regime of the Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) by ousting the Union of Islamic Courts (U.I.C.). Six months earlier, in June 2006, the Somali people allowed the Union of Islamic Courts to take power to help end the anarchy that resulted from a 15-year civil war in the battered country. As a result, the Islamic Union Courts assumed centralised control over many parts in the South, including the capital city, Mogadishu. This move came about partly after it was revealed that the CIA was secretly working with Somali warlords and Ethiopia to invade Somalia. Despite U.S. cash payments to various warlords none was able to assert their authority over the population and bring law and order and security to the Somali people.
Continue reading: 'Menacing Somalia: Unholy Trinity of U.S Global Militarism, Meles's Ethiopia and Thuggish Warlords'``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xMenacing Somalia: Unholy Trinity of U.S Global Militarism, Meles's Ethiopia and Thuggish Warlords``x1181748785,61665,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
rastafaritimes@yahoo.com
June 15, 2007

The Zimbabwe legislators passed an "Interception of Communications Bill" which would allow agents of the government to intercept telephonic, e-mail and cellphone messages.

BBC reports: "Zimbabwe's internet providers have strongly condemned the bill passed this week to allow the government to monitor e-mails and other communications."

The Zimbabwe government proposes to utilize technology, similar to what the US and UK use in their national security interest, but because this is being done in Zimbabwe under the leadership of Robert Mugabe, it is being reported as another human rights abuse.

News 24 reports: "The bill proposes the setting up of an interception of communications monitoring centre run by people appointed by the government...Under the proposed law the communications minister will be authorised to issue warrants for intercepting communications in cases where there are believed to be threats to national security."

Many people, including myself, do not like governments having access to our private mail and online activities, and it is in this vein I am generally opposed to all governments' snooping activities. But if people condone these measures in the US, Britain and South Africa (just to name a few nations that have such laws), then why should Zimbabwe not have similar laws?

Zimbabweans as well as their government are being subjected to sanctions and other destabilization activities from angry White farmers with their opposition sympathizers, the White-owned mainstream media, and the US, UK and other European governments. The authorities in Zimbabwe foiled a plot that was hatched in Britain to overthrow the government in Equatorial Guinea. There are also allegations of attempts to overthrow the Zimbabwe government. When it comes to who and what is being seriously threatened, the Zimbabwe government is more than qualified to implement measures to catch and prosecute those who seek to terrorize its citizens and overthrow its government.

Condemning the Zimbabwe government for implementing what other countries are "legally" doing in the interest of their security is part of the ongoing hypocritical campaign to destabilize Zimbabwe and demonize its government.

Ever since the Zimbabwe government turned away from the IMF and World Bank policies in the late 1990's, the White interest in Zimbabwe, together with the US, UK and other European governments have been trying to destabilize and topple the government.

The attempts to demonize President Robert Mugabe and wreak hardship on the poor citizens intensified when the government started seizing farms that were occupied by colonial Whites and distributing them to Africans in Zimbabwe. The efforts to redress the land issue in Zimbabwe, which was a legacy of the colonial era where Africans were herded on reservations and their land seized, left a minority of Whites with the most and best agricultural land in Zimbabwe. Britain reneged on the agreement to fund the land reform program, and the Zimbabwe government proceeded redistributing land seized to Africans. This process has been thoroughly condemned by the US and other European governments but has generally been applauded by Africans in and out of Africa.

Email: zimbabwecrisis@yahoo.com

Visit: Zimbabwe Watch``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xZimbabwe's Interception of Communications Bill``x1181880022,48425,world``x``x ``x» Race row students are unrepentant
Mass protest planned over video 'prank' that humiliated black staff at South African university

» Never mind 'the other' – we are all to blame
We are all at fault. No matter how sincere and heartfelt our celebrations of the "miracle of democracy" and the "rainbow's multi-hued splendour", it is a sad fact that we did little to eradicate the racism that is so deeply entrenched in the national psyche.

» Racist video sparks outrage in South Africa

» Outcry in SA over 'racist' video

» This is the real South Africa
White and black are shocked to discover how little the country has changed

» The video that sparked riots in South Africa this week``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xRacist video sparks outrage in South Africa``x1204434855,20039,world``x``x ``xBy Leslie
January 20, 2009
Updated: May 26, 2009
africaspeaks.com

Today, Tuesday 20th January, 2009, Barack Obama officially becomes the President of the United States of America. While there is much elation about this occasion, especially as the Bush era was marked by atrocities and war crimes, Obama has not mapped out a clear path for the change that he constantly spoke about on the campaign trail. However, Obama did express some views on several key issues recently and we can gauge those to see if he is really about meaningful change.

Fact 1: Obama supports the hypocrisy of so-called free market capitalism: Obama (and then opponent John McCain) supported the US $700 billion plan to 'rescue' the U.S. financial system. As if! Isn't this diametrically opposed to the tenets of U.S./Europe-styled capitalism? Why would the U.S. want to save capitalist business? Why not let it run its course. Why not help the real victims: the ordinary people who could possibly lose a lifetime of savings?

