MLK: Made in China

A few years ago when I learned about the Martin Luther King Jr. monument that was to be constructed in our nation’s capital, I got excited.

When I learned that the artist assigned to produce the sculpture of perhaps the most notable Negro in American history was a Negro himself, I got even more excited.

Not too long after hearing this news, I learned that the project leaders decided to go with another designer for the MLK monument. Not really a big deal because things often change on large initiatives, right?

The project leaders flipped the script and decided to bring on Chinese stoneworker, Lei Yixin. Making the changes even more controversial was decision to use Chinese granite for the memorial.

– Why not an American sculptor?
– Why not with American materials?
– Just why?

Yes, I was one of those people opposed to the statue after those changes. I wasn’t angry but I was very turned off.

Fast-forward to this summer when the MLK monument opened… I decided that I would not visit.

Fast-forward to this past weekend when I actually visited the monument… I broke down in a moment of DC tourist weakness.

The monument is HUGE. On grand scale. Attractive. And obviously missing the “Made in China” markings.

Even after being impressed by the size & style, I’m like meh… Then you add the fact that the monument is directly across from the Jefferson Memorial. Jefferson was not only a slave owner but a rapist of his female slaves. OK, let me calm down. I’m starting to get a racial tension headache up in here.

I wonder what MLK would think of his monument being constructed by people living under a communist regime that oppresses, jails and tortures citizens while restricting internet access… Wait, some of that happens in the US also.

Your thoughts?
Am I tripping?

BTW, the photo above was taken with my iPhone 4, which was “assembled in China.” I’m just saying.

Cornel West on Aljazeera

Some Ol’ Skool Truth in a Negro Dialect

I found this clip over at Ensayn Reality.

The Great African Scandal

This very informative documentary is by Robert Beckford on his fact finding visit to Ghana and the “new” colonization of Africa.

“What has been shall be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

“Charade Bailout Tanzania Style!” by Nkwazi N. Mhango

When the US government discovered big holes in its ailing economy thanks to underworld business by greed corporate, it invented bailout. Economists still fiercely differ on this. On the one hand there are those that take it as a smart move aimed at keeping the people in the main street afloat. On the other hand, there are those that look at bailout as sinking tax payer’s money to the hole. When one looks at the reasons they offer, they all seem to be right.

But again, logically, one thing makes sense. First of all, the US and other affluent countries have enough financial muscles to take on this. Secondly, the manner in which the bailout is conducted in some areas convinces, there can be romp in soon thanks to the signs the US economy is currently showing. Thirdly US caused this calamity to the rest of the world. Thus it deserves to do something about it even at the world level. Fourthly, greed and selfishness being the engines of capitalism as well as the bombs (as of now), there was no way the US would sit idly by and evidence its children dying of the disease it cultivated. It had to reap the benefits of its system as well as stand by when things go wrong. 

So the first thing to do was to take on greed CEOs who offered credit generously knowingly this irresponsibility would backfire. Their gargantuan emoluments like golden parachutes, salaries and the likes were practically abolished or slashed. To make sure that these crooks do nary get away with it, the government purchases some shares in affected firms so as to ultimately, for some, own them. Currently AIG and General Motors or Government Motors as it is joked, are under government watch as it becomes the holder of majority shareholder of the restructured company, with 60% of the stock. To make sure the crime is not repeated, White House receives briefings on economy almost everyday, among which is the state of the bill of health of bailed out firms. This way, the government is doing it’s business to see to it that taxpayer’s money is not swindled. 

Recently, Tanzania ’s unstoppable juggernaut-like government blatantly proposed bailout measures to her all-time-sick economy. This move sounds smart. Nonetheless, it’s already been seen as charade aimed at stealing taxpayer’s money. With rampancy of stinking corruption in the upper echelons of power, one can comfortably predict its end… it’ll end up a cropper as it morosely digs more menacing holes on the already moth-holed economy! 

One thing to remember, this is the same government that stupidly nationalized almost everything, especially profit-making gung-hos Nyerere found, after felling them and proving to be shoddy as far as business is concerned. Sadly by relegating back to business, this means privatization is a hoax or much bigger mess should be expected.

Let me prove my point. Tanzania secured a loan of over 1/-tn to bail out her economy. Amazingly, this amount is a debt whose interest rate is 11%. The good government in Dar es Salaam is planning to loan the same to some unspecified companies at the interest of 2%!  Reasoning and reality have been given a heave-ho of a sort! Who will pay generously forgiven 9%? Monkey business of course! If  this megalomania is not stopped, Tanzania’s economy will be ruined even more under the pretext of bailing it out. How should it stop crumbling if loans are sought to be abused as the case in point? 

