Voice of the International African Revolution! - Uhuru News

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Voice of the 

International 

African Revolution! 

Volume 23, Number 1 • April 2003 

$1.00/ £1 

African People’s Socialist Party • P.O. Box 11281 • St. Petersburg Fla • 33733-1281 

Inside: 

Parents arrested for protecting 

child from police 

(page 3) 

Iraqi invasion and occupation 

obscures crisis of imperialism 

(page 7) 

Letter from sister of Conscientious 

Objector 

(Page 12) 

Military coup brings French army 

back to Central African Republic 

(Page 17) 

Chairman Omali Yeshitela gives an 

overview of the world situation 

(Page 18)

2 THE BURNING SPEAR April 2003 

Reports from 

THE U.S. WAR ON THE 

While the world is focused on the murder and mayhem the U.S. government is currently wreaking on the Middle East and the rest of the world, the U.S. remains 

undistracted from the centuries-old war it inflicts on the domestically-colonized African community. In fact, this war against our people provided the foundation 

for the U.S. to be capable of committing atrocities in Iraq and the rest of the world. In this section, the Spear provides only a few brutal examples of the war on 

our community from some of the cities in which the African People’s Socialist Party is active. Spear readers are urged to bring to the Spear news from the frontlines 

in your community for publication. Write to P.O. Box 11281 • St. Petersburg, Fl • 33733-1281, or email speareditor@yahoo.com. 

Oakland police assualt 

anti-war student protest 

1 

Sequence of a police attack: demonstration of predominately 

African and Raza highs school students convenes 

peacefully at Oakland’s “Jack London Square.” 

2 

Dozens of Oakland domestic military units attack on 

motorcycles 

On March 5, 2003, the U.S. was 

on the brink of a military assault 

against defenseless Iraqi men, 

women and children. Meanwhile, 

thousands of miles away, Oakland 

police had already begun their 

assault on young African and 

Indigenous students who dared 

speak out against U.S. imperialism. 

On this day, 300 to 400, mostly 

non-white students from high 

schools and middle schools militantly 

marched out of their classrooms in 

defiance of the status quo, while the 

U.S. threatened its brutal “shock and 

awe” slaughter campaign in Iraq. 

This walkout was reminiscent of 

35 years ago, when young folks took 

a similar militant stand against that 

time’s manifestation of U.S. white 

power - the “Vietnam War.” 

After walking out of their classes, 

the students converged on downtown 

Oakland and marched to Jack 

London Square, a gentrified tourist 

neighborhood on the waterfront. The 

march was fully non-violent and fell 

within the parameters of basic democratic 

civil rights described in the U.S. 

constitution. When they reached Jack 

London Square, the police encircled 

them with a phalanx of approximately 

30 motorcycle cops. 

3 

Motorcycle police coral demonstrators, driving directly 

into them, riding over their feet, and forcing them into 

an ever-tightening pack. 

4 

Police violently throw people onto the ground, arresting 

them for attmepting to excercise “free speech.” 

Police attack peaceful protest 

The pigs began using their vehicles 

as weapons, running over the 

feet of the young comrades and pushing 

them closer together - in effect, 

corralling them as if they were cattle. 

It was during this attack that J.R. 

Valrey and Sister Rashida, two 

African reporters for a local black 

community news journal the San 

Francisco Bay View, were arrested 

on charges of assault on a police officer 

and resisting arrest. 

The public policy of police containment 

of the African community 

has not missed a beat, even in the 

face of the City of Oakland paying 

out nearly $11 million to 119 people 

as part of a court settlement for the 

police terror and brutality which has 

come to be known as the “Oakland 

Riders” scandal. 

In addition to the brutality on the 

streets of Oakland, many African students 

were prevented from participating 

in the walkout. 

Students from Oakland high 

schools testify that school gates and 

doors were locked to hold up the students. 

This is a blatant violation of 

school and district fire codes. In the 

Oakland school system, which has 

55,000 mostly African, Raza and 

Asian students, those who dared to 

consider exercising their conscience 

to participate in the walkout were 

threatened by the school administration 

with expulsion. However in the 

nearby, mostly white Berkeley school 

district, students were officially 

excused from class, encouraged to 

participate in anti-war actions, and 

given extra-credit for doing so. 

This component of oppression of 

African people is just another front of 

the U.S. war against colonized people. 

Iraq is another. 

Peace will come only through 

true liberation of African people 

Inside the U.S., and in the San 

Francisco/Oakland Bay Area in particular, 

we see the absence of 

African, Indigenous and other 

oppressed people at these peace 

rallies where hundreds of thousands 

of people attend. This is because the 

“peace movement,” led by the white 

left, will organize marches and rallies 

against a war in Iraq, but refuse 

to address the domestic war against 

African people. 

In response, the African 

People’s Socialist Party is building 

a contingent of African people to 

converge on an anti-war march 

and rally scheduled for April 5, 

2003 in Oakland. It is necessary to 

bring significant numbers to this 

mobilization. 

If the students who were attacked 

seek to join forces with those who 

are truly their allies, brothers and sisters 

in the struggle for peace and 

social justice, they will join the Uhuru 

Movement contingent. 

The Uhuru Movement not only 

fully supports the right of the Iraqi 

people for self-determination, but we 

also are determined to raise the 

rights of African people for social justice 

and national liberation as the 

basis for peace. If African people are 

not free, there will be no peace for 

anyone. 

The time is now for African people 

to be selfish with building our own 

movement for our own benefit. 

The days of supporting what 

white people think peace should look 

like — a peace on the plantation, 

where the slave is prevented from 

rising up and fighting by any means 

necessary, for total, unequivocal 

freedom — are over. 

Time to struggle! Time to win! 

African People’s Socialist Party

April 2003 THE BURNING SPEAR 3 

the Frontline 

AFRICAN 

St. Pete Police Aim To Provoke Another Rebellion 

Police attack child; 

arrest parents for protecting him! 

BY SATEESH ROGERS 

ST. PETERSBURG, Fl — On 

Monday, April 14, the St. Petersburg 

Police Department attacked 13 yearold 

Elijah Harrison near the corner of 

14th Street and 7th Avenue. After the 

attack, the police brutalized and 

arrested his parents, Tammie 

Harrison and Kenneth Nichols for trying 

to protect their child. 

Since Mayor Rick Baker took 

office in 2000, police attacks against 

the African community have been on 

a steady rise. The city is attempting 

to bring back the brutal terrorist policies 

that led to the police murder of 

TyRon Lewis in 1996 and sparked 

righteous rebellions. However, the 

African community grows increasingly 

intolerant of the city’s activities, 

carried out in the name of preserving 

peace for the white community at the 

expense of every African man, 

woman and child in St. Pete. 

African parents brutally 

attacked in attempt to protect 

son from police harassment 

The police initiated the dispute 

when they stopped 13 year-old 

Anthony Haygood for "running a stop 

sign on a bicycle," according to 

police and witness accounts. Though 

there was no stop sign in the direction 

the child was headed, the police 

felt it necessary to harass this young 

man. 

While police were questioning 

Anthony, 13 year-old Elijah, who was 

walking home after being let off the 

school bus, was also attacked in 

plain view of his father who waits 

every day in front of his house for his 

son’s return from school. 

"I saw Officer Barber shove my 

son and I didn’t understand why. 

He’s just walking home," said 

Kenneth Nichols. So as any loving 

and concerned parent would do, he 

went over to see why a grown man 

with a badge 

would be 

attacking his 

son. Mr. 

Nichols asked 

Officer Barber, 

"Why did you 

put your 

hands on my 

son?" Barber 

Elijah Harrison replied, "You 

don’t have 

anything to do with it." 

Being that Elijah is his son — and 

a minor — Nichols had everything to 

do with it. So he took Elijah’s hand, 

turned around and was going to take 

him home. 

"Then someone yelled, ‘Watch 

out!’ and Barber said that I was under 

arrest," Nichols explained. He asked 

what he was being arrested for but 

no one would tell him. 

By this time, Ms. Harrison had 

already come out of her kitchen, 

where she was busy preparing dinner 

for her family. She came to protect 

her son who, by the time the 

police were done with their attack, 

had been shoved to the ground and 

had had his lungs severely bruised. 

Ms. Harrison described the situation. 

"I stepped in front of Kenneth 

because I just didn’t understand why 

they would attack my son and 

fiancée for no reason. I tried to ask 

what was going on. I just wanted to 

know what was going on." 

Officer Barber told Elijah’s 

mother, "Mind your business. This 

doesn’t concern you." But any parent 

see Harris, page 9 

Police thugs brutalize 19 year old 

African woman; 13 year old child 

CLEARWATER, Fl — While 

George Bush contemplated carrying 

out terrorist assaults on innocent 

women and children in Iraq, a young 

woman and child were victims of terrorism 

right here in the African community 

in Florida. 

On March 8, 2003, 19-year-old 

Ashley Talley and her 13-year-old 

brother, Arron Scott, were attacked and 

brutalized by Clearwater police officers. 

At a concert being held by a local 

radio station, police snatched Ashley 

over a barricade as she tried to protect 

her 13-year-old sister from being 

squished against it by the crowd. 

The burley officer choked Ashley 

while she cried out for her little sister 

who was left behind the barricade. 

The officer pressed his thumb into 

her neck in a choke that the police 

use to knock out their victims, often 

killing them. 

Meanwhile, two other officers 

snatched Ashley’s little brother Arron 

over the barricade by his neck and 

slammed him to the ground. 

As one officer had 13-year-old 

Arron in a headlock, choking him, the 

other wrapped his hands around his 

neck, telling Arron that if he kept 

moving the officer would break his 

neck. 

Clearwater police officer chokes African woman attempting to protect 

younger sister 

Witnesses say that after this, several 

officers “dog-piled” Arron and 

handcuffed him. 

Arron was released shortly thereafter 

and was never charged with any 

wrongdoing or told why the police 

decided to terrorize him. In fact, the officer 

who handcuffed him was just as 

clueless as Arron himself as he questioned 

Arron about whether he knew 

what he had done. 

Ashley, however, was handcuffed 

and moved from paddy wagon to 

paddy wagon after she refused to leave 

without her younger siblings. 

Officers told her siblings that Ashley 

was only charged with “disorderly conduct,” 

a misdemeanor, for arguing with 

someone while trying to protect her sister, 

and that they could meet her outside 

the concert. Only later did they find 

out that she was charged with the 

felony “battery on a law enforcement 

officer.” 

This charge is ridiculous! 

The police report says that Ashley, 

5-foot-4 and 110 pounds, “tried to box” 

the officer who was about twice her 

size. Witnesses say she never hit the 

pig. The police report also says that she 

“unlawfully brawled in public.” 

Witnesses say that the only physical 

movement she made, was after the 

police snatched her over the barricade 

and started choking her! 

So, how did the charges change 

from “disorderly conduct” to “battery on 

a L.E.O.”? If she had a felony charge 

from the beginning, then why were the 

police going to let her go? 

We know better! It is no new thing 

for police to brutalize an African and 

then charge the African with a crime to 

cover up their own terroristic actions! 

This is why the 8th point of the African 

People’s Socialist Party’s 14-Point 

Platform states: “We want the immediate 

withdrawal of U.S. police from our 

oppressed and exploited communities.” 

We understand that their purpose is to 

contain and terrorize us; to keep our 

communities destabilized and continuously 

under assault. 

Both Ashley and Arron have been 

traumatized by this assault. Ashley has 

been unable to sleep or eat. She can’t 

function at school because she shakes 

nervously. Her family moved her from 

room to room because she feared that 

police were looking in the window. It 

took some time before Arron would 

even begin talking again. 

These terrorist actions against our 

community by the police must stop! 

We demand that the trumped-up 

charges against Ashley Talley be 

dropped! 

We demand justice for Ashley Talley 

and Arron Scott! 



APSP intervenes in “peace movement” 

opposed to anti-colonial resistance 

ST. PETERSBURG, Fl — As of 

this writing, U.S. forces have toppled 

the Iraqi government through massive 

slaughter and treachery, and 

Baghdad is in flames. 

The ancient city is currently in a 

state of anarchy that is all too convenient 

for American imperialist goals 

of re-colonizing the Middle East and 

the majority of the world. 

Even as U.S. marines stand by 

and watch impoverished Iraqis 

search for meager resources in Iraqi 

cities after 13 years of U.S. economic 

sanctions, an impenetrable 

band of military forces guard the Iraqi 

oil fields, the real loot that the imperialist 

masters will guard at any price. 

Over the past several months, 

during the U.S. government’s buildup 

to the invasion of Iraq, a massive 

anti-war movement has sprung up 

inside the U.S. and around the world. 

Millions of people marched internationally 

and hundreds of thousands 

inside this country. The clear message 

that masses of people did not 

want this genocidal massacre 

against the Iraqi people was ignored 

by Bush and his war cabinet. 

For the first time since the U.S. war 

against the people of Viet Nam, a 

mass movement emerged in cities 

and towns inside the U.S. and across 

the globe, a movement aided this time 

around by the internet and the heady 

sense of global communication. 

Under the surface, though, this 

emerging movement has been riddled 

with struggle and contradictions 

that reflect the colonial realities 

inside the belly of parasitic capitalism. 

As the current situation unfolds, 

the question facing the peace movement 

is more critical than ever: 

peace for whom? 

Struggle in the peace movement 

Recent polls show that the African 

community is strongly opposed to the 

U.S. military massacre of the Iraqi 

people. According to statistics, 78 

percent of white people supported 

the war once the U.S. invaded, while 

71 percent of African people in the 

U.S. were against it. 

According to a column in USA 

Today, “Though African-Americans 

have no love for Saddam Hussein, a 

survey of chat rooms on black Web 

sites and discussions on black radio 

talk shows suggest that many, if not 

most, disbelieve the reasons Bush 

has given for ordering troops into 

Iraq. They think the war has more to 

do with Iraq’s oil than with the 

weapons of mass destruction the 

administration claims Saddam’s 

regime possessed.” 

Several times a week, members of 

the African People’s Socialist Party 

organize street rallies in the African 

communities where we are located. 

These rallies elicit an enthusiastic 

response from African workers. 

Nevertheless, African people for the 

most part do not come out to the 

white-led peace rallies because these 

rallies do not reflect the conditions 

that Africans suffer in this country. 

Around the country, wherever 

African People’s Socialist Party 

organizations of African and colonized 

people attempt to work inside 

the peace movement, similar struggles 

emerge. 

A paper by a group of New York 

“anti-racist” activists describes the 

“resistance by predominantly white 

organizations to sharing leadership” 

with colonized organizations — much 

less following their leadership. The 

New York forces cite the failure of 

predominantly white organizations to 

endorse or participate in anti-war 

activities sponsored by colonized 

people. 

White peace groups consistently 

control the programs at rallies, allowing 

only those African and colonized 

speakers who would not challenge 

“mainstream” white America. African 

movie stars and cultural workers are 

acceptable; people working for 

African liberation are not, and our 

Party and members of the Uhuru 

Movement are generally censored. 

Pacifists, U.S. patriots, 

Democratic party members, Zionists 

and the loyal U.S. opposition have 

attempted to gain control of the 

peace movement. The view that “all 

violence and all war is wrong” predominates, 

a line that maintains “a 

monopoly of violence in the hands of 

the oppressor state,” as African 

People’s Socialist Party Chairman 

Omali Yeshitela explains. 

Peace on the plantation versus 

national liberation 

As colonized subjects, African people 

inside the U.S. experience the full 

force of U.S. imperialism and imperialist 

violence every day. Twenty-eight 

percent of all African men will go to 

prison in their lifetimes. Millions of us 

are imprisoned by unjust laws; our children 

are doomed for failure in hostile 

white school systems and poverty is 

ever rampant in our communities. 

African people live under a militaristic 

containment policy as vicious as any 

that the U.S. will impose on the Iraqi 

people. 

Living in a country built on slavery, 

genocide and colonialism, the white 

population sits on a pedestal of the 

oppression of Africans and others. 

White people’s affluence and wellbeing 

comes at the expense of African, 

Iraqi and all the other oppressed peoples 

inside this country and around the 

world. 

These two realities produce two different 

concepts of “peace.” 

The peace sought by most of the 

white peace movement is not that 

much different than the peace George 

W. Bush is working for. As long as the 

Iraqi people are not in a state of uprising 

there is “peace.” Chairman Omali 

describes it as “peace on the plantation,” 

peace for white people through 

the absence of anti-colonial resistance. 

This is why there are fewer participants 

in the white peace rallies since the 

onset of the war and the subsequent 

occupation of Iraq. 

The essential question is not the 

end of military action, but the fact that 

there can be no genuine peace without 

Over the past year, huge, predominately white, peace demonstations have 

occured in the U.S. What these peace demonstrations have not articulated is 

“peace for whom?”. 

Pacifists, 

U.S. patriots, Democratic 

party members, Zionists 

and the loyal U.S. 

opposition have 

attempted to gain 

control of the peace 

movement... African 

movie stars and cultural 

workers are acceptable; 

people working for 

African liberation are 

not, and our Party and 

members of the Uhuru 

Movement are generally 

censored 

national liberation of colonized peoples 

around the world and inside the United 

States. It is the right of all African and 

colonized peoples to struggle for our 

liberation by any means necessary, 

and the peace movement must be 

based on that premise. 

Party builds principled peace 

movement 

Just weeks after the events of 

September 11, 2001, our Party helped 

to form the Florida Alliance for Peace 

and Social Justice in an attempt to 

bring together as many peace activists 

from around the state of Florida to 

stand against the U.S. government’s 

threatened attacks against the people 

of Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries. 

The Florida Alliance is unique in that 

it has united a broad array of peace 

groups of all persuasions in one organization, 

which has the Party and the 

American Indian Movement in its leadership. 

During 2002, the Alliance held three 

highly successful statewide anti-war 

mobilizations at the MacDill Air Force 

Base in Tampa, the central command 

of the U.S. war drive. All the MacDill 

peace rallies were remarkable for their 

emphasis on national liberation and 

social justice. 

Those rallies featured speakers 

such as Vernon Bellecourt, National 

Director of the American Indian 

Movement; Pam Africa of Friends and 

Family of Mumia Abu Jamal; Dorothy 

Lewis, leader of the movement for 

Reparations to the African community 

and Dr. Sami Al-Arian, the now-imprisoned 

University of South Florida professor 

who was targeted by the U.S. 

government for supporting the just 

cause of the oppressed Palestinian 

people. 

Pacifists claim AIM, Uhuru 

Movement potentially violent 

Over the months, predictable contradictions 

emerged within the Florida 

Alliance, including charges by some 

white peace groups that AIM and the 

Uhuru Movement posed a potential for 

violence. These backwards allegations 

flew in the face of the fact that 

oppressed people inside this country 

are the ones who have endured genocide, 

slavery and colonial violence for 

the past 500 years. 

As a concession to white pacifists, 

our Party is committed to tactical nonviolence 

in Florida Alliance actions. 

Obviously we are not ready to go up 

against the military forces at MacDill Air 

Force base during a peace rally! 

Chairman Omali Yeshitela led in creating 

the principles of unity, which are 

based in nonviolent tactics, and he has 

coordinated the nonviolent trainings 

before the marches. 

Some white people in the Alliance 

were more honest when they stated 

flatly that the organization spends “too 

much time on black and Indian issues.” 

These struggles culminated when 

Mark Kamleiter, leader of the Florida 

Green Party, pulled out of the Alliance 

and joined with others to form United 

Voices for Peace, a new all white group 

which excluded AIM and the Uhuru 

Movement from participating in their 

peace actions. 

At the MacDill peace rally in 

November, 2002, Kamleiter had angrily 

and rudely confronted Chairman Omali 

Yeshitela after his presentation during 

Continued on next page


Continued from previous page 

which the Chairman stated that it was 

the responsibility of the slave “to kill the 

slavemaster and destroy the system of 

slavery.” 

In an unprincipled and subjective 

manner, Kamleiter accused the 

Chairman of using “violence of words,” 

even as Kamleiter routinely talks about 

U.S. patriotism and the American flag, 

the symbol of the most violent social 

system on Earth, responsible for centuries 

of genocide, slaughter, terror and 

rape across the planet. 

It is interesting that Kamleiter and 

other white pacifists are never seen 

demonstrating against police brutality 

and other forms of colonial violence 

that plague our community. Nor do they 

seem to have a problem with the hundreds 

of white anarchists and students 

who violently tore up the city of Seattle, 

Washington during protests against the 

World Trade Organization. 

The main concern of pacifists is to 

protest African people’s right to speak 

out against our colonial conditions and 

express our goal to liberate ourselves 

from the grip of imperialism. 

Omali Yeshitela censored 

In Oakland CA, our Party was also 

instrumental in pulling together the All 

People’s Coalition Against the War (All 

Peeps), an organization with African, 

Mexican, Filipino and Arab people in 

leading roles. All Peeps has held several 

successful actions on the terms of 

colonized people, including the march 

last May across San Francisco’s 

Golden Gate bridge. 

At the same time All Peeps and the 

Uhuru Movement have struggled for 

Chairman Omali Yeshitela and other 

African People’s Socialist Party members 

to be able to speak at the large 

Bay Area anti-war rallies, many of 

which have been coordinated by 

A.N.S.W.E.R., a peace group formed 

by the white-led Workers World Party. 

In the past months, A.N.S.W.E.R 

has been red baiteded — a tactic of discrediting 

a group, person, project or 

idea with the claim of communist 

involvement or association — by pacifist, 

Zionist and patriotic peace groups. 

This attack was a response to speakers 

supporting the African struggle of 

Mumia Abu Jamal and for supporting 

the struggle of the Palestinian people at 

A.N.S.W.E.R -sponosored peace rallies. 

Despite the fact that A.N.S.W.E.R 

has been attacked from the right, it has 

always arrogantly censored Chairman 

Omali and prevented him from speaking 

at its rallies. All Peeps did succeed 

in getting the Chairman to speak at the 

peace rally held in Oakland on April 5. 

After weeks of intense struggle with 

organizers, the Chairman was grudgingly 

granted three minutes at the end 

of the program. Nevertheless, 

Chairman Omali’s presentation was 

clearly the most dynamic and profound 

of the day and the crowd cheered in 

enthusiastic support. 

Peace for whom? 

To give leadership to these struggles 

raging inside the peace movement, 

Party-led forces called together 

forums entitled “Peace for Whom?” in 

St. Petersburg on March 8 and in 

Oakland on April 8. “Is there room for 

Africans, Arabs, Indians, Mexicans and 

other non-white people in the peace 

ples! InPDUM is calling for “$$$ 

billions for reparations, not for 

war, police and prisons!” 

Distinguishing itself from 

other anti-war rallies, which simply 

called for “peace,” this 

demonstration called for liberation 

and self-determination for 

Iraqi, Palestinian and all 

oppressed peoples. Speakers 

rallied the people to stand 

against the U.S. government 

attacks against the African community 

in the U.S. and other colonized 

people in the U.S. and 

around the world. 

Participating organizations 

Anti-war demonstration in Philadelphia, PA 

included InPDUM, the African- 

American Freedom and 

Even before the US-Anglo invasion 

Reconstruction League, the African 

of Iraq officially began, the Philadelphia 

People’s Solidarity Committee, the 

branch of the International People’s 

Moorish Unification Council of the 

Democratic Uhuru Movement 

World Incorporated, Friends and 

(InPDUM) mobilized a powerful 

Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal, 

demonstration in the crowded Monday 

Palestinian activists, students from 

evening rush hour of Center City on 

Moore College of Art, the Germantown 

March 17th. 

Unitarian Church and various peace 

Thousands of city workers on their 

and anti-war groups. 

way home heard the chants, saw the 

After a spirited rally, the demonstrators 

joined with a student “die-in” to take 

banners and got a flyer in their hands 

denouncing the U.S. terrorist aggression 

against the people of Iraq. The 

over the streets around City Hall and 

blocked rush-hour traffic for over an 

demonstration called for no African 

hour. This demonstration was the first 

community participation in Bush’s war 

of several led by the Uhuru Movement 

in the Middle East and demanded 

in Philadelphia, which stood in unity 

peace through social and economic 

with the millions of people all over the 

justice, reparations and liberation for 

world denouncing U.S. terrorism. 

