As a young , idealistic activist in Venezuela, Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias led two unsuccessful 1992 coup attempts against then-President Carlos Andres Perez, who was perceived as having broken promises to the people to resist neoliberal economic policies being pushed by the United States (US) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Chavez was freed two years later after Perez was impeached for his conduct as President, and his popularity rose until he won the presidency himself in 1998. Several anti-Chavez demonstrations, recall referenda and coup attempts by ideological foes would ensue, most famously the April 11-April 14, 2002 attempt by businessman Pedro Carmona in which Chavez agreed to be detained, and then saw popular support force Carmona to release Chavez and surrender. All of the subsequent coup attempts, referenda and other anti-Chavez actions would fail (with the exceptions of a few significant Constitutional ballot measures), apparently due to the underestimation of the people’s support and the charisma of “Chavismo”. Thus, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela was established and strengthened, a reference to Simon Bolivar (1783-1830), who opposed Spanish colonial powers and is widely revered across Latin America.

Critics assailed Chavez for his Socialist politics as well as what were considered increasingly autocratic policies (apparently in an effort to ensure that the Bolivarian Revolution would endure), accusing him and his administration of cronyism and nepotism as he successfully won third and fourth terms as President, the last one in 2012.

Hugo Chavez fell ill in mid-2011, went to Cuba for medical treatment, and finally died of complications from advanced colon cancer on March 5, 2013, in Caracas, at the young age of 58. On April 14, 2013, a new election was held according to the Constitution, and Vice President Nicolas Maduro (pictured above, left) was elected President.

Maduro is considered to be less charismatic than Chavez was, as well as perhaps a less capable administrator, though many of the economic and social problems that beset Venezuela today were not of his making. According to an article about the Venezuelan crisis on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_in_Venezuela),

A socioeconomic and political crisis began in Venezuela in 2010 under the presidency of Hugo Chávez and has continued into the current presidency of Nicolás Maduro. The current situation is the worst economic crisis in Venezuela’s history and among the worst crises experienced in the Americas, with hyperinflation, soaring hunger, disease, crime and death rates, and massive emigration from the country. Observers and economists have stated that the crisis is not the result of a conflict or natural disaster but the consequences of populist policies that began under the Chávez administration’s Bolivarian Revolution, with the Brookings Institution stating that “Venezuela has really become the poster child for how the combination of corruption, economic mismanagement, and undemocratic governance can lead to widespread suffering”.

The research site also blames “a drop in oil production from lack of maintenance and investment” as well as stating that “Political corruption, chronic shortages of food and medicine, closure of companies, unemployment, deterioration of productivity, authoritarianism, human rights violations, gross economic mismanagement and high dependence on oil have also contributed to the worsening crisis.” It goes on to note that

The contraction of national and per capita GDPs in Venezuela between 2013 and 2017 was more severe than that of the United States during the Great Depression, or of Russia, Cuba, and Albania following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

By 2017 hunger had escalated to the point where nearly 75% of the population had lost an average of over 8 kg (over 19 lbs) in weight, almost 90% of the population was living in poverty, and more than half did not have enough income to meet their basic food needs. From the beginning of the crisis to 2017, more than 2.3 million Venezuelans have left the country. Venezuela led the world in murder rates, with 90 per 100,000 people killed in 2015 (compared to 5.35 per 100,000 in the US or 1.68 per 100,000 in Canada) making it one of the most violent countries in the world.

The administration of President Chavez had brought the country’s oil income to bear in the provision of public services, especially to poor citizens, which included free medical clinics, food and housing subsidies, improving literacy and raising the general standard of living.

But Venezuela’s heavy dependence on oil for its income, as well as continuous efforts to destabilize his Socialist government by the United States through the support of coup attempts and widespread infiltration of Venezuelan civil society by US-based neoliberal organizations, ultimately helped bring Venezuela to the precipice of economic collapse. During Chavez’s terms, several of his efforts certainly did not succeed: policies meant to strengthen food security through price controls led to food shortages and ultimately hyperinflation, a housing crisis became worse, and crime in Venezuela increased sharply, possibly due to political conflict in the country. Estimates are that over two million Venezuelans have fled the country, and there has been an explosion in suicides. Accusations of corruption were regularly lodged against the Chavez administration by political foes (who usually were themselves accused of being connected to elites and not with the people), who claimed he used bribery and intimidation to score large electoral victories despite alleged low popularity among the populace.

After a May 2017 Constituent Assembly election was widely criticized by Western and other international observers, an election was held in 2018 in which Maduro was re-elected as President. The election was disputed, and in January 2019 the National Assembly of Venezuela declared the results invalid and named Juan Guaido (pictured above, right) the acting President. National protests were organized against Maduro by Guaido and the National Assembly. The United States, which has imposed one sanction or another against Venezuela over the years, including 2015 sanctions under the Obama administration, announced further sanctions against Venezuela and have threatened to seize its oil companies that operate in the US under Citgo. In response, Maduro severed diplomatic ties to the US and ordered US diplomats out of the country.

Slowly, the international community is responding to this crisis. Western nations, including the United States, Canada, several European nations and right-wing governments in South America from the Lima Group of the Organization of American States (OAS) have supported the protests and backed Guaido in calling for Maduro’s ouster, while a number of CARICOM (Caribbean Community) countries have joined Cuba, Russia and several left-leaning Latin American countries in supporting Maduro, and have met with OAS and United Nations officials to try to resolve the crisis. Mexico and others have urged a peaceful resolution to a situation that threatens to explode in violence.

Western analysts have largely blamed the country’s economic troubles on a combination of mismanagement, corruption and what economists termed “Dutch disease” (a term coined by The Economist in 1977 and developed as an economic model in 1982, inspired by a situation in which The Netherlands’ heavy dependence on natural gas as its major export led to the collapse of other sectors of the economy), which they say Maduro has failed, like Chavez before him, to anticipate and manage. Again, from Wikipedia:

According to analysts, the economic woes Venezuela continued to suffer through under President Nicolás Maduro would have occurred even were Chávez still in power. In early 2013, shortly after Chávez’s death, Foreign Policy stated that whoever succeeded Chávez would “inherit one of the most dysfunctional economies in the Americas—and just as the bill for the deceased leader’s policies comes due”.

Maduro has been criticized for only concentrating on public opinion, instead of tending to practical issues which economists have warned about, or creating ideas to improve Venezuela’s economic prospects.

By 2014, Venezuela had entered an economic recession and by 2016, the country had an inflation rate of 800%, the highest rate in its history. The International Monetary Fund expect[ed] inflation in Venezuela to be 1,000,000% for 2018.

While Western analysts blamed the country’s economic troubles on a failure to deal effectively with this “Dutch disease”, the fate of the Venezuelan economy can also be seen as the result of the more infamous “resource curse”, in which nations that possess an abundant natural resource often find themselves impoverished, often due to the malicious actions of foreign powers whose aggressive, invasive and often warlike actions are geared toward stripping the country of its natural wealth and thus impoverishing the populace.

Examples of the “resource curse” can be found in Afrikan countries such as South Africa (diamonds), Nigeria (oil) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (diamonds, gold, oil and tantalum powder used to synthesize coltan for cell phones). A famous example of a South American “resource curse” was Chile in the 1970s, when the lust for the country’s copper mines (among other resources) led the Richard Nixon administration in the US to support the overthrow and murder of Chilean President Salvador Allende (another Socialist leader) on September 11, 1973, after two previous coup attempts had failed. The resultant dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet lasted for the next 17 years, marked by thousands of murders, disappearances and a few high-profile assassinations, most notably that of Orlando Letelier and his American assistant Ronni Karpen Moffitt by a car bomb in downtown Washington, DC on September 21, 1976.

The parallel to Venezuela’s situation is seen when one examines the history of coup attempts against Chavez (and subsequent attempts on Maduro’s life) and the country’s economic collapse in the context of similar implosions of Latin American and Afrikan nations that opposed US influence. See the web sites Mint Press News, “Make The Economy Scream” (https://www.mintpressnews.com/make-the-economy-scream-on-economic-terrorism/163027/); Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11, 1973 by Peter Kornbluh for the National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 8, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm; “Make The Economy Scream: Secret Documents Show Nixon, Kissinger Role Backing 1973 Chile Coup”, https://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/10/40_years_after_chiles_9_11; and “Make The Economy Scream, This Time in Venezuela” (failedevolution.blogspot.com/2018/05/make-economy-scream-this-time-in.html), as well as doing a search for that quote, to see how economic destabilization was used to set up countries for conquest while apportioning blame to the victims of the economic machinations, with Chile in 1973 as the most famous case. This is not to definitively state that Venezuela’s problems are due to malicious Western interference alone, but one must consider the historical evidence.

Articles on the History and Background of Venezuela’s Economic and Political Crisis

Kirk Semple wrote an article in The New York Times titled “Echoes of the Past in Venezuela Crisis, but Heard More Lightly” (Jan. 24, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/world/americas/venezuela-latin-america.html); and Luc Cohen penned a piece titled “How Venezuela got here: a timeline of the political crisis” (Reuters, January 29, 2029, https://news.yahoo.com/venezuela-got-timeline-political-crisis-015722552.html), that provides a brief timeline of the crisis in Venezuela from the death of former President Hugo Chavez in March 2013 to the imposition of sanctions by the US in January 2019, with references to detailed reports on specific events.

Wikipedia’s rather detailed discussion of “Dutch disease” can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease, while their explanation of the “resource curse”, which perhaps de-emphasizes the role of imperialism, can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse.

Who Is Juan Guaido?

There are several articles that have been written about the 35-year-old National Assembly member who has declared himself the new President of Venezuela.

Ana Vanessa Herrero and Nicholas Casey wrote the article “Who Is Juan Guaidó? Venezuela’s Young Opposition Leader” for The New York Times on January 22, 2019 (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/world/americas/juan-guaido-facts-history-bio.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer).

Nicole Chavez and Rafael Romo of CNN wrote “Who is Venezuela’s Juan Guaido?” on January 24, 2019 (https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/23/americas/juan-guaido-venezuela/index.html).

Scott Smith and Christine Armario reported on the Venezuelan government’s barring Guaido from leaving the country, which sparked denunciations from the US and led US National Security Adviser John Bolton to threaten reprisals if any harm comes to Guaido. Their article for Time and the Associated Press, “Venezuela Bars Opposition Leader Juan Guaido From Leaving the Country”, can be found at http://time.com/5516132/venezuela-juan-guaido-barred-leaving/.

And Dan Cohen and Max Blumenthal for Telesur wrote a penetrating and critical look at Guaido that explores his organization Popular Will, the use of “guarimbas” in street protests that have led to violence, and the involvement of foreign organizations like Otpor (a Serbian political organization), Stratfor (an American geopoliticalm intelligence platform and publisher) and the National Endowment for Democracy (US) in their article, “The Making of Juan Guaido: US Regime Change Laboratory At Work” (https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/The-Making-of-Juan-Guaido-US-Regime-Change-Laboratory-At-Work-20190129-0021.html).

We will share some of the international community’s responses, including statements from CARICOM, OAS, Socialist organizations from Israel and Pakistan, and a group of 70 human rights and political activists in a companion piece.

Too often at Pan-Afrikan conferences, when the discussion turns to issues of activism and revolutionary principles, the Brothers take to the podium and fill the air with grand pronouncements and militant fervor. Most of these speeches are indeed quite relevant, necessary even, but in the process the Sisters often tend to be left out, sitting in the audience as though their only purpose is to listen and not to offer their own viewpoints. I have been told something similar on many occasions by the Queen of our personal castle. And on Saturday, November 17, 2018, at the conclusion of the public Summit, I was told this again by a Sister in the audience who noticed that many of the remarks were, again, male-dominated despite our (apparently less-than-adequate) efforts. If there was one oversight of the 2018 Summit that I would correct, it is that a conscious, intentional effort was not sufficiently made to ensure that more Sisters had an opportunity to address the audience.

And there were strong Sisters whose voices needed to be elevated more.  Some, such as African Union Ambassador Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quao, were unable to join us at the Summit because they were out of town (Ambassador Quao was in Ethiopia). Some were lost among the many voices who sought to address the audience that weekend.  Sis. Makeda Kandake (pictured, below) of Guadeloupe has been a strong organizer for Reparations for Afrikan people, the ending of France’s political stranglehold on its colonies in the Eastern Caribbean (such as Guadeloupe and Martinique), and the organizing of the grassroots Afrikan communities there to force the international community to hear their voices.  Having recently recovered from the devastation of the series of hurricanes that devastated her home as well as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, she is now organizing for conferences and collaborative efforts between Afrikan activists to be held and directed from her home country.  More time should have been reserved for her to make formal presentations at the public Summit event, though she was able to be directly involved in discussions with other Pan-Afrikan activists as part of SRDC’s work to build international coalitions on the way to re-establishing the Pan African Diaspora Union (PADU) on the global level.

