Roots of European Barbarism
Roots of European Barbarism “By the time Rome fell in 476 after a successive wave of bloody invasions by Huns and Visigoths and Vandals, the Christian church had become a militant as well as a doctrinal organization. No longer id Christians turn the other cheek in meek submission to tyranny. The Middle ages were marked by violent struggle between the Church and all opposition. The Arians and then the Cathars were vigorously attacked and reduced to scattered communities. It was not until papal aspirations for universal power inspired the first Crusade that Constantine’s dangerous gift plunged the Christians and their enemies into constant violence. One man’s lust for world domination maintained a steady flow of blood in Palestine and Asia Minor for more than two hundred years.” - Glenn Holt,
The Fury of God Holy Wars and Sacred Violence Page 29
Most of us are familiar with Cheikh Anta Diop’s
Two Cradle Theory where he explains the origins of the vastly differing approaches to life, living and social organization that evolved amongst the more sedentary, civilized and communal, dark skinned people in the Southern latitudes as contrasted to the ghoulish Caucasoids who developed their paternalistic, dog eat dog predatory behaviors as a result of the much harsher climatic conditions during the Ice age in the Steppe regions of Eurasia. We know what Diop said, it makes sense but for some reason we are not able to connect the dots to help us understand Indo-European, Aryan, Caucasoid, white's (whatever you want to call them), abhorrent behaviors. We fail to make the connection that what we see today is merely a cultural pattern that goes back thousands of years. Unlike their less immediate ancestors who were forced into cannibalism or who lived for the love of pillage and plunder, modern day whites resort to delusional fantasies to justify their high tech bloodlust and warmongering. What we see today is a trans-millennial extension of their psychotic and barbaric roots we can easily trace back to the Caucasus mountains. Europeans like to talk about Greece and Rome as if they were the ultimates of world cultures, but the whites we see on a daily basis are not direct descendants of these “civilized” European cultures. We have to begin to understand the roots of European or white violence, the kind of violence that plays itself out everywhere they set foot on this planet is in their genetic make-up and cultural memory. In recent years, modern Caucasians unlike their barbarian immediate ancestors the Vikings, Goths, Saxons, Normans. Huns Juts et al, have rationalized their individual and collective violence under the banner of “the white man’s burden”, “civilizing the heathen”, “saving souls” or in the case of the Arabs, spreading Islam. Most institutions in their society promote war, including the church.
So given that cultural legacy, given our current and recent past history with Europeans vis a vis slavery, rape, social caste etc, why would any of us be surprised Pat Robertson, the millionaire televangelist and right wing fascist called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez Frias. President Hugo Chavez Frias is the dully elected president of the oil rich nation of Venezuela. That South American nation exports 58.7% of its 2.3 million barrels per day of oil to the US. Despite that, the US covets
all of Venezuela’s oil and hates the fact a populous leader like Chavez refuses to dance to the larcenous and exploitive tunes Uncle Sam plays. Robertson is an end timer who professes to believe the imperialist policies of Israel, Britain and AmeriKKKa will hasten the earthly return of Jesus of Nazareth and usher in the long awaited Rapture; a sort of Christian New World Order whereby all true believing Christians will be swept up in the air (even if they are dead, buried and decomposed) to reign in heaven and earthly power with him over his defeated enemies (presumably anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe including Jews and Arabs). The Rapture didn’t happen when the Christians first invaded Palestine during the crusades when they shed rivers of blood in the name of their god. Perhaps the timing wasn’t right. The “Christianized” European tribes and kingdoms stopped fighting each other momentarily (incessant internecine intra and inter tribal wars characterize the real history of Indo- Europeans) and galvanized behind Pope Urban II who in 1095 instigated the first of eight crusades. Ostensibly the Pope’s goals were to “recapture the Holy Land” and control the revenues from the gullible “pilgrims” who trekked and traded there annually to see the “birthplace” and sepulchre of their Lord and Savior. The Europeans captured Jerusalem after much fighting and carnage but were subsequently repulsed several years later after the Muslims mounted a counter holy war called a jihad. Needless to say countless human beings were slaughtered on each side in the name of each combatant’s god (a sort of preview of what is happening in Iraq now) . Alas, for the Europeans, Pope Urban’s goal of controlling the Holy Land (if not the whole world) ended in dismal failure. Perhaps modern day crusaders like George W Bush and Pat Robertson should study more ancient and recent history because it appears they are about to experience the same consequences as their ancestors.
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Things That Make You Stop and Think
Things That Make You Stop and Think PARIS, Aug 28 (Reuters) - More journalists have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003 than during the 20 years of conflict in Vietnam, media rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Sunday.Since U.S. forces and its allies launched their campaign in Iraq on March 20, 2003, 66 journalists and their assistants have been killed, RSF said. The latest casualty was a Reuters Television soundman who was shot dead in Baghdad on Sunday while a cameraman with him was wounded and then detained by U.S. soldiers. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq has demonstrated the blatant hubris and cold blooded psychopathy of the Bush NeoConmen cabal’s agenda. While selling the illegal invasion as an act of US security (all modern wars have to be promoted and hyped so the suckers needed for cannon fodder will sacrifice their minds and lives to the ruling elites whose real agenda has nothing to do with the rationales for war) the war is really about oil, propping up sagging global US dollar hegemony and being Israel’s proxy. Despite Bush’s rhetoric about “Freedom is on the march” what we are really seeing in Afghanistan, Haiti and Iraq and the Balkans are virulent militarist fascism. The key to selling Bush’s war was gaining the support of the mainstream media, which was no problem since they were literally in bed with the Bush- Cheney program from the very beginning. The mainstream corporate media gave Bush and Co. a free pass from the jump, offering no editorial scrutiny of their platform, they abdicated asking tough questions and promised to serve dutifully as sycophantic cheerleaders. In fact, once the invasion started in order to provide one-sided pro-administration coverage of the war, the AmeriKKKan media and the military entered into an unholy alliance whereby “journalists” were embedded with military units to give a pro-war spin on their reporting. Any deviation from the warmongering propaganda was not tolerated and was strictly and forcibly dealt with. Perhaps that’s why there have been more journalists killed in Iraq in two years than during the whole twenty years of the Vietnam War! This pattern began in earnest in Afghanistan when the US deliberately bombed the Kandahar offices of the Arab version of CNN, Al Jazeera which offereed a more balanced view of the war than their US counterparts. When the invasion of Iraq was launched, the NeoConmen and the military decided to tightly control the flow of information and images. No pictures of mangled mutilated bodies, war -torn cites, no photos of US coffins, and only pre-approved (censored) copy would be allowed. For the Bush administration problems again surfaced with Al Jazeera and the foreign press who did not abide by their propaganda rules of engagement. Not surprisingly it has been foreign journalists, those who were more balanced, in their reporting, or more unabashedly anti-war and not “embedded” with US military who have suffered the brunt of US and coalition killings in Iraq. This along with the lies Bush told to sell the war and his Bizarro world propaganda approach where down is up, failure is success and defeat is winning have caused the military to be more trigger happy when it comes to journalists they perceive not to be on their “team”.
Thus the media rights groups Reporters Without Borders recently issued a communique stating more journalists have been killed in Iraq in two years than the Vietnam or Yugoslavian wars,
“The death toll in Iraq compares with a total of 63 journalists in Vietnam, but which was over a period of 20 years from 1955 to 1975, the Paris-based organisation that campaigns to protect journalists said on its Web site. During the fighting in the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995, 49 journalists were killed doing their job, while 57 journalists and 20 media assistants were killed during a civil war in Algeria from 1993 to 1996. RSF listed Iraq as the world's most dangerous place for journalists. In addition to those killed, 22 have been kidnapped. All but one was released. Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni was executed by his captors” (Reuters 08-28-05). Now not all the killings were done by US or coalition forces but, an inordinate number were; including one incident where US forces knowingly fired on a Baghdad hotel that housed journalists. Given the secrecy and deceit of the Bush administration, given their lies about 9-11 and theWar on Terrorism, does anyone in their right mind not suspect this trend is not part and parcel to their ongoing ravishment of truth and information?
