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.

For African Women’s Month

The Greatest Woman in History: A Rock

The woman, a peasant, in the field, worked from dusk to dawn to reap its yield, she dug and planted yam to feed her fam. Sorghum, too, its grass to line the beds where her children lay their heads. Her husband was a farmer, hunter and went off to fight, while the woman kept the home fires alight. She cooked, she weaved. She traded in the market.

She has five children. One grew up; she got married young. The others still lived at home, their skin black and smooth, their smiles big and bright, like their eyes. Another she carried silently within. Then men came with talking sticks, that barked loud fire words. The villagers ran for the forest, tho their flight did them no good. They captured her, she fought and strained. And then tied and bound she was led down to a ship, thrown in its hold, dark and cold.

For forty nites upon the seas, she lay there chained amidst death and disease. When at last she emerged upon the deck, it was in a storm the ship was wrecked; her captors led her to the shore where she would see her Motherland nevermore. She was bought and sold to work a field not her own, when the sixth child was born. The last member of her old fam, so the master let her grow then sold her to another man.

Raped and sold at twelve the girl caught hell, beat and worked like a mule, reviled for her black skin. Preached at, raped again, the women took her in. She planted and plucked the cotton, she hated her life. One day she ran away and ran and ran until she was free. Then she went back. She returned to her old plantation, saw her momma’s face, in the dark. Her mother’s broken gaze by the dim fire light.

That nite she stole away, with her mother close behind, running, until they were beyond the reach of slavery.

The girl went back. No longer a girl anymore, she returned time and again until she stole away with three hundred men, women and children. A thief, a bounty on her head. Stealing property from wealthy slave owners. She traveled with a gun, on her railroad, underground.

She peeled the caps of the Confederates; behind enemy lines, disguised as a washerwoman, she signaled the Union spies. Slave girl, runaway, mother redeemer, Mata Hari.

Her children grew. One came to rule in Liberia far away. Another girl who once knew slavery, grew into a woman, started a business with her man. They grew influential, their plan to lead their community. Then instability. The crackers rose, burnt the town, lynched her man, the people fled. She wept and bled a rage that burned within all her living days. Jim Crow ruled the world when five crackers raped her then. She gave birth to a girl.

A girl became a woman who watched Jim Crow shrink, it never really disappeared. However, she raised a family and those she reared came along in a new age. She joined a movement called Black Power. Instead of the cracker mob the police took the job to lynch her man. They shot up her house, killing a party captain. Her man, drugged by a snitch lay in bed; the cops dragged him out and put a bullet in his head. She fled before the pigs made a tomb for the baby in her womb. Underground and on the run, she gave birth to her first, and last.

Another generation born. That girl became a woman whom, for reasons unknown, strayed from the path which marked her way. She, from a line so proud and bold, broke down in the dark cold winter of the racist summer, picked up the pipe, smoked the crack and never turned back. She sucked and whored thru the streets, never finding rest for her feet or her head. Raped, bobbed, beaten. Homelessness. Sometimes she went dirty begging for money, ended up in jail. Out, on the bricks, suckin you kno what for a few dirty dollars from tricks, lifting wallets and stuff. Her babies raised by the eldest of five, if that aint jive tell me who is going to make sure they thrive.

Eldest daughter started slinging, got caught up in the slaughter, took a fall from the government war against us all. And now she went to prison where she somehow came into another understanding of her place in this world. Lots of lessons to learn there yet she tried Jesus, then somewhere a book that turned her life around. When she got loose things had changed. The world appeared different. Her mother, beat down, broken cracked out still. Her sisters and brothers, some were well and some were ill. This one picked up and trod a different road, the road to liberty in a land where freedom was built on slavery.

Dreadlocks, cowries shells, sound of the cow bells and congos, the rhythm runs deep.

A woman standing up for liberation against injustice. Fighting for her children. Women raped in the Congo, she fights for that to end. Women, old women, who lost their pensions and homes and families in the financial swindles tear at her heart. Refugees from Darfur, in a strange land, their women dragging children behind them, clothed in headscarves and ankle-length skirts, arrive at the welfare office where she greets them and tries to make them feel at home. Lesbians turned out by their families. Runaway school girls at the bus depot, scooped up by her before the pimps suck their blood. Families without healthcare, they need a fighter, too.

