2009-07-16

EXTRADITION OF POSADA CARRILES REQUESTED AT NAM SUMMIT


July 15th, 2009

http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art0051.html

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, July 13. — The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) advocates the extradition to Venezuela of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, who bombed a Cubana de AviaciĆ³n plane in 1976.

The final declaration of the 15th Summit of NAM Heads of State and Government states their support for Venezuela’s request for the United States to extradite the man responsible for the aforementioned 1976 crime.

The document condemns the protection offered to this man accused of perpetrating criminal acts in Venezuela, in contravention of the resolutions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly that seek to impede all types of terrorism.

The refusal to extradite Posada Carriles, the document adds, is hindering the efforts made by the Venezuelan authorities to bring this man to justice.

According to the final declaration of the 15th NAM Summit, the member nations of this organization urge the White House to comply with the request to extradite Posada Carriles, accused of terrorist activities.

This criminal is responsible for the mid-air bombing of a Cuban plane of the Cubana de AviaciĆ³n airline, carrying 73 passengers. Posada currently lives in Miami, under the protection of the US government.

According to preliminary deliberations, the participants at the summit will be also offer their support to the constitutional government of President Hugo Chavez, in view of the aggressive policy of the White House towards Venezuela.

The foreign ministers will also give their support –which will have to be approved by the heads of the delegations- to Venezuela and its right to choose its own form of government, as well as its economic, social and political system, without foreign interference.

The declaration adds the concern of the member nations for the growing intelligence activities against Venezuela and Cuba, and their condemnation of the recent conspiracies and attempts to kill President Chavez.

The representatives of the 118 member nations decided to include in the final declaration, their acknowledgment to the ALBA agreement and the Petrocaribe initiative, as well as the Unique System for Regional Compensation, governed by collaboration principles.

After two days of deliberations at the Savoy Hotel, the experts presented the draft to the ministers gathered here, before submitting it for the consideration of the heads of state and government on Wednesday and Thursday, at the Maritim Jolie Ville Convention Center.

The foreign ministers spoke of the importance of political will to advance the settlement of conflicts in the Middle East, particularly the foundation of a Palestine State, as well as the end of the Israeli occupation. (PL)

For more information concerning U.S. complicity in the activities of Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, see: BUSH SAT ON EVIDENCE OF CUBAN TERROR, written by Robert Parry on 7 May 2007; reprinted from Consortium News; http://www.freethefive.org/usTerrorism/USTerrRobertParry50707.htm
and
ON GEORGE BUSH'S PARDON OF ANTI-CUBAN TERRORIST ORLANDO BOSCH http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/oct1999/corr-o26.shtml

2009-07-12

Essay about Obama's Ghana visit

Feature Article of Friday, 10 July 2009


WARNING TO MY FAMILY AT HOME FROM THEIR KINSMAN IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST


By Dr. Ahati N. N. Toure, Ph.D.

Many people seem not to understand the way things really work in the United States, and I suppose it is only natural to assume that a change of a person as president of a country signals a change in policy and direction. But this is not really true in the United States.

In the United States, the president is less a leader than a manager of policies formulated by corporate elite interests. This is what accounts for the stability of the political system, regardless of who is president.

This explains the outcome of the electoral fraud--in effect, an electoral coup--staged in 2000 (more than 2 million votes were discarded, 1 million of them cast by US Afrikans) and in 2004 (similar machinations secured a Republican electoral victory in the White House) that assured George W. Bush's ascendancy to and continued hold on the US presidency.

The Democratic Party refused to challenge the results in both years. I speculate that former Vice President Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize was awarded as a consolation prize for his obeisance to the agenda of the true masters of US politics.

The United States’ political stability was created after the civil war of 1861-1865, when industrial capitalists consolidated their control of the economic and political direction of the country. The civil war allowed them to oust the neo-mercantilist faction of the European settler elite (owners and champions of the so-called slavery system), which mode of production depended upon exports of raw materials to western European metropoles.

As we all know, this mode of production promotes economic dependency and underdevelopment. The capitalist elites wanted the United States economically and politically to be competitive with and independent of an industrial and industrializing Europe. They did not want to be its subordinates.