Fact 2: Obama has, before his official inauguration as president, already continued Bush's venom-spewing against anti-imperialist nations blaming Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, for the supposed backwardness of Latin America. It is obvious, as Chavez points out, that Obama is kowtowing to the dictates of the Empire, (like Darth Vader to Palpatine). (See: Obama and Chávez Start Sparring Early at washingtonpost.com)

Fact 3: Obama did not - repeat - did not promise to end the hostilities and embargos against Cuba. His promise to ease the travel ban for Cuban-Americans (and other Americans) is a gesture that may especially help to mend family ties for the Cuban community. However, he does not want to end the embargo because he says it is "an important inducement for change." I suppose we will have to wait for the U.S. to force their version of democracy Iraq style before all embargos are lifted. Ahh...what a day it would be when Cuba once again becomes a playground for the mob and the rich and famous! Ahh, yes...wouldn't America just love that! (See: Top Obama Flip-Flops at washingtonpost.com)

Fact 4: Obama intends to "draw down U.S. troops in Iraq and send some to Afghanistan," rather than a complete withdrawal of their illegal and amoral occupation of the territories. (See: Obama Calls for Aid to U.S. Auto Industry, With Conditions at bloomberg.com) He continues with the old paranoia of prior regimes of the world-against-America banter. Like the defensive realists, many of whom believe that we should do them before they do us, Obama has repeated the talk that it is "a top priority for us to stamp out al-Qaeda once and for all" capturing Osama Bin Laden who himself has never admitted involvement in the 9/11 event.

Also, although Obama proposed to withdraw troops from Iraq, he is not opposed to sending them back in the event of disaster or genocide. The invasion of Iraq was in itself a disaster and America has already massacred a nation of many innocent Iraqi citizens. America should leave Iraq and not play God by keeping troops stationed there or even returning troops when America feels necessary. So as benevolent as Obama's plan of expatriating U.S. soldiers may seem, the possibility of their return, especially if there is no real threat to the U.S., is still a desire to keep control of the territory.

Additionally, despite Obama's rhetoric of holding talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without pre-condition, he is still of the view that Iran poses a threat to the Middle East and the U.S. and is not opposed to imposing "international sanctions to push Iran to be more transparent over its suspect nuclear program." What about America and its allies nuclear programmes?

Fact 5: Obama opposes reparations for slavery (See: Obama opposes reparations for slavery at nydailynews.com) further highlighting his light-skinned, mixed race insensitivity to dark-skin Black African concerns and his attempt at political expediency by not turning-off his White support base. So people's idea that they have a chance to correct historical wrongs by electing a so-called Black president has boiled down to naught. This is the price of trying to get a kind-of-Black president by any means necessary: a president who may not necessarily have the interest of ordinary Africans or even native Indian and poor White, Asian or Hispanic interests at heart. Of course the basis of White-supremacy is about maintaining its structure despite the few cosmetic changes that may be made to it.

Fact 6: Obama has pledged "non-negotiable" allegiance to Israel despite their terrorism against Palestine, Lebanon and in general the entire Middle East and "envisages isolating Hamas and Hezbollah, as long as the Islamic militant groups refuse to renounce terrorism or recognize the right of Israel to exist." Nothing different from Bush's bush.

Fact 7: Obama is MIXED race. Obama is half-Black African and half-White Caucasian, who is light in complexion. The texture of his hair and his facial features also show the mixture of the two races. Thus, deeming him the first Black president of America is a distortion of reality. This distortion of him being Black African (American) is a product of racist, American Jim Crowism which has yet to be abandoned. While there has never been a U.S. president that looked like Obama, the first acknowledged mixed race but reported as African-American president of the U.S.A., he is not the first African-American president in the real sense of the term. I personally feel that America isn't ready for that image. I do understand the history behind misconceptions about race as well as the victory some may feel over Obama's electoral win, especially since all past U.S. presidents, as far as I am aware, have not acknowledged recent non-White ancestry. This was deliberate in order to secure the White, racist image of the U.S. presidency. However, when African people buy into the notion that mixed-race persons are Black African, it works against dark-skin Black Africans. This did not begin with Obama but is a continuation of the problem of colourism which favours light-skin ones in the entertainment industry, in the education system, in the workplace and in high governmental positions, including the presidency as of November 4, 2008. Dark-skin Blacks are hardly considered unless, of course, they are 'polished' enough to pass as non-threatening. Can you imagine so many Americans voting for Obama if he was a dark-skin African?

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who probably can't get over the outcome of the American elections would rather deny that Obama is half-African by making the snide remark that he would get along with Obama because he is "young, handsome and also tanned." Berlusconi and others like him, because of their racism and because the white symbol of White supremacy in America's highest office is no more (at least for now), would rather dismiss the fact that he is part Black African and describe him tanned instead of dealing with him as a person of White/Caucasian as well as African ancestry.

So, the 'polished', mixed race Obama is president, but do his politics represent the interests of the ordinary American citizen? As far as I am concerned, his words have not indicated so. He still upholds capitalism with all its flaws and hypocrisies and has not articulated a real plan for better except his rhetoric of "change" and the ubiquitous slogan "Yes, we can!"