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The Con game Continues
The Con Game Continues August 24, 2005—In recent weeks, two "revelations" of pre-9/11 US military-intelligence relationships with al-Qaeda "terrorists" and Osama bin Laden are being used as cannon fodder in an intensifying power struggle between rival political factions vying to seize the "war on terrorism" agenda for their own, and deepen the cover-up of 9/11. The furor over new stories involving alleged 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and US-bin Laden go-between Tarik Hamdi pits spinmasters against other spinmasters—Kean 9/11 Commission supporters versus hawkish Bush-linked 9/11 Commission attackers, neocons versus neoliberals, and intelligence and law enforcement agencies are at each other's throats again over "intelligence failures." While the spin has dwelled exclusively around "anti-terrorism" and various red herrings, and the supposed frustration over the tracking and arrest of al-Qaeda members, the true evidence trail continues to be purposely ignored. This trail leads directly to high-level US government officials and US intelligence agencies themselves (and US intelligence branches such as Pakistan's ISI), for their nurturing, guiding and placement of "Islamic terrorist" intelligence assets (including Atta, Hamdi, bin Laden and al-Qaeda), and US complicity in 9/11.- Larry Chin Online Journal 08-24-05
Recent revelations by Republican Congressman Curt Weldon ( R- Pa) that a special task force within the US military code named Able Danger actually was tracking alleged 9-11 highjacker Mohammad Atta and several other “al Qaeda” operatives during the waning months of the Clinton administration have added grist to the mill for those of us too skeptical to fall for the “9-11 was the result of massive intelligence failures” okey-doke . Weldon’s assertions were backed up by Army Lt.Col. Anthony Shaffer who stated a special operations unit run by military intelligence monitored and tracked Atta and company. However, this unit supposedly somehow failed to share or relay their information to other intelligence and law enforcement agencies! By insinuation Weldon is suggesting if they had, 9-11 could have been averted. Weldon and Shaffer castigated the 9-11 Commission for not following this lead during their so called investigation surrounding 9-11. Of course the Kean Commission which is to 9-11 what the Warren Commission was to the assassination of John F Kennedy; the official white washer whose job was to propagate the party line about “a lone gunman acting on his own” denigrated the importance of Operation Abel Danger saying its’ existence was not relevant to the commission’s investigation. Weldon, a warmonger who shortly after 9-11 sponsored a bill to reinstate the military draft ; probably has his own agenda for putting this information into the public domain and consciousness. As a Congressman he is up for re-election in 2006. As a Republican he must abandon ship and distance himself from the debacle Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq has wrought, toe the party line and face the wrath of the voters or find a scapegoat to take the pressure off of the NeoConmen for lying the US into a no win war. If Weldon can tie “intelligence failures” which could have prevented 9-11 to the Clinton administration it takes some of the pressure off of him and his fellow Republicans who can then claim they were merely playing the bad hand they were dealt, that they at least took the initiative to take the fight to the enemy in Afghanistan. Of course this argument doesn’t alter the fact the reasons Bush gave for invading Afghanistan and Iraq are either: unsubstantiated allegations (Osama bin-Laden was responsible for 9-11) or outright lies (Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was involved in 9-11).
Weldon and Shaffer both know the gullible and easily duped AmeriKKKan public doesn’t know both the CIA (in 1986) and the FBI (in 1996) way prior to 9-11, created Counterterrorism Centers, interagency networks that included fourteen intelligence agencies: CIA, Department of Treasury, Department of State, Defense Intelligence Agency, FBI, National Imagery and Mapping Agency, national Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency and the Army, Naval, Air Force, Marines and Cost Guard Intelligence agencies to share and exchange intelligence data. If we didn’t know this (but now we do thanks to Mamadou Chinyelu’s book Motive Means and Opportunity probable Cause for Indicting George W Bush his Sponsors and Aides for the Attack of September 11, 2001 page 74 we would actually believe 9-11 was the result of “intelligence failures”. However since we know about these intelligence sharing Counterterrorism Centers there is no way we can fall for the 9-11 party line; that rag tag Muslim fanatics operating from caves in Afghanistan circumvented the world’s most expensive, extensive and elaborate intelligence and security network to pull off 9-11!! Although it was not supposed to, Weldon’s revelation further debunks that absurdity proving once and for all, the US at least had significant foreknowledge enough to stop 9-11 but, chose not to. Another very real possibility is: rogue elements within the intelligence network plotted, planned and executed 9-11 using CIA “assets” patsies. If you think this is far fetched, look up Operation Northwoods. You’ll discover just how cold blooded, psychotic and scheming the US military can be.
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Actualize Your Invisible Means of Support
Actualize Your Invisible Means of Support “Corrupt men and organized criminal enterprises acting as governments cannot colonize the unseen and unknown. They do not and cannot establish hegemony over the unseen and the unknown. Spirituality is their Achilles heel. And through that which is revealed through spirituality, we will find our passage to liberty.” - Mamadou Chinyelu author
Motive, Means and Opportunity Probable Cause for Indicting George W Bush, his Sponsors and Aides for the Attack of September 11, 2001 Many Africans the world over, seem overwhelmed and dismayed the forces of evil could be so successful while we seem so vulnerable and impotent against their virulent attacks against us and the non-white world. However this perception is the result of the psychological warfare and menticide being waged against us in conjunction with the resulting affects of the overt genocidal programs we see daily that many of us take as the way things are supposed to be. However, it is all an illusion, part of the delusory notion of white supremacy, the bogus concept white people are superior and destined to make the world their footstool and commode. Admittedly the Europeans have been successful in brainwashing Africans into being ashamed of ourselves, believing we had no history or that we are little more than animals. One of the first things the Europeans did to discourage us was to attack and undermine our cultural cohesion was to denigrate and outlaw our cosmologies while mocking and deriding our spiritual beliefs. Africans are extremely spiritual. So much so that the alien invaders, once they established a toehold in our midst using deceit was to convince us our ideas about God and the universe were superstitions at best and totally useless at worst. Part of their plan to destroy our African identity was to outlaw the observance and practice of our traditional spirituality. Just as the European uses his religion of Roman Catholicism or its Protestant derivations as a political control mechanism, so too Africans used our cosmologies, values, rituals and rites as the glue to bind our societies into cohesive, effective and efficient social organizations. To undermine this social organization they had to take away our belief in the unseen energy/intelligence we know permeates the universe and substitute an anthropomorphic concept of god, a god that looks and acts just like them!
Our kidnaped ancestors rebelled and resisted by integrating the forcibly imposed “Christian” concepts of the Europeans into their remembrances of their African spiritual practices. Where religious oppression was less, like in South America or parts of the Caribbean, the African spiritual traditions held sway. It was in climates like this where African spirituality remained strong that pronounced resistence to European brutality was demonstrated. The Maroons of Jamaica, the Palmares of Brazil, the practitioners of Voodoo in Haiti all were successful in their struggle against European domination because they held onto, practiced and sustained their African identity and spiritual traditions. This explains why the Europeans hate the Haitians to this day. Therein lies the solution to our mental enslavement. We must return to our African spiritual understanding of the power of the unseen, the potency of the invisible to affect our physical reality and our ability to discern and manipulate these forces on our behalf! More and more Africans are seeking the wisdom, balance and empowerment of our African spiritual traditions to impact the quality of our lives and repulse the lethal values, culture and lifestyles of the barbarians who surround us. For us, AmeriKKKa has always been a brutal police state so the twenty plus year shift towards fascism should be nothing new. The problem is that prior to that shift the Civil Rights and Black Power movements forced the state to make nominal concessions as the cunningly moved to squash dissent and mount a counter attack to destroy African leadership using their vicious
COINTELPRO. Our children don’t see the blatant oppression and degradation policies of the state’s political apparatus and agencies like we did so they fall for the “things are better” and “AmeriKKKa is color blind society” "if you are down,it's yur fault" okey-doke. However during the last twenty years the fascists have determined to return to the by-gone era of robber barons, government corruption and virulent and authoritarian socio-economic-color cast. As white AmeriKKKans like Cindy Sheehan grapple with the crass militarism and fiscal self-destruction that is undermining their standard of living, we must not put our trust or emphasis on their socio-political system. Yes use it to keep the wolves at bay if possible; but we must use our most effective tools, our invisible means of support, our innate spirituality. Within us resides the animating life force/intelligence our African ancestors believed could be enhanced or minimized through ritual and benevolent or malevolent supernatural intervention. Our collective challenge is to recognize and fully actualize our inner powers and talents and enhance them for the benefit of ourselves and our people. Through legitimate divination, ritual trance, personal meditation, intuition and dreams we can discern the truth, gain guidance direction and the courage we need to transcend the desecrated and dis-spirited materialistic social and cultural milieus of our enemies. As intellectual warrior and scholar Mamdou Chinyelu stated, “through (African) spirituality we will find our passage to liberty”.
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Cracks In US Economy Expanding
Cracks In US Economy Expanding GM, Ford Motor Debt Ratings Cut to Junk by Moody's (Update1) Aug. 24 (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., the two biggest U.S. automakers, were lowered to junk by Moody's Investors Service. Moody's lowered General Motors Corp.'s rating two levels to Ba2 and the rating on its finance arm to Ba1. Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford was cut one level to Ba1, one step below investment grade. Moody's also reduced its rating on Ford Motor Credit Co. to the lowest investment grade. The Ford cuts affect about $150 billion in debt, Moody's said in a statement today. It's the second junk rating for Ford after Standard & Poor's lowered the company to non-investment grade on May 5. That will push the automaker out of the most widely followed investment-grade bond index by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and may spark selling of the bonds. Chief Executive William Clay Ford Jr., 48, saw his company's share of the U.S. auto market fall for 28 straight months through June. In July, sales rose 29 percent after the company offered employee-pricing discounts to all consumers. - Bloomberg.com 08-25-05
As the media focuses on the pros and cons of Cindy Sheehan’s challenge to George Bush to face her and answer her questions about why her son had to die for his lies, the beat goes on. The beat in this case refers to the real deal about the AmeriKKKan culture and economy. This week’s flap about Pat Robertson calling for the US to assassinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is part and parcel to the continuing moral melt down of AmeriKKKa. Robertson was one of the prime movers of the Christian Right, Bible thumping fascists who support the Nazification of AmeriKKKa who use the veneer of religiosity and morality to camouflage their bloodlust and megalomanical imperialism. Cindy Sheehan is like the little boy in the Hans Christian Anderson story
The Emperor’s New Clothes, the only one in the relam secure enough in their grasp of reality, rectitude to spontaneously acknowledge and proclaim the truth, the man in the parade of pomp and pageantry was as naked as a Jaybird. By refusing to directly confront Cindy Sheehan, Bush has further bunkered himself in his Bizarro World where colonialism is freedom, larceny is endowment and lies truth. Meanwhile in the economic sphere two major giants of US industry and capitalism: General Motors and the Ford Motor Company and their credit lending arms GMAC and Ford Motor Credit Company respectively have suffered another major setback. GM and Ford who employ thousands of AmeriKKKans and whose vendors, suppliers and credit customers form an impressive network within the domestic and global economy (both automakers now own foreign companies like Saab and Jaguar) have been losing money over the last year or so. In May, Standard and Poor investment dropped both companies' bond rating to junk status and recently Moody’s Investors Service did the same. This means unless their fortunes change and sales improve drasticly, investors will not buy their stocks and bonds further endangering both companies’ ability to remain competitive and viable. With labor contract negotiations looming with their unions, this does not bode well for the working class wage earner.