African, Arab and all oppressed peo- 

movement?” asked the fliers circulated 

for these events. 

In St. Petersburg, about 90 people 

came out to enthusiastically participate 

in this critical discussion, which was 

facilitated by Jim Harper, the new editor 

of the Weekly Planet, the popular 

Tampa Bay free weekly paper. 

Panelists included Sheridan 

Murphy, Director of the Florida 

American Indian Movement; Beth 

Schrivener of the Community Coalition 

Against War and Terrorism of 

Gainesville; Harry Simon, Union del 

Barrio, San Diego; Bob Tancig, Florida 

Coalition for Justice and Peace, 

Tallahassee; Omali Yeshitela, Florida 

Alliance and Chairman of the African 

People’s Socialist Party and Mark 

Kamleiter, co-chair of the Florida Green 

Party and member of United Voices for 

Peace. 

Needless to say, Kamleiter’s white 

nationalist stance was clearly exposed 

in a principled way. 

In Oakland, the event opened with a 

salute to Stephen Funk, U.S. marine 

conscientious objector. Stephen was 

followed by a lively panel featuring 

Noura Erakat, Arab Anti-discrimination 

Committee; Quetzaoceloaciua, Barrio 

Defense Committee; Angelica 

Cabande, Filipinos for Global Justice 

Not War; Penny Hess, African People’s 

Solidarity Committee and Chairman 

Omali Yeshitela. 

At both events, the majority of the 

audience united with the struggles 

being made by the very unified colonized 

forces that the only true peace is 

peace through national liberation and 

social justice. 

As Chairman Omali Yeshitela 

summed up in St. Petersburg: 

Philadelphia Uhuru movement 

leads anti-war demonstrations 

The Palestinian and Arab participants 

were especially appreciative that 

the Uhuru Movement called to “Free, 

Free Palestine!” and for self-determination 

for Iraqi and Arab peoples. 

The other anti-war mobilizations, led 

by predominantly white left groups, did 

not voice unity with the right of the Arab 

peoples to sovereignty. In fact, mobilizations 

that had originally supported 

the Palestinian people’s liberation 

struggle against Israel had capitulated 

to criticism by white nationalists. The 

white left had dropped this demand, 

raising instead such slogans as “Bring 

the troops home,” and calling to stop 

anti-Semitism! 

The movement also participated in 

daily rallies and demonstrations in the 

week after the invasion began, including 

a massive student walk-out from 

high school and university campuses. 

Students expressed enthusiastic 

support for the presentation made by 

Philadelphia InPDUM President 

Kamau Becktemba at their rally. He 

deepened their understanding of the 

world situation by explaining that the 

U.S. is at war with the oppressed and 

colonized peoples of the world in a desperate 

struggle to keep control of the 

people’s resources. 

Becktemba called on the students 

to unite with the national liberation 

struggles taking place all over the 

world, including in Colombia, Palestine, 

Africa, the Philippines and the Middle 

“It’s no secret that historically the 

peace movement has been a white 

movement. It may be that I will not be 

able to participate in the peace movement 

as it has historically been understood 

in this country, because that is 

not the peace that I am looking for. 

“When you talk about peace you 

have to talk about national liberation. 

That is the fundamental question. If you 

start with the question of national liberation 

— the right of peoples to be free 

then you start off recognizing that the 

conditions of existence for most people 

in the world, including Indians, Africans 

and others inside this country are 

always violent. 

“There is never a nonviolent period 

when black people, Native people and 

oppressed peoples around the world 

are not suffering from violence. 

Violence is not something that just disturbs 

the peace of the white community. 

“People invoke the names of 

Gandhi and Martin Luther King. What is 

profoundly important to understand 

about both Gandhi and King is that they 

were both participants in a struggle for 

self determination of oppressed peoples. 

They weren’t just standing above 

the fray. 

“The question of peace is not just 

some purely abstract question. It 

requires us to take sides. If you know 

that you live in a country that constructed 

itself of the oppression and 

blood of the masses of people around 

the world, then you must take a stand 

on the side of the liberation of 

oppressed peoples.” 

Peace through national 

liberation and 

self-determination! 

What you can do! 

Tribunal organizing meetings 

open to the community to join 

are held every Wednesday 

night at 7:30pm at the Uhuru 

House at 1021 S. 49th St, at 

Chester Avenue in West 

Philadelphia. 

Call 215-724-3535 

to find out how you 

can participate! 

East, and to join the struggle led by the 

African community inside the U.S. for 

reparations and social and economic 

justice. 

In March, InPDUM and the African 

People’s Solidarity Committee also 

held successful anti-war forums on 

campuses around the Philadelphia 

area: at Temple University, Rutgers 

University, New Jersey and at Moore 

College of Art, as well as at Robin’s 

Bookstore in Center City and the Uhuru 

House in West Philadelphia. 

The anti-war efforts of the Uhuru 

Movement brought people to realize 

that there can be no meaningful peace 

in the world today without genuine justice 

and liberation for African, Arab and 

all oppressed people. Armed with this 

understanding, people signed up to 

participate in building the World 

Tribunal for Reparations for African 

People that the International People’s 

Democratic Uhuru Movement is sponsoring 

in Philadelphia on November 15- 

16, 2003. 



Worldwide demonstrations 

against U.S. led Iraq 

On Saturday, March 15th, two 

days prior to the Bush administration’s 

“ultimatum” to Iraqi President 

Saddam Hussein, 100,000 people 

came out in San Francisco for the 

“Stop the War Convergence” to display 

their opposition to this latest 

threat of imperialist aggression by 

the United States. 

Although there were very few 

African people participating in the 

mobilization, the International Action 

Center organizers chose a march 

route from the Civic Center through the 

Fillmore District and into the Western 

Addition’s Jefferson Square Park. 

These San Francisco neighborhoods 

represent a few of the last remaining 

African communities in the city. 

The African community in San 

Francisco has faced years of vicious 

attacks by the police and the city, as 

part of the U.S. government’s war on 

African people. 

African students at Thurgood 

Marshall High in San Francisco were 

recently attacked by the police following 

an alleged fight between two 

students. Across the Bay, students at 

Oakland High attempting to walk out 

of the school to oppose the war were 

locked inside the high school in violation 

of their democratic rights and 

city fire codes. 

Speaking at the Civic Center rally 

preceding the march, local African 

People’s Socialist Party leader Bakari 

Olatunji called on the anti-war movement 

to oppose both the United States’ 

war on the peoples of Iraq and the war 

on African and other oppressed peoples 

inside U.S. borders. 

Olatunji challenged the predominantly 

white crowd to oppose the war 

on African and Mexican people carried 

out under the public policy of 

police containment and through the 

California prison system, known to 

be the fourth largest prison system in 

the world. 

He cited examples of the San 

Francisco Police Department’s notorious 

brutality. He also reminded the 

crowd about the brutality of the 

Oakland Police Department, which 

had to pay out money to the victims 

of the “Oakland Riders,” four 

Oakland cops who beat, harassed 

and trampled on the rights of 

oppressed African people in West 


Oakland. 

Olatunji questioned 

a peace 

movement based 

on upholding the 

status quo. He 

called for a 

movement based 

on social justice 

and national liberation, 

representing 

the leadership 

of African 

and oppressed 

peoples. 

Henry Clark 

also addressed 

the crowd at the 

Civic Center 

rally. Clark is an 

African community 

organizer 

who leads the 

Protestors in Pakistan burn a U.S. flag in opposition to 

U.S.-led war on Iraq. 

100.000 anti-war protestors joined March 15, 2003 San Francisco demonstration 

Pacifists, 

U.S. patriots, Democratic 

party members, Zionists 

and the loyal U.S. 

opposition have 

attempted to gain 

control of the peace 

movement... African 

movie stars and cultural 

workers are acceptable; 

people working for 

African liberation are 

not, and our Party and 

members of the Uhuru 

Movement are generally 

censored. 

West Contra 

Costa County 

Toxics Coalition. This is an organization 

that exposes the role of Chevron 

and other oil companies in the war 

on African people from Richmond, 

California to Nigeria. 

Other speakers included the 

Bayan International, speaking on the 

U.S. war on the peoples of the 

Philippines, and a representative of 

the Leonard Peltier Committee 

addressing the U.S. war on the 

American Indian Movement waged 

under the U.S. 

government’s 

COINTELPRO 

program. This is 

the same program 

that 

viciously 

attacked the 

Black Panther 

Party and was 

responsible for 

the military 

defeat of the 

Black Power 

Movement in the 

1960s. 

Worldwide 

protests 

attempt to 

stop new 

U.S. assault 

During the 

same weekend, 

massive 

demonstrations 

took 

place across 

the globe, representing 

2,000 cities in 

98 countries 

according to 

wire service 

reports. 

For several 

weeks, protestors 

had 

camped outside 

the Royal 

Air Force 

Base in Fairford, Gloucestershire 

where the U.S. recently sent its B- 

52 bombers preparing for the 

attack on Iraq. In Germany, protestors 

exposed their government’s 

complicity with U.S. war efforts by 

demonstrating at the U.S. airbase 

near Frankfurt. A few hundred protesters 

blocked the entry of the airbase 

for several hours. 

Hundreds marched in 

Bucharest, Romania, calling for 

the 3,000 to 

4,000 U.S. 

troops stationed 

at an air base in 

the Black Sea 

port of 

Constanta to 

leave. 

Turkish protesters 

carried 

anti-U.S. 

posters as they 

demonstrated 

against the 

deployment of 

U.S. troops in 

Turkey. At the 

port city of 

Iskenderun, two dozen activists 

chained themselves to the wheels 

of a truck and blocked a side 

entrance of a Turkish port where 

U.S. forces were unloading military 

equipment. 

Demonstrations in Egypt targeted 

the use of the Suez Canal by 

U.S. warships moving from the 

Mediterranean to the Red Sea. In 

Cairo, around 100 student demonstrators 

clashed with police at the 

American University when they rallied 

in defiance of an emergency 

law that bans street demonstrations. 

Nearly half a million people 

marched in Milan, Italy against the 

war and against the Berlusconi 

government’s complicity with the 

Bush administration. 

Spain saw more than half a million 

people demonstrating in 

Madrid and 300,000 in Barcelona. 

Protests took place in front of 

the U.S. embassies in Greece and 

Nicosia, Cyprus. Thousands of 

marchers demanded the closing of 

Britain’s Royal Air Force base in 

Akitori, the largest British air base 

outside of the UK monitoring the 

air over the eastern Mediterranean 

and the Middle East. Roughly 300 

protestors climbed to the snowcovered 

top of Mount Olympus, 

where military radar is located, to 

demand that “the bases of death” 

be shut down immediately. 

Demonstrators confronted 

Australian Prime Minister John 

Howard as he tried to conduct an 

election tour in Adelaide and 

Sidney. Despite public opinion, 

Australia has several thousand 

military personnel stationed alongside 

those from the U.S. and the 

UK in the Persian Gulf. 

In Tokyo, 10,000 people 

protested the Japanese government’s 

recent decision to join the 

Bush-Blair coalition despite public 

opposition. 

Thousands also demonstrated 

in France, Belgium, Denmark, 

Hungary and the former Soviet 

Republic of Kyrgyzstan, where 350 

people marched to denounce U.S. 

use of their country’s air space for 

the war against Iraq. 

see Demos, page 10 

In Bangladesh, a protestor kicks a burning effigy of 

George W. Bush.


Build the APSP 

Iraqi Invasion and Occupation 

Iraqi man mourns his children, murdered 

in U.S. bombing campaign 

The vicious 

U.S. military 

machine sits 

astride the dignity 

and freedom 

of the Iraqi people, 

after successfully 

overwhelming 

an 

obscenely outmatched 

Iraqi 

military. 

Moving from a 

population base 

ten times larger 

than that of Iraq 

and an economy 

more than a hundred 

times 

greater, leaders 

and media of the 

U.S. are boastfully 

self-congratulatory 

over the 

ease with which 

the U.S. appears 

to have achieved 

Iraqi boy holds sign to express popular sentiment of Iraq 

its immediate aim 

of overthrowing 

tionaries who might have contributed 

the government of Iraqi President to the mobilization of the Iraqi people 

Saddam Hussein as its first step in against the invasion. 

attempting to reshape the power Although Iraqi nationalism among 

relations of the Middle East and the the masses prevented the people 

world. 

from simply capitulating to U.S. terror 

The initial arrogant miscalculation as U.S. war planners had predicted, 

of the U.S. military — it's rush headlong 

toward Baghdad that left an the people to mass organized resis- 

nationalism was not enough to win 

exposed supply line stretched out for tance in defense of the government. 

hundreds of miles and resulted in the In addition, the repressive policy 

first U.S. captives and casualties — of the Iraqi government toward the 

led many to hope the Iraqis would oppressed Kurdish people in northern 

Iraq deprived the people of the 

succeed in inflicting enough damage 

to tie U.S. forces down in Iraq long unity necessary for an effective 

enough for the worldwide anti-imperialist 

revolutionary forces to join the ment. The Kurdish issue has func- 

defense of the country and govern- 

fray from various fronts in earnest. tioned like a time bomb for the 

region, threatening the stability not 

Iraqi mass resistance was faced 

only of Iraq, but also of Turkey and 

with limitations 

Iran, and to a lesser degree Syria. 

However, the fact that Iraq had The Kurds are a distinct people 

been starved under U.S.-driven with a distinct culture, language and 

United Nations’ sanctions and regularly 

bombed by U.S. and British right to a national homeland subse- 

history who have been denied the 

imperialists for the last 12 years quent to what has been declared 

guaranteed that the weakened, "de-colonization" of the region. The 

aspiration of the Kurdish people for a 

national homeland has been seen as 

a threat of varying significance to the 

different governments in territories 

where the Kurds are located. 

In other words, the united population 

necessary for the conduct of 

People's War as successfully 

employed by the Vietnamese against 

French and U.S. imperial white 

power and by China against Japan, 

Kurds have been denied a nation did not exist in Iraq. 

Viet Nam, China and Algeria are 

badly-equipped Iraqi military would examples of how poor countries with 

prove highly inadequate. 

limited resources can prevail in contests 

with rich and powerful coun- 

Moreover, the nature of the Arab 

nationalist Iraqi government itself tries. 

placed severe limitations on its ability The 1980 U.S.-instigated and 

to initiate a more effective resistance supported attack on Iran, and the 

to U.S. colonial aggression. The ruling 

Baath Party had viciously suptionary 

internationalists in Iraq itself, 

suppression of socialists and revolupressed 

all opposition in the country, also limited the ability to mobilize an 

including socialists and other revolu- 

organized resistance from throughout 

the region from the masses of 

workers and peasants whose hatred 

of U.S. imperialism was made obvious 

in the mass demonstrations held 

throughout the region, mostly in defiance 

of the regional Arab governments 

who worked to support the 

Imperialist invasion of Iraq behind 

the backs of their people. 

U.S. attack on Iraq designed to 

win white support for 

imperialist aggression 

Recognizing this is important 

because the invasion of Iraq was 

deliberately designed to attack a 

country where imperialist logic determined 

it could be achieved with relative 

ease. 

For the U.S., the lesson of Viet 

Nam has up to now limited its ability 

to win the mass of North Americans 

or white people to support imperialist 

ventures. This is because the 

Vietnamese inflicted a defeat on U.S. 

The looting of 

museums and libraries 

is a typical story of 

white imperial 

marauders that 

stretches back 

through the annals of 

history. 

U.S. marine swaggers over captured 

city, Bahgdad 

forces that has made the North 

American people gun-shy, afraid to 

attack anybody lest they invite the 

humiliating defeat imposed upon 

them by the Vietnamese. 

September 11 provided the U.S. 

government with the momentum for 

attacking Iraq, although there was no 

connection between Iraq and 

September 11. But the white people 

of the U.S. were forced to tussle with 

the idea that there is no longer any 

way to hide from the possibility of 

defeat, whether on the battlefield 

miles away or within the malls and 

suburbs of the U.S. 

Behind the backdrop of 

September 11, the U.S. regime of 

George Bush picked Iraq as the target 

for an easy victory that could 

make the white people less reluctant 

to support imperialist military ventures 

that could rescue the system 

from its crisis. This crisis has been 

caused by the unrelenting struggles 

for self determination by various peoples 

of the world, upon whose domination 

the white power world capitalist 

system depends for its continued 

survival. 

Resistance against U.S. 

occupation continues in Iraq 

But, despite the earlier, U.S.- 

staged demonstrations of Iraqis welcoming 

the conquering Americans, it 

is not over in Iraq. Indeed, it may 

very well be that the real struggle is 

now going to begin. 

Already thousands of Iraqis have 

see Iraq Crisis, page 8 



National Conference of Black 

Lawyers blasts U.S. attack on 

The National Coalition of Black 

Lawyers is a coaltion of African 

lawyers. Their stated mission is “to 

serve as the legal arm of the movement 

for Black Liberation, to protect 

human rights, to achieve selfdetermination 

of Africa and 

African Communities in the diaspora 

and to work in coalition to 

assist in ending oppression of all 

peoples.” The following Spear article 

is a reproduction of their statement 

to expose amd condemn 

U.S. intervention in Zimbabwe 

The National Conference of Black 

Lawyers (NCBL) condemns in the 

strongest terms an Executive Order 

by George W. Bush that freezes the 

U.S. assets of more than 70 officials 

of the Zimbabwe government. 

In a March 7, 2003 Order, Bush 

invokes the International Emergency 

Economic Powers Act and the 

National Emergencies Act to freeze 

all property and interests in property” 

of 77 Zimbabwe government officials. 

The Order accuses the targeted 

officials of politically motivated 

violence, intimidation, the undermining 

of democratic processes and 

institutions and contributing to the 

deliberate breakdown of the rule of 

law in Zimbabwe. The Order provides 

no specific bases for the referenced 

allegations. 

NCBL regards the right to selfdetermination 

as one of the most 

fundamental of human rights. Article 

1, paragraph 2 of the United Nations 

Charter specifically cites the development 

of self-determination as one 

of the organization’s primary purposes. 

Toward that end, Article 2, 

paragraph 7 of the U.N. Charter 

specifically speaks against the organization 

intervening “in matters which 

are essentially within the domestic 

jurisdiction of any state...” 

The Bush executive order constitutes 

a reckless, provocative, irresponsible 

act of intervention into affairs that 

are strictly within the domestic jurisdiction 

of Zimbabwe. The targeted 

Zimbabwe government officials have 

all been duly elected or appointed pursuant 

to democratic processes that 

have been subject to scrutiny by the 

international community. 

In fact, given the undemocratic 

method by which George W. Bush 

seized the U.S. Presidency, any 

accusations he might make about 

the undermining of democratic 

processes must be dismissed from 

the outset. To the extent that there 

may be any problems with government 

leadership in Zimbabwe, it is 

the right of the people of Zimbabwe 

to address those problems without 

the unsolicited intervention of a lone 

member of a foreign government. 

Finally, NCBL regards as intellectually 

dishonest, at best, the Order’s 

accusation that the actions of the 

Zimbabwe officials “constitute an 

unusual and extraordinary threat to 

the foreign policy of the United 

States,” and that such justifies the 

declaration of a U.S. “national emergency.” 

In the context of the Bush 

Administration’s recent fabrication of 

excuses for all-out war against Iraq, 

any time this Administration makes 

shrill, obsessive, unsupported condemnations 

of targeted foreign government 

officials (such as those 

directed at Zimbabwe leaders) there 

is cause for genuine alarm. 

NCBL calls upon all people of 

good will to reaffirm Zimbabwe’s right 

to self-determination, and to condemn 

unwarranted U.S. intervention 

into Zimbabwe’s domestic affairs. 

This is particularly important during 

this period when government attention 

should instead be focused on a 

failing U.S. economy. 

NCBL was founded in 1968 to 

NCBL regards the right to 

self-determination as one 

of the most fundamental 

of human rights. Article 

1, paragraph 2 of the 

United Nations Charter 

specifically cites the 

development of selfdetermination 

as one of 

the organization’s 

primary purposes. 

serve as the legal arm of the movement 

for Black liberation, to protect 

human rights, to achieve self-determination 

of Africa and African communities 

in the Diaspora and to work 

in coalition to assist in ending 

oppression of all peoples. 

(Quoted excerpts of this statement 

are attributed to Mark P. 

Fancher, chair of NCBL’s Section on 

International Affairs and World 

Peace.) 

Iraq Crisis 

continued from page 7 

begun to demonstrate against the 

U.S. occupation, leading U.S. troops 

to open fire on unarmed civilians, 

killing many. This has added other 

crimes for which the U.S. government 

of assassins will have to 

answer before a people's tribunal 

when the toiling masses of the world 

take power, as we surely will one 

day. 

The looting of museums and 

libraries is a typical story of white 

imperial marauders that stretches 

back through the annals of history. 

Hospitals and morgues are filled with 

the maimed bodies of Iraqis who fell 

victim to the highly developed U.S. 

war technology. This technology is 

enabled by a U.S. war budget that is 

larger than the next 20 countries 

combined. 

There is hardly an Iraqi who has 

not suffered as a consequence of the 

U.S. colonial invasion. 

However, there are daily reports 

of resistance: sporadic attempts at 

ambushes of U.S. troops; the stoning 

or execution of Iraqi puppets who 

support the U.S. occupation; the call 

for united resistance between the 

Shia and Sunni Muslims, etc. 

U.S. aggression not limited to 

Iraq; Opposition to U.S. 

imperialism growing 

Nevertheless, the fact is that the 

Iraqis cannot be expected to carry 

this battle against imperialism alone. 

This understanding requires recognition 

that it is not enough for us to simply 

talk about peace. Iraq is just one 

of the more obvious examples of 

U.S. imperial aggression. U.S. military 

forces are at work in Colombia 

and the Philippines and a wide range 

of arenas in Mother Africa. 

Moreover, the U.S. is attempting 

to subvert the Venezuelan process 

and is threatening to rachet up its 

historical aggression against Cuba. 

Within the Middle East, Syria is 

being targeted by U.S. war mongers. 

The Palestine Liberation 

Organization cannot prostrate itself 

enough before the U.S. and its white 

nationalist military outpost of Israel to 

satisfy the Bush regime's demand for 

complete capitulation as a condition 

for achieving a neo-colonial statehood. 

The outstanding lesson of this latest 

era of struggle, as crystallized by 

the occupation of Iraq, is the growing 

politicization of millions of peoples 

around the world in opposition to 

imperialism and the general lack of 

revolutionary organization that could 

give consequential leadership to the 

masses. 

Peace movement must support 

national liberation and selfdetermination 

Within the U.S., this politicization, as 

it is concentrated in opposition to the 

Bush regime's policy of war and occupation, 

has been generally incapable of 

criticizing U.S. imperialism as a system. 

It can criticize various acts of U.S. 

imperialism while at the same time 

make excuses for U.S. imperialism 

itself. Therefore, the peace movement, 

as such, is generally a lily-white exercise 

in protecting the imperial status 

quo, while protesting the obvious use of 

imperial violence to do so. 

It is a peace movement that refuses 

to recognize the attack on Iraq as an 

attempt to protect the international economic 

arrangement that feeds Europe 

and North America at the expense of 

the toiling masses of the world. It is the 

ongoing struggles of the toiling masses 

for national liberation and self-determination 

that have created the crisis that 

the Bush regime is attempting to solve 

for all imperialists — including its feuding 

partners of France and Germany. 

It is a peace movement that refuses 

to recognize that Iraq is part of an historical 

trajectory that flows from the theft 

of the land of the native people of the 

U.S. and the historical capture, 

enslavement and domestic colonization 

of African people within current borders 

of the U.S. 

The real struggle begins now with 

the colonial occupation of Iraq. The significance 

of the peace movement within 

the U.S. and the world will be determined 

by its ability to move beyond the 

issue of peace and join the world in 

demanding national liberation and selfdetermination. 