Fact 8: Obama and McCain are not too different. The Daily Telegraph (See: How Obama, McCain compare on policies at news.com.au) reports some of the policies of the two. Here is a synopsis:

a) McCain whole-heartedly supports the war and occupation of Iraq. Obama, while supporting the withdrawal of troops, is not against sending them back in case of "catastrophe or genocide."

b) Obama is in favour of talks with Iran but is also in favour of the imposition of international sanctions against Iran to force the country to become more "transparent over its suspect nuclear program." McCain is against talks with Iran and supports economic and other sanctions "if necessary".

c) Obama's view is that America's commitment to Israel is "non-negotiable" and McCain sings the same tune stating that he, Hamas' worst enemy, supports U.S. military aid to Israel.

I can understand the euphoria as well as the disappointment and concern about Obama's election. However, much of these feelings may be misplaced.

What many fail to realize is that the persons operating in the frontline, presidents in some cases and prime ministers in others, are just images that are projected, for instance, to acquire votes. In Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, we have long been accustomed to having leaders look like us, or in many cases, more 'polished' and commonly accepted versions of us.

While there may be one or two differences in policies among candidates, the purpose of their election remains the same: upholding White supremacy. In Trinidad and Tobago, for example, we have adopted and continued with the tradition of the Westminster system of government; we have not implemented mechanisms to allow the poor to be empowered, especially since we have totally endorsed the ideals of U.S./European capitalism; we are anti-communist/socialist or any other utilitarian forms of government or attempts to do so, and the list goes on. The same can be said of American politics. While Democrats and Republicans may differ on some issues, they all agree to uphold White supremacy. Would this be any different under Obama's reign?

I think, to some extent, it would be a good thing for Americans to experience what we here in the Caribbean, and indeed other parts of the world, have been experiencing for decades: White rule with a African, mixed race or Asian face. What we should be weary of is the reasons behind people's endorsement of Obama as well as their rejection of him. We should just as much be aware that the racial labels people ascribe to him may be based on general misunderstandings or other nasty agendas. For example, I may argue that Obama is mixed race and not Black African, especially since I am aware that America's categorization of one drop 'Black' blood equals Black, was done as an extreme form of racism to protect their pseudo-scientific pure-White race beliefs; to ensure that economic benefits did not get into the hands of Africans through those mixed with African, and to ensure that the White supremacist structure remained intact. What the one drop African blood classification did, in effect, was to further disadvantage dark-skin Black African Americans because light-skin Africans or mixed race individuals were (and are) still preferred by Whites. The net result was that lighter skin ones got more economic and other opportunities, especially with systems such as affirmative action, while Whites could claim benevolence to African-Americans in general. Dark-skin Blacks also prefer lighter skin ones - one of the negative syndromes which resulted from slavery - and so they are inclined to support light skin individuals in positions of power while they, dark-skin ones, continue to feel the bulk of the oppression. Thus, the term Black or African-American was effectively warped making race a political term instead of a strictly phenotypical one. This contributed to making life more difficult for Africans while maintaining the racist pyramidal structure.

We will see what Obama does starting today. I still maintain, despite change of face, change...what change?``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xPresident Barack Obama: Change...What Change?``x1232450528,48725,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
January 25, 2009

The Obama administration could be a case of the medicine being worse than the sickness, unless it addresses the abuses of the past Bush regime. Obama spoke of a new era of responsibility in the White House and we should hold him to his word.

Under the previous Bush administration, we witnessed the lack of limits that allow the U.S. governmental power to be abused. Whether or not the U.S. government had prior information and was complicit in the 9/11 attacks, it seized the event and the fear it generated to politicize its anti-Muslim, anti-non-White, pro-Christian agenda under the guise of a War on Terror that has had a far-reaching, negative impact in a multitude of countries worldwide. They manufactured evidence in order to get Congress' approval along with influencing a "coalition of the willing" to wage war on Iraq. The ongoing Iraq war, so far, has resulted in over 1,300,000 Iraqis being killed, hundreds of thousands seriously injured and destruction to the infrastructure of Iraq. Around 4,000 US military personnel have also been killed and countless others injured.

While Obama has suggested a withdrawal from Iraq, he has not suggested the same regarding Afghanistan. Four days in office and he has ordered his first strike in Pakistan.

"Barack Obama gave the go-ahead for his first military action yesterday: missile strikes against 'suspected militants' in Pakistan, which killed at least 18 people." ("President orders air strikes on villages in tribal area")

Similarly, speaking about U.S. acts of aggression, the Afghan president said that the US forces killed 16 civilians. President Karzai further stated the killing of innocent Afghans during U.S. military operations "is strengthening the terrorists."

"Civilian deaths during U.S. operations have been a huge point of friction between the Afghan government and U.S. and NATO militaries. Many of the deaths happen on overnight raids by U.S. Special Forces who launch operations against specific insurgent leaders." ("Afghan president: US forces killed 16 civilians")

The Bush administration sanctioned torture as well as illegal detentions in secret detention centers in Europe, Iraq, Afghanistan and Cuba. The torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib were just some of the extreme abuses that made it to the wider public's attention.