Bush may call himself the "War President" but his handling of the invasion and occupation of Iraq is not going well. His approval ratings and credibility are at an all time low; rightly so since he and his Chickenhawk NeoConmen are the ones putting AmeriKKKans at risk for a lie while Bush the liar was a draft dodger who went AWOL for over a year from his Texas and Alabama Air National Guard units. Since his installment as president in 2000 Bush has presided over a slumping economy much of which he blamed on 9-11 rather than corporate malfeasance, greed and corruption. Even as the economy has rebounded AmeriKKKa witnessed a protracted “jobless recovery”. If GM and Ford go belly up it would create an economic tsunami that will engulf workers and Wall Street. Yet you never hear Bush and Co. utter a mumbling word about this or the fact US bankruptcies are at record levels. According to a BusinessWeek Online dated 08-24-05 bankruptcies have hit record number during the last two quarters.
“The number of bankruptcies in the United States surged to an all-time high in the second quarter of this year as financially troubled consumers scrambled to file before a rewrite of bankruptcy laws takes full effect. Bankruptcy filings to federal courts in the April-to-June quarter totaled 467,333, according to data released Wednesday from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. That marked a record number of filings made in any quarter. Of that total, most -- 458,597 -- were personal bankruptcy filings; the remaining 8,736 were businesses filing for bankruptcy, the data showed.” The article anticipated another jump during the third quarter of 2005 just before the new bankruptcy law goes into effect in October.
“The record 467,333 bankruptcy filings in the second quarter surpassed the previous quarterly high of 440,257 filings in the second quarter of 2003, said Nathalie Martin, a resident scholar at the American Bankruptcy Institute.” What the article failed to mention was the new bankruptcy law was written by the major banks, credit card companies and is part and parcel of the Bush administration’s and Republican Party’s bend over backwards support of corporations and big business to the detriment of the little man and woman, their not too subtle form of class warfare. Perhaps this why Bush’s approval rating is plummeting so rapidly.
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7th Annual Traditional African Religion Conference
NARC Prepares for International African Religion Conference The National African Religion Congress (NARC) is preparing for their seventh annual international conference which will be held Thursday August 25 through Sunday August 28 at the Hilton Garden Hotel 1100 Arch Street. The planners are expecting representative from traditional African and diaspora African based religions to attend this year’s conference and ceremony. Practitioners of traditional African religions of: Ifa, Akan, Voodoo, Sanateria, Candomble and the Orisha Tradition of Trinidad and Tobago will travel mostly from across the United States and Nigeria to attend the conference. The theme of this year’s conference is Healing the Mind Body and Spirit The sessions are open to the public and the $230 registration fee includes: readings from certified priests and priestesses, Reiki therapy, massage and body work, diabetes and blood pressure screenings, dream interpretations, legal advice prayer therapy and workshops on the influence of the African drum in Hip Hop, drum workshop, literacy competency testing, art workshops and more. Conference planners expect about two hundred fifty priests and priestesses and approximately five hundred attendees for the Ceremony of Ceremonies and awards banquet dinner. The National African Religion Congress is a certifying organization that strives to maintain the integrity and authenticity of traditional African religions and provide a global directory of priest and priestesses and also serves as an advocacy umbrella organization to protect the rights of practitioners to observe and practice traditional African religions.
George Ware a Philadelphia resident is the president of NARC. During the past seven years he has seen a marked growth and acceptance of traditional African religions and his organization has helped overcome barriers of ignorance and prejudice directed at practitioners by governmental institutions. “In the seven years since NARC has existed we’ve made great strides especially with institutions because the first level of fighting against prejudice against these religions was bodies that had the power to interfere like police departments and city officials. We’ve worked across the whole United States to change the perceptions of what these priests and priestesses were doing and also showing them the limits of their powers in terms of the law (to interfere). We’ve made a lot of progress in that area. In a lot of instances it’s not so much fighting as it is keeping people abreast of what the realities are.” In addition to safeguarding the rights of individuals and priests and priestesses to practice African religions NARC also serves as a clearinghouse for information, the organization certifies priests and priestesses and publishes an up to date annual world wide directory. “The theme of this yea’s conference is Healing The Mind Body and Spirit. One of the primary programs we have begun to pursue on behalf of priests and priestesses is the recognition of the role of priests and priestesses in the healing of physical illness which is something they have been doing since day one but it’s not something that is known by people outside the religion. So we have begun to contact the health authorities the insurance companies, medical school to raise awareness of priest and priestesses role in alternative healing.’ Explained Ware. “We’re meeting with some success but there is some structural work that we have to on our side because there are protocols that have to be dealt with for instance accreditation and continuing education because not all priest and priestesses are involved in healing. So we have to accredit priests and we have a program in place for that and we have a continuing education program where we have workshops where priests and priestesses share their methodologies, their rituals and their techniques with other priests and priestesses which is broadening the scope of the healing powers because now the people from Santeria are sitting down with the people from Voodoo who are sitting down with the people from Nigeria and sort of getting their heads together and really broadening the healing power of the priest and priestesses through the education program. Those are the kinds of questions the insurers and medical schools are asking because they are getting a lot of feedback from the public that has turned its attention towards alternative medicine and is spending millions and millions of dollars on herbs, ginseng and all types of alternative approaches. Now you have George Washington University and the University of Pennsylvania medical schools developing departments of alternative medicine and they are trying to find ways to understand and include what it is.”
Ware also stresses traditional African religions offer means to heal and resolve some of the pressing social and economic problems facing people today. “We confront all kinds of problems we find are responsive to African religious practices both in terms of people who join the religion and as clients. People come to us to find solutions to problems of drug addiction, problems of broken families to problems of shattered economic life and we find a way to put their lives back together and heal them in those areas in the social arena. So we believe these religions need to be preserved but also made available to people because the problems that I’m talking about are not meeting with much success in terms of the way American society tries to solve them.” More African-Americans and continental Africans appreciate the rich cultural traditions of which traditional African religions are a part. Many are returning to their traditional religions. “Them looking at what we were doing here in America made them (continental Africans) more proud of their indigenous religion and in some instances feel more guilty of having abandoned it.” Shared Ware. The conference also offers opportunities for vendors in their International World Market. For a full conference schedule and itinerary visit www.narcworld.com or call (215) 455-0815
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Either You Are For Peace Or You Are For War
Either You Are For Peace Or You Are For War
“What's notable about the demonstrators of 2005 is how different they are from the protesters of the 1960s. The Vietnam era's antiwar movement got much of its energy and many of its foot soldiers from college campuses. And that, for a time, affected the movement's credibility. For students to march against the war, critics suggested, was not so much about politics as about cultural identity and self-interest, since young male college students, upon graduation, faced the prospect of military conscription. Many of Wednesday's protesters, by contrast, were taxpaying, gray-haired adults, urban and suburban. Among them were parents of soldiers, and the parents' neighbors, and people with no stake in the fight other than their beliefs. Such people are potentially harder for politicians to dismiss than college students. But if there is to be an antiwar movement of real consequence this time around, beyond what developed in the run-up to the war, it will need the energy and numbers that only the campuses can provide. Until now, in the absence of a military draft, there has been little mass action on campus. That will start to change in September, when students get back to school. Or it won't. At the same time, members of Congress will be returning to the capital after the August recess, having spent at least some of it listening to the home folks talk about the war. The lawmakers will be more willing to voice doubts about the Bush administration's handling of the war and to demand a timetable for bringing the troops home. Or they won't.”- Anti-War Landscape May Shift In September by Larry Eichel Philadelphia Inquirer 08-21-05
Cindy Sheehan's vigil has had an impact on the national consciousness, it has hardened the division lines between the Blue and Red States, anti-war and fascists, those who are pro system and apolitical grass roots activists. Thus far except for the massive outpouring of anti-war sentiment prior to Bush invading Iraq, those who opposed the war have been relatively silent in contrast to the massive pro-war propaganda campaign waged by the Bush administration and their minions in the corporate media. The Rove attack machine and his cable news sycophants drowned anyone out who dared vocalize misgivings or opposition to Bush’s imperialistic follies, painting them as fools or benighted liberals. Now as the inexorable KARMA Bush has wrought continues to materialize and the war and occupation are going badly, his approval ratings are plummeting lower every day. Major scandals in theValerie Plame investigation and AIPAC Spy case are percolating under the public’s consciousness due to under reporting by the Zionist influenced/controlled corporate media but despite that the people are losing confidence in Bush and his handling of the war. As we approach the forth anniversary of 9-1, look for an increasingly desperate Bush to use that event to bolster his sagging ratings and push his fascist war agenda. Cindy Sheehan, a mother who lost her son in Iraq and, a founding member of Gold Star Mothers an anti-war group has single handedly with help from a normally callous and pro administration media has put even more pressure on Bush and helped stoke the fires of a moribund anti-war movement. Her cries and quesiotns have helped bring the insanity and a critical examination of the immorality of the NeoConmen’s war to the public’s awareness. Cindy Sheehan may in fact be the catalyst to ignite a massive anti-war movement that will eventually bring down the Republican and Democratic Party sponsored war machine.