Renowned economist Professor Ibrahim Lipumba and opposition MPs queried this and termed it as “flapdoodle” that needs a courage and heart of the mad to commit. He said, “I am getting some feelings that this plan is going to be like a crash programme. Normally crash programmes are implemented without adequate preparations.” Lipumba also added: “I listened to President Kikwete’s address …. and also read the speech budget. I could not find anywhere where an ordinary farmer is mentioned as far as the stimulus package is concerned.” Despite warnings from experts, as usual, like a wise monkey that sees, hears and does nothing, Dar is still hell bent to go on with this buffoonery!

The Economics of Water

Water is the source and the sustainer of life. We can survive a lot longer without food than we can without water. Without a doubt it is essential to our continued existence as a species. Here are some water facts:

1. Approximately 72% of the earth is covered in water, but about 97% of that water is salty and therefore no good for drinking;
2. Our bodies are made up from 80% (for babies) to 60% (for adults) of water;
3. Approximately 70% of the fresh water on the planet are in ice-caps;
4. More fresh water is stored underground than in liquid form on the surface;
5. Less than 1% of the worlds fresh water is readily accessible;
6. 6 countries have 50% of the worlds fresh water reserves: Brazil, Canada, Russia, China, Colombia and Indonesia;
7. Approximately 1/3 of the world’s population lives in “water stressed” countries. 

Against this backdrop of facts, there are multinational corporations that see this as an opportunity to make enormous profits from treating water as a commodity to be sold (by them) and bought (by us). Water has become a $400 billion dollar global industry, the third largest behind oil and electricity.

I watched a very informative award winning documentary by Irena Salina on the growing privatization of the world’s dwindling fresh water supply called: FLOW: for love of water. Here are some other facts about water which it highlights.

Corporations like Suez, Vivendi, Thames Water, Bechtel, as well as Coco-Cola and Nestle, have successfully privatized and commoditized fresh water resources worldwide. National governments and world organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank, are in collusion with these multinationals to not only privatize the worlds fresh water supplies, but also in some “third world” countries, to deny people the right to collect and utilize rain water for their daily needs (i.e. drinking, cooking, washing, bathing, etc.,) and to irrigate their crops!

People worldwide are however fighting back against these efforts. Access to clean water is a fundamental human right and not a commodity to be sold and bought for the profits of a filthy few. This is an issue which affects all of us, regardless of where you reside. Take time to watch the documentary and take action (see here) to help ensure fresh water accessiblity free of corporate profiteering. Stop buying bottled water from these multinational corporations and sign the petition calling upon the United Nations to add a 31st article to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, establishing access to clean water as a fundamental human right. 

White Supremacy, Imperialism and Fascism in America

Breaking down the concentrated class struggle

Right now US society needs a clear understanding of the difference between socialism and fascism because a war is being waged against working class people. Americans fail to understand the class basis of the State. They also have a difficulty in making comparative analyses between the US brand of bourgeois democracy and other types. Imperialism and fascism are not such very different systems. US society presently faces a neo-fascist “dictatorship”.

First of all, socialism is a revolutionary social system. It is born out of revolt, uprisings and insurrection. It is a bottom up society and a system created to wither away; that is, socialism is not a society which has a long-term future. It will be transformed into a society where revolutions, uprisings and insurrections are unnecessary.

Socialism, like the society which must succeed it, will transform the means of distribution so that all the resources of society will be available to its members. The State must operate as the primary instrument for socialized distribution of resources — to contrast with capitalist privatization of collectively produced wealth — but not as the sole force for this activity.

Socialist democracy means working class democracy. This is the logic of democratic struggle. Once the laboring masses eradicate the degenerate notion of racist supremacy, the democratic political process must take on a more principled character. America thrives on the practice of racist supremacy, pure and simple.

Never has this been more apparent than the racist resurgence rising to challenge President Obama’s tenure in office. From Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio voicing his admiration for the Ku Klux Klan to the police summarily executing Oscar Grant on a BART station platform, these examples of racist reaction raising its hydra head have to meet forceful, unbreaking resistance from our community.

