2008-07-22

Build a Kilombo Republic!

The Black Liberation Struggle against Imperialism

So it is, the Black Liberation dialectic has become blurred as the international struggle for survival in a hostile capitalist world economy take precedence. Aside from opportunists diluting the line, ambiguities within our own victories against Imperialism have left the national democratic struggle in jeopardy.

South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique have all become tinderboxes. Imperialism has sworn to destabilize these states. Zimbabwe has been singled out for special demonization, with black-skinned critics leading the charge. Yet, while we uphold the right to criticize, Zimbabwe’s critics consistently depart from rendering concrete support for the Zimbabwean African masses.

Anti-Zimbabwe criticism is also linked with increasing criticism of South Africa because of recent attacks inside the country mis-characterized as “xenophobic pogroms”, as well as the fact the South Africans were slow to pressure the Zimbabwean government for its missteps. Very few observers have struggled to analyze this phenomenon. The Black Commentator imitated Imperialist propaganda styles in cartoon condemnations. It gave the impression that an anti-Zimbabwe element has arisen in South Africa, when workers from all neighboring African countries have been attacked, not just Zimbabweans.

It also ignores the counterinsurgency which has opposed and delayed revolutions in all three countries. In fact, not one anti-ZANU or “anti-xenophobic” article in The Black Commentator even mentions counterinsurgency. Renamo in Mozambique, Inkatha in South Africa and forces inside Zimbabwe all still receive Imperialist financing to turn back the revolutions to colonial times.

So this is the neo-colonialist element inside the Black Liberation Movement itself, posing as revolutionary, posing as black. But we have to be clear that a line exists between revision and dialectics, and that line is not always blurry. In this instance, the line is very clear. It uses anti-imperialist catch-words and near-revolutionary phraseology, yet we have crystal clarity that they have only contributed revision to the black revolutionary struggle.

America, the great enemy of black liberation, drags its black slaves out of the ghetto and around the World to showcase its purported democracy, based on a new colonialism. This neo-colonialism fragments the unstable US black community, and further separates us from other Africans because the racist “culture war” maintains victory by dashing Black unity to pieces.

Neo-colonialism, having reached near total saturation, screams out to the masses to join in on the genocide against their own class and nation. It first screamed out in a most obvious form, in open collaboration with Imperialism. Now ne(g)o-colonialism screams from podiums and newspapers for African workers to sell out everywhere. However, Imperialism cannot genuinely accommodate a total sell out population. America lacks the democratic space and the political will to achieve justice for all those whom it invites into its fold. Imperialism only requires a class peace with the appearance of niggros having achieved the American dream.

This limitation defines the essential contradiction rooted within the Imperialist crisis sweeping thru American neighborhoods, factories, and banks. It exposes the fundamental limitation of Capitalism. We have to be clear that Capitalism is a finite system with finite resources and finite ideas and policies. It only has finite solutions for humanity. Capitalism only accommodates a small, numerically insignificant proportion of persons, who themselves own wealth and power out of proportion to their numbers.

Capitalism has severe limitations, and capital completely lacks the ability to relieve oppression and repression and exploitation. Capitalism’s very existence remains based in perpetuating reactionary, subhuman conditions.

America tenders not one cent toward helping African people transform their economies. These valiant workers and peasants inherited racist economies slanted entirely against them, weighting them down, and having only a handful of educated and trained personnel to help make the transformation. America has done nothing to expedite their prosperous ascension within the family of nations. America has never recognized their uphill fight against the fascism of apartheid and colonialism. But the United States has been quick to condemn the errors of the Black Liberation Movement, and hinder its efforts.

And whereas, on the neo-conservative side Clarence Thomas once cited Malcolm X to express his neo-colonialist ambition at the expense of African people, the negro-colonial Left currently repudiates Malcolm to preface their public betrayals of the great Black Liberation Movement. However, dialectics and revision do not go together, and all remarks by the neo-colonialist sector can never taint Malcolm X’s revolutionary martyrdom in the hearts of the masses.

Mao Zedong once discussed, in Selected Military Writings, the interior and exterior lines of combat. He talked about this because of the dialectic involved in maintaining principled and steeled revolutionary clarity, even on the battlefield. Mao didn’t say anything about blindly obeying orders. He didn’t elaborate on intangibles like honor and glory, or metaphysics. Mao Zedong discussed issues meant to help build a revolutionary fighting force which would help develop China following the communist victory.

Neo-colonialism within the Black Liberation Movement may seem like a paradox, yet it exists because Imperialism needs to undermine the workers struggle.