Most anti-war supporters put their hopes in the traditional Democratic Party whose roots were in blue collar, civil rights and “progressive”social movements. However the right leaning Democratic Leadership Committee (who can best be described as Republican Lite) undermined the Democratic Party's anti-war candidates and their platform. Anti-Bush and anti-war sentiment was so high in spite of John Kerry’s lackluster personality and ambivalent but essentially pro war campaign progressives held heir noses and voted in dorves for Kerry. The 2004 Presidential race pitted the anti-war community against acolytes of fascist imperialism. After a hard-fought campaign won by Bush using election dirty tricks; the anti-war camp’s hopes faded as the situation continued to worsen in Iraq. Bush and the NeoConmen emboldened by their election “victory”, pursued their plans to scuttle remnants of the New Deal by privatizing Social Security. But this gambit turned many AmeriKKKans against him and his corporatist programs. Reports documenting Bush’s lies have further alienated him from the public. So Cindy Sheehan’s vigil is bringing things into clearer focus. Folks are starting to see you can shout out the emperor is naked and people will acknowledge and rally around that truth. AmeriKKKa is at a critical juncture it its history, either sanity will prevail, the anti-war movement will assert itself, gain momentum, pick up grass roots and middle class moral support and efficiently derail the imperialist agenda or, the fascists will win and AmeriKKKa will plunge headlong into an abyss of moral impotence, perpetual war, resource sapping militarism and ruinous imperialism.
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The Ongoing News Blackout
The Ongoing News Blackout “If the same amount of energy that went into the analysis of the IIPA was applied to 18 USC 794, the White House would be in serious trouble and would be forced to change their plans. They wouldn't have the same time they have now, time to create intricate diversions, time to commit more treason. America, you have the means to fight this information war and you have the means to demand the media step up and tell the people what laws have been broken. And in doing this you can make them squirm, and you can force their hand and make them act with less time to plan. By exposing the truth, you force them to move faster, to rush their plans and in doing that they are more prone to make a mistake. Nobody does anything as thorough when they are rushing, compared to when they have time to plot. By ignoring discussion about 18 USC 794 and the death penalty or life in prison, the main stream media and blogosphere are aiding and abetting the enemy by giving it time and resources to plot further treason.” - TREASONGATE: Total Media BLACK OUT of 18 USC 794, Federal Espionage Statute http://citizenspook.blogspot.com/2005/08/treasongate-total-media-black-out-of.html
The mainstream media mind control apparatus like the humans that create and maintain it seem capable of only focusing on one idea or story at a time. Given there is only so much space on the front page or only so many pages in the newspaper or time during a broadcast some clear decisions must be made as to what will be covered, aired or emphasized. We need to understand the mainstream media is not on our side nor is it “free and independent”. It is in the control of the corporate executives who have increasingly through federal deregulation allowed fewer and fewer of them to control more and more divergent media outlets. Since the 2000 Presidential campaign we have seen this small circle of influential executives and owners give George W. Bush a literal free pass to aviod the nut house, go directly past Go, collect two hundred dollars and remain in the game no matter what lame brained statements or malapropisms he has uttered and disatrous policies he’s pursued! Since the 2000 election the mainstream media in stark contras to the way they dogged Bill Clinton, have allowed Bush and Co. to lie, invade several sovereign nations (Afghanistan, Haiti, and Iraq) execute regime change and wreck hellish havoc doing it with no accountability whatsoever! Anyone who dared question or challenge the Bush and NeoConmen cabal was demonized and portrayed as Un-AmeriKKKan, a supporter of terrorists, a fool or a liberal. Their vindictiveness and ruthlessness knew no bounds. In the course of their campaign to browbeat anyone who dared go up against the Rove warmongering machine they demonized former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson and knowingly and deliberately outed his wife Valerie Plame who was a covert operative of the CIA in violation of US law. As a result an investigation was empaneled but the Bushites didn’t give it much thought because their girl Judith Miller of the New York Times and one of the Bush administration’s most ardent warmongers refused to name her sources. For her loyalty though, she was subsequently jailed for contempt. Unfortuneately for Bush the investigation plowed forward and his main man Karl Rove has been implicated in the leak. Worst sstill; is several prominent NeoConmen have been identified as key participants in a wide ranging ongoing espionage investigation of the pro-Zionist American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that has penetrated the Pentagon and Defense Department at the highest levels. This investigation has greatly embarrassed and exposed the AIPAC as part of a far flung Israeli espionage network.
As news from Iraq worsens Bush’s approval ratings plummet further and anti-war sentiment grows, the last thing the administration needs is for Rove and the Neoconmen to be exposed as culpable in the Plame outing and the AIPAC espionage investigation. Hence the need for the mainstream media lapdogs to find or create a diversion to shift public attention off of Bush’s ongoing political woes. The missing co-ed story has played out, the Congressional MLB steroid use hearings story never caught on but the one story that is making headway during the dog days of the Summer of 2005 is the Cindy Sheehan grieving angry mother story. While it is not favorable to Bush, at least it takes the focus off of Karl Rove and the Zionist NeoConmen. The Right Wing attack dogs in the mainstream media and blogsphere can get their rocks off demonizing Sheehan whereas it would put them in an extremely awkward and untenable position defending the indefensible; Karl Rove braking the law or trying to cover for Franklin, Rosen and the foremost NeoConmen Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle as the ongoing espionage investigation exposes their role (if any) in the run up to Bush’s calamitous invasion and occupation of Iraq. What to do? Cover the Rove/ AIPAC stories or Cindy Sheehan and the recent Gaza pullout? For the corporate media this is a no brainer, the Right Wing nuts could savage Sheehan and claim it is the left wingers and liberal press who are supporting and manipulating her, thereby creating emotional controversy while pushing the more damaging and inter-related AIPAC and Plame stories from public consciousness. Also the pro Israeli spin on the Gaza pullout stories generate sympathy for Israel to counter the AIPAC fiasco. The Cindy Sheehan story is certainly newsworthy and timely but when you consider how much more damaging the Rovegate/ Plame/AIPAC stories are to this administration and the New World Order agenda you can see we are being played by the corporate media once again.
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Twenty- First Century Rosa Parks?
Twenty- First Century Rosa Parks? Initially I bristled when I read a Website commentary referring to Cindy Sheehan as the twenty-first century Rosa Parks. Huh? Are they serious? They can’t be for real? Rosa Parks by remaining seated stood up to a systemic, pernicious and virulent color caste system in AmeriKKKa. She went to jail but in so doing, she became the catalyst who sparked the Civil Rights movement by injecting courage and the belief in the possibility of justice into the hearts and minds of a weary and burdened people. Rosa Parks was a secretary of the Montgomery Alabama NAACP. She was an educated woman, quite, soft- spoken but resolute in her conviction that one person could make a difference. It was her standing in the community that helped unify, energize and galvanize African-Americans in Montgomery Alabama in the heart of the South to refuse to ride the public transportation system for 385 days straight! What happened to Rosa parks, getting arrested for not giving up her seat to a white person was the norm in the South in general and in Montgomery Alabama in particular. The onerous burdens of racial caste and dehumanization weighed heavily on the African-American community and its’ leadership was looking for a test case to challenge the city’s segregation laws. Rosa Parks was the right person at the right time. It was not only Rosa Parks but the community as a whole who were determined to make changes. Actually there had been several one day boycotts in the South particularly in Louisiana but they failed to get national attention or major media coverage. Nonetheless, the more I thought about the statement that Cindy Sheehan was the twenty-first century version of Rosa Parks the more plausible it became.
When Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955 the community was ready for action, in fact there were numerous others who had been arrested and the local NAACP even had a fifteen-year old girl, Claudette Colvin who had been arrested prior to Rosa Parks ready to be their test case. But they discovered she was pregnant which put a damper on using her. Park’s arrest was the spark that ignited latent yearnings for redress and justice. The NAACP and local ministers were able to take advantage of the passion and rising courage community cohesion to brave and endure intimidation by the Montgomery white power structure. The newly formed organization, The Montgomery Improvement Association organized and galvanized community support, more than 300 cars were used to car pool black to and from work and downtown retail stores. Fabricated history implies it was the good will of whites, or whites recognizing the error of their ways that ended the boycott. The truth is the boycott almost bankrupted the city’s bus company and severely impacted the bottom line of downtown retail establishments. It was the business leaders who called upon the city father’s to negotiate an end to the boycott. The rest as the say is history (more or less). Just as Rosa Parks was the right person at the right time, it appears Cindy Sheehan is also the right person at the right time. Prior to her vigil five miles from George W. Bush’s Crawford vacation ranch, very little anti-war news was being reported by the corporate mind control apparatus. Once they latched onto Cindy’s story (she is the mother of a young son who was killed in Iraq who desperately wanted to confront Bush about why her son had to die for a lie?) She has been all over the news and more and more people are sympathizing with her and supporting her. Just as Rosa Parks and the boycott leadership were demonized by the local Alabama media ;so too has Cindy Sheehan been ravaged by Bush supporters and their fascist acolytes in the Blogshere.