As it was, however, Sisters were not outright excluded from speaking at the Summit. Below, we include some of the statements made by Sister Activists from Afrika (Liberia), the United States (Maryland) and Europe (The Netherlands), as attendees at the Summit offered their suggestions and planned initiatives to help lift up and liberate Afrikan people. There were also statements made by Mother members of the Maryland Council of Elders, as well as Sisters who participated in State Presentations from Maryland and Washington State, which will be shared in a future article. Whether they were at the podium or speaking from the floor, Sisters and Mothers did indeed have important things to say, and we are honored to be able to share their words.

In this article, we feature the statements of Dr. Barryl Biekman of The Netherlands, Sis. Mouna of ECOWAS Women out of Liberia, and Mama Victory Swift of the Maryland Council of Elders, the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus and Our Victorious City. These were some of the most powerful statements of the Summit, as they gave the rest of us important direction for recognizing, acknowledging and respecting the power of the Black Woman, reaching back home to our Sisters and Brothers in Afrika and ensuring that, when working on behalf of our Youth, that we “leave no one behind.”

Dr. Barryl Biekman on Women of Afrika at the United Nations

Dr. Barryl Biekman, founder and lead organizer for the African Union African Diaspora Council (AUADC) of Europe, has been organizing people of Afrikan descent from her home in The Netherlands for decades. She has been at the forefront of resistance to the racist Christmastime character known as Black Pete (“Swarte Piet”), known in fables as Santa’s black-skinned assistant who, instead of giving treats and toys to good little children, instead kidnaps “bad” little children and spirits them away from home, never to return. She works tirelessly to organize Afrikan populations in Europe to raise their collective voice in the African Union, as does Professor David Horne in the United States. She is in regular contact with Afrikan activists in Germany, the United Kingdom and Dimonas, Israel; indeed, Dr. Khazriel Ben Yehudah of the Afrikan Hebrew Israelites was also in attendance at the Summit, largely because she was there as well. She was among the Pan-Afrikan activists who participated in the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa. Born in Suriname, she has worked for well over a decade in cooperation with SRDC to organize Afrikan people in Europe to establish their voice in the African Union as well as in the United Nations. In January 2015, she gave the keynote address at the official launch of the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent, and has contributed to the efforts of the UN’s Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, which she has continued to champion in the years since.

Aside from participating in several key meetings during the Summit to forge organizational relationships with the Continental Afrikan delegates from organizations such as the African Diaspora Union (Afridu) and the diplomatic delegations from The Gambia and Liberia, she made important observations regarding the African Union, the United Nations and the status of women. “The African Union has declared, until 2020, the Decade of Afrikan Women. And in the Commission on the Status of Women, every year in March, at the United Nations, Afrikan Women [of the Diaspora] are together with Afrikan Women from the Continent. And they are doing amazing jobs. Amazing jobs. Because people must realize that women in some parts of Afrika don’t have access to land, not to finance. … And these women are doing incredible work.”

Sis. Mouna, ECOWAS Women (Liberia) on Bringing the Knowledge Back Home

One group that is participating in the March events at the United Nations on the status of women is the ECOWAS Women. Sis. Mouna, from Liberia, is the President of ECOWAS Women, an organization of Sisters from West Africa who are organizing in the area of the Economic Organization of West African States (ECOWAS). “There’s a United Nations Commission on the Status of Women every year, where women from all walks of life come together, from all organizations, to put their case forward,” she said, echoing Dr. Biekman’s comments. “We were privileged to apply for a side event this year. The deadline was the 9th of this November. So we applied and they will get back to us on November 29. If we are selected, then we can form a synergy, come together and form something to present on that day, instead of us doing it alone. You can come with your plan, I can come with my plan, because we are from Liberia, we have people from Nigeria and other parts of Afrika. And the side event will be visited by everybody, and we’ll be on the United Nations Compound.

“So the Sheroes Sisterhood is doing it with us, the ECOWAS Women. And what we do is, anything that is in the interest of women, we look our for the protection of the Woman.”

She addressed issues faced by Afrikans in general and Afrikan women, in particular, in receiving the respect from Europeans and men that they deserve. “Afrikans don’t need to be coming here and looked down upon. … We need to believe in ourselves. … Whatever we see here in America, we can take it home and make it better. So, with this side event, we can encourage ourselves, and we [can] come together as one. …”

She also discussed Afrikans who move to the West and never return home to Afrika. “People come here and don’t want to go back, they want to stay here [but] at the end of the day, we have freedom back home! What we need is for our governments to understand that they can’t continue to look down on us [and should] give us the rights that we deserve. They say that America is getting our citizens. So, if everybody is leaving Afrika and coming to America to stay, what’s going to make a difference back home? Nobody’s going to be left back home who can make a difference. So, can we come together as one?

“I’m an Afrikan woman, who is proud to be an Afrikan, who is coming here to tell my people that we don’t have to abandon home. We can leave home, but not abandon home. We come, get experience, get the good things that we see, go back home and make an impact. Do not just leave everything there, come here and stay. I don’t see freedom here. I see freedom back home. Back home, I’m president of the ECOWAS Women. Liberian women. Strong women. Here I’m nothing. Here, I have to do everything for myself. Back home, we come together as people. We see one another. We don’t just get on the Internet and that’s it. … Back home, we interact. My brother, my mother, my family, we live together. We have to make people see these things. Why? Because leaving home to come to America, because of hunger, because of bad governance, people don’t want to see their children hungry. [Because] your children are hungry, your children cannot go to school, you cannot pay your children’s school fees, you have to come to find a greener pasture. But if we get our governments to see that these things must change, we will find ourselves coming back home. We will find people staying home. And coming here to just … get experience.

“So, we are open for partnership. We have applied for the side event in March, they will get back to us November 29, then we have to get our Concept Note, our Proposal. … We’ve got to come together and encourage one another and start from here.”

[The United Nations did reply and approved the application of the ECOWAS Women for the side event at the March UN conference — Editor.]

“Leave None Behind”: Mama Victory Swift (Maryland Council of Elders and Our Victorious City)

Mama Victory Swift is a member of the Maryland Council of Elders, as well as founder of the organization Our Victorious City, named for her youngest son, Victorious Swift, who was tragically murdered in March 2017. Mama Victory did a number of things behind the scenes throughout the weekend to help ensure the Summit ran smoothly, including financing the food for one day of the Summit so the attendees could eat for free, but she also made several important statements during the Summit that reflected the level of commitment that one would expect to see from a consistent community activist who is also a mother deeply touched by the senseless loss that threatens us all who live in an environment where so many struggle to survive. Her comments to the audience reflected the personal concern that should shake us out of our intellectual arrogance, laziness, fear and inertia, and make the struggle real for all of us.

“All roads lead to Afrika,” she told the audience on Saturday, much as Mama Tomiko also said. “We have to be able to see the forest for the trees. Everything we’re doing collectively and individually leads us all back to the Motherland, leads us all back to the Continent. Everything we’re doing in Baltimore, whatever we’re doing in Seattle, whatever’s being done in Detroit, Ghana, Liberia, whatever is being done, the purpose of those efforts is for us to come together as a people and to reclaim our name, our culture and our land back. That is our purpose, and I don’t think any of us in this room are dismissed from that agenda. Am I correct? That is our agenda. And … we do need a collective focus on how to get our land back, but I think that we are all collectively doing what we’re doing wherever we’re doing it, so that all roads will lead back to Afrika.”

The day before, speaking about connecting with Afrika and making that connection for the masses of the people, Mama Victory stressed the importance of making personal connections with the people, and most importantly, the children. “Is there any organization out here that works with youth? … It is absolutely possible for us to collaborate, from wherever we are, to make this a collaborative, so we in Baltimore and those in [places like] Seattle, we can set a date and all of us from different states can go together with children from our respective areas, together, to Ghana. So we can do that. That is something we can think about, that we should do, that if we just put our minds to it, we can do. … I want to communicate with everyone that signed that registration. …

“The one thing I wanted to take away is the assignment that we have. … We have to speak, for the next year, to every Afrikan we see. If you walk past an Afrikan, you speak. Everyone, even the ones of us who are lost. … Because that grows unity. That’s something that we’ve been indoctrinated to not do. And that keeps us separated. So when you see another human being that has the same melanated skin as you, you speak whether they speak or not … because that grows unity. That’s something that they’re not accustomed to. That’s something that we’re not accustomed to. I walked in this room today and there were people who didn’t speak to me and we know better. We know better than that. … And we’re then obligated and responsible to do better. Because, see, love is an action word. It’s ‘to love’. And because it’s an action word, we have to move on it, if we’re really serious about growing a nation of people who are waking up and arising from their sleep. The first part of that is having a human connection that we’ve been indoctrinated to discontinue, out of fear. So, speak. That’s one.

“Two is, it’s not enough for us to save our own selves. … My youngest child, Victorious Swift, was murdered last March. Now Victorious, from the age of five, was a founder of an organization. He was a warrior, he is a warrior. His spirit is so profound that the energy of his life force still exists, not only with me and mine, but nation-globally. He did more than I even knew he did. But it’s not enough for us to fight and save our own children. If we will not fight to save all children, then we’ve dropped the ball before we’ve even started. Because — I say this, I’ve said it for years — we can raise our children to be the most phenomenal human beings, the most phenomenal warriors, on this planet, but if we don’t reach the ones who didn’t get it, that’s the one who will meet ours in the middle of the night, in an afternoon going to their car, on their way home — and steal their lives. We have a responsibility, to raise all of our children … and , really, really, really — leave none behind.”

Next SRDC Summit Article: Words From The Elders

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following three-part commentary by Heather Gray of Justice Initiative discusses the current Trump Administration policy of criminalizing Central and South American refugees who have amassed at the US southern border in the context of the history of US aggression, repression and counterinsurgency that has so destabilized countries such as Honduras (from which many of the refugees have travelled) that families with children have undertaken a dangerous journey of several thousand miles, on foot, to reach the United States.  The recent death in US custody of a seven-year-old girl by dehydration and shock, and the callous response to her tragic death by Administration officials, should give us all pause to contemplate how far into the bowels of cruelty and Isfet (disorder, injustice, untruth, disharmony, imbalance, unrighteousness) the United States and its citizens are willing to descend.  In the three installments below, including the text of a report narrated by actor and activist Susan Sarandon and an April 2015 report by Ramona Wadid, Ms. Gray discusses some of the history of the School of the Americas (now named the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC) and its destabilization of Latin America, which human rights activists say is the real cause of the current migration of refugees to the United States.

Part I: Refugees: “Blaming the Victims”
Heather Gray [hmcgray@earthlink.net]
December 15, 2018
Justice Initiative 

Foreword

Donald Trump consistently blames refugees for wanting to enter the United States from Central America for what is most likely the result of United States military training and policies in the area that have led to death, destruction, destabilization and loss and/or lack of civil liberties. No doubt, these refugees have good reason to leave their countries. Yet, Trump continues to inappropriately blame these victims.

U.S. policies? Much of the destabilization in Central America comes from its military, many of whom have been trained in the United States. One of the issues is that there are parallels with the training of the foreign military in the United States with the philosophy of the U.S. domestic FBI’s COINTELPRO (1956-1971) program (Counter Intelligence Program). CONTELPRO targeted activists in the U.S. such as Martin Luther King, H. Rap Brown and countless others in the U.S. who struggled and organized for justice in America.

COINTELPRO continues to target activists in the United States under the guise of what is now known as BIE – Black Identity Extremists. The U.S. international training of military continues to incorporate this directive of targeting civil rights, human rights, environmental, and other activists.

What is the primary goal of COINTELPRO and US militarization domestically and internationally? It is for money/resources. As Major General Smedley Butler had wisely stated in the 1930’s, the military services and war serve at the behest of corporate America and the goal therefore, is to establish an environment that allows corporate entities to have control to exploit and/or have access to resources for their financial benefit. No one states this issue better than Butler. Here are his comments from the 1930’s.

Butler also famously eulogized his own career as follows:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.” (American History USA)

The South American military are being trained in the U.S. not on the pretext of protecting or advancing democratic principles. Instead, they are trained in the U.S. to make their own country amenable to American corporate interests.

America’s Early Colonial History and LIC

In the 20th and 21st centuries, U.S. policies around the world, both economically and militarily, have been questionable at best. U.S. international military aggression outside of the Americas began with the Philippines in the beginning of the 20th century with the Philippine/American War (1898-1902). After the war, the U.S. launched its Low-Intensity Conflict (LIC) program in the Philippines with the creation of the Philippine Constabulary. The Philippine Constabulary is, even today, a national police organization created principally to protect American and Filipino corporate and military elite interests.

In 1987, Philippine scholar Walden Bello, who has written extensively about LIC, stated:

In a very real sense the current battle is merely “round four” of the confrontation between the U.S. imperial power and Philippine nationalism that began in 1898. Threading through the continuing conflict has been the insurgents’ goal of liberating the country from domination by the United States. When the nationalist element is joined to the lower classes’ struggle for land and equality, as it has been in the Philippines, then the revolutionary enterprise has turned out to be both explosive and enduring. And the costs of mounting a counterinsurgency campaign are getting progressively higher.