Any woman working, feeding and clothing her family. Any woman, loving her man. Any woman, liberating her nation and standing tall against the odds, bleeding Harriet Tubman, Samora Machel, Mumia Abu-Jamal. The African Woman, the future, our mothers and lovers, our sweetest comfort when we BLACK MEN stand up and strike for right! When you have touched the women, you have struck a mountain.

For our Sisters. Eternal love and respect.

The Greatest Women in History.

March. African Womens Month.

Bits and Bytes: The tragic play that is the Congo

In this era where a man of African descent has secured the throne of the most powerful nation of the world, a tragedy of enormous proportions continues to be played out in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is indeed easier to sell a “message of hope” in political change to cure what ails us… than to “commit to action” so as to change a situation of recurring despair and destruction. History is now defined by a “change of style” and is no longer based on substantive changes of situations. As “we” people of African descent today celebrate the historic accomplishment of one Black man, let us be mindful that today also… this very minute as you read these words… the future of a nation of people in Africa is being systematically and systemically erased from history. 

1. Three excellent and revealing perspectives on the war by The African Executive: Africa Rejoices Over Obama but Weeps Over Congo, DRC Crisis: The Britain-Rwanda Link and Congo Conflict: From Dried Hands to Blood  
2. The Black Agenda Report: How We Fuel Africa’s Bloodiest War
3. Excellent resource with more indepth information on the war and how to get involved, take action and make a difference: Friends of the Congo   

          

PBS Frontline: On Our Watch

I watched another heart-wrenching documentary on the genocide in Darfur. Titled “On Our Watch”, it was featured on PBS Frontline. It’s unbelievable that this atrocity is still occurring in 2008 and the leaders of our world community cannot muster the “will” to impress upon Sudan that it must stop this genocide. The documentary touched on some of the reasons why there is such a failure to act… the most vital being oil. It’s paradoxical that there are those who believe that Iraq was invaded because of it’s oil fields, while Sudan is left to continue it’s policy of genocide because of it’s oil fields.

There is lots of blame to go around for this failure to act, from the U.N; the U.S. (which has taken a hardline and imposed strict economic sanctions on Sudan, but could obviously do more… see here); the European Community, The Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Iran, The African Union, The Arab League and China… to name just a few of the major players. Let’s not forget about the Afrosphere, which could do much more to advocate for the people of Darfur. If half as much energy, focus and commitment was utilized by bloggers of African descent to organize, petition and demand action to stop the genocide in Darfur, as was generated to support the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, there would be more pressure on our leaders, both community and political, to address this issue. If we don’t show we care by taking action, they certainly won’t! For some of us, it will be a historic achievement to have a black face in the White House… while for others, it’s a historic achievement to survive the day without being raped, tortured or killed… and being able to have one meal for the day. Let me give a “dap and a big up!” to Yobachi over at BlackPerspectives.net, who has been constant in his commitment on keeping Darfur an issue in the Afrosphere.

Below are links to the PBS Frontline documentary and other informative sites on Darfur. There are also links on these sites giving you the opportunity to get involved in stopping the genocide.

1. On Our Watch
2. sudanreeves.org
3. Eyes on Darfur (Seo Company)
4. Save Darfur
5. Save Darfur: Partner Campaigns

“Poverty is the worst form of violence.” Mahatma Gandhi

Don’t ask: “Why does God allow this to happen?”

Pray: “God… give me the wisdom and strength to do what I must to stop this from happening?”  

Into the realm of darkness

They always operated within the realm of darkness. Whether it was under the cover of the darkness of night or during a bright sunny day under the darkness of hate… their ultimate goal was to spread the darkness of fear.

They would seize upon their Black prey like a pack of hyenas with an insatiable thirst for blood. His only crime: being a human being… or more accurately… acting like a human being. This would never do. Whites were human beings. Blacks were… if not animals, they were somewhere in-between… but certainly not human beings. Not equal to Whites. Maybe 3/4 humans…but that ultimately was for God to decide on “Judgment Day” when we all get to heaven. Until then… the White mob would decide on what would become “Judgment Day” for the Black man here on earth. 