Perhaps Cindy Sheehan will become the catalyst for a massive anti-war movement that has thus far has remained lethargic, almost comatose in the face of clear evidence Bush lied to dupe the nation into invading Iraq. Just as the myth makers painted Rosa Parks as simply a tired hard working seamstress, the new myth makers are portraying Cindy Sheehan as a woman overwhelmed with grief due to the death of her son Casey. Prior to December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks had recently completed a workshop on race relations at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. Rosa Parks’ date with destiny was no apolitical fluke! Rosa Parks was a woman on a mission to break down the walls of racial caste in AmeriKKKa. Her arrest and the resulting Montgomery Bus Boycott was the literal spark which ignited a unified civil rights movement all across AmeriKKKa.. Likewise Cindy Sheehan appears to be on a mission not just to get answers about the death of her son; but also challenge the militarist and fascist policies of the Bush administration. She traveled to Crawford Texas in a painted bus with the words Veterans For Peace Impeachment Tour on the side. It remains to be seen whether or not Cindy Sheehan will be the catalyst for a full blown national grass roots anti-Bush, ani-war movement that will force an end to the Iraqi occupation. Is Cindy Sheehan a twenty-first century Rosa Parks? To my way of thinking, it is too soon to tell.
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Genocidal Programs Directed At Africa and Africans Worldwide
Genocidal Programs Directed At Africa and Africans Worldwide "African nations are forced to accept as a precondition for funding, family planning and all its attendant projects -abortion, contraception, sex education etc. A lot of money is expended by Western agencies, particularly Planned Parenthood of America, on contraceptives for Africa... In villages where there is no portable water, no electricity, and no health care services, the major concern of these world population control agencies is not development but family planning clinics" - African Caucus, Report on negative effects of population control on Africa Testimony on International Population Control Activities, 12 April 1994, sponsored by Population Research Institute
Part of the villainous and genocidal assault on Africa and Africans world wide is/was the formulation of a global program of population control. It is imperative we realize the psychopathic personality that drives the European ruling elites to attempt to dominate and subvert the natural order, destroy the ecosystem and subjugate the rest of humanity grows and worsens with each succeeding generation. In the Sixteen the Seventeenth centuries they used their own inborn diseases like syphilis and smallpox to wipe out indigenous populations around the world. Subsequently they hit upon the idea of planned depopulation using blankets laced with smallpox in addition to their weapons of mass destruction to destroy and undermine native populations. Biological weaponry was and is a prime tool in their arsenal against non-white people in their ongoing effort to reduce to the world population to manageable proportions. They fully realize they are only at most eleven per cent of the world’s population, their birth rates are in a state of decline which severely hampers their goal of maintaining hegemony over the world’s people. So to rectify this imbalance, they must severely curtail the growth and population rates of non-white people all over the world. In the forward to Del Jones’ book
Black Holocaust 2000 I wrote,
“The most reliable way to predict and anticipate current and/or future behaviors ad relationships is to study and scrutinize past behaviors.” If we are to survive the relentless onslaught of global white supremacy, we must recognize the underlying abnormal psychology that drives the Europeans to do what they do. African centered psychiatrists like Dr. Bobby Wright, Francis Cress Welsing and Franz Fanon laid a clear foundation for us to build upon by examining European psychopathy. Their efforts have helped us realize we are not the ones who are crazy. It is madness to acquiesce and passively submit to menticide (the deliberate destruction of a people’s mind) and genocide.
In his book
The Black Holocaust Del Jones exposed Global 2000 a nefarious program of genocidal population control aimed at reducing the population of people of color around the world.
“Our holocaust is real and it is brought to you by real enemies that manufacture situations to depopulate the planet. The key to understanding this is to beware of the ‘Global 2000 ' report done at the request of then President Jimmy Carter. The report deals with global management of land, resources and population. It is an ideological document that warns that the earth is being over populated. It warns that land and natural resources are at a premium. It is a document of fear, developed to make whites panic at their zero population growth as the populations of other people’s grow” Page 73. Global 2000 was more than a report it was an ideological blueprint for genocide. Just as we have discovered the genesis of George W. Bush’s calamitous imperialist policies in Iraq were concocted by the Project for New American Century and their white paper entitled
"Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century"; Global 2000 was the plan by which the New World Order elites determined to snuff out the lives of millions and prevent the birth of more black, brown, red and yellow babies. Their agenda is comprehensive and will be accomplished by a myriad of methods both overt and covert. One way is using economic hit men from the IMF, World Bank and US-AID who set terms of loans that impose planned parenthood or fertility control policies as pre-conditions for the loan. They also will use land control, decimation of the economy by setting crop quotas, externally manipulating and destabilizing the cash crop market, or flooding the country with cheaply produced subsidized imports and finished products the local farmers and manufacturers cannot compete with, privatization of natural resources such as water purification plants and imposing exorbitant user fees that the poor cannot afford. Another tactic is forcing potentially lethal genetically altered Frankenfoods on African nations. These conditions will further destabilize the country and region contributing to increased famine, poverty, sickness and death which are the goals of whites all along! Even before Global 2000 was written and released the New World order had promulgated their strategies and tactics for depopulation of people of color. During the Nixon administration, Rockefeller agent and TriLateralist Henry Kissinger penned what was called U.S. National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200). What is NSSM 200?
“The official policy of the U.S. regarding population control in foreign policy is spelled out in U.S. National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200), written by Henry Kissinger. NSSM 200, subtitled ‘Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests,’ warned that increasing populations in developing countries threatened U.S. strategic, economic, and military interests. It suggested that competition from new world powers would rise when developing nations had sufficient populations to utilize their national resources to their full potential. Thus in order to ensure U.S. strategic, economic, and military interest, at the expense of developing countries, it proposed population control to address potential population growth and specifically targeted 13 countries whose growing populations suggested coming power. The report spelled out a plan to bring about ‘a two-child family on the average’ throughout the world ‘by about the year 2000.’ Interestingly, NSSM 200 went into detail about avoiding U.S. responsibility for population-control programs by ensuring that the UN and international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank adopt population-control policies as prerequisites to their giving of aid. The report suggested furthering the camouflage by mandating that countries accepting aid from the UN or the banks form their own population-control ministries. NSSM 200 also noted that the U.S. government played ‘an important role in establishing the United Nations Fund for Population Activities to spearhead a multilateral effort in population as a complement to the bilateral actions of AID and other donor countries.’ It added that ‘with a greater commitment of bank resources and improved consultation with AID and UNFPA, a much greater dent could be made on the overall problem.’ Moreover, the report asserts that ‘mandatory programs may be needed and that we should be considering these possibilities now.’” -http://www.theinterim.com/2002/april/02nobelwinner.html .
While we’re asleep or distracted by their planned media diversions they are plotting, planning and moving ahead. It’s all part of their drive to control the world. Their plans are in full effect, they want total control over the earth, its resources and its people. We can see their agenda being played out all around the world despite suppression and obfuscation by the corporate owned mind control apparatus. The psychology of whites has not changed, they mean death to us, the sooner we realize this and galvanize our forces and resources to resist and counter their moves by controlling our own food supply, building an economic infrastructure and fashioning cohesive race first oriented ideology the better off we will be.
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National Grass Roots Rally For Justice and Prison Reform
National Grass Roots Rally For Justice and Prison Reform Junious Ricardo Stanton
Washington D.C. August 13, 2005 Roberta Franklin is a no nonsense take charge type Sistah. She is a community activist and a radio talk show host on WAPZ 1250 AM in Montgomery Alabama. Several years ago she became an advocate for prisoners’ rights, sentencing reform and the re-enfranchisement of prisoners . Through her efforts the state of Alabama reversed a law that disenfranchised prisoners. As a result Roberta decided to call for a national march and rally to focus attention on the bourgeoning Prison Industrial Complex, the inequities of the “Justice System”, draconian sentencing laws and human rights abuses that occur on a regular basis throughout the United States. The Journey For Justice is a grass roots movement that reached out and contacted prisoner right groups, legal and drug reform advocates and family members of incarcerated persons of all nationalities and ethnic groups. Roberta Franklin was able to galvanize a wide ranging network to commit to supporting the rally. Groups such as: DRCNet, Drug Policy Alliance, Harm Reduction Coalition, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, The November Coalition, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the US Marijuana Party and the Women's Organization for Drug Prohibition Reform, as well as groups such as Critical Resistance, which seeks to "abolish the prison-industrial complex," Morris Dees' Southern Poverty Law Center, the Southern Center for Human Rights, and Families Against Mandatory Minimums. Die hard advocates converged on Washington D.C. and held a rally reception Friday evening and the rally itself at Lafayette Park across from the White House Saturday August 13th from 9 AM to 2 PM braving one hundred plus degree heat to proclaim their solidarity and commitment to prison and human rights reform. One man David Losa a representative of Families To Amend California’s Three Strikes bicycled three thousand miles from Santa Barbara California to Washington D.C. to protest California’s 25 years to life, Three Strikes Felony Law.
The Journey was the trip to Washington D.C. for a rally and demonstration to link with like minded folks and develop strategies to fight for prison, sentencing and drug law reform in the U.S. Several hundred people came from all across the country to stand across from the White House to let the powers that be, although George W Bush was at his home in Crawford Texas, know they want fundamental change in the prison system and sentencing laws. Efia Nwangaza of Greenville South Carolina is the National Co-chair of the JERICHO Movement to Free U.S. Political Prisoners. She came to support the Journey For Justice. “I’m the national co-chair of the JERICHO Movement to recognition and amnesty for U.S political prisoners, we support the Journey because we recognize the hand that dealt the blow to political prisoners is the same hand that deals the blow to the prisoners of politics. It’s apolitical decision as to what human behavior is criminal. And he behavior that has been chosen to be criminalized is that behavior which is perceived to disrupt the commercial interests of white male property owners and to threaten the structural mechanism which contains, controls and crushes dissent, and aims to crush the human spirit. We see the rise in fascism manifesting itself in the form of the PATRIOT ACT which is just a legitimizing of COINTELPRO, the unlawful campaign of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to crush progressive and revolutionary leadership in this country, to destroy the Black Panther Party, The Black Liberation Army, the American Indian Movement, the Puerto Rican Independence Movement; they are the people that the JERICHO Movement represents.”