For revolutionary African 

Internationalists and others, we must 

assume our responsibility now to take 

advantage of the current crisis of imperialism 

and the extraordinarily rich political 

environment that it is providing. 

We must lead. It is that simple. 

We must intervene in the political 

arena provided us by this naked colonial 

aggression by U.S. white power 

and win our own people to conscious 

involvement in the struggle for African 

liberation, independence, unification 

and socialism. We must build the 

African People's Socialist Party and the 

African Socialist International. 

Izwe Lethu i Afrika! 

(Africa is our Land!) 

Subscribe!


Harrison 


reading this knows that if that was 

your child, it definitely would concern 

you. 

Ms. Harrison let Officer Barber 

know, "This is my son." With that, 

Ms. Harrison was shoved out of the 

way by Officer Barber, who, at this 

point, was going to try and arrest Mr. 

Nichols. At the same time, a crowd of 

more than 30 people began to swell, 

watching in anger as the family was 

attacked. 

Mr. Nichols initially dodged Officer 

Barber, causing the officer to fall on 

his face. Then Ms. Harrison told him, 

"Kenneth, don’t run, you haven’t 

done anything." With that, he stood 

still and was slammed to the ground 

and arrested. He was later charged 

with obstruction of justice. 

"I was crying as I screamed to 

Elijah, ‘Run home baby, just run 

home!’ Then I grabbed the fence," 

Ms. Harrison tearfully recalled, "and 

said, 'I’m not running away, I haven’t 

done anything.'" 

That is when the police slammed 

her to the ground and dragged 

Elijah’s mother more than 15 feet, 

causing her breasts to be exposed 

and her legs "cocked wide open for 

the world to see", according to Ms. 

Harrison. "It was so humiliating, they 

wouldn’t even let me adjust my 

clothes." 

African community challenges 

police attack 

Meanwhile, the crowd swelled 

and as the police, becoming more 

and more nervous that the people 

would enact justice right then and 

there, pushed their panic button. 

Squad cars soon scrambled to the 

scene from every direction. 

It was during this time that two 


(APSP) organizers saw the 

onslaught of police who were driving 

so recklessly to the scene that they 

almost injured several pedestrians. 

One of the organizers recalls, 

"The way the police were responding, 

you would have thought there 

was some sort of terrorist attack. We 

followed the squad cars to 14th and 

7th. When we got there, we realized 

there had just been a terrorist attack 

– the police were the terrorists." 

All this took place as Tammie 

Harrison’s son cried out, "Why are 

you doing this to my mom?!" It was at 

this point that Officer Barber pushed 

Elijah for the third and final time to 

the ground before Barber took Ms. 

Harrison and Mr. Nichols away. It is 

likely that this third and final attack 

resulted in Elijah’s bruised lungs and 

increased respiratory problems. 

After being arrested, Ms. Harrison 

was forced to endure several body 

searches on the side of the road and 

on her way to jail. For this incident, 

she was placed in maximum security 

surrounded by males. "I was crying 

as I was forced to lift my breasts and 

bend over and part my {buttocks} 

and cough over and over", Ms. 

Harrison said as she described how 

the police in C-1 Max examined her 

anal and vaginal cavities. 

"One shower had no curtain at all 

and the other had one made of clear 

plastic, so a man could walk by and 

Tammie Harrison and Kenneth Nichols were locked up for defending their 

child against police terror. 

see me naked in the shower— so I 

couldn’t wash myself." 

This must have been especially 

difficult considering the filth she was 

surrounded by in the cell, that she 

characterized as being unfit for even 

an animal. "I will never ever forget 

this as long as I live. I know now what 

it feels like to be raped and lynched. 

These are things I used to cry about 

when I heard about them on television 

and now it has happened to me. 

I would never wish this on anyone. It 

was like I was back in the 1930s or 

something." 

Police Chief Chuck Harmon 

responded to the situation by stating 

that, "It doesn’t raise any concern 

with me." 

Well, Chuck, why should you be 

concerned? After all, these are the 

type of practices that you have 

helped to make routine in the African 

community. It is a war against African 

people, in which the police troops will 

murder, brutalize and detain in concentration 

camps (prisons) anyone in 

the African community at any time — 

with or without reason. 

What you can do! 

Demand: 

• All charges against Ms. 

Harrison and Mr. Nichols 

must be dropped 

• Officer Barber must be fired 

immediately 

• Reparations be made to the 

family for physical injuries 

and emotional and psychological 

distress 

Over 30 people, most of who 

were younger than 20 participated 

in a protest issuing the 

above demands. We are calling 

for all readers of The Burning 

Spear to do the same. 

Call Mayor Rick Baker at 

727-893-7201. 

Call the State’s Attorney’s 

Office at 727-464-6221. 

Please Call 727-502-0575 for 

more information. 

Police protect imperialist 

system that exploits Africans 

When the police are in our community 

you would have to be more 

than a little dumb to seriously believe 

that they are there to protect the 

interests of the African community. 

They are there however, to "protect 

and serve" the interests of the State 

and the white power system at large. 

Africans and other colonized people 

inside this country are a particular 

threat to these interests because 

they depend on our exploitation for 

their very existence. 

The police are protecting the 

same system that built itself by 

bleeding dry the masses of Africans 

through centuries of slavery. 

It is the same system that murdered 

millions of Native Americans 

and then stole all of their land. 

It is the same system that stole 

the land of the Mexican people in 

1848. 

It is the same system that is in 

Iraq now, stealing their oil and trying 

to position itself to be the number 

one slave-master in the world. 

It is the same system that floods 

your streets with drugs, but can’t produce 

a drip-drop of a job. 

It is the same system that killed 

Tyron Lewis. 

It is the same system the Uhuru 

Movement had to file a lawsuit 

against for its attempted murder of 

our organizers in November of 1996 

during the rebellions. 

It is the same system that locks 

up African people for more than a 

quarter century for "stealing a slice of 

pizza," or a half of a century for 

“stealing a golf club”, so that there 

will be slave labor and containment 

of Africans — forever. 

So, what is the point here? The 

point is that the United States, the 

"good old" red white and blue, made 

itself the power that it is by making 

everyone else in the world powerless 

and destitute at the point of a gun. 

In this way, it has made itself 

"oppressed people’s public enemy 

number one." Look around the world 

and what do you see? Look down 

your block and what do you see - a 

whole lot of poor, hungry, landless, 

struggling people. 

Wealth of imperialism came at 

expense of African people 

Now look at Europe and the U.S. 

and what do you see? You see all of 

the riches, food, land and wealth that 

have been taken from you. 

Conspiracy, one may say, but it is 

hardly that. All you have to do is open 

your eyes and look, for it is as clear 

as the ground you walk on. 

In order for this handful of white 

people to be wealthy, the overwhelming 

majority must starve and die. If 

you’ve got a problem with that, the 

police troops are there to help you 

either find a cozy bed in a concentration 

camp, or a nice six-foot pile of 

soil. 

It has always been this way and 

will always be this way as long as 

this social system, known as "imperialism" 

is intact. This is the current 

order of the world that domestic 

police troops and international police 

troops (military) maintain by any 

means necessary. 

When the police brutalize an 

entire family, like they did the 

Harrison’s, this is the order that they 

are protecting. They are protecting 

and expanding the parasite’s relationship 

that keeps everyone in the 

world, including right here in St. 

Petersburg, in misery, poverty and 

bondage. That is their job. That’s 

what the troops are doing in Iraq, and 

in St. Pete, in Colombia and 

Chicago. 

African community must 

organize for independence 

Police Chief Harmon was quoted in 

the St. Petersburg Times on Saturday, 

April 19 as stating that African people 

are happy with this relationship -- that 

this is a "single situation" and that he 

didn’t "want people to get the perception 

that this is a continual occurrence." 

It stands to reason that if he really 

believes that, then he must be getting 

high on his own supply of narcotics that 

he helps to push in the African community 

and that he himself should be 

under investigation for drug use. 

Every African in this country can 

bear witness to the continual violence 

we face at the hands of the State every 

day in one form or another. Just ask 

around. It seems as though everyone 

has his or her own personal terror story. 

Our freedom will not come simply 

because we wish it so. It will come as a 

consequence of our day-to-day struggle 

to make our freedom manifest. 

Billions of people around the world 

share the same problem. We must 

organize to win our independence, selfdetermination 

and national liberation. 

Organize, Resist and Defeat 

U.S. Imperialism! 

Defend all African Mothers, 

Fathers and Children; End 

Police Occupation. 

Join the Uhuru Movement. 

Self-Determination and 

National Liberation for 

Africans and all Oppressed 

People! 

Defeat the War in Iraq and 

Defeat the War in the African 

Community. 



U.S. and Europe rivalry continues to explode in the Balkans as 

Serbian prime minister 

Yugoslavia is one of the countries 

through which the oil and gas 

pipeline from the central Asian 

republics in the former Soviet Union 

flows to Europe. The U.S. and 

Europe, led by the German-Franco 

alliance, are competing for control of 

Yugoslavia. They both supported the 

break up of the former republic but 

without agreeing on how to share the 

spoils. 

Germany supported the secession 

of Croatia and Slovenia, whilst 

the U.S. supported the secession of 

Bosnia, as well, from the federal 

republic of Yugoslavia. 

Between 1999 and 2003, the U.S. 

has been using the terrorist Kosovo 

Liberation Army (KLA) to further 

break up Yugoslavia. The CIA 

encouraged the KLA terrorists to 

Kosovo Liberation Army soldier 

attack southern Serbia, Macedonia 

and Montenegro, which are all 

republics of the former Yugoslavia 

federal republic. 

In addition to this, the U.S. 

bombed Serbia, destroying the 

Chinese embassy, Serbian roads, 

bridges, television and radios stations, 

and oil tankers. Thousands of 

innocent civilians were killed. This 

aggression against Serbia resulted in 

the kidnapping of Sobodan Milosevic 

and his imprisonment in The Hague 

in Holland. He is charged with war 

crimes against humanity. 

This aggression against Serbia 

has resulted in the fracturing of the 

Serbian society, with the nationalists 

led by Milosevic on the one side and 

the pro-Westerners led by Zoran 

Djindjic and Kostunica, the actual 

president of Serbia, on the other side. 

This last tendency itself is split 

between pro-Europe and pro-U.S. 

forces. 

The assassination of Prime 

Minister Zoran Djindjic in the government 

car park on March 12, 2003 is 

a reflection of the power struggle for 

control of State power inside the 

Serbian ruling class. 

It is said that the Milosevic 

camp is taking revenge against 

those who sold him to the imperialist 

rulers in The Hague international 

world tribunal. The suspect, 

Zvezdan Jovanovic, a member of 

the special elite troops known as 

the Red Berets created by 

Milosevic, was arrested on March 

25. More than 1,000 people have 

been arrested, including several 

members of the Red Berets, 

j u d g e s , 

policemen 

and members 

of the Secret 

Service, 

including 

J o v i c a 

Stanisic, former 

chief of 

the Milosevic 

security and Zoran Djindjic 

Franko “Frenki” Simatovic, former 

commander of the Red Berets, as 

well as other sympathizers of 

Milosevic. 

The daughter-in-law of 

Milosevic has been placed under 

house arrest. The Red Berets special 

operation units, known as 

JSO, are being dismantled. A state 

of emergency has been enforced 

since the assassination. 

The Western press is presenting 

these forces as part of organized 

crime and members of some 

powerful clan bent to a life of 

crimes. 

The U.S. wants to keep NATO 

in Europe to maintain U.S. hegemony 

in Europe, and to maintain 

and extend its military superiority 

over Europe. 

France and Germany want a 

European army that will allow them 

to muscle in their diplomatic goals 

in Europe and around the world. 

U.S. strategists see the end and 

replacement of NATO by a 

European army as a challenge to 

U.S. hegemony in the world. 

Control of the Balkans is hotly contested 

between the U.S. and the 

Franco-German alliance, as part of 

the struggle for domination of 

Europe. 

It appears that the white imperialist 

rulers want to have a Serbia 

run by either supporters of Europe 

or supporters of the U.S., but not 

by Serbian nationalists. 

The alliance between the CIA 

and the Kosovo Liberation Army, 

which wants self-determination for 

Albanians of Kosovo, is worth noting. 

The KLA would unite with 

Albania to form the greater 

Albania. According to the German 

press, Albanians from Kosovo 

have become a serious force in 

distributing drugs in Western 

Europe. 

It is our view in the African 

People’s Socialist Party that the 

Serbian nationalists who want to 

see a free Serbia and peace in the 

Balkans have to join the rest of the 

non-white world and fight against 

white power led by the U.S. and 

Europe. 

They have to turn their back on 

any form of white nationalism that 

requires the theft of the resources 

of Africans, Arabs, Asians and the 

populations of South and Central 

America for their existence. 

Anything else is just the status 

quo, peace with imperialism, the 

sharing of our stolen resources by 

white rulers with white people. 

Uhuru! 

Demos 


In Patna, India, protesters 

chanted, “Vajpayee government, 

stop being agent of America.” 

Major marches and rallies were 

also held in Hanoi, Viet Nam, in 

Seoul and other South Korean 

cities, as well as in cities in 

Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, 

Malaysia, Yemen, Guatemala and 

El Salvador. 

Marches and rallies took place 

in Auckland, New Zealand; 

Calcutta, India; Ankara, Turkey; 

Amman, Jordan; Beirut, Lebanon; 

Mexico City, Mexico and in many 

Palestinian cities and refugee 

camps. In Buenos Aires, 

Argentina, 10,000 rallied in front of 

the American embassy. In Canada, 

thousands took to the streets of 

Montreal and Toronto. 

Demonstrations intensify when 

U.S. led bombing begins 

On March 19th, when George 

W. Bush announced the beginning 

of the genocidal assault on the 

people of Iraq, peoples worldwide 

presented strong gestures of dissent 

and disapproval. 

Thousands of people demonstrated 

across the United States. 

In San Francisco, protesters literally 

shut down the financial district 

for the day. Over 1,400 people 

were arrested in acts of civil disobedience. 

In the Middle East, thousands of 

people took to the streets. 

Lebanon and the Palestinian 

Authority issued fierce denunciations 

of the U.S.-led attacks, while 

the Egyptian government daily Al- 

Ahram declared that the war 

marked “the beginning of an era of 

U.S. colonization that will benefit 

only Israel.” Syria’s State radio 

accused the United States and its 

allies of wanting to get their “hands 

on Iraq’s oil and wealth and 

impose their hegemony on the 

world.” 

Hundreds of students gathered 

in Beirut, Lebanon calling for the 

assassinations of U.S. President 

George W. Bush and British Prime 

Minister Tony Blair. 

In Yemen, two protesters were 

killed after a crowd estimated at 

more than 30,000 attempted to 

storm the U.S. Embassy. 

As the bombing continued, 

demonstrations were staged 

relentlessly the world over with 

student walk-outs, traffic stoppages, 

and protests at U.S. 

embassies amidst cries of “Bush 

killer!,” “Yankee go home” and 

“Bush Blair — Stop killing the 

babies!” 

In Occupied Azania (South 

Africa) demonstrations were held 

at the U.S. consulates and 

embassy in Pretoria, Cape Town 

and Durban. The Landless 

Peoples Movement in Gauteng 

province staged a march against 

the war on Iraq, combined with a 

protest against the evictions by the 

South African government of 

African people on their own land. 

In Durban, an anti-war protest 

held on the University of Natal 

campus characterized the U.S. war 

on Iraq as a war against the international 

community. The Centre for 

Civil Society exposed the subsidiaries 

of the U.S. company 

Halliburton’s role in polluting the 

desperately poor communities of 

South Durban Basin. The subsidiaries, 

including Engen and 

Kellogg, Brown and Root, have 

U.S. contracts in post-war Iraq. 

As of the writing of this article, 

the United States is entering the 

third day of its brutal and murderous 

bombardment of Baghdad that 

it has so grotesquely named its 

“shock and awe” campaign. 

As the days unfold, the chasm 

continues to widen between the 

increasing militancy and intensity 

of the global opposition to the 

United States’ massacre of the 

Iraqi people and the arrogant disregard 

of the U.S. white ruling 

class to that opposition. 

As African Internationalists, we 

understand that this chasm is evidence 

of the ever-deepening crisis 

of an imperialism that is fighting for 

its last breaths. It is clear that the 

United States, Britain and a handful 

of puppet governments are carrying 

out cold-blooded murder and 

terror against the will of the world’s 

peoples. 

We stand in solidarity with the 

Iraqi people and their resistance to 

the U.S.’s vicious, bloody and 

unfathomable attack on their livelihood 

as a people and a nation. 

Stop the war on Iraq! 

Stop white power and U.S. 

imperialism! 

Stand with the national 

liberation struggles of African, 

Arab and all oppressed peoples 

of the world! 



BUILD TO WIN!! 

False Decolonization: the Root Cause of Arab Disunity! 

BY MAMMO MUCHIE 

The Arab rulers are hopelessly 

divided. The rulers of Kuwait, Qatar 

and Bahrain openly provide bases to 

the U.S. and British regimes to attack 

Iraq. In the middle are states like 

Jordan, Saudi Arabia and others that 

seem to provide support to the invasive 

forces. The Arab public is united 

more than at any time in history 

against the U.S.-British violation of 

the Arab nation and dignity. 

Consequently the Arab street is 

exploding with anger and resistance. 

There is a new dialectic: Arab ruling 

circle disunity and growing Arab public 

unity. This may create an Arab 

national renaissance. I propose that 

the current war against Iraq could 

never have taken place had there 

been a strong Arab nation in the first 

place, as envisaged by the first generation 

independent Arab leader, 

Gamal Abdel Nasser. 

If the departure for the renewed 

unity of the Arab public and disunity 

among rulers is the Iraq war, the destination 

must be the real birth of the 

Arab nation. 

The Arabs and Africans suffer 

from the failure of the National 

Project 

Gamal Abdel Nasser wanted to 

create a strong Arab nation. Kwame 

Nkrumah wanted to create a strong 

African nation. The idea behind their 

visions was to avoid the kind of 

humiliation that the Arab nation is 

subjected to right now by an all-out 

invasion by forces from other hemispheres 

and internal elites, such as 

the rulers of Qatar, Bahrain and 

Kuwait, aligned to foreign interests. 

Instead we have now either an 

Arab nation badly divided or a nation 

whose birth is so protracted that it 

may not even be born as a unified 

entity in the foreseeable future. The 

birth of a united Arab nation seems 

like one of the longest pregnancies in 

the world. 

Often when we speak of decolonization 

gone wrong vivid images of 

African fragmentation and impotence 

spring to mind. Now to this ugly 

image one is reminded cruelly how 

impotent the Arab nation is in the 

face of danger to its security and survival. 

To the false decolonization of the 

African, I have added the false decolonization 

of the Arab. The Arab may 

feel different from the African for having 

enslaved the latter in yester 

years. In actual fact, Arabs are in the 

same boat as the Africans — they 

have at the moment only the power 

of the weak: the kind of power that is 

displayed in the TV images served 

as a daily diet to an anxiety-stricken 

world by Iraqis since the start of this 

unjust, immoral and illegal war. 

We must wonder about the false 

start in Arabia — its false decolonization 

that has invited its present humiliation. 

Like Africa, it is fragmented 

with official Arabia serving imperialist 

interests and the grassroots marching 

and dying to give birth to independent 

and free Arabia. Like our 

wish to create free Africa, the ordinary 

people of Arabia, by their 

actions, are trying to create free 

Arabia. 

Free or emancipated Arabia can 

be a potential ally to free and emancipated 

Africa. Fragmented and 

falsely decolonized Arabia is no ally 

to free Africa as unfree Africa is no 

friend to Iraq at present. 

The imperialist powers know this 

and they leave no stone unturned to 

weaken states by breaking them. 

The most dramatic break up in 

recent years is the former Soviet 

Union. Smaller break ups in Africa 

occurred in my own country: Eritrea 

and Ethiopia. Both the Arabs and 

Africans have to confront head on 

the false decolonization that has 

made them prey to the misfortune of 

war, insecurity and unending conflict. 

Humiliation is a function of 

false decolonization of the Arab 

and African 

I have been thinking about the 

false decolonization of the Arab and 

the African.What is it about them that 

they are perceived so weak by the 

imperialist powers that massive force 

is made to rain over them with disdain 

and contempt? The Indian 

nation is born; the Chinese nation is 

born. I cannot imagine the imperial 

powers waging punitive wars to disarm 

these two nations to remove 

their weapons of mass destruction. 

They would not dream of regime 

change in China. India, of course, is 

a democracy and it may be envied 

for possessing weapons of mass 

destruction, but the regime follows 

democratic principles for making lawful 

transitions of power. Both India 

and China have not only been born 

as nations, but they have stood up 

and grown. They risk no pre-emptive 

strike! 

We cannot speak so confidently 

even about the birth of the Arab 

nation. Like the African nation, the 

Arab nation is not yet born as a unified 

nation. The innocent blood of the 

Iraqi people may accelerate the birth 

of an independent Arab nation. 

Africa has the African Union. The 

Arab states have the Arab League. 

One would have thought that these 

two unions, theAfrican Union and the 

Arab League, would come together 

and oppose the doctrine of pre-emptive 

strike and regime change in principle. 

Regimes must be changed by 

the Arabs in Arabia and Africans in 

Africa and not by far away powers by 

flaunting international law and displaying 

arrogant power with stunt 

and irrational exuberance. 

Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was leader of the United Arab Republic, struggled 

for a united Arab nation. 

As an Ethiopian- 

African citizen of the 

world I am deeply 

ashamed that Eritrea 

and Ethiopia have 

joined the "coalition 

of the willing" to 

bombard the Iraqi 

people with inhumane 

horror. I believe this 

action is anti-African, 

anti-Arab, antiinternational 

law, 

anti-civilization, antihuman, 

immoral and 

unjust! 

Ethiopia, Eritrea and the African 

Union? 

In Africa, some states are playing 

games with principles. Eritrea and 

Ethiopia are part of the "coalition of 

the willing." One wonders what 

brought about this situation? There 

must have been a prisoners dilemma 

situation. If Eritrea makes a move to 

join the "coalition," Ethiopia will be 

left out in the cold. If Eritrea supports 

or joins the so called "coalition," 

Ethiopia has to, in order not to be 

outdone for the possible future or 

present crumbs from London and 

Washington DC. 

This provides proof that the separation 

of Eritrea from its motherland 

will always destabilize Ethiopia from 

following wise courses in African, 

Arab and international relations. This 

negative competition will no doubt 

repeat itself to the detriment of 

Ethiopia's wider and long-term interests. 

For Ethiopia, its main interest lies 

in playing a leading role in the making 

of the African nation/union and a 

friendly role in assisting and forging 

enduring relationships with the Arab 

nation. At present both the African 

nation and the Arab nation are not 

real. That provides no excuse not to 

strive to make them real by focusing, 

amongst other things, Ethiopia's 

international posture in a way to 

accelerate the creation of these two 

nations including their strategic 

alliance reflecting the reality of geographical 

proximity and cultural 

transaction between them. Any role 

Ethiopia assumes that undermines 

its constructive role in Africa and the 

Arab world will create long-term 

obstacles to Ethiopia's enduring stability 

and security. 

With Ethiopia and Eritrea breaking 

ranks from Guinea, South Africa 

and others, they made the African 

Union look silly by their own silly 

positions. Lost is the opportunity to 

manifest an independent national will 

through the African Union. Lost also 

is the opportunity to speak with one 

voice and get the African Union on 

the map. 

Instead the country that hosts the 

seat of the African Union shows no 

backbone to build the African Union 

to speak for an independent and free 

Africa. This is proof that we are still a 

long way off from the birth of a free 

see Opinion, page 12 



Letters to the Editor 

Read and Distribute The Burning 

Spear! 