According to a report by Joby Warrick and Karen De Young, "A bipartisan panel of senators has concluded that former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials bear direct responsibility for the harsh treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and that their decisions led to more serious abuses in Iraq and elsewhere." ("Report on Detainee Abuse Blames Top Bush Officials")

In Obama's new era of responsibility, he should, on behalf of the American government, also accept a measure of responsibility for the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. The weapons used in the recent slaughter saw over 1,300 Palestinians killed and countless others maimed, as well as the destruction to lives and property. Acts of aggression by Israel are done with weapons and technology supplied by the United States of America and quite possibly with the approval of past administrations.

Obama has called for the disarming and sidelining of Hamas, which is the democratically elected government in Palestine. He also called on Arabs to solidify behind the much discredited Palestinian Authority. So the wishes of Palestinians are being ignored as usual.

Would Obama be continuing the same U.S. policies in Africa? Would there be a continuation of the U.S. efforts in Zimbabwe to force President Robert Mugabe from office? Would there be a continuation of efforts to expand U.S. military bases in Africa?

While there is no clarity about how the Obama administration would deal with all these issues, he has signaled that he does not intend to investigate or prosecute those officials who were responsible for the policies of torture and illegal detention.

If those of the previous administration who are accused of war crimes are not brought to answer through the legal system, and if the laws of the U.S. are not amended to make it extremely difficult for any administration to engage in such acts of aggression, then the Obama presidency is about giving a false sense of security. The era of abuses from the last Bush administration, as well as previous administrations, can revisit us at any time (provided that they are not continued under Obama's administration). In such a case, Obama may be the 'good cop' in the traditional good cop/bad cop scenario: they both cooperate for the same agenda while appearing to be different.

Related Articles:

Gaza Invasion: Powered By The U.S.
It's well known that the U.S. supplies the Israelis with much of their military hardware. Over the past few decades, the U.S. has provided about $53 billion in military aid to Israel. What's not well known is that since 2004, U.S. taxpayers have paid to supply over 500 million gallons of refined oil products -- worth about $1.1 billion –- to the Israeli military. While a handful of countries get motor fuel from the U.S., they receive only a fraction of the fuel that Israel does -- fuel now being used by Israeli fighter jets, helicopters and tanks to battle Hamas.

Change (in rhetoric) we can believe in

Shift Zimbabwe policy, Obama urged``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xIs Obama just playing good cop?``x1232898220,77692,world``x``x ``xTo the U.S. government, Afghans are not worth much. I wonder how much they would have paid White Americans if they accidentally killed them. Of course, this is no accident; they calculated the risk before bombing and decided that the civilian risk was worth it. They feel money can redress the damage so they will do it again and then pay whatever they feel they can get away with.
-- Ayinde

US pays $40,000 after 15 Afghans die in raid

Full article here ...``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xUS pays $40,000 after killing 15 Afghans in raid``x1233092517,81161,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
March 09, 2009

The first Western news reports about the vehicular collision in Zimbabwe that claimed the life of Susan Tsvangirai and injured her husband, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, left many speculating that the accident could have been orchestrated by President Mugabe.

The Herald, the Zimbabwe state media, was the first to publish that the vehicle which collided with Tsvangirai's Toyota Landcruiser belonged to USAID -- an American 'charity' that operates in Zimbabwe. According to the Herald, the registration number of the vehicle is "one of those allocated to the American Embassy technical support staff vehicles."

In a subsequent report in the Guardian UK we learnt that the driver of the truck was employed using money from a British development agency.

With this information in the public domain, it became extremely difficult to pin the blame on Robert Mugabe and as of today, there are media reports from the UK's Foreign Office spokeswoman stating the smash-up was an accident.

"We can confirm that the truck was operated by a project jointly funded by the United States and United Kingdom," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said. "All indications are that this was a genuine accident." --news.morningstar.com

Why are they so quickly calling this a genuine accident?

There were many commentators who speculated that this accident was the work of Mugabe's henchmen to get rid of his rival, Tsvangirai. Why was it not possible that the US and or UK bothched an 'accident' in an attempt get rid of Tsvangirai for forming a unity government with Robert Mugabe? Why was it not possible that an individual or group aligned with the White settlers tried to kill Tsvangirai in order to derail the 'unity government'? We know that many were against him for eventually agreeing to be part of the 'unity' government.

I expect that the government of Zimbabwe would thoroughly investigate this accident; they should call on governments from the southern African states to assist or independently investigate the crash.

Yes, it could be an accident, but we should be suspicious amidst reports of US and UK 'charity' involvement and especially so because of the British haste to call this a genuine accident.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xTsvangirai's Accident with UK and US Aid``x1236610775,87802,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
March 20, 2009
Updated: March 22, 2009

On March 19th 2009, the US President, Barack Obama, sent a video message to Iran as they celebrate their New Year's holiday, Nowruz. The message, which was also posted on YouTube, maintained the style of rhetoric that Obama is noted for. The US President is calling on Iran to change while the US is not taking responsibility for its role in the deterioration of its relations with Iran or offering anything substantial to indicate its willingness to change. I expect the Iranian leaders to welcome the overtures on one hand, but on the other, to reject them until the US demonstrates a change in its policies in the Middle East.