U.S. intervention in the Philippines also has a broader significance in third world affairs. Given its status as a quasi-colony, the Philippines has, in the past, enjoyed the dubious distinction of serving as America’s principal proving ground for developing and testing strategies and tactics for low intensity conflict (LIC). America’s first major overseas LIC engagement, the Philippine-American War, allowed the U.S. Army free rein to develop and test a variety of counterinsurgency tactics that are still emulated today. Fifty years later, in the early 1950s, there was an effort to transfer to Vietnam some of the lessons that the United States had gained in the struggle against the Huk guerrillas in the Philippines. Today, the Philippines, together with Central America, serves as a laboratory for experimenting with LIC tactics, which have been revitalized and revised after the debacle in Vietnam. (Walden Bello)

I witnessed the impact of this U.S. targeted ‘violence’ training while in the Philippines in 1989, which, in addition to the Philippine Constabulary, has also had many of its military trained in the U.S. What I witnessed in the Philippines was paramilitary groups, funded by the United States, that were killing and/or threatening, for example, union leaders and those working on behalf of the poor, including liberation Catholic priests, one of whom I met who was in hiding at the time.

Liberation theologians have been targeted by the LIC-U.S. trained military primarily because these theologians take a stand against the oppressive capitalist infrastructure. Liberation theology originally focused in Latin America but spread to other countries as well. Here is a description of the concept:

Liberation theology, religious movement arising in late 20th-century Roman Catholicism and centered in Latin America. It sought to apply religious faith by aiding the poor and oppressed through involvement in political and civic affairs. It stressed both heightened awareness of the “sinful” socioeconomic structures that caused social inequities and active participation in changing those structures. Liberation theologians believed that God speaks particularly through the poor and that the Bible can be understood only when seen from the perspective of the poor. They perceived that the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America was fundamentally different from the church in Europe…(Britannica)

On-Going U.S. International “Low-Intensity Conflict” Policies

Regarding LIC in South America, we need, again, to consider the U.S. School of the Americas (SOA) or what is now referred to as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). Founded in 1946, it is located in Fort Benning, Georgia. In this school, the United States trains the military of South American countries to serve a somewhat similar role as the Philippine Constabulary and/or even more violent and extreme, if that’s possible.

It could also be said that the WHINSEC in the U.S. is training the South American military to oppress their own people. So, through this LIC policy, instead of the United States military going into El Salvador, Honduras, Columbia, Argentina, etc. the U.S. trains troops from these countries to serve the interests of the United States and the friendly elite of the South American countries. Again, it is a “policing” or “militarization” of countries in what the United States considers its corporate empire of interest.

Here is briefly some information about SOA/WHINSEC from Lesley Gill. Lesley Gill is Professor of Anthropology and Department Chair, Vanderbilt University. She is the author of Teetering on the Rim: Global Restructuring, Daily Life, and the Armed Retreat of the Bolivian State; Precarious Dependencies: Gender, Class, and Domestic Service in Bolivia; and Peasants, Entrepreneurs, and Social Change: Frontier Development in Lowland Bolivia.

Located at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, the School of the Americas (soa) is a U.S. Army center that has trained more than sixty thousand soldiers and police, mostly from Latin America, in counterinsurgency and combat-related skills since it was founded in 1946. So widely documented is the participation of the School’s graduates in torture, murder, and political repression throughout Latin America that in 2001 the School officially changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Lesley Gill goes behind the façade and presents a comprehensive portrait of the School of the Americas. Talking to a retired Colombian general accused by international human rights organizations of terrible crimes, sitting in on classes, accompanying SOA students and their families to an upscale local mall, listening to coca farmers in Colombia and Bolivia, conversing with anti-SOA activists in the cramped office of the School of the Americas Watch-Gill exposes the School’s institutionalization of state-sponsored violence, the havoc it has wrought in Latin America, and the strategies used by activists seeking to curtail it.

Based on her unprecedented level of access to the School of the Americas, Gill describes the School’s mission and training methods and reveals how its students, alumni, and officers perceive themselves in relation to the dirty wars that have raged across Latin America. Assessing the School’s role in U.S. empire-building, she shows how Latin America’s brightest and most ambitious military officers are indoctrinated into a stark good-versus-evil worldview, seduced by consumer society and the “American dream,” and enlisted as proxies in Washington’s war against drugs and “subversion.”

One example, below, of these human rights violations is by the SOA graduate General Juan Orlando Zeped from El Salvador who took a course at the SOA in 1975 on “Urban Counterinsurgency Ops”; and in the 1969, the “Unnamed Course.” Below is some information about General Zeped’s tragic behavior:

Jesuit massacre, 1989: (Zeped) Planned the assassination of 6 Jesuit priests and covered-up the massacre, which also took the lives of the priests’ housekeeper and her teen-age daughter. (United Nations Truth Commission Report on El Salvador, 1993) Other war crimes, 1980’s: The Non-Governmental Human Rights Commission in El Salvador also cites Zeped for involvement in 210 summary executions, 64 tortures, and 110 illegal detentions. (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) Member of the “La Tandona” and held the rank of colonel and served as the Vice Minister of Defense at the time of the massacre. Prior to the massacre he publicly accused the UCA of being the center of operations for the FMLN and was present for the meetings where orders were given for the massacre. He was later promoted to the rank of general (Notorious Grads – School of the Americas).

Summary

Donald Trump should begin to resolve all this so-called refugee dilemma by first, letting these refugees into the United States; secondly, by closing the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in Columbus, Georgia that has trained and taught the military in these countries; and thirdly by ending this kind of ‘Low-Intensity Conflict’ training altogether in the United States and elsewhere.

We are also witnessing now an increased militarization of domestic police forces in the U.S., and there is significant organizing in the U.S. against this trend of police militarization and gun violence overall. This activism needs to also be extended as well to the countries throughout the world that are continuing to be victims of these U.S. ‘Low-Intensity Conflict’ policies and training. Closing down the ‘Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation’ would be a good first start.

After all, most of this domestic and international violence is being conducted thanks to American tax dollars and/or by the controlling corporate elite.

Martin Luther King was certainly correct when saying “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” by inferring that none of us are immune to these injustices.

Part II: Refugees, “Blaming the Victims”

Note: The transcribed 1995 interview below offers more of a background of the ‘School of the Americas’, otherwise known as the ‘School of the Assassins’. This interview offers a better understanding of what the refugees attempting to come to the United States have had to contend with thanks to the training and philosophy their own military have had in the United States.

Narrated by Susan Sarandon, it includes comments by the following: Representative Joseph Kennedy, Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Rufina Amaya (survivor of the El Mazote massacre), Representative Joseph Mokely, Vicky Imerman, Representative John Lewis, Unidentified El Salvadoran woman.

Heather Gray [hmcgray@earthlink.net]
December 15, 2018
Justice Initiative

School of the Americas: School of Assassins

“Here is the School of the Americas. It’s a combat school. Most of the courses revolve around what they call ‘counter-insurgency warfare.’ Who are the ‘insurgents?’ We have to ask that question. They are the poor. They are the people in Latin America who call for reform. They are the landless peasants who are hungry. They are health care workers, human rights advocates, labor organizers. They become the insurgents.

“They are seen as ‘the enemy.’ They are those who become the targets of those who learn their lessons at the School of the Americas.”

–Father Roy Bourgeois

Maryknoll World Productions (1995: 13 minutes)
Narrated by Susan Sarandon
Transcribed by Darrell G. Moen
Information Clearinghouse

TRANSCRIPT

Susan Sarandon: In the late afternoon of December 4, 1980, an unmarked grave was found in a field in El Salvador. When it was opened in the presence of the U.S. ambassador, it revealed the bodies of four women: Maryknoll Sisters Mara Clark and Eda Ford, Ursaline Sister Dorothy Kazel, and lay missionary Jean Donovan.

Of the five officers later found responsible for the rape and murder of these women, three were graduates of the United States Army School of the Americas. According to the Pentagon, the mission of the school is to train the armed forces of Latin America, promote military professionalism, foster cooperation among multinational military forces, and to expand the trainees’ knowledge of United States customs and traditions.

The School of the Americas originated in 1946 in Panama. Now, it is located on the grounds of Fort Benning, Georgia. The school teaches commando operations, sniper training, how to fire an M-16, and psychological warfare. Since no major declared war between Latin American countries has occurred in decades and the communist threat has vanished, why provide this kind of training?

Representative Joseph Kennedy: If you look at the course ranges that are offered to these individuals, they in fact are a dedicated way of teaching military leaders in foreign nations how to subvert their local communities.

Susan Sarandon: Since it opened, more than 55,000 military officials from 23 Latin American and Caribbean countries have trained at the school. About 2,000 students a year. As facts have emerged about the school and its graduates, it has drawn the attention of a growing number of human rights activists, such as Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois.

Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois: Just down the road here is the School of the Americas. It’s a combat school. Most of the courses revolve around what they call “counter-insurgency warfare.” Who are the “insurgents?” We have to ask that question. They are the poor. They are the people in Latin America who call for reform. They are the landless peasants who are hungry. They are health care workers, human rights advocates, labor organizers. They become the insurgents. They are seen as “the enemy.” They are those who become the targets of those who learn their lessons at the School of the Americas.

Susan Sarandon: What has been learned about the lessons taught at the school? In the 1980s, the civil war in El Salvador became a focal point for human rights activists throughout the world. Death squads operated freely, often killing 50 people a night. There were so many cases that on March 23, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero in San Salvador made a plea to the military leaders of his country.

Archbishop Oscar Romero: I would like to make an appeal in a special way to the men of the army. In the name of God, in the name of the suffering people whose laments rise to the heaven each day more tumultuous, I ask you, I order you in the name of God, stop the repression.

Susan Sarandon: While celebrating mass the next day, Archbishop Romero was assassinated. A number of years later, the National Security Archives in Washington D.C. made an important discovery when they obtained a copy of a declassified cable, Cape Dole.

Woman working at the National Security Archives: These two cables are both from the American Embassy in El Salvador.

One is from Dean Hinton, who was then Ambassador to El Salvador in 1981. And it discusses a meeting during which Roberto D’Aubuisson plans the murder of Archbishop Romero. During the meeting, there is described a lottery that the people who are attending the meeting hold to see who would draw the “right” to kill Romero himself.

Susan Sarandon: D’Aubuisson was trained at the School of the Americas. Also trained at the school were two of the three officers directly responsible for the assassination.

December 11, 1981: El Mazote, a small village in El Salvador…

Rufina Amaya (survivor of the El Mazote massacre): First, they forced everyone out of their houses and made us all lie face down in the street, both men and women. There were soldiers on both sides. Then, they moved away to see the women kneeling down on the ground to pray. They killed all of them. Not a single one of them survived, just me by the grace of God. I hid under a tree. When I heard the screams of the children, and I knew which ones were mine, they were crying, “Mommy, they’re killing us.”

Susan Sarandon: Over 900 men, women, and children were massacred. Virtually the entire population of the village and the area surrounding El Mazote. Out of 143 bodies identified in the laboratory, 131 were of children under the age of 12, including three infants under the age of three months. Ten of the 12 officers cited as responsible for the El Mazote massacre were graduates of the School of the Americas.

They were members of the Atlacatl Battalion, a part of the El Salvador Army.

November 16, 1989: San Salvador. Six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her 15-year-old daughter were slaughtered. To get the facts about this incident, a U.S. Congressional Investigation began, led by Representative Joseph Mokely.

Representative Joseph Mokely: I went down [to El Salvador]. I talked with the Embassy, talked with the military, talked with the unionists. I had meetings set up in very dingy places to talk with people who didn’t want to talk to me in public. And we gathered enough information that we pushed the investigation to the degree that it was concluded and the people who perpetrated the crime were found guilty. The killing was done by the Atlacatl Battalion which is the crack [best] battalion in that country. And these are the people, some of them had just returned from the United States, where they were taught a course on “human rights” amongst other things.

Susan Sarandon: Nineteen of the 26 officers implicated in the Jesuit murders were graduates of the school, including Yushi Renee Mendoza, the lieutenant in charge of the squad that killed the Jesuits and the two women. He attended a commando course a year before the massacre took place.

Representative Joseph Mokely: The Truth Commission to the U.N. substantiated everything that I had brought forward.

Susan Sarandon: The United Nations Truth Commission Report released on March 15, 1993, cited specific officers for committing atrocities during the El Salvador civil war. At School of the Americas Watch just outside Fort Benning, Georgia, Vicky Imerman matched the names cited in the U.N. Report with names in a United States Government document.

Vicky Imerman: What I did was I took these officers, all the officers listed in the report and I looked them up in list of graduates of the School of the Americas which we received through the Freedom of Information Act. What I found were 49 of the 60-some officers listed were graduates of the School of the Americas. These officers attended the school both before and after they committed atrocities. Francisco Del Cid, right here, was on the Commandant’s List a couple of years after he ordered the massacre of about 16 civilians and had their corpses burned.

Susan Sarandon: El Salvador is only part of the school’s story. In the entry area of one of its main buildings are photographs of those the school honors, its so-called Hall of Fame. At the top of the list, Hugo Banzer, former dictator of Bolivia, a graduate of the school. Some of the others similarly honored are the former dictators of Honduras, Ecuador, and Argentina. And generals from eight other Latin and Caribbean nations, many cited by human rights groups for involvement in human rights abuses in their own countries.