To the Editor of The Burning Spear 

Newspaper, 

Uhuru! In last month's issue of 

The Spear, there was an interview 

entitled "Anti-War Sentiment 

Infiltrates Ranks of U.S. Military." The 

article was an interview with a young, 

colonized man enlisted in the U.S. 

Marines who refused orders when he 

was activated for the war against 

Iraq. At that time he was in the 

process of filing his conscientious 

objector papers and had to remain 

anonymous. 

"Soldier" as he was named in The 

Spear interview, has since publicized 

his case, and it is no longer necessary 

that his identity remain 

unknown. I would, therefore, like 

Spear readers to know that the article 

was about my brother, Stephen 

Funk. I am writing this letter in appreciation 

of the Uhuru Movement for its 

unwavering support and involvement 

in my brother's case. 

When Steve was in boot camp he 

wrote many letters to me talking 

about his trainings and the experiences 

he was going through, as he 

described in The Spear interview. 

For the most part, I found it difficult 

writing back, because I was very 

subjective and critical of my brother 

for joining the Marines. I was lost on 

how I should respond. 

It was a member of the African 

People's Solidarity Committee 

Opinion 


African nation. Africa' s pregnancy 

with an unborn nation is even longer 

than that of the protraction of birth of 

the Arab nation!! 

As an Ethiopian-African citizen of 

the world I am deeply ashamed that 

Eritrea and Ethiopia have joined the 

"coalition of the willing" to bombard 

the Iraqi people with inhumane horror. 

I believe this action is anti- 

African, anti-Arab, antiinternational 

law, anti-civilization, antihuman, 

immoral and unjust! 

I appeal to the regimes of Eritrea 

and Ethiopia to withdraw from the 

coalition and learn to work consistently 

to create the African nation and 

the Arab nation. 

It appears that Fanon's warning of 

a false decolonization rings more 

true than ever now. It is not the 

African interest that you are protecting 

by being fellow travelers to a 

classic imperialist war — where 

might is equated with right. It is 

somebody else's interest that you 

are serving. In fact you are serving 

the interest of those who protect the 

international financial institutions, 

banks and corporations that have 


(APSC), a cadre formation 

under the leadership 

of the African 

People's Socialist Party 

(APSP) who stated to me the 

importance of providing leadership 

to my brother. When I did 

write back to Steve, I would try to 

provide him with the political education 

I had access to through my relationship 

with the Uhuru Movement. 

I could tell some of this was 

reaching him because, as time went 

on, his letters would express his 

growing understanding of what the 

U.S. military is, and what it represents 

to oppressed people, including 

Filipino people, like our family. 

When he finally got out of training, 

I tried to spend more time with Steve 

and continued to politicize him. He 

read Overturning the Culture of 

Violence and I talked to him about 

the history I read from "Philippine 

Society and Revolution." After only a 

month of getting out of training, he 

told me he was going to try to get out 

of the military altogether. 

Then, on February 9th, he was 

activated. He called me up looking 

for leadership. I then again called the 

APSC cadre, looking for the same. 

Through these discussions, the reality 

that my brother was being called 

on to actively participate in the continued 

atrocities of U.S. imperialism 

really hit home. Both my brother and 

I realized that nothing could be 

worse than being a soldier in the 

U.S. military. He then decided he 

would resist the military by refusing 

to appear at Camp Pendleton and filing 

for Conscientious Objector status. 

Needless to say, I was very 

proud and relieved that my brother 

took this stand. 

On February 12th, the day before 

Steve was scheduled to ship out, we 

had our weekly Wednesday night 

rally of the International People’s 

Democratic Uhuru Movement 

(InPDUM), here in Oakland, 

together over-burdened Africa with 

debt. 

Twelve African States have debt 

over 100 percent of their Gross 

Domestic Product (GDP). This 

makes these countries exist only to 

pay debt! What business do Eritrea 

and Ethiopia have in supporting powers 

that lead such an unjust system? 

Truth is the first casuality of 

war 

Blair and Bush believe their own 

lies that the Arab Socialist Party of 

Iraq is Saddam and that he is isolated. 

The Iraqi people have been 

ready for 12 years to welcome them 

with undulation! 

It seemed that did not happen, 

though there are reports alleging 

manifestations of rebellion. There is 

no doubt that there are people who 

have resorted to native tactics to 

undermine the superior power of the 

invading U.S. and British air, sea and 

land forces. The command and control 

of the resistance seemed to be 

distributed and dispersed amongst 

the civilian population. 

First and foremost, all liars 

deceive themselves first before they 

deceive others. The graver the lie, 

the graver the self-deception, and 

the more dangerous the actions to 

San Jose, CA: Stephen Funk walks 

with mother, Gloria Pacis, left, and 

sister and APSC member Caitlin 

Funk to turn himself to Marine unit 

California. Steve came with me to 

the Oakland Uhuru House. 

It was a special rally, where our 

branch presented a video showing 

the APSP’s trip to Azania and had a 

special guest speaker, Chairman 

Omali Yeshitela, himself. At one juncture 

in the program I got up and introduced 

Steve, and the stance he 

decided to take. The Chairman 

immediately put forward Steve and 

deepened all of our understandings 

about the significance of this stand. It 

was very moving for everyone in the 

room, and I believe this helped 

Stephen become more consolidated 

in his stand and find strength in the 

support of the Uhuru Movement. 

From there, Steve has since 

found support from many other 

groups. He has gone to teach-ins to 

educate others on the Marines and 

how to become a conscientious 

objector. Now he has been in the 

spotlight of international media and is 

getting constant requests to speak 

and provide interviews. Throughout 

this, he looks to me for leadership, 

and I in turn, look to the Uhuru 

Movement. 

Throughout this whole process, 

the Uhuru Movement has been supportive, 

either through me, or directly 

to Steve. I have to give so much 

credit and appreciation to the political 

understanding and education of the 

Uhuru Movement. This is the foundation 

of the stand my brother has 

taken. 

When we do something wrong, 

such as join the U.S. military, the 

Uhuru Movement teaches us to 

make the appropriate self-criticism, 

and then set right the wrongs we've 

caused. This is what we call a rectification 

process. I am so proud of my 

brother for doing this. I am also 

deeply appreciative of the Uhuru 

Movement, and especially Chairman 

Omali, for providing the political foundation 

and support for my brother to 

do the right thing. A year ago, I did 

not think he would be joining with us 

on the right side of history. But with 

the support of the Uhuru Movement, 

he has. 


Caitlin Funk 

Member, African People’s 

Solidarity Committee 

The Burning Spear welcomes your questions, feedback, criticisms 

and viewpoint. Please send all corresponance to: 

The Burning Spear 

P.O. Box 11281, St. Petersburg, Fla, 33733-1281 

or speareditor@yahoo.com 

What we seem to 

see are a people who 

have identified the 

invaders as aggressors 

who came to help 

themselves to their 

oil, their land and 

who wish to install a 

regime that is as 

foreign interestserving 

as the others 

of their Gulf 

neighbors. 

others from the lie. Iraq has been 

turned into hell on Earth by a successive 

series of lies that led the 

U.S.-British military to burn that 

country with hell-fire. 

They lied to get in. They continue 

to spin and lie to stay in there longer. 

To cover up what journalists understood 

as a 'pause' they have to 

increase the bombardment many 

times more. 

Their crime is limitless and there 

seems to be no earthly or divine law 

or authority to restrain them from 

their misguided policies. They must 

be forced by the pressure of world 

public opinion and continuous pressure 

to enter quickly a voluntary 

ceasefire for the sake of humanity 

and spare all of us from universal torment 

and torture from the daily diet 

of horrific deaths. 

The invaders continue to believe 

that only those who benefit by the 

regime's survival and who have 

much to lose are fighting. The longer 

they continue to believe in this lie, 

the more the killing will mount and 

the harder the return to political 

means of stopping this post-modernistic 

theatrical festival of violence. 

What we seem to see are a people 

who have identified the invaders 

as aggressors who came to help 

themselves to their oil, their land and 

who wish to install a regime that is as 

foreign interest-serving as the others 

of their Gulf neighbors. 

What we appear to see is the 

resourceful effort of what seemed a 

determined people unwilling to be 

subdued by the terrifying might of 

superior military technology. Most of 

see Opinion, page 26


WE ARE THE 

AFRICAN PEOPLE’S 

SOCIALIST PARTY 

RULES OF PARTY DISCIPLINE 

At the June 2, 1974 Central Committee meeting the following 

rules were drafted so that Party members would have a guide to 

develop and strengthen our discipline. 

Basic Line of the 

AFRICAN PEOPLE’S 

SOCIALIST PARTY 

“All our work is guided by our understanding that 

our struggle for national liberation within U.S. 

borders is an integral part of the whole African 

Liberation Movement; that the African Liberation 

Movement itself is a part of the great contest 

between the ever-emerging forces of international 

socialism and the dying, but not yet dead forces of 

imperialism; that the particular character of the 

African Liberation Movement within the U.S. is a 

struggle against U.S. domestic colonialism; that 

the destruction of colonialism, led by a conscious 

black revolutionary socialist party, will constitute 

the critical blow in the struggle for socialism with- 

ANY PARTY MEMBER WHO: 

1. Does not consciously strive to elevate his or her political 

understanding has broken Party discipline; 

2. Does not strive to unite our Party with the masses has broken 

Party discipline; 

3. Reveals Party business without authorization has broken 


4. Discusses a Party member negatively to non-Party members 

has broken Party discipline; 

5. Exploits or oppresses African women through action or 

statement has broken Party discipline; 

6. Exploits or oppresses African people through action or 

statement has broken Party discipline; 

7. Fails to initiate constructive criticism or self-criticism has 

broken Party discipline; 

8. Uses words or actions to divide the Party has broken Party 

discipline; 

9. Refuses to recognize and follow Party leadership through 

words or actions has broken Party discipline; 

10 Discards or weakens Party leadership as opposed to 

strengthening Party leadership has broken Party discipline; 

11. Helps to divide and circumvent international African unity 

through words or actions has broken Party discipline; 

12. Uses criticism to divide and not unite the Party has broken 


13. Uses criticism or self-criticism on a personal level and not 

a political level has broken Party discipline; 

14. Uses criticism or self-criticism to hide her or his own shortcomings 


15. Does not carry himself worthy of emulation by the masses 


16. Displays arrogance through actions or words has broken 


17. Displays negativism and reluctance in carrying out Party 

tasks has broken Party discipline; 

18. Does not strive to bring more Africans into the Party or 

Party organizations has broken Party discipline; 

19. Engages in adventurous and individualistic acts has broken 

see NPDUM, page 



Central Committee 

of the 

African People’s 

Socialist Party 

Point of the spear 

Chairman Omali Yeshitela speaks on 

REPARATIONS NOW! 

We’re coming for what’s ours! 

Omali Yeshitela 

Chairman 

Gaida Kambon 

National Secretary 

Ironiff Ifoma 

Director of Economic 

Development 

Bakari Olatunji 

West Coast U.S. Regional 

Representative 

Watu Mwariama 

Northeast U.S. Regional 

Representative 

Nzela Kinshasa 

Director of 

International Affairs 


The following is the last in a three-part 

series. This presentation was made by 

Chairman Omali Yeshitela on November 

17, 2002 in Philadelphia, PA at the event 

"Reparations Now! We’re Coming for 

What’s Ours!" This event was sponsored 

by the Philadelphia branch of the 

International People’s Democratic Uhuru 

Movement (InPDUM). 

As you know, America is ratcheting 

up the drive for war. The immediate 

target for this war is Iraq. 

However, Iraq is not the real question. 

Iraq is important to America 

because of the oil. In fact, Iraq may 

have more oil than Saudi Arabia. It 

may well be the largest oil reserve 

that’s known right now. 

There’s oil all over Africa and 

Latin America. That’s one of the reasons 

the U.S. is in Colombia right 

now — oil. The whole capitalist 

industrial economy is based on 

petroleum, so there’s an interest 

there based on the oil. 

U.S. intends to dominate the 

world 

To the imperialists, not only is it 

good for the corporations to have 

access to all that oil, but it’s also 

good for America to dominate the 

rest of the world — not only the black 

world, the brown world and yellow 

people, but also Europe, because 

Europe is dependent on oil also. 

Therefore, if all or most of the oil is in 

the possession of Uncle Sam, then 

even Europe is on its knees in dealing 

with Uncle Sam. 

This is why some Europeans 

have been reluctant to go along with 

what Uncle Sam is doing. If Sam 

controls the oil, he controls everything. 

The Bush regime has made no 

secret of the fact that it intends to 

control the whole world. 

They have just published what 

they call their Strategic Defense 

Plan. The first thing the Strategic 

Defense Plan states is that it will not 

allow any country in any region of the 

world to achieve military parity with 

the United States government. 

Second, it says that the U.S. shall 

be the dominant power from now on. 

It says “if the U.S. sees any power 

that is opposed to American interests 

or the interests of our allies achieving 

any kind of weapons of mass 

destruction, we will do a pre-emptive 

strike against them. That’s to say, we 

will attack them whether they have 

done anything to us or not based on 

our assumptions of their intent.” 

Third, it says not only will the U.S. 

do those things, but also if necessary, 

they’ll do them without any 

assistance from any other country on 

Earth. Therefore, their intent is to 

dominate the world. Make no mistake 

about it, and it’s naked. The rest 

of the world knows it. All of Europe 

knows it. 

Up until recently, especially during 

the time when the Soviet Union was 

in existence, there was an appearance 

of solidarity between Europe 

and North America to contend with 

the Soviet Union. But, with the collapse 

of the Soviet Union, Uncle 

Sam has said it’s going to take it all. 

You saw what happened in 

Rwanda and what’s happening in 

Congo and in places like Ivory Coast. 

You see the rebellions, the mutinies 

there – that’s Uncle Sam fighting 

against France to take over what 

used to be French-controlled territories. 

The United States government 

intends to control the world. 

The U.S. used to concede territories 

to France as a zone of French 

influence. They aren’t giving up anything 

now. They want the whole bit! 

Europe is nervous as hell about 

this. The last time they saw this, it 

was Germany. That’s why the 

German woman said about Bush, 

Join the 

African People’s 

Socialist Party 

Contact: 

1245 18th Avenue South 

St. Petersburg Florida, 

33705 

727-821-6620 

apsp.uhuru@verizon.net 

During slavery, 

prisons were white. 

The actual end of 

slavery was 

approximately April 

1865. So, they freed 

you in April, but in 

December they 

passed the 13th 

Amendment, which 

said neither slavery 

nor involuntary 

servitude is 

permissible except as 

punishment for a 

crime. Then they 

wrote all the laws 

directed at Africans, 

designer laws just as 

they have now. So 

they didn’t end 

slavery, they 

changed the terms 

for slavery. It was no 

accident. 

"He’s like Hitler." 

Imperialism in crisis 

But I want to tell you something. 

All the bluster and all the weapons — 

see Spear, page 16


The Working Platform of the African People's Socialist Party 

WHAT WE WANT—WHAT WE BELIEVE 

Adopted September 23, 1979. Revised and adopted at the First Congress of the African People's Socialist Party, September 6, 1981. 

1We want peace, dignity, and the right to build a prosperous life through 

our own labor and in our own interests. 

We believe that the U.S. North American government and society were founded on the 

genocide of Native people, the theft of their land, and the forcible dispersal, enslavement, 

and colonization of millions of African people. We believe that the present condition of 

existence for African people within current U.S. borders is colonialism, a condition of existence 

where a whole people is oppressively dominated by a foreign and alien state power 

for the purpose of economic exploitation and political advantage. We believe further that 

this colonial domination is the primary basis of the problems of African people within the 

U.S. and that we shall know neither peace, prosperity, nor human dignity until this colonialist 

domination is overthrown and the power over our lives rests in our own hands. 

2We want the rights to economic development and creative and productive 

employment which promote the needs and well-being of our 

entire people. 

We believe that colonialism is a blood-sucking system which causes all economic development 

to benefit the colonialist ruling class state and society at the expense of our colonized people. We 

also believe that the massive, habitual unemployment and underemployment of our people benefit 

the U.S. colonialist ruling class and capitalist system and that a struggle by African people 

for jobs must be combined with a struggle for socialism and independent economic development. 

3We want an end to all local, state, federal, and other taxation of black 

people by the U.S. government and any of its agencies. 

We believe that such taxation is illegitimate, that black people have no real or meaningful 

authority within the U.S. government, and that U.S. taxation of African people is therefore 

taxation without representation. We believe that in the absence of such real or meaningful 

authority we have nothing to say about how such monies are used, and that therefore the 

taxes taken from black people are often used against us and other oppressed and exploited 

peoples within the U.S. and around the world. 

We believe that the use of taxes extracted from the African population to build more prisons 

to stuff us in and to hire more police to kill us with is criminal, as is the use of these 

taxes to hire soldiers to intimidate and plunder peoples oppressed by this same system 

internationally. We also believe African people must refuse to pay taxes to a government 

which uses such taxes to prop up and support brutal dictators around the world who keep 

their own peoples oppressed and living in squalor in order to maintain U.S. and Western 

imperialist economic and political domination. 

4We want the right to free speech and political association, a guarantee of 

the right to work for the betterment and emancipation of black people 

without fear of political imprisonment and the loss of life, limb, and livelihood. 

We believe that the liberation of African people throughout the world will come primarily as 

a result of our own efforts. We believe it is our duty to our mothers and fathers, our children 

and ourselves, to organize ourselves to overcome our oppression. We believe that the rights to 

organize and speak out against our oppression are basic human rights and that the U.S. government 

must discontinue its attempts to smash these rights and must discontinue criminal 

attacks on those African patriots who work for the betterment and emancipation of our people. 

5We want the right to international political and economic association 

with Africans and all other peoples anywhere on the face of the Earth. 

We believe that all black people are African people and are a part of a single national entity. 

We believe that the genuine freedom of African people everywhere is irreversibly linked to 

the creation of an independent, united, and socialist Africa. We believe the struggle of African 

people within the U.S. represents the U.S. front of the worldwide movement of African people 

for African liberation, political independence, and socialist democracy. We believe that 

the worldwide struggle for African liberation is in unity with the struggles being waged by 

the majority of the peoples of the world to end the oppression of nations by nations and to 

create a new world, within which the toiling masses will end the system of workers and bosses 

and slaves and masters and will own and benefit from the means and products of our labor 

and will have political authority over our own lives. We believe that the natural, objective 

friends of our struggle for African liberation, independence, and socialist democracy are all 

the toiling masses of the world — the people of the Middle East, the Asian and Latin 

American peasants and workers, the democratic forces throughout Eastern and Western 

Europe and the U.S., and the truly socialist states of the world, and that we must therefore 

have the absolute right to free political and economic international association. 

6We want the immediate and unconditional release of all black people 

who are presently locked down in U.S. prisons. 

We believe that all the African men and women who are locked down in the U.S. concentration 

camps commonly known as prisons are there due to decisions, laws, and circumstances 

which were created by aliens and foreigners for their own benefit and as a means 

of genocidal colonialist control. We believe that these decisions, laws, and circumstances 

were created and are enforced without our consent and are therefore illegitimate. We 

believe that the African men and women who are locked down in these concentration 

camps are victims of U.S. colonialist ruling class justice which maintains our enslavement 

and terrorizes our people, and that they should therefore be released immediately to the just 

representatives of our struggle for liberation, independence, and socialist democracy. 

7We want complete amnesty for all African political prisoners and prisoners 

of war from U.S. prisons or their immediate release to any friendly 

country which will accept them and give them political asylum. 

We believe that U.S. prisons are also used as the illegitimate tool for torturing, murdering, 

and holding captive those courageous daughters and sons of Africa who through their patriotic 

deeds or spoken or written words in support of the cause of our liberation have become 

political prisoners and prisoners of war. We believe, along with the majority of the peoples 

of the world, that it is the duty of the colonized and enslaved to resist slavery and colonialism 

and to fight for socialism and those who do so are patriots and heroines and heroes 

and should be held in the highest esteem. 

8We want the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. police from our 

oppressed and exploited communities. 

We believe that the various U.S. police agencies which occupy our communities are arms of 

the U.S. colonialist state which is responsible for keeping our people enslaved and terrorized. 

We believe that the U.S. police agencies do not serve us, but instead represent the first line of 

U.S. defense against the just struggle of our people for peace, dignity, and socialist democracy. 

Therefore, we believe the U.S. police is an illegitimate standing army, a colonial army in 

the African community and must withdraw immediately from our community, to be replaced 

by our liberation forces whose struggles in defense of our community and against our oppression 

demonstrate their loyalty to our community and their willingness to serve in its interest. 

9We want an end to the political and social oppression and economic 

exploitation of African women. 

We believe in the absolute, unequivocal, political, social, and economic equality of African 

women and men. We believe that a fundamental test of the progressive or revolutionary 

character of any organization, party, movement, or society is its commitment, confirmed in 

practice, to the destruction of the special oppression of women and the elevation of women 

to the rightful place as equal partners and leaders in the forward motion of the development 

of human society and as leaders, makers, and shapers of human history. 

10 

We want the right to build an African People's Liberation Army. 

We believe that true freedom, although often taken away, cannot be given to a people. We 

believe that African people are our own liberators, and that we have a right and obligation to 

build an African People’s Liberation Army to defend our political gains, our freedom fighters 

and communities, and to win our actual freedom from our oppressive colonial slave masters. 

We believe that neither meaningful freedom, nor guaranteed political and social gains, 

nor genuine liberation are possible without the assuring existence of an African People’s 

Liberation Army. We believe further that the only legitimate wars are wars of national liberation, 

and wars to oppose imperialist aggression, and that therefore, the only legitimate military 

forces for black people to serve with are military forces which defend liberty and repel 

imperialist aggression. Such a force would be the African People’s Liberation Army. 

11 

We want the U.S. and the international European ruling class and 

states to pay Africa and African people for the centuries of genocide, 

oppression, and enslavement of our people. 

We believe that U.S. and European civilization were born from, and are presently maintained 

by, the horrendous theft of human and material resources from Africa and its people. 

We also believe that this theft of human and material resources is responsible for the 

present underpopulation and underdevelopment of Africa and her people and the political 

servitude, material impoverishment, and cultural discontinuity and disintegration of 

African people throughout the world. We believe that Africa and African people are due 

reparations, just economic compensation, billions of dollars which must be paid to the 

Organization of African Unity or any other legitimate international organization of African 

people, for equitable distribution for the development of Africa. We also believe that reparations 

must be distributed to the various independent African states dispersed throughout 

the world, and to the legitimate representatives of African people forcibly dispersed 

throughout the world who have not yet won liberation. 

12 

We want an end to the vicious, self-serving U.S. and Western 

European political, economic, and military interference in the 

affairs of Africa and African people throughout the world. 

We believe that African people in Africa and elsewhere have a right and responsibility to 

solve our own problems, free from the unwanted, and self-serving interference of U.S. and 

Western imperialists. We believe that the U.S. and Western imperialist interference in the 

affairs of our people is designed to maintain the continuation of the theft of our human and 

material resources and our oppression and impoverishment. 

We believe that African people must be free to organize and struggle for an end to colonialism 

and neo-colonialism without interference from U.S. and Western imperialism which supports 

neo-colonialism and colonialism in Africa, the U.S. and elsewhere, and which has deposed progressive 

and revolutionary African leaders and replaced them with neo-colonialist stooges. 

13 

We want an end to U.S. colonial domination of African people 

within the U.S. 

We believe that the primary struggle of African people within the U.S. during this period is 

to throw off the alien U.S. colonial domination which is responsible for virtually every hardship 

imposed on black people by this government that is identifiable as a “black problem.” 

We believe that our problems with education — from our inability to control our own 

schools and determine the education of our own children, to the inferior and racist quality 

of the education we do receive — are caused by colonialism. We believe that our problems 

with health care — from the absence of black controlled and operated health clinics and 

institutions throughout our communities to the hazardous health conditions imposed on us 

by poverty and callous government decisions — are caused by colonialism. 

We believe that our problems with housing — from the unavailability of decent and adequate 

housing for the majority of our people, to the dilapidated and vermin-infested housing 

we are forced to live in — are caused by colonialism. 