Obama's address to Iran should have gone something like this:

To the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,

Best wishes to you during and after your celebration of Nowruz. I hope the new year brings better relations between our two nations. In honor of this occasion I will be offering tangible evidence of our efforts to foster better relations.

Our nation has done yours countless wrongs over the decades and for this I am sorry. I want to let you know that you have very good reasons to be distrustful of my overtures but I hope after your leaders and I meet face to face we can work out appropriate reparations which the US will like some time to pay due to our current economic crisis.

During my administration the US aims to get rid of our Weapons of Mass Destruction and wish you do the same. We invite you to inspect our facilities as we destroy them but we will understand if you are hesitant to reciprocate. We hope you would do likewise after you are convinced of our sincerity. As a gesture of goodwill, all sanctions that have been imposed and upheld by the US government are to be lifted immediately.

We are ready to be a transparent administration and pledge to cease all covert and overt undermining of your government.

In addition, the US will no longer assist Israel while Israel continues to illegally occupy Palestinian land and kill innocent Palestinians. We will recognise Hamas and other similar bodies as resistance movements and the US will immediately remove them from our terrorist list.

This address to you, where I am promising to redress many wrongs, is the first of many amends the US would like to make to other nations that have been harmed by our transgressions; this is my work during the course of my administration.

Choosing Nowruz to send this message is symbolic of our willingness to recognize and respect not only the sovereignty of Iran but also your cultural and religious heritage.

Thank you, and Eid-eh Shoma Mobarak.

Related News:

Why Iran needs a different approach from Obama March 26, 2009

Iran's supreme leader dismisses Obama overtures March 21, 2009

Iran's Khamenei rebuffs Obama overture March 21, 2009``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xWhat Obama should have said to Iran``x1237521623,82003,world``x``x ``xBy Ayinde
March 24, 2009

United States President Obama is picking at Venezuela's President, Hugo Chávez again. Some may have thought and hoped that Obama could have appreciated the efforts of Chávez -- one of the most progressive leaders we have today. However, perhaps cowardice, maybe indifference and definitely ignorance prevail as Obama continues with the anti-progressive and unfriendly US agenda.

Obama said that Chávez has, "..been a force that has interrupted progress in the region." --washingtonpost.com

How dumb do you have to be to believe that?! Obama expects us to believe that he is unaware of the US sponsored bad capitalist fiscal policies, wars, coups and assassinations that have impeded development in Latin America for all these decades? Does Obama not know about the Bush regime's support and involvement in the 2002 coup in Venezuela that attempted to remove the democratically elected president, Hugo Chávez, from office?

Obama said: "We need to be firm when we see this news, that Venezuela is exporting terrorist activities or supporting malicious entities like the FARC...This creates problems that are not acceptable."

Where is any hard evidence of Chávez exporting terrorist activities? Is Obama just relying on news from Chávez's enemies in the media? Obama is going along with these unsubstantiated, malicious accusations that are a continuation of the demonizing campaign from Bush's regime. In reality, it is the US that is involved in terrorist activities in Venezuela by supporting the 2002 coup and the opposition forces that are using violence to advance their political agenda.

I am not surprised as I knew that Obama is not much different in mindset and policies to other US presidents who are first and foremost about protecting the interest of the White elites at home and abroad. Obama could turn out to be the worst US president ever. He is the non-White face in front of US imperialism that caught many so-called progressive Whites and non-Whites unaware.

However, he has exposed the weakness in many who thought they were revolutionaries but, deep down inside, believe that America is this great nation and the problem is just some of the leaders and the poor decisions they make. They do not get that the 'American Way' is fundamentally flawed. The politics are corrupt, their idea of democracy is a farce, and White superiority is firmly entrenched. Obama is demonstrating that America does not require a White leader to uphold the illusion of White superiority.

Leslie already said it: "Change...What Change?"
"I think, to some extent, it would be a good thing for Americans to experience what we here in the Caribbean, and indeed other parts of the world, have been experiencing for decades: White rule with an African, mixed race or Asian face."

Also Read:

Chávez Warns that Obama "Repeats Bush's Discourse Against Venezuela"
by TeleSUR; narconews.com - January 16, 2009

Obama and Chávez Start Sparring Early
Washington Post Foreign Service - January 19, 2009

Why Obama Should Talk to Chávez
By Tim Padgett - February 18, 2009

Venezuela & Chávez Watch
trinicenter.com``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xChávez is right: Obama has "the same stench" as Bush``x1237948309,89254,world``x``x ``xBy William Blum
April 04, 2009
killinghope.org

In the past two months:

-- US Vice President Joe Biden was asked by reporters at a summit in Chile if Washington plans to put an end to the near-50-year-old economic embargo against Cuba. He replied "No."

-- Israeli authorities broke up a series of Palestinian cultural events in Jerusalem, disrupting a children's march and bursting balloons at a schoolyard celebration. There has not been, nor will there be, any embargo of any kind by the United States against Israel. Nor will President Obama make any comment about what he really feels about invading a children's party and bursting their balloons.