Among other graduates, Manuel Noriega, former president of Panama, currently in prison in the United States. Four of the five ranking Honduran officers who organized death squads in the 1980s as part of Battalion 316, are graduates. Half of the 250 Columbian officers cited for human rights abuses attended the school. The three highest ranking Peruvian officers convicted in February 1994 of murdering nine university students and a professor were all graduates. Also, the Peruvian army commander who brought out tanks to obstruct initial investigation of the murders.

During the dictatorship of the Somoza family [in Nicaragua], over 4,000 National Guard troops graduated from the school. Many of them later became known as the “Contras,” responsible for the deaths of thousands of Nicaraguan peasants in the 1980s. The general in charge of Argentina’s so-called “Dirty War” was a school graduate. During that internal conflict in the late-1970s and early-1980s, an estimated 30,000 people were tortured, disappeared, and murdered.

General Hector Gramajo of Guatemala was the featured speaker at the school’s graduation ceremonies in 1991. Human rights groups claim he is the architect of strategies that legalized military atrocities in Guatemala resulting in the death of over 200,000 men, women, and children.

Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois: As a Catholic priest, as a U.S. citizen, I really feel a responsibility to speak out against that because of this [school]. This does not lead to healing, it leads to death and suffering. In a way, this is a death machine. And this, I want to say, is very close to home because it’s in our backyard. It’s not out there in El Salvador. This is not in South Africa. We’re talking about a school of assassins right here in our backyard being supported and financed through our tax money. It’s being done in our names.

Susan Sarandon: $30 million of U.S. taxpayer money was recently spent to renovate school headquarters and these housing units for soldiers attending the school.

Vicky Imerman: It’s an outrage. It’s the use of our tax dollars, American tax dollars, for what I think your average American feels is a distinctly un-American purpose.

Susan Sarandon: On September 30, 1993, the School of the Americas was debated by Congress for the first time in its history. It happened when an amendment to the Defense Department budget was introduced by Congressman Joseph Kennedy.

Congressman Joseph Kennedy: Mr. Speaker, my amendment would reduce the Army operation and maintenance account by $2.9 million, the amount dedicated to running the Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. The intent of this amendment is to close the school.

Representative John Lewis: Why should we continue to fund and condone military-inspired murder? Why should we continue to train thugs to kill their own people? Vote for peace. Vote for non-violence. Vote for harmony. Vote for the Kennedy Amendment.

Susan Sarandon: 174 voted in favor, 256 against.

Congressman Joseph Kennedy: We’re only 30 or 40 votes short of winning. That means that if people around the country hear about this and write their congressman, we can win. This is an issue that we can win on.

Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois: And what’s very important right now I feel is to let out voices be heard. Bishop Romero said it best before he was assassinated by someone who trained at the School of the Americas. He said, “We who have a voice, we have to speak for the voiceless.” I realize that we here in this country have a voice. We can speak without having to worry about being disappeared or tortured or being picked by [by the police or military]. We can speak, and I just hope that we can speak clearly and boldly on this issue.

Susan Sarandon: In April 1994, a group of human rights activists from around the country began a 40-day fast on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. They were there to make their case for shutting down the School of the Americas. The day before the fast ended, Congressman Kennedy joined them in a press conference.

Congressman Joseph Kennedy: The so-called Hall of Fame in Georgia is nothing more than a Hall of Shame for the people of our country. We, as a nation and as a people have a right and an obligation to say what we believe in in terms of how our dollars are going to be spent. What we are saying unequivocally is that we do not want to be associated with the kinds of individuals that are torturing, maiming, and killing innocent people throughout Latin America. That’s what this bill is all about and that’s what your commitment is all about, and we commit to working until this bill is passed.

Susan Sarandon: The next day, Congressman Kennedy’s second effort to shut the school was defeated by a smaller margin than his first one. 175 voted for his amendment, 217 against.

Unidentified El Salvadoran woman: I’m not very educated, but in my simple words I think that the only thing the School of the Americas has accomplished is the destruction of our countries in Latin America. Don’t give us any more of that military aid. It would be better to help the poor who are in need.

Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois: We need the voices of others, and we also need those letters to congressional leaders. To let them know that we will not allow them to use our money to run a school of assassins.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

Part III: Refugees: “Blaming the Victims”

Note: When the ‘School of the Americas’ was changed to the ‘Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation’ (WHINSEC), there was hope the mission would have changed as well but the whole thing appears to be a hoax as assassins are still being exported from the school, as described in the article below. But here is a brief description of the name change:

The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) is a United States Department of Defense Institute located at Fort Benning near Columbus, Georgia, created in the 2001 National Defense Authorization Act. It was formerly known as the US Army School of the Americas, but was renamed in 2000 so Congress could claim they’d shut S.O.A. down (see below under SOA Watch). (Wikipedia)

Heather Gray
December 15, 2018
Justice Initiative

The School Of The Americas Is Still Exporting Death Squads

South American militaries have been sending soldiers to the U.S. for “ethics” and “human rights” training for years, but history shows that many of these alumni go on to become notorious torturers and murderers, not defenders of peace. Ramona Wadib

Students from the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly School of the Americas) and students from the Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School conduct a joint assault on a simulated narcotics camp during a field training exercise. (Photo: U.S. Navy)

April 22nd, 2015
By Ramona Wadib
Mint Press News

RABAT, Malta – In 2009, just a year before Sebastián Piñera became president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet approved the training of 211 Chilean recruits at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA).

Between 1999 and 2010, Chilean governments sent a total of 1,205 recruits to the school, with Bachelet remaining at the helm of cooperation with the U.S.-based institute that has graduated scores of alumni involved in human rights violations under Chile’s dictatorship era from 1973 to 1990.

Despite the macabre reality inflicted upon Chileans during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, the Concertación governments of the center-left, allegedly embarking upon a democratic future for Chile, retained ties with the school that produced torturers such as Miguel Krassnoff Martchenko, who, according to torture survivors, never concealed his identity while subjecting his victims to brutality.

Bachelet’s father, Gen. Alberto Bachelet, who was loyal to socialist president Salvador Allende, was tortured to death by the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (the National Intelligence Directorate, also known as DINA). Bachelet herself was detained and tortured by DINA, later fleeing into exile and returning back to Chile in 1979.

Under Bachelet’s first presidency (2006-2010), Chilean cooperation with the U.S. expanded, especially following her one-year stay at Fort Lesley J. McNair, in Washington, D.C., which provided the prelude to Bachelet’s military and surveillance investment.

Socialism quickly eroded into opportunism, with the country’s first female president emphasizing Pinochet’s legacy of oblivion as she extended diplomatic maneuvers to former DINA torturers, even praising generals allegedly involved in the torture that contributed to her father’s death.

Piñera also sent recruits to train at WHINSEC and furthered U.S. military collaboration in 2012 by opening a military training center at Fort Aguayo in Concón, Chile.

From the SOA to WHINSEC

Established in 1946 in Panama, the SOA was responsible for training over 64,000 South American soldiers, many of whom later became notorious torturers and murderers in death squads. According to former Panamanian President Jorge Illueca, the SOA was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.”

Expelled from Panama in 1984, the SOA relocated to Fort Benning, Georgia, and was renamed WHINSEC in 2001, allowing for an apparent termination of the previous program through dissociation. In reality, however, WHINSEC retained its SOA foundations and the U.S. Department of Defense has shielded the institute from criticism and outcry with regard to the school’s historical link to human rights violations.

In its mission statement, WHINSEC claims to have been founded upon the Charter of the Organization of American States and pledges to “foster mutual knowledge, transparency, confidence, and cooperation among the participating nations and promote democratic values, respect for human rights, and knowledge and understanding of U.S. customs and traditions.”

These values, according to WHINSEC’s website, are imparted through a three-lesson Ethics Program, as well as the Democracy and Human Rights Program – the latter dealing with “the universal prohibitions against torture, extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances.”

A far cry from protecting human rights

CIA and U.S. Army manuals detailing torture techniques translated into Spanish and utilized by the SOA are a far cry from anything containing human rights protections. Indeed, as SOA Watch explains, “These manuals advocated torture, extortion, blackmail and the targeting of civilian populations.”

The manuals, written in the 1950s and 1960s, “were distributed for use in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Ecuador and Peru, and at the School of the Americas between 1987 and 1991.” Indeed, in-depth research and testimony from torture survivors relay more than just a depiction of torture practiced by SOA graduates in South America during dictatorship eras, such as Chile under Pinochet. Sadistic torture practiced upon detainees at Abu Ghraib is also reflective of the CIA torture manuals and torture previously carried out on detainees in South America.

Since 2000 and the renaming of the SOA, other crimes linked to SOA graduates have come to light.

Col. Byron Lima Estrada was convicted in June 2001 of murdering Guatemalan Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi following the publication of a report insisting the Guatemalan army was responsible for the murder of almost 200,000 people in the civil war that took place from 1960 to 1996.

Two SOA graduates, Venezuelan Army Commander in Chief Efrain Vasquez and Gen. Ramirez Poveda, were involved in the failed 2002 coup against President Hugo Chávez. According to SOA Watch, Otto Reich, then-assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, was “appointed as a WHINSEC board of visitor member to ‘oversee’ democracy and human rights curriculum, as well as operations at the school.” Reich was also deeply involved in the planning of the coup against Chávez.

In 1999, Bolivian Captain Filiman Rodriguez had been found responsible for the kidnapping and torture of Waldo Albarracin, director of the Bolivian Popular Assembly of Human Rights. In 2002, Rodriguez was accepted for a 49-week officer training course at WHINSEC.

In May 2014, a detailed report by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Colombia-Europe-U.S. Human Rights Observatory highlighted U.S. military assistance to Colombia between 2000 and 2010. According to the report, which studies extrajudicial killings committed by the Colombian Army Brigades, U.S. intelligence assistance to Colombia “supported units that had adopted a strategy conducive to extrajudicial killings.”

Colombia requires its officers to undergo training at WHINSEC. The 2014 report states that out of 25 Colombian graduates from 2001 to 2003, 12 had either been charged with “a serious crime or commanded units whose members had reportedly committed multiple extrajudicial killings.”

It should be remembered that Plan Colombia, signed by U.S. President Bill Clinton, was translated into “moral and political support” by Colombian Gen. Mario Montoya. Between 2000 and 2010, U.S. assistance was considered a factor which influenced the staggering total of 5,673 extrajudicial killings – all of which occurred with impunity, lack of judicial mechanisms, rewards for the murders and the role of national leaders such as Montoya providing a safety net for those complicit in the atrocities.

As regards WHINSEC in Colombia, an academic on the Board of Visitors is quoted in the report as stating, “So if a student of mine leaves an ethics class and engages in criminal activity does that make me or my university liable for her activity?”

This attitude summarizes the lack of accountability surrounding WHINSEC. The dissociation from the school’s history under its original name – the SOA – is merely a premise for distancing the institution from the atrocities committed by its students and graduates.

History, however, tells a different story. While WHINSEC continues to emphasize what it describes as a commitment to human rights by citing a mere eight hours of instruction in the subject, research, such as the report on Colombia’s extrajudicial killings, reveals a reality that goes beyond the cosmetic reforms employed by the institution.

Assembled delegates at the Consultation.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (UNHCHR) held a Regional Consultation of the Regional Mechanisms to Combat Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Other Related Forms of Intolerance on Saturday, December 8. The official announcement of the Regional Consultation reads,

“In recognition of the vital role played by regional and sub-regional human rights mechanisms, the Human Rights Council (HRC) since 2007 has requested OHCHR to bring together International and regional human rights mechanisms to exchange views on good practices and lessons learned aiming at enhancing cooperation between them. … In 2017, the HRC requested OHCHR to hold a workshop in 2019 to take stock of developments … including a thematic discussion on the role of regional mechanisms in combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance and in the implementation and commitment in the Durban Declaration and Program of Action [DDPA]. … The [December 8] regional consultation will generate discussion on good practices, challenges and lessons learnt in combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance in Americas and measures to be taken to enhance the effectiveness of the Inter-American human rights mechanisms in following up on the [DDPA], including through strengthened cooperation with other regional and UN human rights mechanisms [and] will allow participants, who may not be able to attend the international conference to provide input into the discussion …. “

The following report was compiled by Mama Tomiko Shine, Director of the Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC), one of the participating organizations. Also included is her written contribution to the Consultation, concentrating on issues in the Criminal Justice System, as well as several recommendations for action.