The Black Liberation Movement exists for the masses of African people, for them to seize and exercise power. Black liberation overthrows and dismantles the instruments of exploitation and oppression which rules over Africans, and builds a human social system to abolish private ownership, arms races and wars, and the crises in production and social relationships. At times, black revolutionaries have fallen short of our goals, because we lacked the democratic space to complete our work.

Clearly, the Black Liberation Movement must forcefully mark its territory. It must create splits thru out the neo-colonialist infrastructure. It must make its ideological attacks on Imperialism. Capitalism itself supplies a vast source of agitational material for revolutionary organizers.

Black revolutionary workers have a duty to undermine confidence that the system will straighten out this crisis. We must make short shrift of the State ideology, the functions of its branches, its relationship to big Capital, and its alienation from the masses of people.

The Imperialist power structures, or capitalist central committees, have failed to realize the deep set aversion to occupation war -- and hence its obsolescence -- within their societies. With the bailouts of parasitic banks in the midst of a widespread housing crisis, the Imperialist power structure has overestimated society's tolerance for exploitation. Energy prices have shot up because of supply-side deregulation, a doctrine of neo-conservative government, which also auctions off public assets to the highest bidder. Anti-democratic laws from the Telecom Act to the Patriot Act undermine workers rights and set the stage for sweeping repression.

Capitalism is a class-based system which dominates relationships between nations, between societies and classes, the rich and the poor, the great and the small, and between women and men. This degenerate system, birthed in human trafficking and genocide, today strives for validation thru the ascendancy of black slaves to positions of power formerly reserved for Imperialism’s white colonial masters. Today, Capitalism is in crisis, grasping for anything to keep it afloat. The role of black revolutionaries is to make sure this system drowns.

2008-07-05

El Commandante: On Struggles across the World

Reflections of Fidel
The Chinese Victory (Part I)
Translated by ESTI


WITHOUT some basic historical knowledge, the subject I am dealing with could not be understood.

In Europe, people had heard about China. In the autumn of 1298, Marco Polo told marvelous tales about an amazing country he called Cathay. Columbus, an intelligent and intrepid sailor, was aware of the Greeks’ knowledge about the roundness of the Earth. His own observations led him to agree with those theories. He came up with the plan of reaching the Far East sailing westward from Europe. But, he calculated the distance with far too much optimism, for it was several times greater. Unexpectedly, between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans, this continent loomed up on his route. Magellan would make the journey conceived by him, even though he died before reaching Europe. Still, the value of the spices collected paid for the expedition initiated with a number of vessels – of which only one returned – a prelude of future colossal profits.

From that point, the world began to change at an accelerated pace. Old forms of exploitation were repeated again, from slavery to feudal serfdom; ancient and new religious beliefs spread over the planet.

From that fusion of cultures and events, accompanied by technical advances and scientific discoveries, today’s world was born, and it could not be understood without a minimum of real precedents.

International trade, with its advantages and disadvantages, was imposed by the colonial powers, such as Spain, England and the other European powers. These, especially England, soon began to control southwest, south and southeast Asia, and Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, forcibly expanding its rule everywhere. The colonizers were not able to impose their authority over the gigantic country of China, which had an ancient culture and fabulous natural and human resources.

Direct trade between Europe and China began in the sixteenth century, after the Portuguese established the commercial enclave in Goa in India and in Macao in southern China.
Spanish control in the Philippines facilitated an accelerated exchange with the great Asian country. The Qin dynasty, which ruled China, tried to limit this kind of unfavorable commercial operation with foreign countries as much as possible. It was allowed only through the port of Canton, today called Guangzhou. Britain and Spain had great deficits because of the low demand of the enormous Asiatic country, related to English goods manufactured in the metropolis, or Spanish products coming from the New World that were not essential to China. Both of them had begun to sell opium.

Large-scale opium trade was at first dominated by the Dutch through Jakarta, Indonesia. The English observed the profits that were close to 400 percent. Their opium exports which, in 1730, were 15 tons, grew to 75 in 1773, shipped in crates weighing 70 kilograms each; with this they bought porcelain, silk, spices and Chinese tea. Opium, not gold, was the currency Europe used to acquire Chinese goods.

In the spring of 1830, faced with the unbridled abuse of the opium trade in China, Emperor Daoguang ordered Lin Hse Tsu, an imperial official, to fight the plague; he ordered the destruction of 20,000 crates of opium. Lin Hse Tsu sent a letter to Queen Victoria asking for respect for international regulations and not to allow trade with toxic drugs.

The Opium Wars were the English response. The first lasted three years, from 1839 to 1842.