Roberta Franklin was pleased with the turn out and participation and is looking forward to next year for an even greater number of people participating. “I’m pleased with the response, the people who came out, the participation. This is a good start, next year we will be be even larger and we will keep coming back until we get what we want, which is a national agenda for justice, prison and sentencing reform.” For more information about Journey For Justice and Family Members and Friend of People Incarcerated call (334) 220-4670.
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Leeches In Suits Sucking Africa Dry
Leeches In Suits Sucking Africa Dry
“From Senegal to Zambia, from Mali to Tanzania, from Cote d'Ivoire to Uganda, entire sectors of the domestic industry have been wiped out, with devastating consequences. Not only has the industrial sector contribution to domestic product continued to fall, but also the industrial workforce has continued to shrink dramatically. In Senegal, more than one third of industrial workers lost their jobs in the 1980s. The trend was accentuated in the 1990s, following sweeping trade liberalization policies and privatization imposed by the IMF and the World Bank, especially after the 50% devaluation of the CFA Franc, in 1994. In Ghana, the industrial workforce declined from 78,700 in 1987 to 28,000 in 1993. In Zambia, in the textile sector alone, more than 75% of workers lost their jobs in less than a decade, as a result of the complete dismantling of that sector by the Chiluba presidency. In other countries, such as Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, Zambia, Tanzania, etc. similar trends can be observed.”- Demba Moussa Dembele, THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND AND WORLD BANK IN AFRICA: A 'DISASTROUS' RECORD http://www.pambazuka.org/
When we look at Africa through the eyes of the Western mass media we see famine, starvation, poverty, war, devastation and instability and we are told these condition are the result of African leader’s ineptitude corruption, moral deficiencies and lack of ability. The truth of the matter is the woeful condition in Africa are a direct result and legacy of European colonialism, NeoColonial political and Neoliberal economic policies. The IMF World Bank US-AID have replaced the monopoly trading companies and the G8 and Multinational CEOs who do the bidding of their Bilderberger and TriLateralist New World Order puppeteers have replaced European monarchs as the prime charter granters, divider uppers and sphere of influence peddlers; nevertheless the results remain the same, systemic predatory exploitation, trade imbalances and inequities and divide and rule tactics designed to keep Africa in political shackles and economic bondage for centuries. The prime instruments the blood sucking imperialists use are: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and similar agencies like US-AID in the guise of aid, loans and assistance. They assist all right, assist the West in sucking the resources out and imposing harsh and stultifying conditions on the leadership forcing them into the Hobson’s choice of onerous debt, high interest rates and debt service, the privatization of their natural resources or covert destabilization tactics such as assassination and overt economic sanctions. This is really what is keeping Sub-Saharan Africa poor and impotent. Their goal is to prevent each African nation and the continent from being politically self-sustaining, free of burdensome debt and able to affect policies that improve the overall conditions of the masses. In an eye opening article entitled
The International Monetary Fund and World Bank In Africa: A Disastrous Record by Demba Moussa Debele which appeared online at www.pambazuka.org we read,
“In a report released in September 2001, UNCTAD indicated that the average income per capita in SSA was 10% lower in 2000 than its 1980 level. In monetary terms, average income per capita fell from $522 in 1981 to $323 in 1997, a loss of nearly $200. The same report said that rural areas experienced an even greater decline in income. These statistics were confirmed by the World Bank, which says that income per capita in Sub Saharan Africa contracted by a cumulative 13% between 1981 and 2001. The 2004 edition of the World Development Indicators says that SSA is the only region in the world where poverty has continued to rise since the early 1980s, that is at the onset of IFIs' intervention. According to that document, in 1981, an estimated 160 million people lived on less than $1 a day. In 2001, the number had risen to 314 million, almost double its 1981 level. This means that approximately 50% of Africa's population lives in poverty. When the threshold is $2 a day, the numbers rise from 288 million to 518 million, during the same period.” The article is extremely critical of the IMF and World Bank’s role in all of this. “ One of the main objectives of financial liberalization is to make African countries ‘attractive’ to foreign direct investments. But as the experience of development shows, foreign direct investments follow development, not the other way around. In addition, despite all ‘the right financial policies’, foreign investments continue to elude Africa, with less than 2% of flows to developing countries, despite having among the highest rates of return on investments in the world. And these flows are concentrated in a few oil-producing and mineral-rich countries, according to UNCTAD and the World Bank. In reality, financial liberalization has yielded little gains. For most African countries, it has been associated with huge costs. First, it entails higher levels of foreign exchange reserves to protect domestic currencies against attacks resulting from speculative short-term capital outflows. Second, financial liberalization has increased the likelihood of capital flight, in part as a result of a greater volatility of domestic currencies. The high costs of trade and financial liberalization further weakened African economies and opened the way to the privatization of the continent. Privatization, like financial liberalization, is seen by the IMF and World Bank as an instrument to promote private sector development, which has been elevated to the status of ‘engine of growth’. The privatization of State-owned enterprises (SOEs), including water and power utilities, has been one of the core conditionalities imposed by the two institutions, even in the context of ‘poverty reduction’. Most of the foreign direct investments registered by African countries in the 1990s came as a response to privatization of SOEs. No sector was spared, even those considered as ‘strategic’ in the 1980s, such as telecommunications, energy, water and the extractive industries. In 1994, the World Bank published a report assessing the process of privatization in SSA. After complaining about the slow pace of privatization throughout the region, it issued a warning to African governments to accelerate the dismantling of their public sector, accused of being ‘at the heart of Africa's economic crisis’. The process of privatization peaked in the late 1990s and ever since has leveled off, despite more deregulation, liberalization and all kinds of incentives offered to would be investors. To date, it is estimated that more than 40,000 SOEs have been sold off in Africa. However, the ‘gains’ from privatization, projected by the World Bank and the IMF, have been elusive. In fact, many privatization schemes have failed and contributed to worsening economic and social conditions. Almost everywhere, privatization has been associated with massive job losses and higher prices of goods and services that put them out of reach of most citizens .” If this were only happening in one or two African countries we could say, well this is just an isolated pattern, but the fact it is happening throughout Sub Saharan Africa and is being directly induced by policies of the IMF and Wold Bank shows it is part of a conspiracy of re-enslavement, dependency and impotence. So the recent G8 summit and Live 8 PR extravaganzas were just that, PR and propaganda ploys to cover the real reasons Africa is in debt in the first place and to reshuffle the deck so the situation remains unchanged. The article also points out how the IMF and World Bank collude to strangle Africa economically,
“The second track in weakening the role of the State in development was to deprive it of financial resources. Trade and financial liberalization achieved in part that goal. As already indicated, trade liberalization not only led to a greater loss of fiscal revenues, following lower tariff barriers, but it also led to huge trade losses. This was compounded by financial liberalization which entailed further fiscal losses resulting from tax holidays and low income tax rates. To make up for these losses, the African State had to resort to more and more multilateral and bilateral loans and credits, which further alienated its sovereignty. As a result, many African States have been stripped of all but a handful of their economic and social functions. Cuts in spending mostly fell on social sectors. State retrenchment primarily aimed at eliminating subsidies for the poor, removing social protection, and abandoning its role in fighting for social justice through income redistribution and other social transfers to the most disadvantaged segments of society. This explains, among other things, the degradation of many basic social services and the explosion of poverty in Africa, since 1981, as the World Bank itself has acknowledged. While dismantling or weakening the economic and social roles of the State, the IMF and World Bank have sought to build or strengthen the functions most useful to the implementation of Neoliberal policies and the promotion of private sector development. This explains the insistence on ‘capacity building’ or on ‘institution building’, heard over the last few years. However, the institutions that the IMF and World Bank talk about are not for development, but for markets. In other words, they propose building institutions supportive of Neoliberal policies and in the service of the private sector, especially foreign investors. Thus, the ‘institution building’ agenda promoted by the IMF and the World Bank has nothing to do with promoting democracy and protecting human rights. In fact, the Neoliberal conception of governance undermines both since it deprives representative institutions of their role in formulating public policies following open and democratic debates. They are reduced to implementing what the IMF and World Bank and their G 8 masters decide for African countries and their people.” The insightful article concludes by saying,
“The IMF and World Bank have utterly failed in ‘reducing poverty’ and ‘promoting development’. In fact, they are instruments of domination and control in the hands of powerful states whose long-standing objective is to perpetuate the plunder of the resources of the Global South, especially Africa. In other words, the fundamental role of the Bank and Fund in Africa and in the rest of the developing world is to promote and protect the interests of global capitalism. This is why they have never been interesting in "reducing" poverty, much less in fostering ‘development’. As institutions, their ultimate objective is to make themselves ‘indispensable’ in order to strengthen and expand their power and influence. They will never relinquish easily that power and influence. This explains why they have perfected the art of duplicity, deception and manipulation. In the face of accumulated failures and erosion of their credibility and legitimacy, they have often changed their rhetoric, but never their fundamental goals and policies. This is why they cannot be trusted to bring about ‘development’ in Africa. If the experience of the last quarter of a century has taught Africa one fundamental lesson it is that the road to genuine recovery and development begins with a total break with the failed and discredited policies imposed by the IMF and the World Bank.” As long as the leeches in suits can suck Africa dry using loan shark tactics backed by the CIA, MI6 and Western imperialist forces Africa will remain at risk until a strong Pan-Africanist movement breaks the shackles of Western induced dependency.