Racism shapes the culture of the colonizer society, and deforms the culture of the oppressed. It is, in reality, an expression of class warfare. As such, racism designates one nationality as a master race and the others as servants or slave races, a so-called underclass. These ideas, inculcated thru out colonialism, set the standards for interactions between workers of different nationalities. Workers from the white society think of themselves as superior to blacks, Latinos, American Indians, and Asians. Even government census forms convey a false sense of race purity.

The government bail out of the bloodsucking banks, tho, will deepen the merger of international finance capitalism with the State, which is the very definition of fascism. Capitalism is comprised of concentration of wealth into as few hands as possible. Imperialism constitutes capitalism’s merger of finance with the corporations to create an international finance system. So because of what is taking place today, with the State giving massive amounts of money to the Wall Street bankers, this is the end-game in the Milton Friedman economic model first advocated by Ronald Reagan, also known as voodoo economics.

Barack Obama seems to deepen this trend of reducing US white workers to colonized status, while the neo-cons continue to inflame racist sentiments. This struggle reflects the historical lag between bourgeois ideology and working class self-realization or, on the opposite hand, white workers reaction. Until that gap gets closed, the colonized masses must remain in a defensive posture against their white working class comrades on the other side of the skirmish line.

The State and Imperialism

What is going on with President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan? If we can take the word of economists like Paul Krugman and others, the government needs to wait out this period of “financial crisis” because it will stabilize over the next nine months or so. However, Obama continues to push for the so-called bank bail outs, which are nothing more than massive giveaways to the already filthy rich financial sector.

The US government want absolute authority. It seeks absolute authority under the cover of democracy to carry out the most inhuman agenda in history. It wants the ability to implement its agenda under the cover of law, based upon the assumption that elected lawmakers can pass legislation that supports the most extreme goals of international finance.

This is apparent from watching trends over the last thirty years. Over this period, leaders from Reagan on thru Obama have raped public assets to fill the pockets of international bankers and other corporate financiers. In the effort to strip down the State to its basic, fundamental character, US presidents have auctioned off, sold, or outright given the banks trillions of dollars. They have used the excuse that there is a banking crisis. Simultaneously, the banks line their pockets, the pockets of their investors, and buy up other financing assets.

If the bankers were operating honestly, the banks would never have sunk. It is because of their rapine greed and thirst for power that the banks have collapsed. It is not because credit has dried up, but because so much money has become concentrated in so few hands that this situation exists.

Anytime real wages have not kept pace with inflation, anytime the US worker labors for more hours than his counterpart in other industrial workers, anytime that worker has to go into debt to maintain a house, automobile and the simple thing in life, that is because cash has dried up on the street. It has dried up because the financiers have concentrated 80% of it in their own hands. Seven or eight percent of all people control 80% of all the money. Which means that the remaining 83% of the population must fight over the remaining dollars.

So while Obama has joked about bailing out the auto industry, he continues to push the argument that society cannot survive without the banks. But the auto industry produces a product. The banks do not. Paper money is not a product with any intrinsic value whatsoever.

Why is the State giving even more money to the banks, when the government owes the banks over $10 trillion? The State can seize the banks and liquidate the debt. That makes more sense.

That is what the State did with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. It wanted to control the oil and the opium, so it invaded those countries. Seventy-five percent of Iraqi oil ends up on the black market; opium production has skyrocketed since the US occupation of Afghanistan. The dope ends up here. Profits from the blackmarket oil ends up in the hands of the CIA and the international financiers. These monies are used to destabilize governments and societies, including US society.

However, the State wants to strip away all the benefits US workers have provided for this society. The State wants to strip down Social Security, pensions, health care and transform this country into a backwater of reaction. It can only achieve this by supporting the banks. In doing so, the strategy has been to give away public sector assets from cash grants to public lands.

The international financiers control the most reactionary sector of capitalism. They fuel wars all over the globe. They finance wars, they finance coups d’etat, they finance assassinations of men like Salvador Allende and Maurice Bishop. They want to transform revolutionary Cuba into a whorehouse and a den of vice. They want the world for their playground while creating misery and instability for billions of people in every single country.

The United States is rapidly moving towards fascism. It is repeating all the steps and turns that Germany and Italia made in the years preceding World War II. The marginalized right-wing has become more shrill and obstructionist, and the Obama Administration appears like the Weimar Republic, granting concessions to the enemies of the people, international finance. If this trend continues, in four more years there will be a firestorm in this country. You kno where this leaves African people. People need to take to the streets today.  We do not have time to wait.