-- The White House and the Pentagon appear to be having a competition over who can announce the most troops being sent to Afghanistan. Is anyone keeping a body count?

-- US drones continue to drop bombs on people's homes and wedding parties in Pakistan. No one in Washington publicly admits to this or comments in any way about the legality or morality of it all.

-- Bolivia and Ecuador have expelled American diplomats for what their hosts saw as conspiring to undermine the government.

Any number of other examples can be given of how alike the foreign policies of the Bush and Obama administrations are, how little, if any, change has occurred; certainly nothing of any significance. Yet, my saying such a thing is precisely what most often bothers Obama supporters who read or hear my comments. They're in love with the man with the toothpaste-advertisement smile, who's "smart" (whatever that means), who plays basketball, and is not George W. Bush, and his wife who puts her arm around the queen of England.

Obama's popularity around the world is enhanced, to an important extent, by the fact that he has endeavored to conceal or obscure his real ideology. As an example, in early March, in an interview with the New York Times, he was asked: "Is there a one word name for your philosophy? If you're not a socialist, are you a liberal? Are you progressive? One word?"

"No, I'm not going to engage in that," replied the president.

The next day he called the Times reporter, telling him: "It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question". Obama then gave the reporter several examples of why his policies show that he isn't a socialist.

He didn't have to convince me. Obama's centrist bent is clear to anyone who bothers to look. But after the Times incident – which apparently bothered him – he may have felt the need to be more clear about his ideological leanings to avoid any further silly "socialist" episodes. The next day, meeting at the White House with members of the New Democrat Coalition, a group of centrist Democratic members of the House, Obama said at one point: "I am a New Democrat."

Most conservatives will probably continue to see him as a dangerous leftist. They should be happy that Obama is the president and not any kind of real progressive or socialist or even a genuine liberal, but the right wing is greedy.

William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir and Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Source: killinghope.org``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xThe Ideology of Barack Obama``x1239587891,55813,world``x``x ``xThe Guyana Cultural Association New York Inc. /Guyana Folk Festival committee yesterday announced the passing of Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, a former professor of the University of Rutgers and an important son of Guyana’s soil.

Ivan Van Sertima, born January 26, 1935, is a Guyanese-British historian, linguist and anthropologist noted for his Afrocentric theory of pre-Columbian contact between Africa and the Americas.
Full Article : blackpower.com


Ivan van Sertima dies

R.I.P. Ron Takaki and Ivan Van Sertima``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xDr. Ivan Van Sertima passes at 74``x1243569623,94971,world``x``x ``xNEVIS

August 27, 2009

Press Release

The 13th Summit of the Caribbean Rastafari Organisation (CRO) Inc. concluded in Nevis on Tuesday 25th August following the election of officers to run the affairs of the regional body for the next three years.

Bongo Wisely (Burnet Sealy) of the Iyanola Council for the Advancement of Rastafari of St. Lucia was elected Chairman, with Ras Iral Jabari of ICAR, Barbados as Co-Chair. Sisters Yejida Parry and Shelly Huggins of the One Love Rastafari Movement of Nevis were elected as Secretary and Assistant Secretary, while Sister Idesha Jackson of St. Vincent and the Grenadines was elected Treasurer with Ras David Sebastian of Trinidad & Tobago elected to the office of Assistant Treasurer. Outgoing Chairman, Ras Franki Tafari of Antigua and Barbuda will serve as the PRO of the organisation with Sister Ashaya of Guadeloupe appointed to serve as Assistant PRO.

The Conference was officially declared open by the Nevis Deputy Premier, the Honourable Hensley Daniel on Thursday 20th August who issued a call to the Rastafari delegates to collaborate with the Caribbean governments and the Nevis Island Administration particularly, in helping to remedy some of the shortcomings of Caribbean society, with a focus on youth development. A delegation from the Conference later met with Minister Daniel and outlined several areas of cooperation and collaboration between the CRO and the Nevis Island Administration. The Minister pledged his assistance in realising these community based development projects.

Executive Director, Ijahnya Christian of Anguilla conducted a fruitful seminar on Organisational Leadership with a practical exercise in budgeting. Herbalist Ras Bobby Olivacce of St. Thomas USVI conducted a well received 'health and herbs' exposition at the Summit's culture and trade event at Villa Flat. The Conference also journeyed to St. Kitts where a large gathering at the Cayon Community Centre reasoned on some of the concerns and issues affecting the Rastafari communities in the Caribbean.

Honoured guest at the 13th CRO Conference was Dub Poet, author and producer Yasus Afari of Jamaica who entertained the audience at the Nevis Cultural Centre on Friday night (21st August), with a rousing performance of poetry and reasoning. Ras Yasus also pledged his assistance in developing viable economic and business projects with the CRO and the Nevis Island Administration.

Among the important activities that took place during the Summit was the sanctification of three infants according to the precepts of the Ancient Theocratic Order of the Nyahbinghi. The presiding priests anointed the infants and with the assistance of the matriarchs present, introduced and welcomed them into the Rastafari community of families present.