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US Determined to Push Frankenfood s on Africa
US Determined to Push Frankenfood s on Africa “The PR exploitation of drought and hunger in Zambia shows that for the GM lobby there are no limits, even when it involves rewriting history and manufacturing crimes against humanity. This year, following scanty and erratic rainfall, many of Zambia's maize fields have had the life scorched out of them. In some provinces the severity of the drought may mean a crop failure of 100 percent. With maize reserves falling short of the country's requirement, the Zambian government has banned the export of maize meal to neighbouring countries in a bid to forestall the looming food deficit. This crisis is reminiscent of the crises Zambia faced in 2000 and 2002. It's not only the threat of hunger, though, that's reviving painful memories; it's also the way in which that threat is being exploited. For the genetically modified foods lobby, tragedy spells opportunity, with drought and crop failure providing the perfect platform to pressure the Zambian government over its resistance to genetically modified organisms. So far, instead of going down the GM route, Zambia has been looking to alternatives to feed its population. Three years ago, when that strategy was first adopted, it led to Colin Powell's denunciation of Zambia at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg. And Powell's attack was just one element in a virulent US/industry campaign of pressure and dissimulation that continues to this day.”- Jonathan Matthews www.freezerbox.com 06-20-05
To their credit several African leaders are resisting efforts by the multi-national agribusinesses like Monsanto to dump genetically engineered or modified foods often called Biotech products or
Frankenfood on their people. Several weeks ago I wrote apiece pointing out how Kenya was resisting the Frankenfoods offered by the West. I recently came across additional information showing that Zambia is also opposing importation of genetically modified corn despite a severe drought that is threatening their total maize crop this year. Of course whenever Africans stand up for ourselves and exert our right of self-determination we are demonized and portrayed as the bad guys, ironically the term the US military also uses to describe the Iraqis fighting to oust the AmeriKKKan warmongers from their homeland. In the case of Zambia their leaders have remained resolute in their desire to explore alterative natural means to feed their people. For the leeches at big agribusiness and their US government sycophants, the famine in Southern Africa which impacted Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho and Angola presented a prime opportunity to flood the region with their excess inventory (they have large inventories because many European nations refuse to buy them) of genetically altered seeds and foodstuff. The leaders of Kenya and Zambia are to be commended for holding out because of concerns about the lack of adequate testing and the safety of genetically engineered ( the words biotech, engineered, altered and modified well be used interchangeably) seeds and foods. Of course the agribusinesses are motivated by potential profits and could care less about the any dangers of eating plants that have been cross pollinated or genetically melded with fish, animals and even human genes and DNA! Zambian leaders even sent their scientists (the Western media would have us believe Africans and science are mutually exclusive)
and their economists on a fact finding tour of the laboratories and regulatory agencies of US, Europe and South Africa (SOuth Africa is the leading proponent of GM foods on the continent) to determine whether or not GM seeds or corn would be safe and a good investment. Their experts returned and advised Zambian presidentLevy Mwanawasa to pass on the GM corn due to inconclusive studies.
Whites don’t like to be told no or that their products are Wack, especially by Africans so they put extreme pressure on the regional governments to accept the GM maize by kick starting their PR/media mind control machines to globally attack, denounce and demonize the African leaders saying their actions were irresponsible and would cause massive deaths from starvation. Zambia was the only nation that did not capitulate to US pressure. To his credit President Mwanawasa was able to secure alternative food sources and prevent the dire consequences the US mind control apparatus was forecasting. The question this time is, how long will Mwanawasa be able to hold out? Zambian leadership is in the cross hairs of the corporatist Bush administration. According to an article in the Online alternative medium
www.freezerbox.com The US economic/policy hit men are out to get Mwanawasa,
“But for the GM lobby, the failure to offload GM food even onto a country wracked by hunger made for a humiliating global spectacle, and they weren't about to back off. The tone had been set at the Earth Summit when Andrew Natsios, the head of USAID, had gone after the organizations opposing GM. ‘The Bush administration,’ Natsios warned, ‘is not going to sit there and let these groups kill millions of poor people in southern Africa through their ideological campaign’. Also on the US hit list were Zambia's leaders. The US Ambassador to the UN Food and Agriculture Agencies, Tony Hall, called for African leaders who had refused US food aid to be tried ‘for the highest crimes against humanity in the highest courts of the world.’” Part of the problem is the US wants to dump its Frankenfoods on Africa because the European Union will not open their markets to US freakfood. Unlike in AmeriKKKa where the USDA rolled over for Monsanto and the other giant Frankenfood makers the EU, like Kenya and Zambia is demanding thorough testing and safety clearance of GM foods before they approve them for consumption. This means potential losses and irate shareholders at Monsanto so the battle is far from over, a UK organization, www.GMWatch.org Reveals that Africa is the prime target for US Frankenfood manufacturers,
“Amidst this enthusiasm for genetic engineering, there has been little space for critical reflection. Leaping into genetic engineering brings with it a wide range of biosafety issues including health and environmental risks, and broader socio-economic impacts. It requires the acceptance of intellectual property rights on living organisms, the privatisation of public research, and expensive research and development at the expense of farmer-based innovation. Instead, what we are witnessing are aggressive attempts especially by the United States through its agency for international development, USAID, and the genetic engineering industry to impose GM crops on Africa under the guise of addressing food insecurity, reducing environmental stress and fighting poverty. The potential for agri-businesses to profit from hunger in Africa through, ostensibly the provision of food aid, technical assistance, capital investment in agricultural research, capacity building and the funding of biosafety initiatives, is enormous.” Africa is the prime target and the biotech and GM lobbies are making inroads throughout the continent. Pray that other African leaders will demonstrate the courage and resolve the leaders of Kenya and Zambia have in resisting the imposition of Frankenfoods on their people.
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Transmute Your Frustration
Transmute Your Frustration Just as the within smallest seed is encoded the potential for the most beautiful and radiant flower, the tallest, thickest oak tree or the most tantalizing fruit; so too resident within each of us is an animating dynamic spirit/intelligence whose natural tendency is expansion and actualization. It is the nature of the human spirit to seek the expression of the indwelling gifts, talents, aptitudes and proclivities resident within each of us. This is the essence of life, it is what living is all about. In our free and most enlightened state it would be the duty of the society to discern and assist in the actualization of the genius within its membership. In many indigenous societies, this responsibility is taken very seriously and is executed through rituals, divinations or the occult sciences. In a benighted and backward cultures like those established by the Aryans, this notion of reciprocal social nurturing and responsibility are missing. Any serious study of the indigenous Caucasian cultures of the Steppe region in Eurasia will reveal it spawned a ruthless and predatory dog eat dog, every man for himself cultural outlook. The Indo-European spread these behavioral patterns as they expanded into Europe, Asia and subsequently everywhere they set foot on planet Earth. Their legacy aggression, their love of war, pillage, plunder and domination are undeniable. We can see these patterns being played out this very moment all over the world albeit under the banners of noble sounding verbiage like “democracy “, bringing peace” “civilization” and the “War on Terror”. Once the invaders conquered, their target population and region, they set up a repressive/oppressive color based social dynamic with themselves at the top of the hierarchy and the rest based upon color gradations with the darkest at the very bottom!
Our situation as Africans in AmeriKKKa is a variation of that centuries old theme. When we look at our status in the overall arrangement of AmeriKKKan society, although we have contributed much we are still relegated to the margins. The vestiges of the racial caste system euphemistically called “segregation” still exist only, in more subtle forms. One of the consequences of this continued oppression (oppression: The act of oppressing, excessively restrictive authority or power; severity; hardship; cruelty; a sense of heaviness or weight on the mind or body, depression- The New Webster’s Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language) is an omnipresent animus, tension and uneasiness on the part of both the oppressor and the oppressed. Having set up the system with themselves in the most favorable positions and a skewered power relationship so all rewards are based upon white skin privilege or benefits are accrued by Africans for the maintenance of and in service to the oppressor’s system and agenda creates a deep sense of frustration on the part of the victims of global white supremacy. The Dictionary of Psychology defines frustration as: blockage or thwarting of goal directed behavior, an unpleasant state of tension anxiety and heightened sympathetic activity resulting from blockage or thwarting. What is this blocking and thwarting? It is the deliberate denigration of our selfhood and humanity, the minimizing our innate talents and abilities by treating us as “less than” inferior beings, and writing us off as worthless and subhuman. The effects of this oppression are an unpleasant state of tension, anxiety and anger due to our systemic maltreatment and dehumanization. Most of us are frustrated but many aren’t able to articulate precisely why we feel this way. We know something is wrong but can’t put our fingers on exactly what. Part of the problem is we are locked into a socio-political system that is the very antitheses of our natural African systems. This is exacerbated by the fact we have no clue of who we really are, what our life’s mission is, nor do we receive any support for discovering or helping us actualize it. We are dismissed or pigeon-holed into educational systems and occupations that stifle our innate genius because we lack the knowledge, options and guidance to match our nurtural aptitudes with ways to express and manifest them. Doors are closed to us simply because we are black. And we are subjected to a program of menticide designed to drive us insane. This process is very distressing and frustrating. Often we seek to anesthetize this strain and pain by using alcohol or drugs or engaging in self-sabotaging and destructive behaviors like overspending, over eating and reckless interpersonal or sexual activities.