We believe that our problems with food and clothing — from the terrible quality and 

quantity which are imposed on us by blood-sucking merchants, to our inability to produce 

and distribute them for and among ourselves — are caused by colonialism, where our 

whole people is dominated and oppressed by a foreign and alien state power for the purpose 

of economic exploitation and political advantage. 

14 

INDEPENDENCE IN OUR LIFETIME! 

We want the total liberation and unification of Africa under an All- 

African socialist government. 

We believe that “the total liberation and unification of Africa under an All-African socialist 

government must be the primary objective of all Black revolutionaries throughout the 

world. It is an objective which, when achieved, will bring about the fulfillment of the aspirations 

of Africans and people of African descent everywhere. It will at the same time 

advance the triumph of the international socialist revolution, and the onward progress 

toward communism, under which every society is ordered on the principle of — from each 

according to his (her) ability, to each according to his (her) needs.” — Kwame Nkrumah 

see NPDUM, page


Spear 


and they’ve got a bunch of weapons; 

there’s never been in history anything 

comparable in terms to the military 

power that you see in the United 

States — represent a crisis. It’s a 

power that’s fighting 

for its very life. 

I say this 

because in the 

past when you 

saw imperialism in 

motion, it was a 

dynamic motion, 

of just taking over 

everything, collecting 

all the 

resources and 

growing stronger 

and bigger as a 

consequence. 

Now what you 

see with imperialism 

in motion is an 

attempt to defend 

and hold everything 

it stole in the 

past. There’s nothing dynamic about it. 

It’s an attempt to stop the revolutionary 

process that’s happening all over the 

world. Sometimes it doesn’t look 

exactly like revolutions, but people are 

taking back and fighting for their own 

resources. They’re removing their 

resources from the absolute control of 

the imperialists and that undermines 

the whole social system itself. It is 

fighting for its very life. 

This crisis has been deepening for 

a very long time, certainly since the 

second imperialist war that they like to 

refer to as the Second World War or 

World War II. World War II was white 

power fighting to re-divide the world. 

Did you know that there were no good 

guys in World War II? You don’t know 

that because you hear on the news 

that World War II was the last honest 

war made by America. There was 

nothing honest there. It was a war to 

re-divide the world. 

In the first imperialist war, Germany 

had lost a lot of its colonies and other 

resources to the rest of Europe. In fact, 

Rwanda was then a German colony, 

and when Germany lost the war, the 

white people gave the black people in 

Rwanda to Belgium, to punish 

Germany. Hitler was fighting to take 

back for Germany what all the other 

white people had all over Europe, and 

he was not only going to take that, but 

the white people too. 

World War II was a war to re-divide 

the world and there was nothing good 

or decent about it. Don’t tell me that it 

was wonderful because they rescued 

the Jews. It had nothing to do with that. 

How can somebody be good for rescuing 

some white people in Germany 

when they’re murdering black people 

all over the planet, which is what they 

were doing? They were murdering us 

in Philadelphia and down South when 

that was going on. 

This war created space for peoples 

all around the world to push for revolution. 

Immediately following that war, 

India became free and independent in 

1947 and China in 1949. In the ‘50s 

Cuba was liberated and there were 

activities in Kenya with the Mau Mau; 

Nkrumah was active in Ghana. There 

was revolutionary work happening 

everywhere. 

Going into the ‘60s there was Viet 


Nam and people like the Tupamaros in 

Uruguay; the Sandinistas were trying 

to make revolution in Nicaragua. All 

over places like South Africa, there 

were revolutionaries under the influence 

of Kwame Nkrumah. All over, 

African people were trying to do 

things. Che Guevara had Latin 

America in flames during that period, 

and he even went to Africa to try to 

make that revolutionary process happen. 

Since that time, you’ve seen this 

incredible revolutionary process. In 

1979, James Earl Carter made that 

famous speech at the banquet in Iran. 

He told the Shah of Iran how much he 

appreciated him, because, he said, 

"You’re an island of stability." Then he 

got on the plane to go back to 

Washington, and the Shah almost 

beat him there because the people 

overthrew the government. 

They’ve been trying to put a cap on 

the revolutionary process. That’s what 

gave rise to Ronald Wilson Reagan. 

Carter was a thug. Don’t make any 

mistake about that. Brzezinski, who 

was the National Security Advisor for 

Carter, is the one who created the 

modern jihad. Osama bin Laden and 

the so-called Islamic fundamentalist 

movement were created by the Carter 

regime. It was created to destroy the 

Soviet Union in Afghanistan. They 

sucked the Soviets into Afghanistan, 

and they brought Muslims from all 

over the world and destroyed the 

Soviet Union there. Carter did that. 

Brzezinski was on the Afghan border 

bragging about it on TV. 

Then, Ronald Reagan came in with 

a mandate from the American people 

to stop revolutionary activities all over 

the world, to get black people off welfare, 

and to do the whole bit. They’ve 

been trying to put the genie back in the 

bottle. They’ve been trying to stop the 

revolutionary process. 

Now you have Bush Jr. in power, 

The prison system — which began to fill with Africans immediately after slavery “ended” — sells inmates’ labor to 

continue to create material wealth for the U.S. on the backs of Africans. 

We rebuilt the 

modern economy of 

the South by African 

convict leasing. We 

built railroads, 

cleared swamps and 

went into the mines 

in Alabama, 

Birmingham and 

places like that. 

That’s what we did. 

They say you all 

won’t work, but hell, 

we’re tired. 

and you see all the clothes taken off 

the Emperor. It is naked, wide open. 

With the failure of neo-colonialism, the 

United States government is trying to 

put direct white power back in control 

of the whole world again. They can’t 

trust the Shah. They can’t trust 

Saddam Hussein, who used to be 

almost in the employ of the United 

States government. If we’re not careful, 

we’ll be back on the plantations 

again at the rate this thing is attempting 

to move now. 

You really have to understand. This 

is not about Iraq. It is about a social 

system, which was founded on the 

theft of the human and material 

resources of the rest of the people of 

the world, attempting to rescue itself 

from a terrible crisis that’s been bleeding 

it for a very long time now. 

That’s why we talk about reparations. 

We are a part of those stolen 

resources that gave rise to the creation 

of imperialism and white power. I 

know we like to say we’re against 

injustices and we are, but we need to 

learn how to be for our selfish selves 

as well. In order to be for your selfish 

self, you need to know what the real 

contradictions are that we’re confronted 

with. 

Reparations due for more than 

slavery 

Some people handle the question 

of reparations as dealing simply with 

the issue of slavery. I disagree, and I 

think that was one of the major contributions 

that the Party brought to the 

whole discussion of reparations. I 

wrote a book in 1982 called Stolen 

Black Labor, which, for the first time, 

using a relatively scientific approach, 

quantified the value of stolen labor of 

African people. We came up with a 

total of $4.1 trillion. It was a relatively 

scientific process. If I did it again it 

would be done differently, and it would 

be many, many, many times more than 

that amount, but it was the first attempt 

at quantification. It actually put a figure 

on it, saying that there were "X" numbers 

of Africans brought into slavery 

who produced "X" amount of cotton 

and tobacco, etc. 

The thing that was very interesting 

about this investigation was the realization 

that the rate of exploitation of 

Africans has been greater since the 

end of slavery. Just think about it. They 

were working us for free, from "can’t 

see" to "can’t see," and they made a 

whole bunch of money off that. I’m 

saying the rate of exploitation has 

been greater since slavery ended. 

That includes convict leasing. 

During slavery, prisons were white. 

The actual end of 

slavery was 

approximately 

April 1865. In 

December 1865, 

the United States 

government 


Amendment. So, 

they freed you in 

April, but in 

December they 


Amendment, 

which said neither 

slavery nor involuntary 

servitude 

is permissible 

except as punishment 

for a crime. 

Then they 

wrote all the laws directed at Africans, 

designer laws just as they have now. 

So they didn’t end slavery, they 

changed the terms for slavery. It was 

no accident. 

For 50 years after that, they didn’t 

build many prisons. They had what 

they called convict leasing. They made 

laws, particularly throughout the 

South, because Africans weren’t working 

for white people any more. Not 

only wouldn’t Africans work for white 

people, we started wandering. If they 

passed a place and saw some chickens 

and vegetables, we would take 

them, because we grew them. We 

saw the product of our labor and would 

take it. 

Now black people wouldn’t work. 

All the white people wanted black people 

back on the job again. Not only did 

they want us on the job, they wanted 

us to work on terms that were unfavorable 

to us. We couldn’t leave if we 

wanted to quit. That was true of the 

North and the South. 

So there was this incredible 

upheaval. They began to pass laws 

that said if you didn’t have what they 

called a "visible means of support," 

they could lock you up. That’s what the 

vagrancy law was. They passed the 

so-called pig law. It said that if anybody 

stole a pig they could be sentenced 

to 10 years. They’d lock you 

up, then they would pay the white man 

(sometimes the same white man who 

you were working for on the plantation 

for free) so much per African. 

This white man would then put us 

back to work on the plantation. We 

rebuilt the modern economy of the 

South by African convict leasing. We 

built railroads, cleared swamps and 

went into the mines in Alabama, 

Birmingham and places like that. 

That’s what we did. They say you all 

won’t work, but hell, we’re tired. 

Convict leasing was characterized 

as worse than slavery. When we were 

"slaves," when white people owned 

us, they had an investment that they 

would try to protect. Now the State 

was the owner of African people, and 

the white people who we worked for 

didn’t care if we lived or died. It was no 

skin off their backs. They had a saying, 

"One dies, get another." Literally! 

see Spear, page 17


Military Coup Brings French Army Back to Central African Republic: 

Divided Africans suffer in French, U.S. tur- 

On March 15, 2003, in a classic 

neo-colonial military coup supported 

by French imperialism, Idriss Deby of 

Chad, and Joseph Kabila of Congo, 

General Francois Bozize seized 

power in Bangui, Central African 

Republic (CRA), overthrowing the 

10-year-old regime of Ange Patassé 

while the president was abroad. This 

coup is part of the bloody contest 

between the U.S. and France for the 

rape of Africa. 

General Francois Bozize 

Ange Patassé was nearly overthrown 

in November last year, but 

was rescued by the troops of Jean 

Pierre Bemba, the anti-Kabila 

Congolese rebel leader backed by 

Museveni, a U.S. puppet chief in the 

Spear 


There were instances where they 

would not even feed us. They would 

get hundreds of us, take us into the 

swamps in Louisiana, for example, 

and work us in the swamps with 

snakes and the rest of it. They didn’t 

give us any food. 

You think I’m making that up. You 

don’t have to make up things on white 

folks. Just look at the damn history. 

They don’t teach any of us this history 

that I’m talking about right now. 

Sometimes they talk about George 

Washington Carver and peanut butter. 

Then they leave out the fact that Jiffy 

owns it all, and at best, we get a job 

with them. 

So, the rate of exploitation has 

become greater since then. It’s not 

just about slavery. We have to explain 

the phenomenon of what’s happening 

to us right now. If you talk about reparations, 

it’s really important to make a 

claim that our current condition of 

existence owes itself to our relationship 

to American imperialism. 

This is the point that I want to make 

though: Slavery isn’t something that 

happened to black people in America 

as such. Slavery is something that 

happened to Africa. It took an attack 

on Africa to get us here. 

It was an attack on Africa that even 

today sees Africa under-populated. 

They like to say that Africa’s poor 

because there are too many of us. 

They say the birth rate is too high. 

region. As expected, Bozize 

declared himself president, 

suspended the constitution 

and promised to work with 

political parties to prepare 

future elections in the country. 

This is clearly part of the 

ongoing neo-colonial crisis 

that has split the African petty 

bourgeoisie between the 

French and U.S. imperialist 

rivals in the rape of Africa. 

Four years ago, the 

French army was forced to 

leave the CAR as tension 

grew between their neo-colonial 

regime and French imperialism. 

Patassé had escaped 

three mutinies and two military 

putsches. He flew into 

exile in Togo. 

Now, Joseph Kabila hopes 

to deny Bemba's rebel troops 

the use of the Central African 

Republic as a rear base to launch 

military attacks on Congo. Equally, 

Idriss Deby, the president of Chad 

hopes to secure Chad’s southern 

frontier in order to protect the oil that 

is to be pumped out to white imperialist 

countries later this year. 

Colonel Ghaddaffi of Libya is 

another loser in this coup, because 

he had provided soldiers to protect 

Ange Patasse. 

Congo alone has the same area in 

terms of territory as India. There are a 

billion people in India and only 50 million 

people in Congo. 

It has nothing to do with birth rate. 

It has to do with exploitation rate. It 

has to do with the fact that Africa is 

under-populated because Africans are 

not there. Africa is under-developed, 

for lack of a better term, because 

Africans have been developing for 

white power everywhere else except 

in Africa. 

I think it’s fundamentally important 

for us to understand that. I don’t think 

it’s possible to have freedom as an 

African person that’s separate from 

Africa itself. I believe that all Africans 

everywhere need to recognize the 

connection to Mother Africa that gave 

birth to us. 

There are monuments left in Egypt 

that are estimated to be 15,000 years 

old. That’s a long time! You have huge 

monuments — things like the pyramids, 

which are five, six, seven thousand 

years old. 

Now if somebody makes something 

to last five or six thousand years, 

they didn’t make it for themselves, did 

they? They made it for us who were 

coming behind them. They made it for 

all of us. Yet, everything that has come 

out of Africa is in the control of somebody 

else. 

It is our responsibility as Africans to 

take back what belongs to Africa, so 

that Africa and her children all over the 

world will be able to know freedom 

and prosperity! 


Masses of people flooded the streets in Central African Republic after a French-backed 

military coup d’etat. 

French imperialism is the main 

cause of the poverty of our 

people in CRA 

With a population of less than five 

million people, the Central African 

Republic has been impoverished 

beyond recognition by more than a 

century of French imperialism. It is a 

land-locked country the size of the 

state of Texas, located between the 

Democratic Republic of Congo 

(DRC), Cameroon, Sudan, Chad and 

Republic of Congo. 

It is a nation with no railways, 

equipped with just 429 kilometers of 

paved highway. Under the control of 

French imperialism, it exports diamonds, 

uranium, gold, oil, and timber 

to white imperialist countries. The 

imperialist crisis has accelerated 

since January 12, 1994 when the 

French government devalued the 

African Financial Community (CFA) 

currency used in 14 African countries. 

The French devalued the CFA 

currency to 50 percent of its previous 

value. Most of the workers and state 

civil servants have not been paid in 

30 months. 

This coup is designed to protect 

the shaky French parasitic imperialism, 

which in reality will accelerate 

the crisis of imperialism in CRA. 

New black ruler but the same 

old white power imperialist 

domination of CRA 

General Francois Bozize is in 

power due to the military backing of 

France, Chad and the DRC. This is 

enough to know that the suffering of 

our people will continue without end, 

because these armies are in peace 

with white power, whose existence 

requires the depoliticization, disorganization, 

exploitation and constant 

repression of our people. 

Bozize stated that he stands for a 

"consensus transition," which will be 

defined at a later date. He also 

announced a "program of reconstruction" 

breaking with "10 years of 

democratic impasse." 

Abel Goumba, a medical professor 

who is the head of the Patriotic 

Front for Progress, is the new and 

first prime minister of Bozize's government. 

His role is to give a civilian 

cover to the military regime of 

Bozize. 

Abel Goumba is one of several 

neo-colonial parties opposed to the 

ousted President Ange-Felix 

Patasse. He stated "I remain 

attached to my principle: those who 

want to come into the government 

must have clean hands, not those 

that have dipped their hands into the 

state’s coffers." This is a stupid statement 

since the French control the 

currency and the state’s coffers in 

the first place. This is a government 

of the status quo, a Negro government 

that supports business as 

usual. It will transfer our resources to 

Europe, loot the country and repress 

the masses. 

In their first week in power, the 

government has been shooting anyone 

who thought they could use the 

chaos created in the early hours of 

the coup to seize some food, medicine 

and other products of basic 

necessities. They were shot on sight 

by the new regime. 

The African Socialist International 

is the only way 

This new situation continues to 

expose the trend that emerges in 

every neo-colonial crisis: the 

absence of a revolutionary party of 

the African working class equipped 

with a vision and strategy to defeat 

the sell-out primitive African petty 

bourgeoisie and white imperialism, 

and achieve the total liberation of 

Africa and the unification of all 

African people dispersed around the 

world. 

That is the task of the African 

People’s Socialist Party. That is why 

we are organizing the State of Black 

People Around the World conference 

in London this July. That process will 

take us to the creation of the African 

Socialist International, an organization 

of African workers in alliance 

with poor peasants that will organize 

the resistance and the offensive of 

Africa to kick out U.S.- and Frenchled 

white imperialism. 

Uhuru ! 



Transcription of Chairman Omali Yeshitela’s 

World Summation 

St. Petersburg, FL — February 27, 2003 

On February 27, as it was becoming clearer 

that U.S. verbal bellicosity toward Iraq 

was close to expressing itself in a new 

invasion of that already impoverished 

and brutalized country, Chairman Omali 

Yeshitela called together the local Uhuru 

Movement for a meeting in St. 

Petersburg, Florida for a discussion about 

the world situation. This discussion was 

designed to help our movement understand 

the underlying bases for the pending 

invasion and occupation. 

The following is an edited transcript of 

the Chairman's presentation. While we 

recognize that there are many who will 

not take the time to read such a long presentation, 

we have, nevertheless, decided 

to publish it here. We publish this presentation 

with the understanding that 

those Party members, militants and other 

activists attempting to respond to the 

obvious acts of U.S. imperial aggression 

will be better served with this explanation 

of the real motive forces of the current 

U.S. war drive. 

We’re living in a world where 

more than half the people on Earth 

live off less than two dollars a day. 

I’m convinced that it is not necessary 

to live in a world where the vast 

majority of the people don’t have 

access to clean drinking water or 

enough food and shelter and are 

confronted with all kinds of violence 

all the time. 

I’m convinced it’s not necessary 

to live in a world where ignorance is 

imposed upon masses of people on 

the one hand, while their wealth and 

resources are stolen and information 

is concentrated in these imperialist 

centers on the other hand. 

I’m a revolutionary. I’m not 

involved in a movement to try to 

make a better imperialism. My objective 

— as arrogant as it may seem — 

is to transform the world. Many people 

have problems with that because 

an assumption of our own insignificance 

has been imposed on us by 

the social system we live under. 

But as arrogant as I am about 

being intent on changing the world, 

I’m not so arrogant as to insist that 

everybody who participates in this 

discussion has to agree with this 

serious need for world transformation 

as a condition for being in action. 

I want to be clear that I work from 

a bias. Everybody does. I know what 

mine is. Many times people do not 

understand what their biases are. 

Main contradiction in the world 

is between oppressed and 

oppressor nations 

In the African People’s Socialist 

Party we have said that the fundamental 

contradiction in the world is 

one that exists between oppressed 

and oppressor nations. This is the 

most profound contradiction. It does 

not deny the existence of other contradictions, 

but we say this is the 

contradiction around which every 

other contradiction revolves. 


Oppressed peoples around the world have become determined to rid themselves 

of bloodsucking imperialists. Picture created by Reefa-1 

We recognize that even as there 

are oppressed nations and oppressor 

nations, and that this relationship 

is the most dynamic relationship in 

the world, there are contradictions 

within the oppressed nations themselves. 

There are contradictions between 

men and women. There are contradictions 

between workers and 

bosses. There are contradictions 

between heterosexuals and homosexuals. 

There are similar contradictions 

within the oppressor nations – 

between men and women, between 

workers and bosses, and between 

heterosexuals and homosexuals. 

There is a whole array of other contradictions 

that I have not touched 

upon. 

I’m not suggesting that these 

other contradictions do not exist. My 

statement is that the most dynamic, 

fundamental contradiction, the one 

around which all the others revolve 

and the one which the others require 

for their existence is this contradiction 

between oppressor and 

oppressed nations. 

Capitalism is a parasitic system 

that was founded on slavery 

In fact, this is a contradiction that 

began with the rise of capitalism 

itself. Capitalism was born as a world 

system and it was born as part of a 

process. I’m not suggesting that 

there was never oppression or 

exploitation before capitalism. Of 

course there was. Slavery existed 

before capitalism. 

I’m not talking about the generic 

slavery that people like to remind us 

about. I’m talking about the real kind. 

I’m talking about the kind that people 

talk about when they talk about the 

relationship between Africans and 

other peoples around the world. I’m 

not suggesting that contradictions 

did not precede the existence of capitalism. 

Of course, there were contradictions. 

But the ones that we are fighting, 

the ones that we have to contend 

with, the ones that set the terms 

for the relationships that we have in 

the world, are those contradictions 

that were given birth by the rise of 

My point is that 

all along, the real 

contest has been 

the contest for 

national liberation. 

The Soviet Union 

was hated and 

dreaded because it 

would give a gun 

to somebody in 

Nicaragua or Cuba. 

It would give a gun 

to somebody in 

some place in the 

world who would 

really change the 

fundamental 

relationships that 

existed between 

the oppressed 

nations and the 

oppressor nations 

of the world. 

capitalism in the world. 

A capitalist social system dominates 

the entire world. It’s not feudal. 

It’s not socialist. It’s capitalist. 

Whether we are talking about capitalism 

as it manifests itself in the 

United States or Belgium or whether 

we’re talking about capitalism as it 

manifests itself in Haiti, Burma or 

Congo, the same capitalism dominates 

the entire world. 

Marxist theory, as developed particularly 

by V.I. Lenin, talked about 

imperialism as being capitalism 

developed to a certain stage. Lenin 

called imperialism "capitalism that 

had become rotten ripe." Lenin said 

that one of the manifestations of this 

development was that capitalism 

became parasitic. 

I pose to you that capitalism was 

born parasitic. There was never a 

time that capitalism was not parasitic. 

It was born off the slave trade. 

Marx referred to "primitive accumulation" 

-- the accumulation that didn’t 

come as a consequence of capitalist 

production, but was its starting point. 

Capitalism was born off the slave 

trade. 

The slave trade created the world 

economy that was a precondition for 

the rise of capitalism as a world system. 

Things like the 1841-42 war 

against China, called the "Opium 




War" — that turned China into a 

nation of junkies — gave rise to capitalism 

as a world system. The 

French turned Viet Nam into a drug 

colony. 

The tremendous amounts of loot 

and resources coming from places 

like this into Europe transformed the 

relationship for peoples who used to 

be free and independent. We had the 

ability to meet our own needs, but 

our resources were going to what 

had been an impoverished and disease-ridden 

Europe. 

Europe was not only poverty and 

disease-ridden but it was absolutely 

un-free. In Europe, there was feudalism. 

There was no such thing as 

"home ownership" or the things that 

Europeans and North Americans like 

to brag about today. Those things all 

came as a consequence of the pillage 

that Europe initiated against the 

rest of the world. 

The rise of capitalism as a social 

system was parasitic. It came at our 

expense and that of other peoples 


Imperialism in crisis 

We want to talk about the situation 

in the world. We want to struggle 

to understand what is going on. 

Some things are very glaring to us. 

We see a Bush Administration up 

against the entire world in its 

absolute urgency to deepen the war 

that was initiated some 11 or 12 

years ago against Iraq. 

This is a glaring manifestation. 

We see millions of people in the 

streets protesting. We saw a few million 

here, within the United States. 

We’ve seen perhaps up to 18 million 

people throughout the world marching, 

demonstrating against this genocide 

that the United States is intent 

on waging against the people of Iraq. 

Folks are searching for answers 

and we ought to be searching for 

some kind of answers in trying to 

understand what’s going on as well. 

What we concluded some time ago 

was that the whole empire, the imperialist 

system, is in a state of severe 

crisis. It almost sounds like a cliché, 

especially for anyone who has been 

involved in the struggle for social justice, 

as it is often characterized. You 

always hear the socialists talk about 

the crisis of imperialism. 