The second, with France joining in, lasted four years, from 1856 to 1860. They are also known as the Anglo-Chinese Wars.

The United Kingdom forced China to sign unfair treaties committing this country to opening up several ports to foreign trade and handing over Hong Kong. Several countries, following England’s lead, imposed unequal terms of exchange.

Such humiliation contributed to the Taiping Rebellion of 1850 to 1864, the Boxer Rebellion of 1899 to 1901 and, finally, the fall of the Qin Dynasty in 1911 which, for various reasons – including its weakness in the face of foreign powers – had become highly unpopular in China.

What happened with Japan?

This country with its ancient culture and very hard-working, like others in the region, resisted "Western civilization" and for more than 200 years – among other causes because of a chaotic domestic administration – remained hermetically sealed to foreign trade.

In 1854, after an earlier exploratory voyage with four gunboats, a U.S. naval expedition commanded by Commodore Matthew Perry, threatening to bomb a Japanese town – defenseless before the modern technology of those vessels– obliged the shoguns to sign, on behalf of the Emperor, the Treaty of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854. Thus, the grafting of capitalist trade and Western technology was begun in Japan. At the time, Europeans were unaware of the Japanese capacity to develop in that field.

On the heels of the Yankees, representatives of the Russian Empire arrived from the Far East, fearful that the U.S., to whom they later sold Alaska on October 18, 1867, would get a head-start in trading activities with Japan. Britain and the other European colonizing nations came quickly to the country with the same intentions.

During the U.S. intervention in 1862, Perry occupied different parts of Mexico. At the end of the war, the country lost more than 50 percent of its territory, precisely those areas where the greatest oil and gas reserves were to be found, even though at that time, gold and land to expand into, not fuel, were the main goals of the conquerors.The first China-Japan War was officially declared on August 1, 1894. At the time Japan wanted Korea, a tributary state subordinated to China. With more developed weaponry and technology, it defeated Chinese forces in several battles near the cities of Seoul and Pyongyang. Later military victories opened its way toward Chinese territory.

In the month of November that year, they took Port Arthur, today Lüshun. In the River Yalu estuary and at the Weihaiwei Naval Base, surprised by a land attack from the Liaodong Peninsula, heavy Japanese artillery destroyed the fleet of the attacked nation.

The dynasty had to ask for peace. The Treaty of Shimonoseki, which put an end to the war, was signed in April of 1895. China was forced to cede Taiwan, the Liaodong Peninsula and the archipelago of the Pescadores Islands to Japan "in perpetuity;" China also had to pay a war indemnity of 200 million taels of silver and open up four ports to the exterior. Russia, France and Germany, defending their individual interests, obliged Japan to return the Liaodong Peninsula, paying in exchange another 30 million taels of silver.

Before mentioning the second China-Japan War, I should include another armed episode with a double historical importance; it took place from 1904 to 1905 and it cannot be omitted.

After being inserted into armed civilization and wars for the partitioning of the world as imposed by the West, Japan, which had already waged the first war against China as mentioned above, developed its naval power to such a degree that it was able to deal a harsh blow to the Russian Empire, which was at the point of prematurely inciting the revolution programmed by Lenin when he created in Minsk, 10 years earlier, the Party which would later unleash the October Revolution.

On August 10, 1904, with no advance warning, Japan attacked and destroyed the Russian Pacific Fleet at Shandong. Czar Nicholas II of Russia, upset by the attack, ordered the Baltic Fleet to be mobilized and to set sail for the Far East. Convoys of colliers were contracted to bring in the shipments needed by the fleet while it was sailing towards its distant destination. One of the operations to transfer coal had to be carried out on the high seas due to diplomatic pressure.

The Russians, upon entering south China, sailed towards Vladivostok, the only available port for the fleet’s operations. In order to reach that point, there were three routes: the best choice was the Tsushima route; the other two required navigation to the east of Japan and increased the risks and the enormous wear and tear on the vessels and crews. The Japanese admiral had the same thought: for this option he made his plan and located his ships so that the Japanese fleet, after making a U-turn, would have all its vessels, mainly cruisers, passing about 6,000 meters away from the adversary’s ships, a large number of battleships. These would be at the reach of the Japanese cruisers, outfitted with personnel that were rigorously trained in the use of their cannon. As a result of the lengthy route, the Russian battleships were navigating at a speed of only 8 knots as compared with the 16-knot speed of the Japanese vessels.

The military action is known by the name of Battle of Tsushima. It took place on May 27 and 28, 1905.

On the side of the Russian Empire, 11 battleships and eight cruisers took part.

Admiral of the Fleet: Zinovy Rozhdestvensky.