Because of the changes of the civil war, both so-called parties--which are really two sides of one coin--have pledged patriotic allegiance to capitalism as quintessentially American. Their emotional and ideological commitment to its advance under the US political system includes the shaping of its foreign policy--or the definition and extension of what are defined as US interests on to the world stage.

Bush's ascendancy to the US presidency, for perceptive observers, shows that the people do not choose the manager of the country. They simply ratify, or are made to ratify, the results of a selection. Barack Hussein Obama--a name that in and of itself is astonishing in European settler political culture--is no less the product of a selection process.

This explains the consistency of policies pursued by so-called "Democratic" and "Republican" presidential administrations--or, now, "black" and "white" presidents. In the United States all US presidents are "white."

In Africa we call this neo-colonialism.

One example of this is Africom. Established during George W. Bush's regime, it is still being carried out by Barack Hussein Obama's regime. To many, at least, the Bush personality was a bit too crude and, in some respects, brutish for the world to accept. Put some color on him, with a sophisticated and intelligent personality, and now you have the same agenda for Africa, skillfully repackaged in an Obama. The agenda remains the same--imperialistic, exploitative, and, ultimately, deadly--but the general perception is different. It is seductive.

US presidents come and go, but the interests remain constant. Therefore, what is the real agenda in the US president's visit to Ghana? Oil. Africom.

We really should not underestimate the craftiness of the Europeans in their choice of this particular personality for president of the United States. The best way to test my thesis is to explore the question of African strategic interests, or, alternatively, American strategic interests in Africa, and examine the ways in which and the degree to which Obama's pursuit of American policy is consistent with or diverges from that of his predecessor. If you do this well, you will prove my point.

Do not be fooled by appearances. Look deeper, for the snare has been set for you.

Dr. Ahati N. N. Toure is assistant professor of Africana History and Black Studies at Delaware State University, USA. He is the author of John Henrik Clarke: Africalogical Quest for Decolonization and Sovereignty (Africa World Press, 2009).

Source:
Toure, Ahati N. N.

2009-07-10

For a United Front of the People Against Imperialism

South African Communist Party 1935

Source: Umsebenzi, October 26, 1935.
Transcribed: by Dominic Tweedie.
Editorial Note: After the Seventh Congress of the Communist International held in Moscow in July-August 1935, had endorsed Georgi Dimitrov’s call for a broad united front to halt the drive to fascism and war, the Communist Party of South Africa acknowledged its own sectarian errors of the past and sought to ally itself with other anti fascist and anti-racist elements amongst both blacks and whites in South Africa. With the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, Italy’s attack on Abyssinia, the Spanish civil war and Japanese aggression in the Far East, the danger of a second world war loomed ever more threateningly. At home Herzog’s Native Bills heralded a new assault on the rights of the oppressed black majority, and Cabinet Ministers like Pirow openly expressed their admiration for Europe’s fascist leaders. Fascist and racist organisations like the Greyshirts became active, stirring up hostility towards the Jews and the blacks and making physical assaults on the Communist Party’s platforms.

The Communist Party took part in the great Bloemfontein conference on December 16, 1935, which gave birth to the All African Convention and also co-operated with the National Liberation League which had been formed in Cape Town. Party members also played a key role in the revival of the African National Congress towards the end of the 1930s.

During 1936 the name of the Party’s journal was changed back to The South African Worker, though Umsebenzi remained as a sub-title. Possibly the intention behind this was to make the paper more acceptable to progressive whites whom the Party hoped to bring into the united front. A new slogan running across the head of the paper in each issue was: ‘For a United Working Class Front Against Imperialism and War’.


Some leading representatives of the Native population of the Union of South Africa such as Prof Jabavu, Dr Seme, Matseke and others proposed a few months ago to call on December 16, this year, a joint convention of all existing Native organisations. These proposals could not but be greeted by all sincere fighters for the cause of the Native people, as such a convention is of great importance for our cause and a mass movement in favour of it was already called to life

The position of the Native population becomes ever worse. In the run for profits, in the desire to strengthen their power in our country, the Anglo-Boer imperialists are tightening the rope around the necks of our people. The prosperity in the mining industry, the improvement of the economic conditions of the Native population. It just brought tremendous profits to the mine shareholders and fat subsidies of the government to the rich landowners.