So they would set upon the Black man with clubs, stones and bricks. He was beaten, whipped, kicked, punched, dragged and spat upon to an “inch of his life”. They purposely made sure that death wouldn’t come so easy… or quickly. He would be dragged mercilessly, all the while crying and begging for his life, to a tree which would be furnished with a rope. Sometimes he would be stripped naked. Most times he would be immersed in coal oil. Every time he would be hung on the tree.

The Black man, barely conscious and now numb due to the shock of all the trauma, would remember the sermon he had heard in church on what was now to become his last Sunday morning. The sufferings of a “White” Jesus would return to his mind and he would try to identify and sooth his soul that like HIM, he was bearing his cross. Like HIM he was innocent of any crime. Like HIM he was being led like “a lamb to the slaughter”. BUT as he takes his last breaths… as he looks through his swollen eyes into the hate filled souls, see the crooked smiles and hear the shouts and jeers of the citizens of the realm of darkness… there is a stirring in his soul… a moment of clarity of his mind… that he is not “White” like his beloved Jesus. No… he is a Black man. This is not a religious experience… a crucifixion to save the world. No… this is a terrible injustice. This is a lynching.    

Some of the perpetrators would cut off body parts for souvenirs… ears, toes, fingers. Pictures would be taken. If some thought and planning had gone into the event, a picnic, a barbeque with other festivities would take place. Then he would be set ablaze. A human torch. A beacon of light in the realm of darkness. 

November Carnival Submissions: “Reparations:what is the value of what we’re owed?”

Thanks to those who participated. Additions are welcomed and respectful discussion is encouraged. As always, if you have an idea for a future Carnival topic, let us know at Afrospear@hotmail.com.

Jamelle discusses what reparation’s mean and more importantly, how we should really conceive of reparations at The United States of Jamerica.  

Hathor argues that the public needs to understand the impact of slavery before reparations can be discussed at Hathor-Sekhmet.  

Aaron sees the reparations movement as engaged in an unwinnable political contest and nothing more than a distraction and diversion at A Political Season. 

Brother Pruitt lays out a blueprint (or should it be called “blackprint”) for his vision of the reparations movement as a guest blogger at Second Book of Asabagna.

November Carnival: “Reparations:what is the value of what we’re owed?”

I have never been a strong supporter for the call for reparations. I find that I expend enough energy just trying to get what I am currently entitled to, while I am struggling to hold on to what little I already have. Therefore I have not been really interested in fighting to get an apology and/or monetary compensation from “white” people for the past and current atrocities, injustices and other consequences that stem from slavery.

However, I recently received an interesting email which got me thinking more about this issue. It was from Brother Pruitt, who is the Reparations Leader and Chairman for the Committee for African American Reparations (CAAR) and the Reparations Union Lobbying Association. On his website he states:

“African-Americans should form a Reparations Union creating a power base in the tradition of lobbying and special interest groups that will consist of rich, middle class and poor blacks in addition to community conscious whites, jews and others who would like to see blacks win reparations and attain equality. This would enable African-Americans to announce the need for a congressional hearing to address the ills in society that exist because of slavery, segregation, institutional racism and discrimination. African-Americans owe it to themselves and their ancestors to expose politics and people responsible for maintaining corruption perpetuating unethical activity.”

From what I understood from his email and website, reparations is just one component, but a significant part of the overall healing and empowering process we need to go through as a community. 

What are your views on the issue of reparations? Is it a worthy cause or just a waste of time and energy? Will monetary compensation address the injustices and atrocities of the past in any significant way…. or will it lead to what Biggie Smalls once warned: “Mo’ money, Mo’ problems”? Is reparations only an issue for those in the Diaspora or should those on the African continent demand reparations also from Europeans and Arabs for the theft of human and natural resources and the continuing effects of colonialism?

Please have the link to your post submitted by Sunday 04 November at Afrospear@hotmail.com, and the carnival date will be Monday 05 November.