Consultation of the Regional Mechanisms of Human Rights in the Americas and the United Nations Human Rights Mechanisms to Combat Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Other Related Forms of Intolerance

December 8, 2018
OAS, Washington DC; IACHR Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner

by Tomiko Shine
Director, Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC)

On Saturday, December 11, 2018 an all-day civil society consultation was held in Washington, DC at the Organization of American States with human rights defenders from the Americas to discuss human rights mechanisms to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and other forms of intolerance. Most of the participants represented South America from countries such as Brazil, Columbia, Peru, and Ecuador, with a few representing North America.
Organizations represented from the Americas were: Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN); Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations; Inter-American Court of Human Rights; The International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights; Centro de Desarrollo de la Mujer Negra Peruana (CEDEMUNEP); Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH); Ilix-Acción Jurídica; American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); UNEAFRO; Consejo Comunitario Casimiro y Casimirito Chocó – Colombia; WOLA; Asociación de Comunidades Afrocolombianas del Centro del Valle; Thurgood Marshall Center for Civil Rights – Howard University; Defensoria Pública da União; Red Latinoamericana y del Caribe para la Democracia  REDLAD; Inter-American Commission  of Women; Mano Amiga de la Costa Chica A.C.; Coletivo de Advocacia em Direitos Humanos (CADHU); The Sentencing Project; International Human Rights  Association of American Minorities; US Human Rights Network (USHRN); Secretariat for Access to Rights and Equity (OAS); Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC); Mesa Departamental de Tierras para Comunidades Afrocolombianas del Departamento del Valle del Cauca.

Panels of discussion and interventions included Racial Discrimination in the police and criminal justice system, Under-representation of Afro-descendant persons in politics, Special Measures and affirmative actions, and Cooperation with international mechanisms to combat racism.

President Commissioner IACHR, Special Rapporteur on Women, and Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons of African Descent and Against Racial Discrimination Margarette May Macaulay expressed concerns on police/state violence, mass incarceration, under representation of Afro-Descendant women in politics, and the current hostile climate towards human rights of Afro-Descendants men and women in the Americas. Human rights defenders in testimony spoke about rising Police/State Violence, and the assassination of Brazilian politician Marielle Franco. Also, there was alarm at the growing denial of their Afro Descendance by the youth in countries like Dominican Republic, and throughout the Americas.

In addition, much testimony was given towards the astronomical numbers of Afro Descendants in North America incarcerated both young and old; it was concluded the prison experiment has been a complete failure. In addition to speaking on Police/State Violence, Criminal Justice, Education and Political Under-representation, much talk was given to the topic of Reparations and the continued poor living conditions of Afro Descendants throughout the Americas centuries later. It was echoed that the back-breaking work done by enslaved Africans over the centuries in building international, national, and generational wealth for the Americas should never be forgotten.

President Commissioner Margarette May Macaulay implored several times throughout the day for civil society to unify and work together as organizations in solidarity to combat racism and racial discrimination.

The few North American participants spoke to the historical and current situation of Criminal Justice, Education (Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs), and Reparations on the national, state, and university level regarding the descendants of enslaved Africans. Below is one intervention by North American participant Tomiko Shine, Cultural Anthropologist and Director of Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC).

APP-HRC Written Testimony and Recommendations
Intervention Panel: Criminal Justice

In the US Criminal Justice system today, we are no longer in the mass incarceration era but generational incarceration. Where the black bodies of African descent have been confined, contained, or imprisoned for the last 400 years from racialized laws, plantations, Jim Crow, segregation and prisons. Thus, the same laws and policies that confined the slave/sharecropper to the land of his oppressor/slave master are the same laws/policies that imprison the woman and man of African descent in prisons across the nation. In effect we must conclude after 400 years the US criminal justice system has failed US families of African descent generationally, and reparative justice must begin immediately to salvage the future of unborn children of African descent in American society. To combat historical institutional racism, we can no longer engage in talks or activities of reform, but that of transformation to dismantle the criminal justice system transforming it into a human rights system based on justice, rebalancing human identities, narratives, and conditions.

Recommendations

⦁ The criminal justice system must begin to move away from colonial/race language ushered from 18th century European philosophical thought that only lends itself to incarcerate identities and narratives and use a human rights language that speaks to liberation and freedom of the person.
⦁ The criminal justice system must become a human rights system based on the human being and their historical lived experience in America.
⦁ The criminal justice courts should begin to be replaced with human rights courts.
⦁ The international mechanisms of human rights need to be inserted more into the current system of the criminal justice system.
⦁ Persons of African Descent that stand before the courts should have access to all forms of justice which includes international and regional human rights mechanisms.
⦁ As 2019 is the 400th year of the first enslaved Africans brought to American ports, the tools of reparative/restorative justice and human rights mechanisms must begin to be used in releasing aging prisoners across America who have been in prison for 30, 40, 50 and 60 years.
⦁ A Human Rights Office should be established in every major city and state across the nation.
⦁ In US law schools a human rights curriculum should begin to be taught to law students for them to develop into human rights agents, builders, and defenders.
⦁ Criminal Justice Departments/Criminology Studies across US colleges should now evolve into Human Rights Departments/Studies.

This intervention is dedicated to human rights defenders Maria Elena Moyano Delgado and Marielle Franco.

References 
Books:
⦁ Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gangs to the Penitentiary, by Dennis Childs
⦁ Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America, by Judge Andrew Napolitano
⦁ The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander
⦁ The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, by Edward Baptist
⦁ Perpetual Prisoner Machine, by Joel Dyer
Journals/Articles:
⦁ Black Power Incarcerated: Political Prisoners, Genocide, and the State, by Laura Whitehorn
⦁ Generations of Philly Families Are Incarcerated Together, by Samantha Melamed
Hearing:
⦁ 1985 Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission/MOVE
Films:
⦁ 500 years Later, by MK Asante
⦁ 13th, by Ava Duvernay
Campaign:
2015-2024 UN Decade for People of African Descent 

On Friday, November 16 and Saturday, November 17, the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) and the Maryland Council of Elders (MCOE) hosted the 2018 SRDC International Summit at the historic Great Blacks In Wax Museum. The actual meeting was held at the Mansion, located at 1649 East North Avenue, on the corner of North and Broadway in East Baltimore.

The Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus was founded as an international Pan-Afrikan organization as a result of the African Union’s 2003 invitation to the Afrikan Diaspora to become involved as potential voting members, and the holding of a Pan-Afrikan roundtable discussion among activists in Los Angeles in April of 2006. Its mission centers on the establishment of local, national and international groups dedicated to reaching out to the grassroots communities of people of Afrikan descent, establishing a Pan-Afrikan Agenda and electing a cadre of representatives to present that Agenda to international Pan-Afrikan bodies such as the African Union. A plan was developed and proposed by SRDC by which the local organizing committees can reach out to their communities and elect Representatives and Councils of Elders, who would in turn become potential spokespeople for the Pan-Afrikan Diaspora in international meetings. The Maryland Organizing Committee of SRDC was founded in 2007.

The Maryland Council of Elders was established at the December 2017 Pan-Afrikan Town Hall Meeting that was held by the Maryland Organizing Committee of SRDC. This is not the first time a Council of Elders has been established in Maryland, but so far it has been the most active, having presided over three Town Hall Meetings, the commemoration of Afrikan Liberation Day 2018, and now the 2018 SRDC Summit. Its members include Baba Rafiki Morris (Co-Chair), Mama Maisha Washington (Co-Chair), Mother Marcia Bowyer-Barron, Mama Victory Swift, Mama Abena Disroe, Baba Ishaka-Ra-Hannibal-El, Baba Kenyatta Howard, Dr. Ken Morgan, Baba David Murphy and Baba Ade Oba Tokunbo. Key activists who have worked directly with the MCOE to make the Summit a success include Bro. Brandon Walker, Bro. Ben Enosh, Sis. Kim Poole and Bro. Charles Jackson.

A number of local organizations were also involved in the planning and implementation of the Summit: Our Victorious City, the All-Afrikan Peoples Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), the Organization of Afro-American Unity Baltimore (OAAU), the Organization of All Afrikan Unity Black Panther Cadre (OAAUBPC), the Ujima Peoples Progress Party (UPP) and the Teaching Artist Institute (TAI).

The Summit’s objectives are also inspired by several international organizations: the Central American Black Organization (CABO), known in Spanish as the Organizacion Negro Centro Americana (ONECA); Per Ankh Smai Tawi from the Virgin Islands; the Mouvement International pour Reparation (MIR) from Guadeloupe; the Pan African Federalist Movement (PAFM); the African Union African Diaspora Council (AUADC) from Europe; the Middle East African Diaspora Unity Council (MEADUC) from Dimonas, Israel; the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent; and the Pan African Diaspora Union (PADU).

Delicious and healthy food for the attendees was graciously provided courtesy of Sis. Ujimma Masani, founder of the organizations Brothers Who Can Cook and Sisters Who Can Burn as well as a member of the activist organization Working, Organizing, Making A Nation (WOMAN) and Mama Victory Swift, who provided much-needed financing for the food.

Special guests traveled far to participate in the Summit. Aside from the Organizing Committees from Los Angeles California, Charleston South Carolina, Seattle Washington, Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, The Netherlands and Dimonas Israel, delegations from The Gambia (Gambian Embassy), Liberia (Sehwah) and the African Diaspora Union (Afridu, based in South Africa), as well as representatives of Queen Mother Delois Blakely (New York) and the Pan African Federalist Movement made presentations to the audience during the two days of the Summit.

The first day started later than scheduled, largely because of delays in transporting the out-of-town guests from their hotels near the Marshall Baltimore-Washington International Airport to the meeting venue. In spite of the early chaos, the members of the Maryland Council of Elders, in particular, made sure the arriving delegates and community members were welcomed and that food was made available for attendees during both days of the Summit.

Future articles will discuss some of the statements and presentations made throughout the Summit. This article will concentrate on the opening remarks from SRDC’s founder, Professor David Horne, as well as the Co-Chair of the Maryland Council of Elders, Baba Rafiki Morris, and the former President-General of the UNIA-ACL, Baba Senghor Baye.

Baba Rafiki Morris
Co-Chair
Maryland Council of Elders (MCOE)

“My name is Rafiki Morris. I’m one of the co chairs of the Maryland Council of Elders, who along with the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus is hosting this meeting today. I’m also an organizer for the All-Afrikan People’s Revolutionary Party, and so we’re going to exchange some views about the problems our people have, and try to approach some solutions over the next couple of days. We apologize for the late start, and hopefully we’ll catch up, because we have a lot of things to talk about.”

After Mama Abena Disroe and Baba Ishaka-Ra-Hannibal-El officiated the Tambiko (Libation), during which the Ancestors were recognized and honored, Baba Rafiki continued.

“In December of last year, the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus pulled together some of us for what has come to be known as the Maryland Council of Elders. The Maryland Council of Elders consists of Brothers and Sisters from basically all walks of life and we were given a charge by the people who brought us into existence to choose one thing and do it well. It took us a while to examine the activities of the various organizations that made up our group, to find out what that one thing should be. We finally concluded that the best thing that we can do as Elders in a troubled community, is bring our people together. The best thing that we can do is forge unity among our organizations, among our community and among ourselves.

“And it is in that spirit that we have maintained our activity over these past several months … soon it will be a year. Wow. It’s been a long year. We did a lot of work in that year. And we have made some progress. It’s a funny thing about progress. You don’t always know that it’s happening, until somebody else says ‘I see whet you all did.’ And this is what’s been happening with the Council of Elders. I was up in Arch Social Club a couple of weeks ago, and one of the Brothers there — because we hadn’t been meeting there for a while — says, ‘Rafiki, no matter what you all do, make sure that you all stay here at Arch Social Club, because you all don’t know the impact that your presence has had on what we’re doing here.’ We didn’t know. But just our presence there, seniors in our community, meeting to talk about our problems, inspired the people around us to begin to do things to help our people.
“We took on two major activities outside of our Town Hall Meetings. The first one was Afrikan Liberation Day, and the second one is this Summit. We put a lot, a lot, a lot of hope, faith and confidence in this Summit. And we will tell you like we tell everybody, you see there’s a small amount of people here. We always tell folks, it’s not the size of the audience in the fight. It’s the size of the fight in the audience. And when I look out at this audience I see fighters. I see strugglers. I see people who are not content with the status quo. And if you are Afrikan on the planet Earth, one thing you should not be is content. Because it ain’t right what’s going on.

“So, we want to welcome you, but we want to welcome you with an understanding of what’s happening. We are dying. Our people are dying. In Baltimore, we lose almost four people a day, to gunshots and opioid overdose. More in opioid overdoses than gunshots. And Baltimore doesn’t have 500,000 people.

“They spend more money on police in Baltimore per capita than almost any city in the United States. Like 25% more. Sixty percent of the city’s budget is spent on policing. Now you know who they’re policing. They’re policing you. And they’re waiting for you to give them a reason to come kick your door in. This is the same process that they’re using in the Sudan, this is the same process that they’re using in West Afrika, this is the same thing that they’re doing in Venezuela, in Bolivia, in Colombia, in Trinidad, in every major city in the United States. It’s called counterinsurgency. Keep them down so they don’t rise up. This is what’s going on. This is what’s happening. This is a military operation. And you are the enemy. Some of us don’t want to acknowledge that we have enemies. But we definitely have enemies, and the only way to deal with our enemies is to get organized, and the only way to get organized is to set aside some of the petty differences that keep us divided, separated and apart from one another.

