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20 THE BURNING SPEAR April 2003 Continued from previous page 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. African People’s Socialist Party 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 around the world. 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 Continued on next page
April 2003 THE BURNING SPEAR 21 Continued from previous page 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. Continued on next page you have The Burning Spear. So they really haven't done anything by crushing one organization.” - Huey P. Newton The Burning Spear African People’s Socialist Party P.O. Box 11281 St. Petersburg Fla 33733 727-821-6620 SUBSCRIBE TO THE BURNING SPEAR! $12 per year • Adopt-a-prisoner - $12 per year • Spear Sustainer - $25 per year Fill out coupon below and send to the address above: Name __________________________________________________ Address ________________________________________________ City, State, Zip __________________________________________ Phone ____________________ Email ______________________ African People’s Socialist Party
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