On the contrary, striving to retain their profits, imperialists started a new attack on the living conditions of our people. The colonial government wants to take away the vestige of our miserable political rights, it wants to rob the Native population of the Cape of its franchise. The Native population suffers heavily of national oppression, landlessness and systematic robbery. It is now more than ever necessary, therefore, to unite the efforts of the whole Native population and its organisations for the defence of its human rights against the new brutal laws of the imperialist Union Government.

We fully agree with Mr John Chekedi, who says: ‘We shall be made slaves indeed, unless we can unite and become a nation.’

The Communist Party pointed out many a time during the last years that the unity of action of the whole Native population and its organisations is the main and decisive condition which will bring our struggle to a victorious end. The Communist Party proposed many a time that united action with the African National Congress and the ICU should be established for the fight for the immediate demands of the people. But the leaders of the ANC and the ICU without explanation have continually refused our proposals. The more heartily we greet now the initiative of the ANC leaders in calling the JOINT NATIONAL CONVENTION.

In the fight for land and independence, our people have set up many organisations: political, economic, sport, religious and so on. Each of these has its program and particular principles. Each of these organisations offers its way to solve the questions that interest the Native population-to free our country from brutal imperialist slavery. In the same time the ANC, for instance, thinks it possible to regain our land and independence through co-operation with the Colonial Government and the Anglo-Boer imperialists, the Communist Party says that our people can fully free themselves from slavery only by driving out the Anglo-Boer exploiters from our country and by establishing an Independent Native Republic. Yet, let us put away the difference of the ways towards national liberation. All of us have one common cause, requiring the unity of our efforts, and however different we regard the solution of the question of national liberation, it is clear for all of us that in the interests of national freedom we cannot allow that the imperialists should tighten more and more the rope around our necks, that our last political rights should be taken away. The fight against national oppression and exploitation, the fight for the immediate, most necessary needs of the people — that is the basis for the united action of all the Native organisations, irrespective of their political differences. That is why we greet warmly the proposal to call a joint convention.

The necessity to call such a convention now is dictated also by other external events. Italian imperialism raises its fascist fist against the last and only independent Negro state in Africa-Abyssinia. The Italian fascists prepare for a bloody war against the peaceful Abyssinian people. We cannot remain indifferent in the fight of our Abyssinian Brothers for their independence. We must rally as a united people and stretch out our hand of solidarity to the Abyssinian people and hinder the Italian fascists in fulfilling their imperialist plans.

The significance of the convention is enormous. It will be the first convention in the history of our people’s struggle for its freedom, on which there will be represented the vast masses of the Native population.

2009-07-08

C. Mullins on Malcolm X!

Malcolm X taught African Americans self-defense, regardless of the odds against us! I am 74 years old now and my mother taught me that I am responsible for a thousand enemy, I accepted that responsibility. What responsibility have you accepted Mr. Jesse Muhammad?

War has been declared on poor African Americans, Muslims, South and Central Americans, Indonesians, Iraqis, Afghanistanian people, North Koreans, Iranians and Cubans by white racist.

These people understand Capitalism is the problem:

1. Capitalism causes prostitution

2. Capitalism causes family to separate

3. Capitalism puts people in jail

4. Capitalism miss-educates

5. Capitalism creates racist prison guards that are in collusion with AB's [Aryan Brotherhood] that are torturing/killing African American inmates in Oklahoma’s Max-security McAlester prison. Ask some of your brothers that are in this prison, I know you must have some converts there!

6. Capitalism's intelligence community, the CIA, and its Contra terrorist put drugs in our community to destroy African American youth, family, organization and leadership; drugs set African American people back as far as Louis Farrakhan did after the assassination of Malcolm X.

7. Capitalism does not permit speaking out against injustice, racism or discrimination, unless you are prepared to kill or die to protect your rights. Which members of the Black Panther Party were prepared to do and did! Nobody has to tell me what happens to you when you speak out against this criminal government. What happened to Malcolm-X and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense are classic examples. The BPP stood with the Palestinian people in word and deed. It is legal to volunteer to fight in foreign wars, Jews leave New York and Tulsa every Friday to fly to Palestine to Kill Palestine’s, are you sending Muslim volunteers to fight in Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine? Some of Malcolm's people are fighting all over the world!