“So, it’s to address these issues that we are here today. And we would like for all of you to pay close attention, to involve yourselves in this discussion. This is not a series of lectures. This is a discussion. A dialog. That means you’ve got to talk and listen. Right? That’s what dialog is. It’s an exchange. And we’re here to exchange views. There are a lot of different formations and groups represented here, with different points of view. And we say all of these points of view have some validity. Because you don’t fight a revolution just one way. You fight a revolution in every possible way, at the same time. And this is what we have to do, and this is what we have to talk about.

“So without further ado, I would like to bring Professor Horne, who’s going to do our opening remarks, and thank you all for coming, hope you stay with us throughout these two or three days of activity, and give your best, because your people need it. Thank you very much.”

At this point, Professor Horne approached the podium to make his opening remarks, in which he gave a synopsis of the situation of Afrika, its connection to its Diaspora and the mission of SRDC.

Professor David Horne
Founding Member of the National Secretariat
International Facilitator
Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC)

“Are Black people going to win? Will Afrika be united? Then, Hallelujah.

“My given name, by my parents, is David Lawrence Horne. I was given an Afrikan name three days ago, when I was in Liberia. I’ve always been of the belief, particularly with Afrika, that when you have done something that they can identify, they give you a name. In Afrika, names mean something. Names are significant. Quite often here, our names are just whatever is cute, whatever kind of fits. … And again, that’s part of an adaptation to this country. But we are Afrikan people. We were Afrikan people before. We were Afrikan people then. We are Afrikan people now. And we will be Afrikan people tomorrow.

“Historically, everybody’s Afrikan. We all came from the Continent, even though White people don’t want to acknowledge it, even though they came from Afrika. We are the birthplace of mankind. Now, clearly, they don’t want to be Afrikan anymore, and we really don’t want them to be Afrikan anymore, because they don’t really represent us. But we who are Afrikan, whether we’re in Brazil, Suriname, Trinidad, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Baltimore, Los Angeles, no matter where we are, we are still Afrikan people. Israel — not all of Israel, just Dimonas — we are still Afrikan people, and part of our assignment, part of our reason for being here, in case we forget — and the Elder just reminded us of why we’re here, which is to have a discussion — but in case we forget why we’re here, it ain’t right. And it’s not going to be right until we correct it. Until we bring the balance back into the world. So, it may not be right before we leave this Earth, but it is our obligation to do everything we can in the short time that we can have to make sure we move it forward.

“It should be better, we should be further along the road, when each of us transition out of here. If we’re not doing that, then why are we here? Just to make a little more money? Just to get a bigger car? Just to party a little more? That’s a complete waste of damn time. If you’re not here to make this place better, you shouldn’t be here. Afrikan people have one job — to reclaim the land, and to reclaim ourselves. Afrika must be reunited. Afrika must come back together.

“I am part of a group that organized itself in 2006 called the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus. I was lucky to found the organization and we’ve been moving and expanding ever since. The original objective of SRDC was to help get Afrikans who are not on the Continent — and again, we are trying to move away from this concept of the ‘Diaspora’; there are basically Global Afrikans, those on the Continent and those not on the Continent, but we’re all Global Afrikans — our responsibility was to figure out a way of showing the African Union that we were willing to accept their invitation. Now, we’ve been gone a long time. We’ve been scattered all over the place. We have all kinds of songs, all kinds of poetry, all kinds of writings remembering that. We all in here remember ‘Sometimes I feel like a motherless child / A long, long way from home.’ They were talking about us being away from Afrika.

“Well, in 2003, the African Union, the newest iteration of an organized Pan-Afrikanism, the newest organization to move us forward, about bringing Afrika together, that organization, in 2003, invited the Global Afrikans not living on the Continent to come back home. Not just to come back home to raise hell. Not to come back home to rob people, beat people up and bring some of these ills that we’ve learned away from home, to bring them back. No. They invited Afrikans to come back home and help to push Afrika to where it should be. We should all be talking about Wakanda. Afrika should already be there. We are supposed to be helping them get there. And the African Union invited us to come back home, to stop being like motherless children.

“But they would set up a procedure to do that. We then embarked on having Town Hall sessions, creating Councils of Elders so that we could get people in the community to decide who had been working in a Pan-Afrikanist way before this invitation. Who would now carry us further. And we’ve been working with trying to get into the African Union. There are supposed to be twenty delegate seats to join one branch of the African Union called ECOSOCC [the Economic, Social and Cultural Council]. ECOSOCC is an advisory part of the African Union. It makes no real executive decisions. It makes a recommendation for action.

“The African Union is a presidential-head-of-state organization. There are essentially 55 Afrikan countries. Actually 54, unless you count Western Sahara. Morocco does not count Western Sahara because it sees it as a colony. [People] don’t recognize colonies anymore. So [for us] there are 55 Afrikan countries. The heads of state make all the firm decisions.

“ECOSOCC, which is were the Global Afrikan Community called the Diaspora is supposed to come back in, and is supposed to become part of this discussion body, and make recommendations to move forward — they don’t know us anymore. We’ve been gone too long. A lot of us don’t know them. A lot still don’t have real relationships with Continental Afrikans. When they come here, you don’t invite them to barbecues. You don’t invite them to your churches. You don’t hang out with them, you don’t invite them to your parties. You know what I’m talking about. They have convinced us that the Continent is no longer a part of us. Afrikans don’t even know who we are. White people spend a whole lot of time bringing Afrikan guests in and keeping them in White communities. ‘Don’t talk to Black people; don’t talk to Afrikan-Americans because they will taint you, because they will get you messed up. They will take you to the ghetto and get you all into their life of crime.’ So while a lot of Afrikan guests have been brought in, and kept away from us, we have had our history books written by crazy people who taught us that we’re not Afrikan. ‘No, your history began when you got off the slave ship. That’s Black history.’ And that was a lie in and of itself. Number one, the people who got off that ship in 1619 were not slaves. And our history did not begin there anyway. We have a global authority. World history came from Black folks. …

“But they have tried to keep us divided. They have taught us a bunch of nonsense about each other. Part of the African Union’s job is to get rid of all that. They must change the whole educational system. In the 55 Afrikan countries, the educational system is still based on European values. They are still teaching young Afrikan kids about Galileo and a bunch of other White heroes. They don’t have Afrikan heroes in books, so that you can learn that Afrikans came up with mathematics, not White folks. That the first civilization was in Afrika, not in Europe. We don’t have that yet. So part of the African Union’s effort is to change the White educational system, just like we are changing our educational system. Just like too many of us still don’t know who we are and where we came from, and that we are worth something. It’s not supposed to be based on what White people say. …

“So, the SRDC was created to connect those who wanted to be recognized as Afrikans again. We’re the continental organization that was talking about real Pan-Afrikanism. This is the next iteration of Kwame Nkrumah and his dream. This is the next iteration of what Haile Selassie talked about. …

“The state of where we are now is that the African Union is still making major, major, major progress, but it is a bureaucratic organization, still run by heads of state, who still care much more about bringing in money for their family, and staying in charge, than they are worried about how to better govern the people, how do I make decisions that will help my individual country.

“We are still working on dual citizenship for us. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I want to have an option. When that orange man [in the White House] goes nuts — he’s not nuts yet, he’s just normal now for him — but when he goes nuts, I want to have a place to go, that loves me back … where I can be a citizen, where I can help develop something. I want to have an option. So a part of what SRDC is working on is dual citizenship, so we’re setting up negotiations in different countries. We’re working on this responsibility we have to reconnect ourselves to this Afrikan future.
“I just came from Liberia. The single Afrikan country that America colonized. In the 1884 European conference [known as the Berlin Conference–Editor] which colonized all of the Continent, except Ethiopia — South Sudan was not there, Eritrea was not there, they were not entities at that time — America was at that [1884 Berlin] conference. They didn’t take on any of the other territories, but they had already colonized Liberia. They had taught some Afrikan-Americans that ‘you can go back home, you can go back to Liberia. Just act like us.’ So some of us went home and acted like White folks and imposed ourselves on the native population of Liberia. Now I grew up seeing Liberia in every magazine all the time, talking about how things were getting good for Afrikan-Americans to return and if you wanted, you could go back and instantly become citizens. But it was a mess. It was a mess and it got to be a big mess and got to have a civil war. This country [the United States] dropped Liberia like a stone. Ignored them so their development went backwards instead of forward. And they are now in serious need.

“I’m a Pan-Afrikanist. I’ve been a Pan-Afrikanist most of my adult life. I’ve worked with a bunch of other Pan-Afrikanists. I understand why we ignored Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras. Because we can understand that some Black people spoke Spanish. I understand that we focused only on ‘Let’s Go Back To Tanzania, Let’s Go Back To The Continent’. I understand that. I do not understand why we ignore Liberia. Pan-Afrikanists should have been all over Liberia by now. But we were not, we have not been. And they need some serious help.

“So one of the things we’re doing right now is a big project. We are going to build a Public Library in Liberia. Liberia has no Public Libraries anywhere in the country. Not one. Shocking to think about, but in most Afrikan countries, a Public Library is not a big deal. They use their money to build streets and highways. We’re going to build a library, so the young people will have a place to go. … We’re going to build something from the Diaspora. That’s part of what SRDC is doing in partnership with Liberia. We need to understand, Liberia needs help and all of Afrika needs our help. We have to come back. We have to reconnect. That is what SRDC is about, that is what, essentially, this Conference has to be about.

“Yes, there have been wars [among activists] … word-wars between 2008, 2007 and now. [Some people] have been acting crazy, and have called people a bunch of names, and have gotten in the way of progress. Unfortunately, that is how we move forward. By moving backwards ten yards before we can move one yard up. [Ancestor and former Jamaican Ambassador and barrister] Dudley Thompson, who was the President of WADU [the World African Diaspora Union, another prominent Pan-Afrikan organization] before his untimely death, was a great, great man. He had done innumerable things which we have to give him credit for. And he [and other recent Ancestors deserve] much more than the nonsense we have heard on the Internet. A lot of you have read foolishness about who is doing what and who is not doing what, who is a CIA agent and who is basically sleeping around. All of that gets in the way and should be ignored.

“We must have projects. We are now going to connect with the African Union and we’re going to connect with this whole effort to re-unify Afrika. Afrikan must be unified. We’re going to connect to that, not by just going through the bureaucratic [organizations]. We want our twenty seats in the African Union. We’re not letting that go. But we’re not going to say that this is the only way that we’re going to handle this.

“We are going to do project-by-project. We are going to show you that we are so valuable that you cannot ignore us. We have a representative here, Dr. Barryl Biekman, from Europe, who represents at least 25 years of trying to organize [Afrikans living in] Germany, The Netherlands, France and other European countries to do the same thing, because Afrikan people are everywhere. We are fighting through the nonsensical name-calling to get to the real, purposeful action forward. That is what SRDC has been about. SRDC has a very, very strong connection to our European counterpart, we are working with folks in the Caribbean, we’ve actually traveled to Brazil, we’ve gone to Canada, we’ve gone around trying to tell people Afrika Says Come Back. They’re ready. Get ready to help.

“Dr. Khazriel [Ben Yehuda, from Dimonas, Israel], who is the head of the Afrikans in Israel, has been working with SRDC and the European Pan-Afrikanists to make us understand that there are Black Palestinians, there are Black Bedouins, there were Black people in what White people like to call Israel long before those people showed up.

“We’re a historical people. We’re the bedrock. And that bedrock is now rising back to the surface where it belongs.

“We must understand something about science. Climate change means they all are going to come running to Afrika. The cold weather [that is expected to result in the polar regions when the planet’s heat-exchange mechanism breaks down] is going to kill all of them off. All of them are going to come back to the Equator. When they come, they are going to come to reclaim, retake it. And we’ve got to be ready for that. They’re coming for everything that we have. If we have not reconnected ourselves to that Continent, we have given away the future of the Afrikan people, and we cannot allow that.

“The Conference this weekend is about How do we move forward along that pathway? How do we reconnect with Afrika? How do we do something tangible? How do we make some decisions that will not only impact why we are killing each other here [but also] how we will stop killing each other over there?

“And we have a representative from a group called Afridu [the African Diaspora Union, based in South Africa], which has said they want to reconnect with us as we reconnect to Afrika. They want to be our eyes and ears in the Pan African Parliament [which] was set up to become the legislative body for the entire Continent. Once you get to a Union Government or a Federalist Government, you’ve got to have a legislative body. The Pan African Parliament was established to do that. Right now they meet two or three times a year and they make recommendations but the recommendations are not always listened to by the heads of state. But they are firm in what they are trying to do. They understand Reparations. They understand that Afrikans from here want land and Reparations and they have discussed it. They have discussed the whole issue of human rights being imposed on them. … Afrikan culture, most of it, is not into the gay lifestyle, and the Pan African Parliament has had a number of discussions about [LGBTQ issues]. So the Pan African Parliament is going to become the legislative body for the entire Afrikan Continent. So we have a group, Afridu, that is working with us in the Pan African Parliament.