The imperialists are experiencing 

a severe crisis. That’s not to say that 

they understand that it’s a crisis, 

even though some thinking leaders 

of the imperialists have expressed 

some recognition of crisis. 

The crisis has its origin in a 

process that has been going on for a 

long time. It clearly began to manifest 

itself after the second imperialist 

war. That’s the war that the pundits 

like to refer to as the last honest war 

that America pursued. Of course, in 

reality, that’s just a bunch of garbage. 

The second imperialist war, like 

the first one, like the Korean War and 

like virtually every war that’s existed 

for the last 400 or 500 years, was a 

war to re-divide the world. There 

were no good guys in that war. The 

heroes of that war – the guys that 

were fighting for "democracy" – were 

all countries and states that had 

colonies. As much as people like to 

talk about Hitler, the truth of the matter 

is that Churchill presided over 

what they like to refer to as "an 

How do you 

explain the fact 

that fundamental 

economic crisis can 

happen in America, 

England and other 

places as a 

consequence of 

what some poor, 

starving country is 

doing? The oil 

workers go on 

strike in Nigeria 

and the gasoline 

prices go up in St. 

Petersburg, Florida. 

It’s because of this 

parasitic 

relationship. 

empire upon which the sun never 

set." That seems to suggest to me 

that Hitler was a piker. He was a boy 

scout compared to Churchill. In that 

war, a group of cutthroats was fighting 

to re-divide the world. 

Anti-colonial struggles emerge 

after second imperialist war 

One of the things that was significant 

about that war is that it offered 

up a certain type of political space for 

oppressed peoples around the world. 

The empire was at war with itself. I 

was taught in school that Africans 

went off to Europe as soldiers and, 

for the first time, we saw freedom in 

places like France. That inspired us 

to come back to fight for freedom 

here in the United States. 

Supposedly, we have to see freedom 

in that fashion before we have 

an inkling of what it is we should be 

struggling for. That’s nonsensical. 

The truth is, it was precisely because 

of the confrontation that the empire 

had within itself that the political 

space emerged and other people 

began to wage struggle for independence 

and freedom from colonialism. 

When you talk about imperialism, 

you’re talking about white power that 

created itself off the colonial domination 

of the rest of the world. 

Ugandan soldiers leaving the town of Bunia in Congo where hundreds of 

Africans have died as a result of imperialist proxy wars. 

As a consequence of that war, in 

1947 we saw the independence in 

India. In 1949, it was China. In the 

‘50s, revolutionary struggles 

emerged all over Africa. The Mau 

Mau were fighting against the British 

in Kenya. Ghana achieved independence. 

Even Iraq, I think, became 

nominally independent from England 

in ‘58. Of course, in ’59 there was the 

magnificent Cuban revolution that 

contributed to revolutionary fervor, 

particularly throughout the Americas. 

Anybody who’s familiar with Che 

Guevara knows that he didn’t stop 

just in Latin America. He was also in 

Africa. 

In the ‘60s, we saw the incredible 

and most magnificent struggle of the 

people in Viet Nam, who in the ‘50s 

had defeated the French before they 

saw colonialism propped up by the 

United States government. In the 

‘50s, we also saw the people of 

Korea come close to total independence. 

Then the United States intervened 

in Korea to prevent the total 

liberation of Korea. 

In fact, in many ways, the first 

humiliating defeat of the United 

States was Korea. China came 

across the Korean border because it 

was clear that part of the objective of 

the United States was also to attack 

China. The Chinese pushed the U.S. 

back across the 38th parallel. They 

ended the war by having an 

armistice there that resulted in the 

Korean people being divided even 

today. 

We hear discussions about the 

North Koreans and the South 

Koreans as if they are two separate 

people. They’re one people. They 

are people who have been divided 

just as the people of Viet Nam were 

divided and just like various peoples 

around the world have been divided 

— by imperialism. 

You saw the emergence of these 

kinds of struggles after the second 

imperialist war. They just took off. 

These struggles created serious 

crises. People talk about the "domino 

theory." They talk about how many 

troops went to Viet Nam, how many 

people were killed by those troops, 

and how many of those people coming 

from here died in Viet Nam to 

stop this domino thing. 

The backdrop to all of this of 

course was the communist "boogie 

man." The communist boogieman 

was represented mostly by the 

Soviet Union and to a lesser extent 

China because China was poor. 

Even though China gave significant 

political support, and sometimes 

more than political support, to struggles 

for national liberation, when they 

talked about the communist boogieman 

it was really the Soviet Union. I 

would remind you, however, that 

Continued on next page 

The International African Revolution is at Hand! 

Conference on 

July 25 - 27, 2003 

London, England 

for more info contact 

the African People’s Socialist Party in the US: 

727.821.6620 or apsp.uhuru@verizon.net 

or in Britian: 

020.8265.1731 or Uhurasi@aol.com 

Build the 

African Socialist International! 




there was never an incident of real 

confrontation between the U.S. and 

the Soviet Union. 

The thing that made the Soviet 

Union such a bad entity in the world 

was not some direct contest 

between the U.S. and the 

Soviet Union. It was the fact 

that the Soviet Union, when it 

was in the interest of the Soviet 

State, would support struggles 

for national liberation at various 

places around the world. 

They had to fight against 

encirclement by the United 

States and by the other imperial 

powers. They would support 

struggles for national liberation 

around the world. This was the 

contest. You saw these proxy 

struggles happening all over 

the world. My point is that all 

along, the real contest has 

been the contest for national 

liberation. 

The Soviet Union was hated 

and dreaded because it would 

give a gun to somebody in 

Nicaragua or Cuba. It would 

give a gun to somebody in 

some place in the world who 

would really change the fundamental 

relationships that 

existed between the oppressed 

nations and the oppressor 

nations of the world. 

Now, subsequent to the second 

imperialist war, we saw this 

escalation of struggles by people 

to win their freedom. In the 

process, they were depriving 

capitalism of those resources that 

keeps it strong. I’m not here to try to 

spout off some type of doctrine to 

you. What I’m saying is relatively 

obvious. Even now, as they try to 

explain the gouging that’s being 

done at the gas stations, they talk 

about the impending war with Iraq. 

They talk about the troubles in 

Venezuela. I was in a meeting the 

other day when someone asked how 

American oil got under Iraqi sand. 

You might also ask how American oil 

got under Venezuelan sand. 

How do you explain this contradiction? 

How do you explain the fact 

that fundamental economic crisis can 

happen in America, England and 

other places as a consequence of 

what some poor, starving country is 

doing? The oil workers go on strike in 

Nigeria and the gasoline prices go up 

in St. Petersburg, Florida. It’s 

because of this parasitic relationship. 


U.S. administrations attempt to 

deal with crisis of anti-colonial 

struggle 

For a long period, we’ve had this 

on-going struggle. I can’t say when it 

reached a critical level, but I do know 

that it has contributed to the political 

crisis in this country and in other 

places. I believe that this struggle 

contributed to the crisis that led to 

the death of John F. Kennedy. I cannot 

say exactly how. I believe it was 

tied up with Viet Nam and other 

questions like that. I believe those 

questions are so deeply significant to 

the existence of imperialism itself 

that the weapons of criticism became 

the criticism by weapons in the 

instance of John F. Kennedy. 

I believe that subsequent to that 

there has been a crisis in the executive 

branch of the United States government. 

It has been rather obvious. 

Kennedy was assassinated — I 

would say that’s a crisis of sorts. 

Subsequent to that, you had 

Johnson who could only stay one 

term as president because of Viet 

Nam. Then following Johnson you 

had the guy who was a crook. His 

vice president was kicked out. He — 

Nixon — was kicked out. 

Then you had Ford, who could 

only be there one term because of 

the deal that he did with the crook. 

Following Ford, the Georgia plantation 

owner came forward. This was 

the system’s attempt to resolve this 

crisis so they could get to these other 

kinds of crises that were out there in 

the world. There was also crisis 

inside of America itself that was 

caused by the Black Liberation 

Movement. It was making a fundamental 

ideological assault, among 

other things, upon the basic assumptions 

of Americanism and white 

supremacy, which in the final analysis 

is the ideological underpinning of 

America and imperialism in general. 

Carter administration foreign 

policy based on "human rights" 

So you have this crisis. Then 

James Earl Carter’s theme for his 

presidency was a statement, a 

response to the crisis in the executive 

branch and the crisis that existed 

between the government and the 

people — all the people — in this 

country. Carter said, "Trust me, I will 

never tell a lie." Do you remember 

Carter saying this? That was his 

whole theme. His foreign policy was 

based on human rights. Carter was 

first trying to resolve this contradiction 

in this country among the people 

who have come to be so suspicious. 

They were doing regular polls at the 

time that showed that the sanitation 

workers and people like that were 

more trustworthy and popular than 

the president of the United States 

was. That makes sense to me. 

Then of course the peoples 

around the world hated the United 

States for how it was treating them. 

After what they’d done with Viet 

Nam, after what they’d done to 

Cuba, after what they’d done to 

Guatemala, Iran and all those other 

In Panama, demonstrators — whose country has experienced the massacre of thousands of 

civilians at the hands of the U.S. government — burn a U.S. flag in protest against the massacre 

of Iraqi people. 

The crisis is so 

profound that you 

saw most recently the 

theft of an election. I 

mean the public theft 

of an election. That’s 

not something that 

democracies like to 

do. Democratic 

capitalism is a hidden 

dictatorship. The 

dictatorship rose up 

and bared its fangs 

for everyone to see. 

places, here’s Carter with a human 

rights foreign policy. Not only did he 

have a human rights foreign policy, 

but who was his UN ambassador? 

Who did he put out to front this foreign 

policy? Andrew Young. He put a 

Negro out to front this foreign policy 

for him. So, it’s not white power or 

white nationalism that’s out there. It’s 

a Negro forwarding this policy. 

This is Carter’s response. Even 

as he was talking "human rights" and 

saying, "trust me," Carter also put 

Brzezinski in motion. Brzezinski was 

the National Security Advisor under 

the Carter Administration. You should 

read his books. He wrote one book 

called Out of Control and another 

called The Grand Chessboard. 

These books decry the fact that, from 

their view, the world is spinning into 

chaos and anarchy because of all 

these struggles of oppressed peoples 


Brzezinski is the one who created 

the modern day "Jihad." When you 

talk about Osama bin Laden, 

thank the wonderful James 

Earl Carter. He’s the one who 

goes about seeing if people 

have honest elections. He 

says he’s the most honest expresident. 

Carter’s Administration, 

through Brzezinski, created 

Osama bin Laden and the 

modern Jihad. There was no 

such thing as Jihad in modern 

history. They resurrected it to 

destroy the Soviet Union. They 

succeeded in doing that in 

Afghanistan. They organized 

Muslims from throughout the 

world to go into Afghanistan. 

They sucked the Soviet Union 

in and then wiped it out. The 

U.S. could not afford the 

deadly battle that the Soviet 

Union was engaged in. 

The situation with Osama 

bin Laden is what the CIA calls 

"blowback." It’s when you put 

some program in motion and 

then it comes back and hits 

you in the face. That’s what 

9/11 effectively was — "blow 

back." 

People have illusions about 

the good guy — the moderate 

imperialist versus the other 

imperialist. Carter still goes to 

Venezuela and other places as 

the "nice imperialist." 

However, Carter had a problem. 

In 1979, Carter was in Iran. They had 

a huge banquet for Carter in Iran. 

Carter praised the Shah of Iran, who 

had been put in power by the CIA in 

1954 after they overthrew 

Muhammad Mossadegh. The Shah 

was a dirty criminal tyrant who brutalized 

the people of Iran in ways that 

people in this country cannot imagine. 

Carter went there with his human 

rights policy and he praised the Shah 

of Iran. He said the Shah of Iran was 

the island of stability in the Persian 

Gulf. Then he caught an airplane 

back to Washington D.C. and the 

Shah almost beat him here because 

the people overthrew him. His island 

of stability was overthrown and the 

mullahs took power in Iran. 

The mullahs took power in Iran, 

because the Shah was under U.S. 

tutelage. The Shah was the policeman 

of the United States in the 

Persian Gulf. He was so brutal, and 

the dictatorship was so severe, that 

the masses of people did not have 

the political space to organize. 

Therefore, the mullahs were the only 

ones who could organize. The 

churches became the centers of 

organization. That’s how they were 

able to take power. 

If there’s not a secular or some 

other kind of progressive government 

in Iran, it’s because of the U.S. 

policies that supported the Shah by 

overthrowing Mossadegh. They put 

the Shah in place to repress the 

Iranian people. There was no political 

space available for any genuine 

progressive force to rise up there. 

Carter and Brzezinski played a 




role in creating even Khomeini with 

this modern day Jihad and the 

Muslims took power in Iran. 

Then, in 1979 the Iranians captured 

that nest of spies in the 

embassy in Tehran. A crisis emerged 

then that was similar to what we saw 

happen after 9/11. This was a new 

experience for white people in this 

country. 

Here you have the "rag heads" — 

and all the other terrible things that 

the people who wear turbans in that 

part of the world are characterized as 

— taking the U.S. embassy. Not only 

had they taken the U.S. embassy, 

but also this notion of the old flag 

never touching the ground was 

thrown in the wind because they 

were publicly taking out the garbage 

using the American flag. They were 

taking out the garbage for TV cameras 

and things like that. 

They went into the embassy. As 

you know, the U.S. had shredded all 

the documents in the embassy. The 

Iranians got all the shredded documents 

and pasted them together. 

They were selling them in the streets 

in Iran. These documents showed all 

the terrible stuff that the CIA and the 

United States government had been 

doing to the people there. 

It was considered a real catastrophe. 

In that same year, 1979, the 

Sandinistas marched into Managua 

and overthrew Somoza, who had 

been put in power by the U.S. government. 

The U.S. government 

trained Somoza’s National Guard. 

Crisis abounded. 

Reagan administration calls 

national liberation movements 

"terrorists" 

Then you had Ronald Reagan, 

this white guy on his white horse, 

attacking both the contradictions 

inside this country by attacking the 

black movement and the African 

community in general, and raising 

the most reactionary, raciallycharged 

characterizations. He used 

terms like "welfare queens." He did 

this because there was a serious 

economic crisis that emerged in this 

country in part because of the success 

of peoples’ struggles. 

So, the African community was 

taking all the shots. Internationally, 

Carter was talking about how our 

friend the Shah got overthrown and 

how there was struggle in Panama. 

Somehow, the Panama Canal is 

"our" canal. There didn’t even used 

to be a thing called Panama. What 

they now call Panama was a part of 

Colombia. The United States government 

wanted to draw out the canal 

there. They needed to allow shipping 

between the Atlantic and the Pacific 

Oceans that would save them a lot of 

money. So, they created a false revolutionary 

movement in what is now 

called Panama. They went in there to 

help their friends become independent. 

After their friends became independent, 

their friends gave them permission 

to build the canal. 

So, here was Reagan rescuing 

America from all of these things outside 

the U.S. White people in this 

country were not accustomed to 

being afraid. That’s bad, because 

fear is a normal emotion. Most people 

experience it as a regular condition 

of existence. That isn’t true for 

I’m not trying to 

find a way out of the 

crisis for imperialism, 

because everybody 

else lives in crisis... 

The fact that people 

are trying to resolve 

those crises is causing 

the crisis for the 

parasite that feeds 

off of them. 

It seems to me that 

we’re confronted with 

the question of how 

we move to unite with 

the vast majority of 

humanity that wants 

to be free! 

white people as a rule. That’s why 

they have to make up games like 

bungee jumping — to experience 

fear. Most of us know fear readily. It’s 

such a new phenomenon to white 

people, who are easily frightened. If 

anything happens they call 911, you 

know. There’s always that ability. 

So now, the world was closing 

down on America. The Iranians took 

"our" embassy. They were treating 

"our" guys so bad and "our" guys 

couldn’t come home. The Iranians 

wouldn’t let them come home. 

Whoever heard of a situation 

where white guys can’t go where 

they want to go when they want to 

go? Then, of course, there was the 

so-called rescue attempt. A grain of 

sand got into the helicopters and that 

was a failure. It was just a mess out 

there. 

There was revolution in 

Nicaragua. Revolution seemed to be 

threatening El Salvador. So, white 

people were afraid. They were also 

losing their money. That was the 

emergence of the angry white man. 

You saw the whole struggle against 

big government. Of course, big government 

was government that was 

paying welfare and food stamps. 

Reagan took that on seriously 

and he won the election. He won 

incredible support from the white 

population to take things back to the 

way they used to be. Under the 

Reagan Administration, you began to 

see a pattern emerge. His Secretary 

of State was Alexander Haig. He was 

not a diplomat but a damn general. 

That was a suggestion about what 

they had in mind. It indicated how 

their foreign policy was going to be 

conducted. 

I was in Nicaragua when Reagan 

took office, during the inauguration. 

I’ll never forget Alexander Haig, who 

declared himself the vicar of foreign 

policy. He was one for strange elocutions. 

He said that those groups that 

had been called "national liberation" 

organizations would henceforth be 

known as "terrorists." That came 

from the Reagan Administration. 

One of many Iraqi children brutally murdered by U.S. troops 

Reagan also had a moderate 

imperialist as his vice president. That 

was George Herbert Walker Bush. 

He was a moderate. Do you remember 

that? 

Everybody was apologizing all the 

time for this ex-CIA agent. I don’t 

know if you’re ever an ex-CIA agent. 

I think it’s like the Mafia. Once you’re 

in, it’s for life, you know. George 

Bush was the head of it. Like the 

Mafia, I don’t think they can let you 

go. You know too much. 

Anyway, George Herbert Walker 

Bush was the moderate imperialist. 

Somebody in this room is old enough 

to remember some of this. 

They created this thing they 

called the "arc of crisis." They characterized 

Iran, much of the Persian 

Gulf, the Middle East and certain 

other areas in parts of Asia as the 

"arc of crisis." They said they had to 

deal with it. They recognized this crisis 

even back at that time. 

We’ve been looking at this 

attempt all along to try to put the 

brakes on this process of people winning 

their freedom, winning their 

national liberation. All these struggles 

for national liberation always 

seem to contradict the national interest 

of the United States government. 

"Our" national interest is to have all 

the oil in the Middle East. It’s "our" 

national interest to do this kind of 

stuff. This was the serious manifestation 

of crisis. 

George W. Bush steals 

presidential election: denies 

Africans right to vote 

They have been trying to resolve 

this crisis all along. I believe that the 

situation is becoming crystallized. 

“You might not have the Black 

Panther Party, but you 

have the Uhuru House. 

You might not have 

The Black Panther 

newspaper, 

but 

The crisis is so profound that you 

saw most recently the theft of an 

election. I mean the public theft of an 

election. That’s not something that 

democracies like to do. Democracies 

always talk about capitalism. 

Democratic capitalism is a hidden 

dictatorship. 

The dictatorship rose up and 

bared its fangs for everyone to see. 

They actually stole the election in 

broad daylight. People saw them 

steal the election: "Stop the count, 

stop the count, stop the count." It 

was televised. They didn’t just steal 

an election. They stole an election 

through the public policy of disregarding 

the votes of the African population. 

In my view, the political crisis is so 

severe that the Democratic party, 

certainly Al Gore and those who he 

represents, could not even win the 

election. 

When I say couldn’t win the election, 

I mean that they had the ability 

to win the election but they wouldn’t 

do what was necessary to win the 

election. To win the election, they 

had to call into question the Civil 

Rights Act of 1965. That Act was put 

into place exactly so the kind of thing 

that happened to the black community 

could not happen anymore. 

Africans were denied the vote in 

Mississippi and Alabama. That’s why 

the Civil Rights Act was passed in 

1965. That’s why people like Martin 

Luther King were out there dying. 

That’s why people like Julian Bond 

marched. That’s why they wanted to 

lynch my ass in Madison, Florida, 

when we tried to get the right just to 

vote. 


you have The Burning Spear. So 

they really haven't done 

anything by crushing 

one organization.” 

- Huey P. Newton 

The Burning Spear 


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727-821-6620 

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In 1965, the U.S. passed the 

Voting Rights Act. Not one time did Al 

Gore raise that question, nor did he 

ever raise the question of the black 

community being disenfranchised. 

He would rather lose an election 

than raise up this contradiction that 

would mobilize African people 

against the system that had denied 

us the right to vote. 

So, of course he’s not in power. I 

should say he was not elected. 

I think that is a reflection of the 

crystallization of the crisis that’s 

emerging in this country. They stole 

an election. Then, having stolen an 

election, right away you began to 

see an attempt to take on the crises 

that exist in the world. 

Bush creates war cabinet 

Again, we see a General as a 

Secretary of State. This is the third 

time that I’m aware of that this has 

happened. The first time, of course, 

was Marshall who was a general. 

This was after the second imperialist 

war when he became Secretary of 

State, and the so-called Marshall 

Plan was initiated that white people 

in this country like to talk about. They 

say how we helped poor friends and 

poor Germany. In reality, financial 

deals almost rendered Europe into a 

colony of the United States. It was no 

giveaway. The U.S. was raking in the 

loot and the resources. 

Now we saw Bush make General 

Colin Powell Secretary of State. 

Some people consider him the 

moderate imperialist. That’s because 

ORDER 

IN THE COURT! 

U.S. Government and 

The contradiction 

[with North Korea] is 

one that the U.S. 

initiated because it 

saw the growing 

movement towards reunification 

of the 

Koreas. If Korea 

reunifies, the U.S. has 

no basis for having 

almost 40,000 troops 

there. Those troops 

ostensibly protect 

South Korea from socalled 

North Korea. Of 

course, we know those 

troops are there for 

the 800-pound 

gorilla, China. 

they don’t know Colin Powell. Colin 

Powell was a cover artist for the Mai 

Lai massacre in Viet Nam. He tried to 

cover that up. In 1992, Colin Powell 

was also working as part of the 

Reagan Administration, along with 

Europe will be on Trial for 

Their Crimes against 

African People 

Contact: InPDUM 

(215) 724-3535 

Or (267) 254-5901 for info 

InPDUM – World Headquarters 

1245 18th Avenue South #2, 

St. Petersburg, Florida 33705 USA 

727-502-0575 or 

inpdum_international@hotmail.com 

World TribunalonReparationsforAfricanPeople 

November15-16, 2003 – Philadelphia, PA 

Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. 

They created the plan that is 

being initiated now with the U.S.A. 

P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act and the pre-emptive 

strike. They had been floating 

these ideas around since 1992. They 

only now got in power. This is why 

they’re implementing this stuff now. 

Even Madeline Albright, of all persons, 

said that this crew that’s 

around the President has wanted to 

do this for more than ten years. 

We’re not looking at a new phenomenon. 

So, you have this crew that 

includes Colin Powell. You have 

Rumsfeld who previously was 

Secretary of Defense, if I’m not mistaken. 

You have Cheney, who’s also 

been Secretary of Defense. You 

know he was CEO of Halliburton, the 

largest oil entity of its kind in the 

world. 

There’s Condoleeza Rice, a frothing-at-the-mouth 

person tied to the 

oil corporations. There’s an oil tanker 

named for her, the Condoleeza. 

Then there is this religious fundamentalist, 

Ashcroft. You know, given 

the opportunity he would exchange 

the Constitution for the bible. This is 

the crew that’s in power. 

Now, even as this is going on, 

there are other manifestations of crisis. 

I mentioned Brzezinski’s books. 

There are other persons tied to these 

think tanks, like Samuel Huntington 

who is out of Harvard University. He 

wrote a book The Clash of Cultures. 

It had a subtitle, something about 

how the world is getting out of hand. 

He opens his book up with a discussion 

about a demonstration at the 

Republican Convention in San 

Diego. I forget what year it was. He 

was concerned because the 

Mexicans who were marching at that 

demonstration were carrying 

Mexican flags, not American flags, 

and they were "Mexican-Americans." 

He began to anticipate this cultural 

clash between Muslims and others. 