The 13th CRO Conference included delegates from Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St. Thomas USVI, St. Lucia and Jamaica along with members of the Rastafari community of the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis.

Outputs of the 13th CRO Summit included:

-- A Concept Note for an initiative in culture based enterprise in Nevis in 2010

-- A Resolution urging the formalization and finalisation of the process to include the African Diaspora as the 6th Region of the African Union, and

-- A Statement on Rastafari Profiling influenced by the death of a young Rastafarian in Barbados on 17th June 2008 following an incident involving the Royal Barbados Police Force.

CRO Secretariat,
Triple Crown Culture Yard,
P. O. Box 109,
The Valley, Anguilla A1-2640
Tel. (264) 497 2878
Fax (264) 497 7999
crosecretariat@yahoo.com ``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xCaribbean Rastafari Organisation``x1251877462,90496,rasta``x``x ``xBy William Blum
September 2nd, 2009

"And on the most exalted throne in the world sits nothing but a man's arse." —Montaigne

If there's anyone out there who is not already thoroughly cynical about those on the board of directors of the planet, the latest chapter in the saga of the bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland might just be enough to push them over the edge.

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted for the December 21, 1988 bombing, was released from his Scottish imprisonment August 21 supposedly because of his terminal cancer and sent home to Libya, where he received a hero's welcome. President Obama said that the jubilant welcome Megrahi received was "highly objectionable". His White House spokesman Robert Gibbs added that the welcoming scenes in Libya were "outrageous and disgusting". British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was "angry and repulsed", while his foreign secretary, David Miliband, termed the celebratory images "deeply upsetting." Miliband warned: "How the Libyan government handles itself in the next few days will be very significant in the way the world views Libya's reentry into the civilized community of nations."
Full Article : trinicenter.com``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``xAh yes, 'the civilized community of nations'``x1252239884,54118,world``x``x ``xThe following text is a full transcript of statement by President Robert Mugabe at the 64th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2009.

Your Excellency, President of the 64th Session of the General Assembly, Mr. Ali Abdulsalam Treki; Your Majesties;

Your Excellencies, Heads of State and Government;

Your Excellency, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. Ban Ki Moon;

Distinguished Delegates;

Ladies and Gentlemen;

Comrades and Friends.

Let me begin by extending our warmest congratulations to you, Mr Treki, on your election as President of the 64th Session of the General Assembly. Your election to this high office is a befitting and eloquent tribute to the personal and diplomatic qualities that we have witnessed in you over the years. We are, indeed, proud of the honour that has been bestowed upon the African continent as a result of your election. We are confident that, under your wise stewardship, we will make pleasing progress on the important agenda before us.

In the same vein, I wish to commend your predecessor, the President of the 63rd Session, Father Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, for having brought his experience and wisdom to bear upon the various meetings and conferences that he presided over during the last year. He brought integrity, transparency and credibility to the deliberations of the General Assembly. Indeed, we share his assertion, that the G-192, that is, the General Assembly, being the most representative body of the United Nations, is the best forum to tackle global issues which include the current financial
and economic crises. We commend him for standing up for what is right and for upholding the right of each Member State to be heard, no matter how small.

Mr. President,

Over the years, my delegation has underlined the need for the United Nations and other international bodies to truly serve the collective interest of all Member States.

Our unchanging conviction is that all international institutions should abide by the universal principles which underlie multilateral processes of decision-making, particularly, the principle of equality among States and the right to development. It is in this context that we welcome the appropriate, indeed, timely, theme of this Session: "Effective global responses to global crises, strengthening multilateralism and dialogue among civilizations." It is our hope that we will have a candid and holistic debate on the global responses to the crises that currently affect our world.

Mr. President, Zimbabwe supports the revitalisation of the General Assembly to make it more effective and thus enable it to fulfil its mandate. As the pre-eminent deliberative and policy-making body of the United Nations, the General Assembly should play a more active role in mobilising action against such challenges today as peace and security, the financial and economic crises, economic and social development, and climate change. Accordingly, the encroachment of other UN organs upon the work of the General Assembly is of great concern to us. We therefore reiterate that any process of revitalisation should strengthen the principle of accountability of all principal and subsidiary organs of the United Nations to the General Assembly.

Mr. President,

It is our hope that the current negotiations on the reform of the United Nations Security Council will break the deadlock that has for some time now prevented us from making progress in an area of strategic interest for Africa. The reform of the Security Council is not only desirable but imperative, if it is to ensure the successful implementation of its global mandate to maintain international peace and security on behalf of all Member States.

The fact that Africa, a major geographical region, remains under-represented and without a permanent seat on the Security Council is not only a serious and antiquated anomaly whose time for address is overdue. It is also clearly an untenable violation of the principle and practice of democracy in international relations. The reform of the Security Council should urgently take full notice of the African position which demands two permanent seats, with complete veto power, plus two additional non-permanent seats.