“In the 2012 Global Diaspora Conference, that was held in South Africa, part of the decision making was that the Diaspora could become Observers. If you were willing to pay your airline tickets and take time out from your job, you could become Observers at any of the African Union activities. You can do interviews. You can go to the Pan African Parliament. You can go to meetings of ECOSOCC … and then come back and talk to your home group about what happened at the meetings. If you’re willing to put in the time and spend the money, you can do it. We have not taken advantage of it. So for the most part, we don’t know what’s going on in Afrika. And we need to know.”

[On the question of how we can move forward in the face of movements such as #MeToo, the Women’s Movement, Blexit and various White Supremacist-inspired actions without falling behind and running out of time:] “We will get our 20 delegate seats [within the next two years]. [Also. US President] Donald Trump will be impeached. … [US Vice President Mike] Pence was involved in the skullduggery that got Trump elected in the first place [so he could be impeached as well]. …

“The plan that we came up with for building community, the Town Halls and the Community Council of Elders, that is still the best plan out there. There is not any place in the world where Global Afrikans live which has come up with a better plan than this. The people who were in charge of selecting how to organize the Global Afrikans kept assigning people that they liked, as opposed to assigning people who knew what they were doing, and so that got in the way. We have now been able to kill that. We now deal directly with African Union officials. The process will be in place to decide on those 20 delegate seats before the end of 2019. And for those coming from the United States, no, we are not getting 19 of the 20 seats, as some of my friends have said. … The United States may get four, maybe. Brazil’s going to get three or four. But anyway, we’ve got to divide them up.”

[On the need to check our tendency for American arrogance in dealing with Afrikan leaders and communities:] “In 1974 we went to the Sixth Pan African Congress in Tanzania. There were 350 of us. There were more delegates from the United States than there were from the rest of Afrika. Our first week there, we went to every meeting, every conference, and raised hell. ‘You Afrikan presidents don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know how to lead. You don’t know how to take Afrikans to the next level.’ We basically came in storming. At the end of that first meeting, [Guinean President] Sekou Toure sent his foreign minister in to talk to us. Sekou Toure was our major hero at the time. The foreign minister came in and said ‘My dear Afrikan Brothers, we are honored by your presence here, that you are coming back to show us how much you care about Afrika. But trust me when I tell you, sit down and shut up. Not one of you has ever run a country. Not any of you has ever had to face decisions about what to do with the thousands of people who are … in a particular area. You don’t know what you are talking about, coming here and telling us about how we have to have Scientific Socialism here, we need to have trade relationships there. Sit, listen and learn.’ Governance is hard. Trying to be able to maintain your country and not lose it is hard.

“That’s why we talk about how the African Union has made some progress, and it has. They have just passed something that no one thought possible: the Continental Free Trade Agreement, which means the entire Afrikan Continent will now start trading with each other, as opposed to focusing all their trade relations with what comes from Europe. To hear that Nigeria was importing rice every day to feed its people, that’s crazy. We taught the world about rice. Afrikans need to trade with each other and value what Afrikans produce. They have now made that agreement. They are now going to pull that off. Nobody would have thought that possible 15 years ago.

“There is progress being made. But it is, first of all, identifying what issue you can tackle, pull all your resources together, tackle that issue, then move on to the next one. You need to address these issues in your own communities, with your own Councils of Elders, so we can get together and pool the resources of all this wisdom. That is what this whole collective effort is all about. This is not a game. This is not going to be easy. This is a lifetime commitment.”

Baba Senghor Baye
Assistant Manager, Harambee Radio
Former President-General, UNIA-ACL

“First of all, this [Professor Horne] is my Brother here, and when we say SRDC, I’m with that. We worked with the UNIA for many years and are still with the UNIA. He served as International Organizer, I served as President-General. But I want my Brother to understand that there’s a movement taking place. Not in an organization, but a grassroots global movement, called the Pan African Federalist Movement. The head of the Regional Initiating Committee of North America will be here tomorrow. But I’m very much involved with that movement on the international, national and local level. So what I want you to understand, if we’re talking about people under 39, they are rising up. But they need the wisdom of those of us that know what has been going on, and know what can go on if we don’t do what we’re supposed to do. So all these [competing] movements we’re talking about, we’ve got a movement coming.

“In 1958, when Kwame Nkrumah called Brothers and Sisters together for the first Afrikan Peoples Conference, there was a plan. … There were other plans that did not properly manifest. We’re talking about the grassroots plan of the people rising to power to address the issues from the bottom up.

“From December 8 to December 13 this year, we’re meeting in Accra, Ghana, along with the Kwame Nkrumah Center, led by Samia Nkrumah and others and the Pan African Federalist Movement. Thus far, representatives from 36 countries have registered. … David will be there with me and others. So, many of us are coming together to address the issues that our Ancestors put in place. They knew that the grassroots had to rise up. Unfortunately, many of the grassroots don’t realize how much power they have to go up against those other movements in terms of … the truth of Mother Afrika. So, in spite of what the countries may do, despite what happens from the top down, we’re coming from the bottom up. And that means there’s going to be change, regardless. So I want to make it clear, sometimes we put too much emphasis on others’ movements, and then we don’t concentrate on building our own movement. Young people are sick and tired of the foolishness, but they don’t have the wisdom, they don’t necessarily have the clear picture of what our Ancestors laid down. And this movement I’m talking about is led by those Ancestors. … We need to study and bring all that together, and build power from the bottom up. And whatever happens from the top is going to happen, but Dr. Horne assured us, we say by the next generation, we’re going to take Afrika back and unify Afrikans.

“Now, there’s going to be hit-back. Let’s be clear. But we don’t have a choice. By 2020, it will be 100 years [since] Marcus Garvey brought 25,000 delegates from all over the world together in Harlem, and the same objective they had. So we’re not far behind. Now we’ve got to catch up. But don’t be content. … Afrika’s gonna win.”

Later on Friday and Saturday morning, the various SRDC organizations from Seattle, Washington, Charleston, South Carolina and Baltimore, Maryland made presentations on their activities over the last year. The Saturday session also featured presentations by delegations from The Gambia, Liberia and the Pan African Federalist Movement, as well as an address by the Community Mayor of Harlem, Queen Mother Delois Blakely. Check back with this site over the next week or so for more articles from the 2018 SRDC International Summit.

New Ancestor and Honorable Warrior for the People, Baba Abdul Jabbar Caliph.

Sunday, November 18 was the date for the Pan-Afrikan Memorial and Ascension Ceremony for prison activist and freedom fighter Bro. Abdul Jabbar Caliph.  “Jabbar”, as he was commonly called, was a leader in the National Jericho Movement for the freedom of Political Prisoners until joining the organization Release Aging People in Prison, now known as the Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APPHRC) several years ago.

Mama Tomiko Shine and Baba Tyronne Morton, leaders of APPHRC.

Bro. Jabbar was also an integral member of the Ujima Peoples Progress Party, building a Black worker-led independent political party in the state of Maryland. 

Bro. Nnamdi Lumumba of the Ujima People’s Progress Party with his Queen.

The following is a short tribute from the memorial program.  We will add more to this post in the near future.

Four strong warriors who fought alongside Baba Jabbar for truth and justice: Bro. Kelly (UJIMA), Bro. Brandon Walker (UJIMA), Baba Jihad Abdulmumit (Chair, National Jericho Movement), Baba Tyronne Morton (APPHRC)

Abdul Jabbar Caliph departed this physical world taking his last breath on October 8, 2018. In the context and ritual of the 40 day Ascension ceremony his transition falls on November 18, 2018. In the story of African people this is a most important date. Why? On November 18, 1803 over 200 years ago the Battle of Vertieres took place on the small island of Haiti against the imposing and powerful European armies; liberating the Haitians from slavery and European domination.

Group picture from the Ascension Ceremony, with Baba Jabbar’s Family front and center.

Thus Abdul Jabbar Caliph is ancestrally aligned within the pages of African history and cosmology. Considering the character of the man with Jabbar meaning strong and mighty, he always spoke about and to the need of liberation for people of African descent across the globe. He fought to the end for the liberation of African people mind, body, and soul. He went to the people because he was not afraid of the people, and recognized he was the people. His dedication, works, and brilliance of mind is etched in the memory of all he touched. Thus he moves on to continue his work on the ancestral plane; available to us Africans in America as we become ready to liberate ourselves and our future.
 
“African people are going to have to fund their own liberation”
“Only black people can free black people”
— Abdul Jabbar Caliph

Bro. Jabbar at a meeting with Mama Pam Africa of MOVE.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Justice Initiative, founded by Heather Gray, regularly releases announcements, analyses and commentaries in the area of social justice, particularly racial justice and American racism.  Here, she shares a press release pertaining to a biotechnology conference occurring in South Africa which is supported by several multinational biotech agribusinesses and the response of several on-the-ground Afrikan civil society organizations and activists.  Ms. Gray can be reached at hmcgray@earthlink.net.

Note: For additional information on the disruption and the desire for corporate agribusiness to control all of the world’s food systems and seeds, as they are insidiously attempting to do throughout Africa as described below, please read the interview with organic farmer Rashid Nuri entitled: Rashid Nuri on “Seeds of Destruction”. 

Heather Gray
August 28, 2018
Justice Initiative

Media release: Civil society responds to BioAfrica Convention

For immediate release:
African Centre for Biodiversity
28 August 2018

BioAfrica Convention: Open for the business of profit; closed to the questions that matter

This week the biotechnology industry meets at the Durban International Convention Centre. Themed “Africa – Open for business” the Convention will explore various ways in which African biodiversity can be exploited for agriculture, industry and health by providing a platform for stakeholders in the biotechnology environment.  The Convention is co-hosted by AfricaBio, the Technology Innovation Agency and the South African Department of Science and Technology, with primary sponsorship from DuPont, Syngenta and MSQ Health.  (See https://bioafricaconvention.com/ for details)

What is clear from the programme and exorbitant participation fees is that they will not be building the Bio-Economy together with the communities whose resources and knowledge will be exploited.  There has been no attempt to open the content or participation to civil society voices that might challenge the neo-colonial agenda, or the neoliberal approach to commodifying and privatising nature and traditional knowledge, an approach which also contravenes the essence of African belief systems which centralise communal ownership and benefit.

In co-hosting the event with industry mouthpiece AfricaBio – whose membership includes global biotech giants such as Bayer-Monsanto, Syngenta and DuPont – the South African government is ensuring that critical social, environmental, ethical, health and economic concerns are swept under the carpet.  These include concerns about genetically modified crops and related herbicides that have already been foisted on farmers and the public.  They include concerns about the obdurate belief that technological solutions are a “silver bullet”.  And they include concerns about the lack of imagination for alternative and decolonial agricultural futures that build on farmers’ knowledge rather than supporting Trojan Horse projects such as the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) Project, which present false solutions for drought tolerance.

In so doing, South Africa is complicit in pressuring other African governments to accept technology packages that ultimately benefit these multinationals, while society, the farmer and consumers bear the brunt of negative impacts.

We, the undersigned civil society organisations and individuals, reject this agenda to commodify our natural resources and traditional knowledge while displacing these with increasingly risky and untested technologies for the benefit of global capital.

ORGANISATIONS

• Biowatch SA
  For more information: Vanessa Black Cell: 082 472 8844
  Email: vanessa@biowatch.org.za

• African Centre for Biodiversity
  For more information: Mariam Mayet
  Cell: 083 269 4309
  Email: mariam@acbio.org.za

NETWORKS

• No GMO South Africa
• Seed Freedom SA
• Seed sovereignty South Africa
• Resistance is fertile SA
• Toxic Free community

INDIVIDUALS

• Busisiwe Mgangxela – agroecology farmer
• Rushka Johnson – small-scale farmer, environmental activist and seed guardian

The recent apparent escalation of insanity in the Trump Administration has led many pundits to speculate on the set of circumstances that could possibly have led to the current sad state of affairs in the capital city of the so-called Leader of the Free World.  Never before have they seen such audacious, boldfaced corruption in defense of a hypocritical and incompetent regime, they say.  They insist that the United States has reached a new low in mendacity with the criminal actions of members of the Trump Administration, possibly leading all the way to Trump himself.  Only impeachment, they say, followed by a pair of “extra-small handcuffs”, will tell.

These people have not been paying attention.

At least from Day One of the Trump Administration, it was clear that truth and competence were not highly valued, despite Trump’s claims during his campaign that he would find “the best people”.  His then-press secretary, Sean Spicer, would angrily insist that the public coronation of his president was the largest to ever witness such an event ever, “period”, in spite of clear visual evidence to the contrary.  The only thing that was perhaps more shocking than that assertion was the fact that, before the year was out, Spicer would be replaced by someone who appears to be even more comfortable angrily dispensing disinformation to the public in Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Rudolph Giuliani, formerly (and improperly) dubbed “America’s Mayor” merely because he happened to be entrenched in New York’s City Hall when the September 11 terrorist attack took place, was long known to Pan-Afrikan activists and Black communities in New York as a racist mayor who never thought twice about enabling the brutality of his police, from the Abner Louima attack in a police station bathroom to the Amadou Diallo murder by police in the vestibule of his own home to the repressive tactics used against the 1998 Million Youth March in Harlem.  Giuliani had used the month leading up to the Million Youth March to turn up the heat in New York’s racial drama, threatening march organizer Dr. Khalid Muhammad and lying about Dr. Muhammad’s intentions right up to the immediate aftermath of the march, insisting that he had exhorted followers to “go out and murder people” during the march when in fact no such statement was ever made (I personally made tapes of everything that was said, and there was no such exhortation at any time during the march).  He had used these false assertions to justify the use of his riot police to attack the march organizers as they were ending the march three minutes late.  Thus, Giuliani’s current antics in support of an unlawful “law-and-order” president were anticipated by his critics who knew of his behavior as Mayor of New York City.