Then there’s Pat Buchanan’s 

book, Death of the West. It is another 

expression of the crisis. Many liberals 

like to discount Buchanan 

because he’s supposed to be so far 

out. But, Buchanan, Huntington and 

Brzezinski are running the same 

essential line. Buchanan was a 

speechwriter for Nixon and Reagan. 

This guy is as legitimate as any other 

imperialist thug in the world is. 

Buchanan’s concern is that by 

2050 or sooner, white people will be 

a serious minority. I think he said 

they would make up around ten percent 

of the world’s population. 

White people are not reproducing, 

he said. Other people are reproducing. 

Even in places where there 

seems to be quite a few white people, 

they’re old. 

He was decrying the Muslims and 

the declining influence of Christianity, 

which he characterized as the ideological 

glue of the Western world. 

They are all seeing the same kind 

of threat. This threat is coming from 

these hordes of oppressed peoples 

around the world. The world is 

descending into chaos because it is 

no longer being controlled by Europe 

and North America. That’s the crisis 

that they’re hell-bent on trying to 

resolve. 

I don’t know any more than anyone 

else does in this room about who 

did 9/11. In my estimation, it could be 

argued effectively that the United 

States government did it. The fear 

that I have about that argument is 

that it also could represent liberals 

running from another possibility. I 

think they might fear even more that 

there are oppressed peoples around 

the world who are so fed up with the 

relationship with U.S. imperialism 

that they’ll do any damn thing they 

can to bring it down. 

I think that some people might 

rather believe that the Bush regime 

did it than believe that there might be 

Arabs and other people who are out 

there trying to find any way they can 

to bring America and imperialism 

down. I believe there are people like 

that. 

I was listening to a presentation I 

made some years ago and I said 

then that if there were a nuclear accident 

in America that wiped it out, 

then there are peoples all around the 

world who would celebrate. That is 

an objective truth. I wasn’t saying 

that to be alarmist. It is true because 

of the stranglehold that America has 

had on the people around the world. 

I’m not trying to offend any patriots. 

I’m really struggling for objectivity. 

I’m open to being challenged and 

struggled with. I am not just saying 

these things to be saying them. I’m 

not trying to hand out some doctrine. 

I believe what I’m saying. 

I told you my biases. I told you the 

foundation of where I’m coming from 

so that you can check it with some 

type of logic yourself. I believe what 

I’m talking about. You can go to any 





library, even right down the street, 

and pick out books that will show you 

the historical data that backs up what 

I’m talking about now. 

My concern now is that people in 

this country are the most politically 

backward people in the world. They 

base their politics on raw and naked 

emotion. How silly is it for a whole 

population, when talking about 9/11, 

to be saying, "I don’t care why they 

did it"? You ought to care why they 

did it. Hell, they might do it again! 

It seems to me that you want to 

know why the hell they did it. There 

might be something you can do to 

stop it from happening again. 

So to say, "I’d rather be stupid, I’d 

rather be dumb and ignorant," is just 

the most ridiculous thing. That’s the 

kind of thing that permeates the political 

culture in this country. It makes it 

difficult to have the kind of discussion 

that we need to have if we’re going to 

move things forward. 

Obviously, we have a situation. 

Either way it’s a statement of crisis. 

The Bush regime could be so desperate 

that they would do what happened 

on 9/11. There’s no morality in 

the politic of imperialism. I’m not suggesting 

that it’s outlandish to assume 

that they would kill 3,000 people in 

the Trade Center. Hell, they’ve killed 

more than that in Afghanistan in the 

last period and regularly in other 

places. 

Someone attacked symbols of 

U.S. financial and military power and 

they were willing to kill themselves in 

the process of doing that. That is a 

statement of crisis. In my opinion, 

this is something that needs to be 

recognized. 

Bush regime attempts to recolonize 

world 

So, now the Bush regime is in a 

process of attempting to rescue the 

entire imperialist system. It does it in 

the most selfish way, because it’s 

objective is not simply to rescue 

imperialism, but to rescue the imperialism 

in which America would have 

absolute hegemony. 

In fact, in September, they put 

forth the so-called Strategic Defense 

Plan. This Strategic Defense Plan 

had three components to it: 

One, it stated quite clearly that 

America is the most powerful country 

in the world, and that it would never 

allow any other country to become 

as powerful. 

Two, that if any power who is 

opposed to U.S. imperialism, in any 

region in the world, begins to acquire 

weapons of mass destruction, the 

U.S. would use pre-emptive attacks 

to wipe them out. 

Three, they would do it unilaterally, 

by themselves, if necessary. 

All these other arguments are 

nonsense. We’ve been hearing 

about the United Nations, and having 

somebody else with the U.S. If you 

read just the document they have put 

out themselves, they have stated 

that their policy is world hegemony. 

Their objective is to re-colonize the 

world. It is to stop the bleeding of the 

imperialist system that comes as a 

consequence of oppressed peoples 

around the world fighting and winning 

their freedom, whether it is in 

the Middle East or any place else. 

That’s what seems to be happening. 

Now, in my opinion and the opinion 

of the Party, the Bush regime 

can’t do anything right. There’s nothing 

right they can do. That’s the place 

where they are. 

The government says it is fighting 

against violence. It has characterized 

this massacre that it wants to commit 

against the people of Iraq as somehow 

rescuing the people from the 

violence of Saddam Hussein! 

So, I’m truly, truly, truly concerned 

about that. I think that we are in a 

very serious and tenuous place in 

the world. We need to struggle for 

more political clarity and maturity in 

our movement. We need to be willing 

to look objectively at what America’s 

about. 

U.S. fighting in Asia, Africa and 

Latin America, as well as Middle 

East 

There’s another reason that I’m 

concerned. I’m concerned because 

the situation with Iraq is obvious to 

everybody. What’s not so obvious is 

what the U.S. is doing in all these 

other places. 

They have now effectively 

declared war in the Philippines. 

Initially they were just going to send 

somebody over to help and advise in 

the Philippines. Now they say they 

are going in ostensibly to get the Abu 

Sayaf. 

Who is America to go and get any 

damn body? I mean they can’t even 

get the white guy that did anthrax in 

this country. There was a guy right 

over here in Seminole. They found 

him with weapons of mass destruction, 

but they haven’t characterized 

Around the world the sentiment is the same. Whether they are chanting it in 

South Korea or displaying it in the Philippines, the people around the world 

are demanding that the “Yankees Go Home!” 

him as a terrorist. They didn’t do to 

him what they’ve done to Sami Al- 

Arian. 

We’re confronted with a serious 

question, particularly in Africa. 

You read about the million 

Africans killed in Rwanda, because 

of so-called contradictions between 

the Hutu and the Tutsi. Many of 

those Africans died in 1998 and 

1999. 

Then, of course, every day you 

pick up the newspaper and there’s 

something about the situation in 

Congo. There’s the situation in Ivory 

Coast. There’s a near-situation in 

Central African Republic. 

All over Africa, you see this stuff. 

What most people do not understand 

is that what you’re looking at in 

Rwanda, Congo, Ivory Coast, and 

Central African Republic is a contest 

between France and the United 

States. France used to be the dominant 

force in these so-called 

Francophone states. 

The United States no longer recognizes 

the French sphere of interest 

in Africa. It has now moved to take all 

of it away from France. You’re looking 

at proxy wars that sometimes 

have resulted in skirmishes between 

U.S. and French troops in Africa. 

We’re not just looking at Iraq. 

When we talk about peace, we have 

to be talking about a peace that 

comes as a consequence of national 

liberation. People have to be free. 

Latin America has to be considered, 

also. The most dynamic force 

in the world is the struggle for 

national liberation. This is the most 

progressive force. Anybody who’s 

standing in the way of that is standing 

in the way of progress, whether 

it’s in the black community in 

America or in Bolivia which just had a 

major uprising. It’s in a very unstable 

situation. 

You don’t even know half of 

what’s happening in Colombia. I 

talked to a comrade who just got 

back from Venezuela. It’s nothing like 

what you think because the media 

only lets you see what they want you 

to see. It’s boiling in Venezuela. In 

Venezuela, comrades from the 

FARC from Colombia are passing 

out leaflets on the streets. It’s that 

serious there. 

Then of course, U.S. troops have 

made it clear why they went to 

Colombia. They went there to fight 

the revolutionaries. 

Then in Brazil, which is huge, you 

have a changed situation with the 

election of this social democrat. 

You know about the economy in 

Argentina. You know about the situation 

in Peru. It is an extremely volatile 

situation all over the world. There is 

no way that the U.S. can do what it 

wants to do and come out of it the 

way it wants to come out. It’s 

attempting to re-colonize the world, 

and it is serious. That is the context 

for everything that we’re looking at 

right now, including this war that 

they’re talking about making against 

Iraq. 

This is the crisis that imperialism 

is looking at. 

I’m not trying to find a way out of 

the crisis for imperialism, because 

everybody else lives in crisis. When 

you have a world where more than 

half the people live on two dollars a 

day, that’s a damn crisis for the rest 

of the world. The fact that people are 

trying to resolve those crises is causing 

the crisis for the parasite that 

feeds off of them. 

It seems to me that we’re confronted 

with the question of how we 

move to unite with the vast majority 

of humanity that wants to be free! I 

think that’s what we’re contending 

with. 

You have this interesting contradiction. 

It’s not all that it looks like. 

Almost everything is up for grabs. 

Europe fears U.S. hegemony 

over entire world 

Europe is uneasy with the United 

States. It has been for a while, especially 

since the so-called Soviet 

threat has disappeared. Europe has 

been trying to move as rapidly as 

possible for unification. 

It has been clear that there are 

two objectives of the European 

Union (EU). One of them was to contain 

Germany. Every time Germany 

flexes its muscles, it kicks everybody 

else’s ass in Europe. So, they want 

to contain Germany. 

They also want to grow an economy 

and a military that is as strong or 

stronger than those of the United 





States. They’ve even commented on 

this in their journals. This is one of 

their intentions. With the so-called 

Soviet threat gone, there was no reason 

why they could not do that. 

Now, you have forces in Europe 

with their own interests that are separate 

and distinct from those of the 

United States. They have interests in 

Iraq. They want the loot from Iraq 

and Iran. 

France was trading seriously with 

Iran and Iraq. China was as well, 

although China’s not part of Europe. 

These countries and entities want 

their own relationships. They want to 

look after their own interest. 

Sometimes that’s in contention with 

the interests of the United States. 

Now, everybody’s concerned 

about the United States taking Iraq. 

They say that Iraq has more oil 

reserves than Saudi Arabia. In fact, 

they call it the second largest. They 

say that every time you dig a hole in 

Iraq you get oil. They say they have 

enough oil, I think, for the next hundred 

years. 

The problem is that Europe is 

dependent on oil too. So is Japan. If 

the United States sits astride all the 

oil in the Middle East, then they’ve 

got control of Europe, period! 

That is the real concern. Another 

concern is the arrogance of U.S. 

imperialism. It disallows these 

spheres of interest that I was talking 

about. It is quite blatant in its statement 

of world hegemony. 

It doesn’t even pretend that the 

Europeans are equal powers. They 

say this is how it’s going to be and 

you fall in line or you get left out. 

This is creating serious contradictions 

among the populations in 

Europe. There is a form of nationalism: 

European nationalism, French 

nationalism, British nationalism. 

They resent America telling Tony 

Blair what to do. They are ashamed. 

They hate it. They write in newspapers 

that Blair is Bush’s poodle. 

Just yesterday, in the House of 

Commons, Blair received the largest 

defeat in the history of England. 

More than a third of his own party 

fought him against this war resolution. 

He won the resolution, but he 

won it because the Tories, many of 

who were against him, carried the 

day for him. They said it was a humiliating 

defeat for Blair. 

You have all these people who 

hate that their fallen empire is a footstool 

for U.S. imperialism. The same 

thing is happening with the French 

and the Germans. 

There is a kind of nationalism 

that, even as it uses expressions 

about sympathy for the people in 

Iraq, is opposed to it being dominated 

by the United States the way 

it’s being dominated. So, millions of 

people are in motion around that 

question. 

You have certain sectors of the 

ruling elite in England who are afraid 

of the European Union, because if 

Europe united as it’s talking about, 

Germany and France are going to be 

the primary forces in Europe. To contend 

with them, England is hanging 

with the United States, come what 

may. That’s going to be their seat at 

the table. They would be eaten up by 

a Europe dominated by Germany 

and France. 


It exposes this 

fantasy of so-called 

western democracy. 

Bush would say that 

it’s democracy at 

work because people 

are marching. That 

isn’t democracy. 

Democracy is when 

the majority says 

don’t do something, 

and then you don’t do 

it. That’s democracy. 

The U.S. is taking advantage of 

Europe in some interesting ways. 

The former Soviet states are being 

brought into the European Union and 

they are on the payroll of the United 

States. 

There is the notion that their socalled 

development is going to come 

from the United States. So, that’s 

why Rumsfeld is playing the game of 

the old Europe versus the new 

Europe. He’s telling Germany and 

France to go to hell, because he has 

Hungary, Poland and the Czech 

Republic. He is going to try to play 

the new Europe against the old 

Europe. 

Because they’re in the pocket of 

Uncle Sam, England is struggling 

with Germany and France about 

where they are trying to take Europe 

and the European Union. 

The type of EU that France and 

Germany want is problematic. They 

want a closely-knit, single economy 

and a single military. These new 

forces coming in are struggling for 

something loose. They’re going to be 

the U.S. Trojan Horse inside this situation. 

So, you have a highly volatile, 

unstable situation where the U.S. is 

exposing itself to the whole world. 

That’s no little thing. It’s antagonizing 

so many allies. One of the ways the 

U.S. gets to project its imperial 

power around the world is through 

military bases stuck in these other 

countries that it’s now making hostile. 

It has already been suggested 

that the bases would be going in 

Germany. You know that U.S. troops 

are training so-called Iraqi dissidents 

in Hungary. Now there’s a military 

base in Hungary, so they’re anticipating 

that. 

You know there was a time when 

this contradiction we’re looking at 

now might have caused a war 

among the imperialists themselves. 

The problem now is that the United 

States has a military budget that is 

larger than the next 20 countries 

combined. 

You aren’t going to get one of the 

other imperialists to be willing to take 

on the U.S. The EU might have the 

muscle to try to push the U.S. around 

sometime in the future, but there is 

not a single one of the European 

nations that’s capable of challenging 

the United States now. 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il doesn’t hide that North Korea has nuclear 

weapons and can do pre-emptive strikes just as U.S. can. 

It seems France is going to jump 

on board once the war starts, 

because they want their own action 

in Iraq. They want to have their own 

relationships with the economy 

there. But if the U.S. takes it, then 

everybody gets left out, unless they 

jump on board now. 

So, if France wants contracts for 

rebuilding, or any kind of favorable 

business deals, then they need to be 

on board when the U.S. goes into 

Iraq. That’s why some people are 

suspecting that France will jump in at 

the last minute. It won’t want to be 

left out of the business deals that are 

going to come with the conquest of 

that territory. 

It’s all cold-blooded. All their 

moralistic nonsense has nothing to 

do with morality. It’s all cold-blooded. 

U.S. fears China will defend 

Korea in struggle 

The Korea issue is blatant to 

everybody, too. They’re going to kill 

Saddam Hussein. They don’t make 

any bones about that. They’ll kill him, 

his family and everybody who’s close 

to him because he might one day 

have nuclear weapons, and he might 

have some weapons of mass 

destruction. 

Well, Korea says, "We’ve got 

them!" — nuclear weapons. Korea 

said America’s not the only one that 

can do a pre-emptive strike. We can 

do one too. Korea said, well bring it 

on, no matter what they do. Every 

day they do something new. They 

crank up the nuclear reactors. They 

shoot a missile over Colin Powell 

when he goes to the Middle East to 

try to calm things down. 

This is an interesting situation. It’s 

going to be hard for the U.S. to attack 

Korea because if the U.S. attacks 

Korea there’s an 800- pound gorilla 

that nobody’s talking about — China. 

I do not see how China could 

stand aside and see that happen. 

This is true, not because China has a 

love affair with the Korean people 

necessarily. China has its own interests, 

and it is not interested in U.S. 

hegemony over that area of the 

world. China expects to be the dominant 

force, not only there, but maybe 

in the whole world. 

Given an opportunity, China will 

just go along, industrialize and build 

itself. But if the U.S. attacks Korea, I 

don’t see how China could sit by and 

watch that happen. That’s the 800- 

pound gorilla that’s sort of out there, 

and no one’s talking too much about 

it. 

Colin Powell went over there and 

talked to China. He said, "Say something 

to Korea." China responded, 

"That’s your problem, you deal with 

it!" Guess what? Not only did China 

tell them that, but also the new president 

of so-called South Korea said 

in his inaugural presentation that 

they are not going to be a lapdog of 

the United States. They said they 

were not going to allow the United 

States to tell them what to do. They 

said that their move is now towards 

re-unification of Korea. 

This brings us to the basis of the 

contradiction between the 

Democratic Republic of Korea and 

the United States. The contradiction 

is one that the U.S. initiated because 

it saw the growing movement 

towards re-unification of the Koreas. 

If Korea reunifies, the U.S. has no 

basis for having almost 40,000 

troops there. Those troops ostensibly 

protect South Korea from so-called 

North Korea. Of course, we know 

those troops are there for the 800- 

pound gorilla, China. That’s a serious 

contradiction. 

Now, everybody in the whole 

world is watching this thing happen. 

There’s no mystery here, it’s not like 

Viet Nam. It’s not like the Second 

Imperialist War. It’s not like Korea. 

Bush says, "We’re not going for 

the oil." Companies say, "We don’t 

want their oil." Colin Powell says, 

"We don’t want their oil." All of them 

have to say that because the whole 

world knows what’s going on. 

The whole world knows that millions 

of people came out in opposition 

to this war, yet the Bush regime 

still intends to do it. It exposes this 

fantasy of so-called western democracy. 

Bush said that the demonstrations 

show that democracy’s at work. 

He’s a fool. I’m sorry. To say Bush 

and fool is being redundant. 

Bush would say that it’s democracy 

at work because people are 

marching. That isn’t democracy. 

Democracy is when the majority says 

don’t do something, and then you 

don’t do it. That’s democracy, you 

understand. 

The imperialists have this very 

cavalier attitude. They’re even using 

words like imperialism in their own 



Arab demonstrators set fire to likenesses of George Bush, Israeli Prime 

Minister Ariel Sharon, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair outside a 

McDonalds in Manama, Bahrain. 


journals. You should read Foreign 

Affairs. 

Bush’s statement is so cavalier! 

He would actually liquidate that a 

real democracy would require him to 

be bound by the interests and wishes 

of the masses of people. 

Iraq war will have serious 

implications for imperialism 

If Bush doesn’t go to war against 

Iraq his career and his regime are 

gone. Make no mistake about it. 

Bush isn’t doing this as an individual. 

As an individual, he would certainly 

be concerned about his career. 

If he goes to war, which is very 

likely, he’s going to unleash forces he 

cannot even imagine. 

This whole notion of some democratic 

space will be gone. It’s gone 

for people in this country who actually 

thought there was democracy. 

Jimmy Wickets asks, "You mean 

there’s no democracy?" No! You 

should have listened to what people 

were saying to you in the Barrio 30 

years ago. 

That’s going to be an extraordinary 

event for many people. 

You think it was bad when people 

learned that Richard Nixon used all 

those curse words on the tapes! For 

this guy to go to war while all these 

people are out there demonstrating 

and all kinds of people went out there 

to try to bring some kind of reasoning 

to this thing is going to have consequences. 

I can’t say what they all 

are. 

I don’t mean there’s going to be 

some kind of calamity the next day. 

But, I’m telling you it’s going to have 

serious implications. It’s going to 

deepen the crisis. Nobody will have 

respect for this thing. 

Around the world, he’s causing 

major contradictions between peoples 

and governments everywhere. 

In the Middle East, all these puppet 

governments — who deny it — are 

backing Bush up behind the backs of 

their people. 

He’s creating severe crises 

between the people and the governments 

there. He’s creating a crisis 

between the people and the government 

in England, and other places. 

It’s a serious, critical crisis that’s 

emerging. 

He’s revealing that the imperialists 

have no respect for any kind of 

law. What might have seemed 

shocking on 9/11 in 2001, in my view, 

will possibly be looked upon in four 

or five years as child’s play. 

Nobody plays by the rules. Bush 

is making up the rules as they go 

along. That’s something that all the 

peoples in the world will be looking 

at. 

Bush is talking about occupying 

Iraq. He’s talking about putting forces 

down there. He’s saying that they’re 

going to have to occupy Iraq. They 

used to wonder how to do this 

because it causes all kinds of destabilization 

in the Middle East. They 

don’t care. 

In fact, they have been concerned 

about Saudi Arabia for some time 

now. They’re concerned about the 

stability of the government and the 

ideological influences there. Now 

they take Iraq and they intend to 

dominate everything in the Middle 

East. 

They used to rely on the Shah of 

Iran. They used to rely on the State 

of Israel as the policeman. Both 

proved to be unreliable. When the 

U.S. goes into Iraq, the situation in 

occupied Palestine that already had 

been getting worse every day, will 

get worse under the cover of all this 

discussion and struggle around Iraq. 

I suspect that they intend to remove 

the Palestinian population with this 

attack on Iraq. 

One of the problems that the 

imperialists have is Islam, because 

it’s international, and it has some 

kind of organizational and ideological 

coherence. It is located in all these 

places where people are poor and 

struggling to win some freedom. 

Bush says, "We’re 

not going for the 

oil." Companies 

say, "We don’t want 

their oil." Colin 

Powell says, "We 

don’t want their 

oil." All of them 

have to say that 

because the whole 

world knows what’s 

going on. 

That’s one of the reasons that Islam 

itself is under assault. 

Turkish government opposes 

Kurdish struggle for homeland 

Turkey is an interesting question. 

The Turks say that one of the reasons 

that they’re going into Iraq is to 

rescue the poor Kurds who live in 

northern Iraq. Then in the southern 

part of Iraq, there are the Shiite 

Muslims. 

Iraq really controls a little less 

than a third of its territory. The 

integrity of Iraq’s territory has been 

compromised severely. U.S. and 

British forces bomb Iraq regularly. 

The Kurds are a group of people 

who were left out when the imperialists 

redrew the lines in that area. 

They are a distinct cultural national 

entity. Because they were left out 

when the borders were drawn, the 

majority of the Kurdish populations 

are in Eastern Turkey, Northern Iraq, 

Syria and Iran. 

The Kurds want a national homeland. 

They are oppressed everywhere. 

They are oppressed because 

the imperialists drew borders in the 

Middle East and left them as they 

did. The Kurds can’t get a homeland 

except at the expense of the territorial 

integrity of one or another of the 

states where they now live. 

So, none of those states want to 

say the Kurds can have a homeland 

because the homeland comes at the 

expense of what is characterized as 

the national territory. The Kurds have 

been played off all the time. The 

imperialists use the Kurds against 

one or another state. They use them 

against Iran or against Syria. 

Turkey is most vicious in its attack 

on the Kurds. The Kurds can’t even 

use their own language. The Kurds 

can’t dress in their national clothing. 

Every now and then, the Kurdish 

resistance is attacked militarily. 

When they’re attacked, they go over 

the border. Turkey and northern Iraq 

are contiguous, so the Kurds go over 

the borders. 

The Turkish army chases Kurds 

into northern Iraq, just killing them. 

The Kurds want Kurdistan, a 

national homeland in northern Iraq. 

The Turks say if you give the Kurds a 

national homeland in northern Iraq, 

it’s going to threaten the stability in 

Turkey, because the Kurds who live 

in Turkey are going to want a 

national homeland as well. That’s 

going to destabilize our situation. So, 

Turkey tells the U.S., "We’ll go down 

with you, if you give us enough 

money. We’ll support you, if you let 

our troops occupy northern Iraq 

where the Kurds are." 

You have the Shiite Muslims in 

the southern part of Iraq. The 

Americans are also helping them 

solve their problem. But if the Shiite 

Muslims assume national autonomy 

or some kind of independent status 

there, all the other Arab states, Saudi 

Arabia included, will feel threatened. 

