Voice of the International African Revolution! - Uhuru News

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16 THE BURNING SPEAR April 2003 Spear continued from page 14 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 African People’s Socialist Party 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 passed the 13th Amendment. 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. 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
April 2003 THE BURNING SPEAR 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 continued from page 16 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! Uhuru! 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 ! African People’s Socialist Party
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