Losses: 4,380 dead, 5,917 wounded, 21 ships sunk, 7 captured and 6 rendered useless.
The admiral of the Russian fleet was wounded by a shell fragment that hit him in the skull.

On the side of the Japanese Empire, 4 battleships and 27 cruisers took part.

Admiral of the Fleet: Heichachiro Togo

Losses: 117 dead, 583 wounded and 3 torpedo ships sunk.

The Baltic fleet was destroyed. Napoleon would have termed it "Austerlitz at sea". Anyone can imagine the deep wound caused by the dramatic event to traditional Russian pride and patriotism.

After the battle, Japan became a much feared naval power, rivaling Britain and Germany and competing with the United States.

Japan rehabilitated the concept of the battleship as the principal weapon in the years to come.

They embroiled themselves in the task of empowering the Imperial Japanese Army. They requested and paid a British shipbuilder to construct a special cruiser, with the intent of later reproducing it in their Japanese shipbuilding yards. Later, they manufactured battleships that were far better than those of their contemporaries, both in armor and power.

There was no other nation on the face of the earth that could come close to Japanese naval engineering in the 1930’s in the design of warships.

That explains the bold action with which, one day, they attacked their master and rival, the United States which, through Commodore Perry, started them off on the road of war.

I shall continue tomorrow.

Fidel Castro Ruz

March 30, 2008
7:35 p.m.

2008-07-04

Propaganda Putsch Posing as Anti-Xenophobia

Class Struggle in Southern Africa via the US Black Colony

The Black Commentator on June 26 featured three cartoons depicting the violence in South Africa, the first accompanied by a brief text on the struggle inside Zimbabwe. A startling aspect about each of the three cartoons was their anti-African depictions. Each cartoon seemed to criticize the attacks by South Africans against workers from neighboring countries.

The cartoons couched this depiction in a way which held all South Africans responsible for the attacks. As if South Africans were united in reactionary consensus against the influx of workers from Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland.

However, those of us who participated in anti-apartheid work from the Seventies thru the Nineties recall the spate of reactionary violence by the neo-colonialist Inkatha against the South African liberation movements. As paid thugs of the apartheid regime, Inkatha behaved as a counterrevolutionary force militating against fighters and workers based inside South Africa.

This so-called xenophobia must be contextualized. It is not "black-on-black" crime. Neither is it tribalism. It is not xenophobia, either. Africans from neighboring states have been working in South Africa at least since the Forties. That is not xenophobia when the liberation movements thru out Southern Africa were knit together as one large family fighting an enemy at once foreign and yet taking root on African soil. Counterinsurgency has nothing to do with xenophobia, but with preserving the status quo set by Imperialism.

By the same token, to plant the South African flag in the back of a figure with "Zimbabwe" written across its back feeds the impression that Zimbabweans have nowhere to turn. This has more to do with The Black Commentator's axe-grinding of the sort reminiscent of its Inkatha cousins. That is not art, it is typical Imperialist propaganda.

If you want xenophobia, read the blogosphere's inflammatory, racist comments on Barack Obama's bid for the White House.

South Africa is immersed in a power struggle which has enveloped African people since the anti-colonial movements picked up steam. It derives from the political expression of the African petty bourgeoisie and all its attendant inadequacies. Contradictions within Zimbabwe and South Africa, respectively, are remnants of ages old scores which have not been settled despite decisive, anti-colonial victories. South Africa's problem is derivative of the world wide struggle against Imperialism, colonialism and capitalist domination.

People are moving ahead despite Bill Fletcher and Horace Campbell. Campbell's divisive position on Zimbabwe was upheld at the BRC tenth convention held this past month in St. Louis. Meanwhile, Fletcher continues to use The Black Commentator to attack the Southern Africa liberation movements.

Southern Africa continues to symbolize and represent black America's own anti-colonial sentiments, with many proud moments and a few not-so-proud ones. But we still salute the internationalist Black Liberation Movement thru out that region.

That's why people use their ability to look thru the smoke screens of an analysis posing as revolutionary, posing as Leftist, posing as black. Campbell, as late as 2003, stated in a Black Commentator article that Jonas Savimbi, the notorious stooge paraded by Ronald Reagan as a "freedom fighter", belonged to the anti-colonial trend. In this period, individuals like Fletcher and Campbell will be seen in the black community for what they really represent.

People in thru out the US, the Caribbean and Africa kno that the Zimbabwe question offers up some critical points. Yet the people are not poised to allow US Imperialism to intervene. They are unprepared to play the sucker role for attacks against African people anywhere by a bloodsucking capitalism. African people united will never be defeated!