8. In regards to killing each other: we kill each other because we are taught to kill each other on television, the movies, in the newspapers. In your life time you will never see a member of the BLA killing a pig, a politician or a white racist, but they show you pictures of Negroes killing each all the time.

Malcolm X taught us self defense, he taught us that it is legal to kill those who attack us, including the five pigs that were attempting to kill Loween Mozell in Oakland; anyone who is attempting to kill us, he taught us to protect the community, not just the Muslim community, but the entire community was the duty of all people anywhere in the world and we had the right to retaliate when attacked.

9. This is what is so beautiful about Al Qaeda and the Taliban is that they are practicing what Malcolm-X taught poor people. They were attacked by America and are practicing self-defense, and are up against a powerful mentally ill military force, which many members of the NOI belong to.

10. History taught us that Black Moroccan Muslims [Blackamoors] took civilization to Spain in 711 AD and Europe, and the Olmecs took civilization to Central and South America 3,000 years ago. They were successful because they were advancing civilization and humanity not capitalism, the civilization they built were destroyed by Europeans as surely as America is going to be destroyed.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is not a freedom fighter, as most of the Muslims I know are not, the Muslims in the US Military are fighting to protect capitalism not to destroy it, as a matter of fact, most of the Muslims I know are material capitalist and ideologically aligned with world capitalism, which puts you on the other side of the fence from me…………

I support Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Iraq, Iran, Cuba and the Tamil Tigers in Indonesia and all of those who kill Americans who have attacked and killed members of their families to advance capitalism. Who do you support Mr. Jesse Muhammad?

If capitalism is the number 1 problem world wide, and the number 1 solution to the problem is the destruction of capitalism, where can you possible be standing? in the middle with a bow tie and patent leather shoes on?

If Malcolm was asked the two question, I thank he would answer: 1. Pick up the gun and defend your community and family 2. Malcolm-X respected the leadership of the NOI, and was obedient to it, he also was way ahead of everyone in the NOI at the time he was assassinated by myrmidons, I do not think he would respond to being polished.

Curtis Mullins African American Council

PS: Your article is an insult to the legacy of Malcolm-X, may his memory live on forever in those who have picked up the gun in defense of their community!

2009-07-03

"What, to the Slave, Is Your Fourth of July?" Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) was the best known and most influential African American leader of the 1800s. He was born a slave in Maryland but managed to escape to the North in 1838.

He traveled to Massachusetts and settled in New Bedford, working as a laborer to support himself. In 1841, he attended a convention of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society and quickly came to the attention of its members, eventually becoming a leading figure in the New England antislavery movement.

In 1845, Douglass published his autobiography, "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave." With the revelation that he was an escaped slave, Douglass became fearful of possible re-enslavement and fled to Great Britain and stayed there for two years, giving lectures in support of theFrederick Douglass antislavery movement in America. With the assistance of English Quakers, Douglass raised enough money to buy his own his freedom and in 1847 he returned to America as a free man.

He settled in Rochester, New York, where he published The North Star, an abolitionist newspaper. He directed the local underground railroad which smuggled escaped slaves into Canada and also worked to end racial segregation in Rochester's public schools.

In 1852, the leading citizens of Rochester asked Douglass to give a speech as part of their Fourth of July celebrations. Douglass accepted their invitation.

In his speech, however, Douglass delivered a scathing attack on the hypocrisy of a nation celebrating freedom and independence with speeches, parades and platitudes, while, within its borders, nearly four million humans were being kept as slaves.

Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation (Babylon) whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin.

Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!"

To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.

My subject, then, fellow citizens, is "American Slavery." I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.

Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery -- the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate - I will not excuse." I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment.

What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men -- digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave -- we are called upon to prove that we are men?

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No - I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may - I cannot. The time for such argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Frederick Douglass - July 4, 1852

The History Place - Great Speeches Collection