In order to heal we must first recognize and admit we are ill. We have to acknowledge this uneasiness, this inner agitation and frustration and grasp that it is not healthy to maintain over long periods of time. We have to transmute or re-channel this emotional and psychological energy into self-affirming and self-actualizing activities. The process is a cognitive one; it begins with our thinking, how we think and what we think about. We have to consciously and assiduously reprogram our minds to think of self and group first. We must learn to take an ethnocentric approach to life and living. This will require a major mind shift because we have been programmed very well to think of serving white folks first and ourselves last, if at all! We must rethink what it means to be a human being. For models we can and ought to refer to African philosophies from ancient Kemet, or the intricate ideologies of the Akan, Yoruba or Kongo cultures. There we will find pathways to our psychological, emotional and spiritual liberation. We can also tap into the resident omniscience within ourselves through meditation and intuition. We can begin to pursue our dreams and goals; after all frustration is the blockage and thwarting of goal-directed behavior. We must remain true to our goals and life’s mission.
We have an obligation to be purposeful and goal oriented and not allow obstacles or opposition deter us. When we encounter blockages, we must not become frustrated. We have to examine the opposition and determine its’ power. If we can overcome or transcend the situation using our inner and external resources, fine. If not, we must not allow discouragement or frustration to set in. Instead of focusing our emotions outwardly or negatively imploding, we can redirect our energies into positive activities (mental, emotional and physical) that will assist us in achieving our goals. We can modify our strategies and tactics so we are not thrown off task. Resistence and opposition are natural, they are a part of all endeavors great and small. We just have to find ways to overcome them. Remember the principles of aerodynamics, airplanes fly not only using thrust but also by manipulating air resistence and pressure. Wind and air ppposition helps the plane fly! Expect opposition to your goals but use it to strengthen yourself and accomplish your undertaking. Redirect the energy you would use being frustrated anxious and angry into ways that trigger your inner resources to solve problems and attract to yourself the needed allies to help succeed. Life is lived from the inside out. Transmuting frustration is an inner process. Our inner self is the first thing we need to learn to master and control. Once we do this, we can use our self-mastery and control to fashion our personal and collective outer reality; one that curtails or eliminates our oppression.
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Look Beyond The Headlines (Lies)
Look Beyond The Headlines (Lies) “A professor of development studies at the London School of Economics, Gavin Capps has researched the numbers behind the debt. In an article titled "Redesigning the Debt Trap," he explains the dangerous web that the debt, structural adjustment programs, and capital flight creates in Africa. He cites Africa Action, a U.S.-based NGO, reporting in 2001 that the ratios of foreign debt to the continent's gross national product increased from 51% in 1982 to 100% in 1992. Africa's debt grew to four times its export income in the early 1990s. Its debt burden is twice that of any other region in the world, it carries 11% of the developing countries' debt, with only 5% of its income. The gross national product in Africa is $308 per capita, while its debt stands at $355 per capita. The money spent paying back the debt and the interest on the debt expanded from an average of $1.7 billion from 1970-1979 to $14.6 billion from 1997-1999. Africa received a total of $540 billion in loans, paid back $550 billion, and still retained a debt of $295 billion between 1970 and 2002. In 1990 African countries paid out $60 billion more than they received in new loans, and by 1997, this increased to about 162 British pounds. In 2001, sub-Saharan Africa borrowed $11.4 billion, and paid back $14.5 billion. This catastrophe is played out in the social service and health sectors. Shrinking African national budgets are being spent in greater proportions to repaying Western creditors at the expense of welfare or productive domestic investment. During the 1980s debt service repayments averaged 16% of African government expenditure compared to 12% on education and 4% on health. A decade later, the situation remains appalling, as interest payments are prioritized over human needs. In 1999 the Zambian government was pressured to spend $14 million more in debt service than on its collapsing health care system, in the face of the AIDS pandemic reaching new heights. Also in 1999, 33% of Angola's gross domestic product was spent on debt repayments, as compared to 4.9% of gross national product on education and 1.4% on health. In the whole of sub-Saharan Africa in 2001, debt repayment amounted to 3.8% of GDP, as opposed to 2.4% spent on health care.”- Virginia Rodino African Debt War and Imperialism Are Linked www.Counterpunch.com 08-02-05
The racist corporate media mind control apparatus likes to portray Sub-Saharan Africa as a disease, famine, poverty ravaged region exacerbated by government corruption and malfeasance but the truth of the matter is Africa is in the position it is in due to five hundred years of European invasion, colonization and neo-colonial administration. Africa was carved up partitioned and galvanized by Europeans at the infamous Berlin Conference of 1885-86. The mere presence of whites on the continent wrought social and ecological havoc, violent disruption and resulting oppression. The clash of values allowed the whites to instigate conflict, violence and turmoil not only in Africa but everywhere else the whites set foot on planet earth. This is an undisputable and empirical fact. One of the ways the conflict manifested itself was in relation to the land, European values towards life in general, land and labor were antithetical to indigenous cosmologies and cultural patterns. In his classic work Race and Culture Contacts in the Modern World sociologist E. Franklin Frazier documented how this clash of values created conflict and disrupted the indigenous way of life.”Where the collective conception of land tenure exists the relation of men to the land and their rights in regard to the products of the soil are as Labouret has pointed out, of an essentially religious nature. The individual concept of land tenure introduced by the Europeans tends to secularize the relationships of natives to the land and effects fundamental changes in their habits and customs. This is achieved first by a transition from a subsistence economy to a commercial system of agriculture with marketable crops. Another stage in the process of secularization is attained when land acquires a ‘transferable value’ and rights in the land are commercialized. It is also important to point out that this transformation is accomplished by changes in the organization of labor and changes in the meaning of labor for native peoples.” page 136-37. The aggression of whites which forced Africans off their traditional lands or made them shift from a collectivist subsistence culture to one of cash crop agriculture helped undermine and devastate the African socio-cultural fabric making it easier for the Europeans to subjugate them. Life for Africans is/was a spiritual relationship. The Europeans forced a secularization of existence which tore asunder the African personality alienating them from the spirit and ancestral worlds which in African cosmology undergirded their existence. That process along with Arab and European slavery which severely depopulated the continent helped set the continent up for defeat and conquest by the Europeans.
Once Africa was partitioned into European colonies and protectorates, each European nation state violently and forcibly imposed alien values and customs onto the natives further disrupting their lives. Trade between the Europeans and natives was always unbalanced because the European had nothing of real value to trade (even if they wanted to be fair) in relation to the goods the Africans offered. This pattern continued well into the colonial era where the whites extracted the valuable raw materials, natural resources and crops in exchange for cheap goods with jacked up price tags. As the West became rich due to their predatory and unbalanced trade policies, this pattern became set in stone as global capitalism grew. Following WW II when the armed liberation struggles of Africans and Asians further taxed the already decimated European militaries and economies, the whites initiated a new strategy to maintain their hegemony. Rather than totally capitulate to African and Asian demands for freedom which would have meant a drastic deterioration in their wealth and lifestyles, the whites structured a more subtle variation of their theme of “indirect rule”. Our wise ancestor Kwame Nkrumah called it NeoColonialism. The whites allowed African leaders to ascend to “power” but retained control over the economic infrastructure and dictated the terms African leaders were forced to operate under. If a leader like Patrice Lumumba or Kwame Nkrumah became too independent or too nationalistic they were murdered or deposed in a coup d’etat. By the twentieth century the multinational corporations had replaced the monopoly trading companies as the trade and economic policy makers and the Western elected officials had replaced the European monarchies as the ruling figureheads collaborating with them to exploit, rape and plunder Africa.
Today neocolonialism and neoliberal globalist economic polices are the tentacles strangling Africa. The economic hit men from the IMF, World Bank and US-AID with the backing of the CIA, MI6, other Covert Special Ops groups and military are the ultimate enforcers of the new extortion and international loan sharking techniques employed by their New World Order puppeteers. Africa is “poor” today not because like Europe they lack natural resources, Africa is poor because of the death grip the West has on their national economic infrastructures. Africa is poor because they are drowning in debt and restrictive policies imposed upon them by the IMF , World Bank and US-AID. In an article called African Debt War and Imperialism Are Linked, Virginia Rodino spells out how the West maintains its death grip on Africa, “Blair and Brown's simplistic rhetoric of relieving Africa's debt instead masks the reality that there are massive and continuous flows of wealth out of Africa into the pockets of Western capitalists, capitalists who are inextricably bound to the system that impoverishes millions, while the bankers and investors profiteer from the militarized budget. The Commission for Africa's agenda and the drive for free trade actually ties the mass of Africans into an exploitative neo-liberal system that has been bleeding them dry for decades...The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank consolidated their hold over Africa directly because of the debt crisis. They continue to ensure commercial banks are repaid by lending African states more money to service their private debts. And these U.S.-led institutions act as debt collection agencies for the Western powers, in addition to the IMF's insistence on even harsher repayment terms of the multilateral loans it makes. The charters of the IMF and World Bank specifically forbid debts that they hold to be rescheduled or written off, and most of these debts are charged at market rates. This is one of the main reasons why Africa's total debt has continued to grow while an even greater volume of its resources has flowed out of the continent.” So you see Africa is still being raped and violated by the West. To justify their larceny the Western media lies by saying the problem is ineptitude and corruption on the part of African leadership. But the truth is this leadership was corrupted or at least rendered ineffective due to IMF and World bank impositions and conditions tied to these agencies loans. Don’t believe the hype, look beyond the headlines, search for the causative factors, don’t focus solely on the effects.
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