Iran is also Shiite Muslims, and many 

are concerned that Iran will have 

influence among the Shiites who are 

in southern Iraq. 

This situation is very volatile and 

extremely dangerous. They’re about 

to unleash some stuff they’ve never 

seen before and cannot even imagine. 

Turkey’s been trying for a long 

time to be white. The European 

Union won’t allow Turkey to join, 

mostly because they’re a Muslim 

state. So, Turkey crushes down any 

meaningful evidence of Islam. 

Muslims always win the election 

because Turkey’s a Muslim state. 

Under Attaturk, Turkey was made 

a secular state, but everybody’s a 

Muslim there. However, you can’t act 

as if you’re a Muslim if you’re in 

power or the army will kick your ass. 

Ninety percent of the people in 

Turkey don’t want to participate in 

the war. 

That’s the real deal. It’s a very, 

very tenuous situation all over the 

world. 

Peace movement denies right of 

colonized people to struggle 

against our oppressors 

We have some serious concerns. 

We have concerns about a peace 

movement that would define itself 

only in terms of what they call stopping 

the violence. That is a discretion 

that comes about while not recognizing 

violence as an absolute component 

of the conditions of existence of 

colonized people on the planet. It’s 

always violence. 

If you’re black, you’re always confronting 

violence. That’s what living 

seven years less than white people 

on average means. In the concentration 

camps that they call Indian 

reservations, the life span is in the 

‘40s. All the other places around the 

world people are locked into the 

imperialist system. 

A real pacifist in this country 

would be exhausted just from lying 

down in front of the police cars that 

are trying to get to the black community 

on a regular basis everywhere in 

this country. 

However, they want to talk about 

"pacifism" and "stopping the violence" 

and sort of stopping everything 

in place. This pacifism that they 

talk about in the peace movement is 

effectively a pacifism that would 

guarantee the permanent monopoly 

of violence in the hands of the imperialists. 

The only time they talk about 

stopping the violence is when the 

oppressed people rise up to try to 

take back our freedom. That doesn’t 

play well. I’m concerned about that 

for a number of reasons. 

A peace movement like that will 

validate the attack that the government 

is making on peoples by allowing 

them to characterize any 





response to the violence of imperialism 

as violence equal to what the 

imperialists are doing. 

The struggles in Colombia now 

are characterized as being waged by 

terrorists, and that is "violent." 

The Palestinians are being massacred 

on a daily basis. Just over the 

last week, maybe 40 or more 

Palestinians have been murdered. 

Their response is "violence." Then 

you have the "good violence" versus 

the "bad violence." The "good violence" 

is violence by the U.S. and its 

allies. The "bad violence" is committed 

by anybody who is opposed to 

that. 

Therefore, I’m concerned about 

the peace movement. I am truly, truly 

concerned about a peace movement 

that will validate the policy of the U.S. 

government, which is fighting against 

"terrorism" and "violence." 

The thing that disturbs me is that 

less than 44 percent of Africans are 

for this war. In this country, Africans 

are the largest group of people 

opposed to the war, but Africans 

don’t participate in the peace movement. 

The Africans can’t participate 

in the peace movement because the 

peace movement doesn’t recognize 

the war that’s being made against 

the Africans. 

The peace movement calls on 

everybody to fight for peace for white 

people. It will not include on its 

agenda the attack that’s happened to 

Africans, Indians and other people in 

this country. 

In fact, the Quakers have said 

Opinion 


the people of Iraq — not only 

Saddam and his supporters — see 

the war directed at them. Contrary to 

the Iraqi exile opinion, it looks that 

even if Saddam falls, the resistance 

might outlive him. The native tactics 

might test the power of the 

microwave bombs, the bunkerbusters, 

oxygen-depleting bombs 

and other B-52 bearing cruise missiles. 

It is looking more and more that 

way. 

I read a report that when Iraqi 

people see dollars, they will side with 

the invading force. Such lies and 

contempt directed at a basically 

nationalist-patriotic people can be 

very self-deceiving. The people may 

take the dollars and sweets and continue 

to fight the invaders. Has that 

occurred to the invaders who think 

dollar power will neutralize what 

seems a self-motivated, spirited and 

determined resistance? 

Most of the leadership of the Arab 

Socialist Party of Iraq has been 

weaned in Cairo University under the 

Arab nationalist leadership of Gamal 

Abdel Nasser. Saddam graduated 

from Cairo University in the ‘60s. His 

main political content has been Arab 

nationalism even when he fought the 

Kurds and the Mullahs of Iran — the 

latter not being Arab! 

The defining content of nationalism 

is to try to use the resources of a 

country first and foremost to develop 

that people. Saddam and his followers 

may have shown cruel and 

deceitful conduct, but they are above 

all Arab nationalists. Saddam would 

probably be seen and hailed as an 

This contradiction 

between oppressed 

and oppressor 

nations is really 

busting wide open... 

You see they’re not 

occupying France. 

The war is 

happening in all 

these other places 

where people have 

been living under 

colonial domination 

all this time. They’re 

trying to stick 

people back in that 

situation. 

that they don’t even want to participate 

in the anti-war movement that 

we helped to build because it was 

taking up too many causes of Indians 

and black people. 

We don’t live in peace. We don’t 

have any peace in our communities. 

We are opposed to the war because 

we are witnesses to what the 

American war is all about right here, 

where the movement that is supposed 

to be for peace won’t open the 

Arab (even Muslim) leader at the 

grassroots level in the Arab world. If 

this war becomes drawn out and 

long — dead or alive — he will be 

immortalized in the Arab world and 

perhaps even in the Muslim world. 

The World is too silent! 

An old civilization is being razed 

to the ground and no one is rushing 

to put a stop to this madness. The 

UN is mute. China, Russia, France 

and Germany make meek statements. 

The Arab League makes 

banal remarks while Qatar's foreign 

minister walks out. 

The African Union has uttered 

hardly a murmer or blib. 

The world must not see Iraq burn 

like hell. The images we see are 

deeply disturbing and the scar they 

leave will not be healed for generations. 

We must try to be resourceful 

and try to save lives — on all sides. 

As the soldiers displayed as P.O.W.s 

from the USA show that they are 

from ordinary families why should 

they die too? 

The African-American father who 

waved the picture of his killed sonsoldier 

in the war to the world media 

demanded to Bush that he be held 

responsible for taking his only son's 

life. That was a display as heartrending 

as it is symbolic of all those 

soldiers who may die for the simple 

reason of being in Iraq — not 

because they know anything or care 

about the Iraqis, but because they 

are doing a 'job.' Moreover, as one of 

the captured POWs said, "They are 

there because they have to follow 

orders." 

Anarchy above international law 

What can be done to prevent the 

door to allow African people to participate. 

This contradiction between 

oppressed and oppressor nations is 

really busting wide open. That’s what 

September 11 seems to have been 

about. That’s what Afghanistan is 

about. That’s what Iraq is about. 

That’s what Colombia is about. 

That’s what the Philippines are 

about. 

You see they’re not occupying 

France. The war is happening in all 

these other places where people 

have been living under colonial domination 

all this time. They’re trying to 

stick people back in that situation. 

Inside this country, the so-called 

peace movements reflect imperial 

assumptions as they relate to 

oppressed peoples. They assume 

that black people should not come in 

and mess up their damn peace 

movement. They have a nice peace 

movement and here’s Omali. They 

say, "Every time Omali talks, he’s 

talking about oppression and imperialism 

and we just want it to stop." Do 

you understand? 

That’s what’s happening. Here’s 

Sheridan from the American Indian 

Movement talking about what’s happening 

on the reservations and they 

just want the discussion to stop. 

It’s happening even with folk who 

are being redbaited, like 

A.N.S.W.E.R. They are being redbaited, 

yet they’re trying to stop us 

from speaking out. 

They say they want 

to save the people, 

then bomb them and 

their country to save 

them. After their 

conduct of 

destruction, they 

want to show them 

compassion by 

inviting ruthless U.S. 

corporations, 

government 

development agencies 

and NGOs to 

reconstruct their 

society and provide 

them food and 

medicine. 

Driving force in history is 

national liberation 

It’s an incredible, volatile situation, 

but it’s one that can bode well. 

The fundamental problem is all 

the millions of people who are out 

there in opposition to what the Bush 

regime is attempting to do. People 

are opposed to imperialism, but the 

fundamental contradiction is the lack 

of organization. 

There is no evidence of revolutionary 

organization. People need 

organization. 

Even with the Soviet Union being 

the opportunistic entity that it was, it 

was significant because it gave ideological 

grounding for many forces 

throughout the whole world. 

The contradiction in this world that’s 

going to be kicking everybody in the 

teeth is that oppressed peoples everywhere, 

including the black communities 

and Barrios in the cities and communities 

where you live, are moving 

forward and are no longer going to live 

like this. 

That’s what’s defining the historical 

trajectory that we’re moving along 

today. Bush is trying to stop history. 

That will not work. I think what revolutionaries 

struggle to do is to understand 

the historical trajectories and join them 

to facilitate the birth of a completely 

new kind of social system. That in the 

final analysis is what we’re fighting for. 

People have to choose sides. 

The driving force in history is 

national liberation. There’s a real 

attempt to re-colonize the world directly 

under white power. I believe everything 

they do will deepen this crisis as 

opposed to lessening it for them. That’s 

the world as we see it. 

BUSH-BLAIR mad rush to destroy 

Iraq under the guise of changing its 

government? 

What kind of world are they wishing 

to create? 

Tomorrow, a small country can go 

charge its neighbor to bring about 

regime change and can point to the 

Blair-Bush doctrine of pre-emptive 

strike to bring change. And if this 

country appears to be endowed with 

some rich minerals that the big powers 

desire, they will use that as a pretext 

to get involved and bombard 

hapless populations. This is a neat 

formula for spreading world anarchy. 

Ironically, this comes from the 

power that wants — or says it wishes 

— to police the world and create stability 

and security for the 21st century. 

How can this power create security 

and order if it is seen as an outlaw 

and contemptuous of the international 

institutions and international 

law? 

This is a formula for a security disorder 

for the 21st century, not a new 

world order. 

Charity after the festival of 

violence and willful destruction 

Organized hypocrisy characterizes 

imperial politics and human 

rights. Imperial power self-arrogates 

the power to dictate the terms of any 

engagement. 

If opposed, it collects a number of 

disparate countries and goes to 

enforce its own actions against the 

will of the world and international law. 

It camouflages its own action under 

the euphemism of a constructed 

"coalition." 

There is not only violence against 

people, but truth is dead and language 

itself is casualized — having 

been used and turned into fraud and 

deception. 

Ethics is thrown out of the window. 

The overriding animal instinct to 

win war dictates how the war is 

reported, played out, even thought 

about. It is not a command and control 

of the physical battle. It is a command 

and control of everything. It is 





a nightmare when truth is turned into 

falsehood, information becomes disinformation, 

P.O.W.s are pawns in 

the war game and war dictates life. 

The idea of destroying a country 

and summoning U.S. private companies, 

governments and Non-governmental 

organizations (NGO) as 

angels of mercy is the most hypocritical 

turn of this whole sordid episode. 

It reminds me of a story about a 

19th century Russian noblewoman 

who went to an opera and kept 

weeping while watching the opera, 

and even after she came out of the 

opera, at the death of a Russian poor 

peasant. She kept weeping and 

when she came out of the opera her 

footman was frozen to death staying 

where he had been ordered to stay 

— outside suffering from the freezing 

severe Russian cold winter weather. 

She became angry at the inconvenience 

she faced by his death. Her 

compassion for the Russian peasant, 

borne by her weeping, was betrayed 

by her conduct! Not wishing to have 

any inconvenience. As long as her 

privileges are not touched she can 

afford to show compassion. As soon 

as the privilege is affected, her conduct 

submerges her compassion. 

The military destroyers of Iraq are 

like this Russian noblewoman. They 

say they want to save the people, 

then bomb them and their country to 

save them. After their conduct of 

destruction, they want to show them 

compassion by inviting ruthless U.S. 

corporations, government development 

agencies and NGOs to reconstruct 

their society and provide them 

food and medicine. 

Why is it necessary to be emboldened 

in the first place with the conduct 

of destruction and wish to sanitize 

the effect of the willful and deliberate 

destruction with a false compassion? 

Destruction first, construction 

after. Why not construction ever 

so that ones conduct and compassion 

flow together! 

Blood and tears in Iraq are flowing 

like rivers and there is not enough 

protest to stop this orgy of violence. 

The protest must be total and worldwide. 

It must be made to bite for the 

sake of the Iraqi people and the U.S. 

and British soldiers that are in harm’s 

way. 

The protest must continue 

The protest must continue to stop 

this war that will no doubt generate 

deep hatred and is spreading miscommunication 

across religions, 

nations and population groups. 

It is time to overcome barbarism 

and promote civilization, control 

anarchy and stand for legality, 

uphold morality and reject moral 

blindness, be counted for justice by 

fighting injustice, and oppose forcedetermination 

and support self-determination. 

I weep for my divided country 

whose very division has forced it to 

side with arrogant imperial power. I 

do this as I continue to march and 

oppose the Blair-Bush projection of 

destructive(!) and retributive violence 

against Iraq as a country and people. 

For that matter, I do not wish any 

country to be humiliated, in the way 

Iraq has been, for the "sins" of its 

leaders. Let that people cleanse the 

sins of their leaders or remove them. 

Others cannot bomb democracy into 

An Iraqi man carries a child after a U.S. massacre of more civilians. 

being. 

The world deserves better than 

gunboat diplomacy or democracy. It 

is the people and the people alone of 

that particular place (Iraq in this 

case!) who must be in charge of their 

own destiny. This is an important 

matter of principle that brooks no 

trespassing. 

As Thomas Jefferson said, "In 

matters of principle stand like a rock. 

In matters of taste swim with the current." 

War and peace are issues of 

principle and not taste. Africa must 

stand united against the arrogant 

concept of forced regime change. 

Africa must say no to gun boat 

democracy. The African Union must 

express an African will of opposition 

to the invasion of Iraq. The African 

Union has to oppose arrogant power 

coming any where and directed at 

any people. 

Africa should demand national 

liberation and support the Arab 

people 

Africa must stand on the side of 

the national aspiration of the Iraqi 

people. If Africans allow this vast 

injustice and criminal bombardment 

to go unopposed, tomorrow their turn 

will come. 

It is thus vital that they stand for 

principle and reject temptations to 

side with invasion, aggression, occupation 

and externally-forced regime 

change. These are matters of principle. 

Africa's own history and experience 

demands that Africa takes a 

stand. 

1. On matters of peace and war, 

we demand that Africa learn to speak 

with one voice. 

2. African countries that overtly 

and covertly joined the so-called 

coalition of the willing should withdraw 

from it. 

3. Africans must demand an 

immediate ceasefire now. The U.S.- 

The world deserves 

better than gunboat 

diplomacy or 

democracy. It is the 

people and the people 

alone of that 

particular place (Iraq 

in this case!) who 

must be in charge of 

their own destiny. 

British forces should withdraw 

unconditionally and immediately 

from Iraq! 

4. The idea of regime change by 

military means is wrong in principle 

and cannot produce a regime that 

the population can respect. 

5. Africa must oppose the concept 

of regime change and the military 

strikes to bring it about. Gunboat 

democracy is neither democracy nor 

liberation. It is colonialism and a 

modern form of conquest that 

exposes a population to needless 

humanitarian catastrophe. 

6. Africa must join forces with all 

the forces that support international 

law. 

7. Africa must actively seek to 

support actions to bring to international 

justice the war criminals. 

8. Africa's eminent lawyers must 

volunteer to prepare to prosecute 

war crimes committed by the invading 

powers. 

9. Africans must support Iraqi 

civilians in any way they can. 

10. The citizens of Africa must 

demonstrate, petition and do everything 

possible to make all the governments 

of Africa and the African Union 

condemn this war against Iraq as illegal, 

illegitimate and immoral. 

Africa must stand for national liberation, 

not national humiliation. 

It must stand for national independence 

not re-colonization in this day 

and age. 

Africa must stand for justice and 

oppose an imperialist war for the 

resources and control of the Arab 

world. 

If Africa does not stand on the side 

of the Arab nation, it will have shown a 

moral and political blindness that will 

haunt it for generations. 

It is time for Africans to show 

strength by fighting the last frontier of 

their damnation, confronting head on 

their false decolonization to manifest a 

true decolonization. 

Iraq is now a litmus test to show 

progress in attenuating the false decolonization 

of the African and Arab mind. 

The innocent blood of Iraq may yet lead 

to the sprouting of the Arab nation. 

At this historical moment, Africa 

should stand side by side with the Iraqi 

people and country. 

Where there is no love, there 

is hate, enmity, enemy and war 

An American friend sent me this 

thought and it is a good way to end my 

remarks: 

Where there is love, there is no 

hate. Where there is no hate, there is 

no enmity. Where there is no enmity, 

there is no enemy. Where there is no 

enemy, there is no war! 

I write this as one who is deeply 

affected by this war. It is difficult to carry 

out normal life when the images of disorientated 

children, wounded and dead 

people hit one everyday. 

I must confess I find the provision of 

this unwanted image an indictment to 

civilization. The 21st century should 

have been different. It has become a 

throwback to the carnages of the previous 

world wars. Therefore, those who 

see it as their birthright to lead this 

world are dramatic failures. 

They should have guided the planet 

not to war, massive waste and colonization, 

but to peace, justice and prosperity. 

The current war is proof they 

have failed, as they are morally feeble 

and greedy. 

Our planet should be governed with 

the expression of many voices — not 

only U.S. and British, but also Arab, 

African, Indian, Chinese, Latin 

American and European voices. We 

need a multi-polar not a uni-polar, a 

multilateral and not unilateral, a negotiating 

or dialogue- seeking and not warspreading 

world. 

We need U.S.-British humility and 

not arrogance to create order in this 

world. Let us hope the current blood 

and tears of Iraq end up watering the 

birth of a just, equitable and tolerant 

world. From this great tragedy, let there 

be hope and victory for the wretched of 

the earth. 

About the author: Mammo Muchie is an 

activist and university lecturer who has 

been marching against imperialist wars 

against Indochina, Africa and now 

Arabia. He says of himself, "As a scholar 

activist engaged in contributing knowledge 

to the creation of the African 

nation, I shall be working on African 

integration and ways to institutionally 

participate in grass roots organizing for 

African national liberation." 


Get the Tools You Need to 

Books 

Overturning the Culture 

of Violence by Penny Hess. 

Working from the leadership of 

Omali Yeshitela's writings and 

speeches, Hess chronicles the 

development of the world 

capitalist economy through the 

theft of indigenous land and 

African labor and calls for “white 

people to be a part of the future 

through reparations to African 

people”. 581 pgs. $22.95 

Social Justice and Economic 

Development for the African Community; 

Why I Became a Revolutionary by Omali 

Yeshitela. Presented in 3 chapters: 

• The conditions and times that shaped my world view 

• Why I took up the demand for black power 

• Struggle for social justice based in genuine economic 

development for African people 28 pgs. $5. 

This Time ‘Til It’s 

Won...Power In Our Own 

Hands by Omali Yeshitela. This 

Political Report to the 2nd Party 

Congress of the African People’s 

Socialist Party (APSP) in 1987 

features an overview of Yeshitelism, 

an introduction to the development 

of the APSP and an analysis of the 

state and future of the struggle for 

black freedom. 104 pgs. $4. 

Izwe Lethu i Afrika! (Africa is 

Our Land) by Omali Yeshitela. This 

political report to the 3rd Party 

Congress of the African People’s 

Socialist Party in 1990 sums up the 

current period as the “Era of Worldwide 

African Revolution and Socialist 

Unification of Africa and African People 

Under the Leadership of the African 

Working Class and Poor Peasants.” 

122 pgs. $10. 

The Dialectics of Black 

Revolution; The Struggle to 

Defeat the Counterinsurgency 

in the U.S. by Omali Yeshitela. A 

description of the forces that gave rise to 

the Black Power Movement of the ‘60s, 

the U.S. government military program 

that defeated it, and a strategy for 

African liberation. 39 pgs. $6. 

Video Tapes 

1) On September 11th. September 

16, 2001 speech by Omali Yeshitela 

at the Uhuru House in St. 

Petersburg, Florida. Discusses the 

bombing of the World Trade Center, 

Bush’s plans for war against the nonwhite 

world and the expected attack 

on Civil Liberties. $10. 

2) The Value of Stolen Black 

Labor. Speech by Omali Yeshitela 

presented on Labor Day Weekend, 

2002 at the Uhuru House in St. 

Petersburg, Florida. Discusses the 

critical role of the slave trade and the 

continuing exploitation of African 

labor in the development and 

maintenance of world capitalism. 

Argues the demand for reparations. 

$10. 

3) African Heroes and Martyrs. 

Speech by Omali Yeshitela in 1995 

at Li’l Bobby Hutton Park in Oakland, 

California. Recounts the 

development of the Black Power 

Movement of the ‘60s, the U.S. 

counterinsurgency war that defeated 

it and today’s work to rebuild. 

$10. 

4) The Battle of St. Petersburg. 

Includes footage from the rebellions, 

demonstrations, tribunal and vigils 

through which the African working 

class community of St. Petersburg 

rose up and forced the city to listen, 

following the police 1996 murder of 

TyRon Lewis. $10. 

How to Order: 

You can order from Burning 

Spear Publications in 2 ways: 

1) Fill out this form and mail in. 

Make check payable to: 

Burning Spear Publications 

Mail to: 

Burning Spear Publications 

P.O. Box 11281 

St. Petersburg, FL 33733-1281 

2) Order online at 

www.burningspearuhuru.com 

Allow 2-3 weeks for delivery 

Audio Tapes 

Omali Yeshitela 

Discusses Current Events with 

Local and International Leaders on the Front Lines of Struggle 

New Series - “Conversations with Chairman Omali” 

Mohammed Aldouri, Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations on the U.S. war against 

Iraq. 

Zhang Yuan Yuan, Chinese Embassy representative on the downing and holding of the 

U.S. spy plane in China. Also discusses Chinese-African solidarity. 

Abu Layla, Political Bureau member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of 

Palestine, direct from Ramulah on the morning following the DFLP’s carrying out of the first 

Palestinian armed action penetrating an Israeli military post in the Occupied Territories. 

Thami Daliwonga Ka Plaatjie Secretary General of the Pan Africanist Congress of 

Azania (South Africa) on the continuing struggle for land and black power in Africa. 

Minister Curtis Gatewood, President of the Durham, North Carolina branch of the NAACP speaks 

against Bush’s war and his struggle to move the National NAACP and the country’s religious leaders to an 

anti-war position. 

Deadria Farmer-Paelmann, on her reparations research and lawsuits. 

Lawrence Hamm, President of People Organized for Progess on their work to stop police 

brutality in New Jersey. 

NYC Councilman Charles Barron, shares his views on black power and economic development. 

Paul Renne, San Francisco attorney who argued against HUD’s “1 Strike You’re Out” rule before the U.S. 

Supreme Court and Robles Park Residents Council President Connie Burton on the rights of public 

housing residents. 

Also available on audio tape ... 

1)The Value of Stolen Black Labor. 2)Sharpeville Commemoration/The Vanguard Party. 

Item Cost per item Quantity Cost 

Book - Why I Became a Revolutionary $5.00 

Book - This Time Til It’s Won $4.00 

Book - Overturning the Culture of Violence $22.95 

Book - Dialectics of Black Revolution $6.00 

Book - Izwe Lethu i Afrika! $10.00 

Video - $10.00 

Video - $10.00 

Audio - $5.00 

Audio - $5.00 

Add $4. shipping cost for orders under $25. 

Total enclosed _______ 

Name ________________________________________ Phone __________________________ 

Address______________________________________ Email___________________________ 

City__________________________________________ State______Zip___________________

Voice of the International African Revolution! - Uhuru News

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