Mr. President,

The UN Conference on the Financial and Economic Crises held in June 2009 rightfully positioned the United Nations at the centre of efforts to deal with the global financial and economic crises. The devastating effect of the current global crisis has clearly exposed the folly of leaving the management of the global economy in the hands of a few self-appointed countries and groupings. My delegation, therefore, fully supports the setting up of a follow-up working group under the aegis of the General Assembly. It is urgent and critical that the working group reaches an early agreement on immediate policy actions to be taken by the international community in support of developing countries, who have suffered the most as a result of this global financial meltdown. Such actions should include the development of a global stimulus plan to respond to the crisis and other issues related to it.

Mr. President,

These measures will not achieve the desired objectives unless accompanied by a comprehensive reform of the Bretton Woods institutions which, among other things, would include representation of sub-Saharan Africa on the Executive Boards of these institutions. We are glad that our unequivocal call for their reform is beginning to bear fruit. We, therefore, welcome the recent decision by the World Bank to establish three seats for Africa on its Executive Board. We are similarly pleased that, earlier this month, the IMF finalised the re-allocation of Special Drawing Rights on the basis of the US$250 billion pledged by the G20 at its meeting in April 2009.

Regrettably, only a mere US$18 billion of this money was allocated to low income countries, while the developed countries, which caused the crisis, got the lion's share.

Mr. President,

The need to ensure global food security has been raised and re-stated at many international forums. We reiterate our call for an urgent and substantial increase in investment in agriculture in developing countries. It is critical that provisions of agricultural inputs, seeds, fertilisers and chemicals be put in place for small scale farmers, particularly, women. To achieve this, there is need to channel more support towards agriculture, which has dwindled over the last few decades. In addition, we call upon the developed countries to remove or reduce their agricultural subsidies and to open up their markets for agricultural products from developing countries.

Mr. President,

In the area of health, efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality, and combat HIV and AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, still fall short of targets despite the commitments made at the national and international levels. Over the last few years, Zimbabwe has made great strides in the fight against the HIV and AIDS pandemic, our limited resources notwithstanding. The country has witnessed a drop in the adult prevalence rate of 20 per cent in 2000 to 11 per cent this year. However, the country still faces a major challenge in increasing the availability of affordable anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). We, therefore, continue to urge the international community, in cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, to assist in increasing access to affordable essential drugs, particularly for people in Africa.

Mr. President,

People living with HIV and AIDS expect delivery on the commitments we have made.

For sub-Saharan Africa, malaria presents yet another still formidable challenge. The commitment of the international community and national governments therefore needs to be strengthened so as to eradicate the scourge of malaria from our part of the world.

We warmly welcome the renewed enthusiasm by Russia and the United States to pursue actions to achieve a world free of nuclear arms and we urge other nuclear weapons states to do the same. In this regard, Zimbabwe is honoured to have chaired, in May this year, the Third Preparatory Committee for the 2010 Nuclear Proliferation Treaty Review Conference and takes this opportunity to thank all members for their support. We are hopeful that, having secured agreement on the Conference agenda, members will produce a renewed commitment to the three pillars of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty; namely, nuclear disarmament, nonproliferation and peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Mr. President,

May I now turn to the developments in my country. Since its formation in February this year, the Inclusive Government in Zimbabwe has demonstrated a conviction and unity of purpose, and an unwavering commitment to chart a new vision for the country and to improve the lives of the people in peace and harmony. In the Global Political Agreement, we have defined our priorities as the maintenance of conditions of peace and stability, economic recovery, development, promotion of human rights and improvement of the condition of women and children.

Regrettably, while countries in the SADC region have made huge sacrifices and given Zimbabwe financial and other support at a time when they too are reeling from the effects of the global economic crisis, the western countries, the United States and the European Union, who imposed illegal sanctions against Zimbabwe have, to our surprise, and that of SADC and the rest of Africa, refused to remove them. What are their motives? Indeed some of them are working strenuously to divide the parties in the inclusive Government. If they will not assist the inclusive Government in rehabilitating our economy, could they please stop their filthy clandestine divisive antics. Where stand their humanitarian principles when their illegal sanctions are ruining the lives of our children?

We similarly call for an immediate end to the coercive, illegal and unjustified fifty year economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba which is estimated to have cost Cuba so far a total of US$96 billion, causing untold suffering on that country and its people. My delegation joins other Non-Aligned Movement countries which have repeatedly condemned the use of unilateral coercive measures as a flagrant violation of the norms of international law and international relations, especially as they govern relations between States under the UN Charter.

Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me conclude by reiterating the need for effective and comprehensive multilateralism to promote the global partnership for peace and development. The United Nations and other international organisations which carry the legitimacy of multilateralism should play a leading role in directing the course of events and developments, taking into account the interests of the majority of its members in an inclusive, peaceful, just, universal and democratic manner. It is our hope that through our unity, solidarity, cooperation and commitment, the challenges facing the international community could be addressed. Let us rise to the occasion and demonstrate our political will and ability to work together for the good of humanity.

Zimbabwe is willing and ready to play her part.

I thank you.``xmeri``xmeri@tstt.net.tt``x2009 Statement by President Mugabe at UN``x1253989084,41896,world``x``x