Alt-right enthusiasts have been discussing the racist credentials of former adviser Steve Bannon and current adviser Stephen Miller since they emerged from the shadows and joined the Trump campaign.  From Miller’s first public words that Trump’s edicts “will not be questioned”, we were duly informed that his boss was nothing if not a megalomaniac, and that he had in Miller a willing acolyte who seemed to relish any opportunity to lead the Stormtroopers forward into the “lawless rabble”.

Omarosa Manigault-Newman, his once-loyal “Apprentice” reality-star adviser, has recently come out to acknowledge her own (allegedly unwitting) complicity in enabling Trump’s destructive policies (perhaps the only one to have done so, at least until onetime Trump attorney Michael Cohen finally turns State’s evidence), but she has been known as an opportunist for years, one who was more than ready to embrace a man whose historical image is that of an unrepentant racist, and to whom she had bragged that his opponents would be forced to “bow down” after he was elected president.

Trump’s choices for the Department of Energy (Rick Perry, who could not even remember the name of the agency as he was campaigning on eliminating it four years earlier), Housing and Urban Development (the apparently narcoleptic Ben Carson, whose commitment to increase rents in federal housing for poor people caused many to wish he had stuck to brain surgery), Environmental Protection (the anti-environment Scott Pruitt, followed by the equally anti-environment Andrew Wheeler), Education (Betsy DeVos, whose lack of public school experience has led some to question whether she ever went to school at all) and Homeland Security (Kristjen Nielsen, who claims not to have known that Norway was a White country and whose incompetence and heartlessness led to her public harassment at dinner one evening) have smacked of a level of cronyism that is the only possible explanation for the appointment of individuals who are so woefully unqualified for those positions.

It appears the only members of Trump’s Cabinet who are actually qualified to do their jobs are Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, who ironically goes by the  nickname “Mad Dog”.

The United States Legislative Branch has completely failed to serve the American people as a “check” on the Trump Administration, from the obstruction of the Republicans to many Obama Administration policies, to their current efforts to obstruct all investigations into the crimes of Trump Administration and campaign officials, to their pushing of tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of the working and underclasses, to the relative fecklessness of too many in the Democratic Party.  As a result of the Legislature’s dysfunction and even treachery (Congress, the opposite of progress), the Supreme Court now is composed of a majority that will likely back any Trump Administration excess, and thus all of the so-called “checks and balances” that we were so proudly taught were the hallmark of American governance and a guarantee against dictatorship are now gone.

And let us not forget the most egregious culprit of all, Donald Trump himself.  In the 1970’s, he and his father were consistently sued by Black residents of their apartment buildings for housing discrimination.  In the aftermath of the April 19, 1989 assault, rape and sodomy of the Central Park Jogger, Trisha Meili, Trump first called for the execution of the Central Park Five (Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, and Korey Wise), but then continued to insist on their guilt after they were cleared of the crime by DNA evidence and the detailed confession of the real attacker.  He embraced the “birtherism” conspiracy theory against Barack Obama from the time he had launched his 2008 candidacy for president.  His gleaming towers along the Atlantic City boardwalk loomed for decades over an inner city suffering from neglect and decay as his casinos flourished, apparently blissfully unaware and unconcerned about the public price being paid for their private success.  And his presidential campaign was replete with anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant, anti-disabled, anti-Muslim, anti-protester, anti-environment, racist and misogynistic screeds that only increased and were translated into official national policy when he was scandalously named president through an Electoral College victory that went against the actual popular vote.

Why are people so stunned and shocked about the loss of the soul of the US political system only now?

But this is not what is the most stupefying about all the hand-wringing that has been going on in analysts’ circles about the Trump Administration.  They speak as though this level of self-interested, incompetent opportunism is a new development.  This has been an ongoing trend for decades, centuries even. 

The 2000 Presidential election, with its politically-motivated “hanging chad” recount in the pivotal Florida polls courtesy of Catherine Harris, the Republican Secretary of State who had been an open supporter of George W. Bush, swung the election in Bush’s favor after a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that was made on partisan lines.  This, and Bush’s subsequent 2004 re-election (courtesy of fellow Bush supporter Ken Blackwell, the Republican Secretary of State in Ohio, through another contested process along partisan lines), were engineered, again in spite of losing the popular vote, with the assistance of the Electoral College and a systematic campaign of voter intimidation and vote-suppression in which Afrikan-American voters were disproportionately “scrubbed” from the voter rolls, robbing them of their Constitutionally-protected franchise.  During Bush’s presidency, Administration operatives used shadowy accomplices from private firms Blackwater (mercenaries) and the Corrections Corporation of America (jails and prisons) to extend a brutal war in Iraq that was largely considered illegal, expand mass incarceration in Iraq and the United States, raise the privatization of public resources to an art form and, as a result, rake in tons of illicit profits for their corporate cronies.  This was accomplished, again, through political strong-arm tactics and a relatively compliant Congress weakened by the growing-in-influence Tea Party.

Ronald Reagan launched the best-known War on Drugs when he was president in the 1980’s, aided by the importation of huge amounts of cocaine into South Central Los Angeles and other poor Black neighborhoods (all to help facilitate his “dirty wars” in El Salvador and Nicaragua).  His campaign to shrink government helped usher in a new wave of privatization that would enable the abuses of the George W. Bush Administration, and now Trump.

Bill Clinton, the once-dubbed “first Black president” because he picked up a saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show, race-baited Sista Souljah and Jesse Jackson in his two presidential campaigns, and then set us all up for the increased privatization of public resources (such as water) as he helped lead the Democratic Leadership Council in a political Race to the Right.  And even though he has since apologized for the catastrophic impact of his policies on the people of Ayiti (“Haiti”), he never enacted any policies or embraced any initiatives to reverse the damage his administration had caused there. 

But, of course, all we remember about Clinton’s misdeeds boiled down to a blue dress.  No wonder people are so shocked by revelations that should have been intuitively obvious to the casual observer.

Even Jimmy Carter, the former president who has done the most for the cause of humanitarian work through his various charitable organizations, backed dictatorial presidents in Indonesia (Suharto) and Iran (Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi), perhaps his most visible and famous misdeeds (“mistakes”?) as Head of State.

In the late 1960’s, Richard Nixon perfected the “Southern Strategy” that exploited Southern White fears of a Black Planet and then, as president, launched the first systematic War on Drugs that started Black America on a manufactured plunge into the abyss of mass addiction and mass incarceration. 

George Wallace openly campaigned on racial hatred before an assassin’s bullet magically seemed to transform him into a civil rights supporter.  His status as a Democrat reflects the onetime position of the Democratic Party as the party of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction.

Indeed, when one goes all the way back to the founding of the United States on the mass murder of the Indigenous First Nations, the building of the new country’s economic base on the backs of enslaved Afrikans, the repeated broken treaties with the survivors of the genocide brought on by the Westward Expansion, the backing of slave states in the Caribbean and the subsequent support and rule of dictatorial regimes in South America, Afrika and Asia, and the dropping of not one, but two nuclear bombs on the two most heavily populated cities of Japan during World War II, killing 220,000 civilians (when Japan was retreating on all fronts and trying to find a way to surrender without losing face or sacrificing their Emperor), one can hardly miss the unifying thread of exploitation, genocide and terror that has supported the prosperity and the might of the United States to this day.

Those among us who continue to tout the fantasy that this is the “greatest country in the history of the world” conveniently overlook these mortal sins that were committed on the rest of the world to allow this nation to form and to prosper.  If it is to truly live up to the hype of its own self-proclaimed greatness, it has massive debts to pay, debts that were amassed by the same putrid, rotting soul that creates leaders such as Trump today. 

If, and when, the United States truly atones for those historic wrongs committed against so many around the world, it may finally earn the title “greatest nation on earth”, and then, finally, the shock many analysts proclaim upon seeing a regime as corrupt as this one may be justified.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Among the projects being developed by the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC), an Pan-Afrikan Diaspora organization dedicated to organizing the voice of the grassroots Pan-Afrikan Diaspora at the local level and merging them to take that voice to the World Stage through the African Union, United Nations and independent Afrikan Diaspora organizations, are a number of initiatives working toward the development of concrete institutions and services on the Afrikan Continent.  One of these is the Liberian Library Book Donation Project, being led by the South Carolina SRDC Organization and its State Facilitator, Mr. Joseph “Kumasi” Palmer.

As of this writing, there are no Public Libraries in Liberia, according to Mr. Palmer.  This comes as a surprise to many of us, partly because of our assumptions in the United States that a Library is so routine that we often ignore them, as well as the documented progress that Liberia has made since the removal of Charles Taylor as President in 2003 and the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as Afrika’s first woman head of state in 2006.  Mr. Palmer and several associates from South Carolina have met with Liberian officials to advance work on the development and supply of the first Public Library in Liberia.

Below is the public letter that has just been released by the South Carolina SRDC Organization concerning the project and the criteria for donating books.  Contact information for the South Carolina SRDC Organization is also included below.  If you have gently used books that you would like to donate, please feel free to contact them to arrange your donation.

July, 2018

Dear Friends and Associates,

The South Carolina branch of the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) is embarking on a project to help establish a public library in Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa. We have endeavored to collect book donations, create a working inventory and database, and ship books to Liberia. The key to the success of this type of project is a good and dedicated ‘on the ground’ partner with a proven track record. We have that in SEHWAH, a local and international Liberian organization. The Director of SEHWAH, the Hon. Ms. Louise W. McMillan-Siaway, was the Assistant Minister for Culture (Ministry of Information, Cultural Affairs and Tourism) under the former Ellen Johnson Sirleaf administration. Ms. McMillan-Siaway is working closely with the current Liberian government to obtain a proper space and furnishings for the library.

“In America there is a public library in every community. How many public libraries are there in Africa? Every day there are new books coming out and new ideas being discussed. But these new books and ideas don’t reach Africa and we are being left behind.”
-George Weah, President of the Republic of Liberia, West Africa

This initiative though absolutely necessary, is not without its challenges. Still, SRDC considers it a major responsibility and is excited to be the pioneering element of this project. Public libraries are essential in the process of providing citizens access to knowledge. It is certain that a well-stocked public library will have a positive impact on Liberian literacy and development. For this reason, we are taking a grassroots approach and are reaching out to you to donate and/or purchase books to donate. Grassroots interest and involvement is a way to ensure that the library is solidly developed, sustainable, accessible and well-used.

SUBJECTS NEEDED
History (World History/African History/African American History/Caribbean History/History of Blacks in Europe, etc.); Political Science; English (Grammar/Writing); Music; Arts; Literature/Novels; Geography; Education; Math; Finance; Banking; International Trade; Health; Hygiene; Wellness; Science; Ecology; Medicine; Nursing; Farming; Gardening; Agriculture; Animal Husbandry; Law; Business; Computer Technology; Construction and Building Technology; Electrical; Plumbing; Engineering; Electronics; Photography; and Children/Young Adult books.

We will accept “For Dummies” book titles (e.g., Digital Photography for Dummies).
See link for list of titles: https://www.dummies.com/store/All-Titles.html

GUIDELINES
•We seek gently used books – books that are in good condition.
•Books or novels that have “explicit” sexual content (pornography) will NOT be accepted and/or shipped to Liberia.
•Books that evangelize/proselytize/promote a particular religion will NOT be accepted and/or shipped to Liberia, unless we can determine historical value.
•Books will be accepted through December 31, 2018.
•Please send a listing of all books, along with your name, organization, email address and contact phone number to the email address listed below.
•Pack books carefully and deliver or mail to our warehouse:

Mr. Joseph Palmer
901B Long Point Road
Mount Pleasant, SC 29464
Phone: 843.452.4880
Email: ProjectLiberiaLibrary@gmail.com

In the future, we will need to set up a Board in order to oversee the development and supervision of staff and interns for the library; to create a proper atmosphere and establish methods to measure and maintain the progress of the library. Contact us with any questions or concerns. We will keep all of our book donors posted on all developments pertaining to the library (so please send us the list of books you are donating as well as your name and contact information).

Monetary donations in any amount can be made via PayPal at www.yaaba.org. YAABA is our 501c(3) charitable partner organization. Any donated funds will be used to defray costs and materials needed to ship the books to Liberia.

Please remember, A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life, so kindly assist us by becoming a benefactor of this important initiative.

Sincerely,
Joseph Palmer
Facilitator
SRDC – South Carolina
www.srdcinternational.org

Exactly how is it that Voter Suppression is not considered a CRIME?

That is all.