It did not require osteric or astrological mighty to tell that Libyan strongman, Muammar Gaddaffi, would shamefully and rapidly fall from gracce. It’s just the matter of reading signs of time when imperialistic NATO offered to take on Gadaffi. For those who either were there or remember the brutal death of Samuel Kanyon Doe, former Liberian tyrant on 9 September 1990, will agree with us that dictators are insane and myopic people. To know what I mean, who would expect a masculine guy like Gaddafi to wear a wig? Maybe, these creatures live in their own imaginative interstellar, even lagoon nebulae world, but not in this practical world we know. That’s why they see things in a deceptional and different ways. When Doe was brutally mutilated, tortured and ultimately killed before the cameras, many thought this would be a lesson to other dictators. But it did not become.

For reminder, Doe brutally killed former Liberian long time benevolent dictator, William Tolbert and his thirteen member of cabinet were publicly executed a few days after the coup. He dumped their bodies in quarries. Soon after grabbing power, Doe brutally killed Thomas Quiwonkpa, the then Commanding General of the Armed Force of Liberia, who was mutilated by Krahn soldiers under orders from Doe himself. Thenceforth, Doe became a butcherer of Liberians till the day he was made to pay dearly.

The sad story of Doe was revived by the recent capturing and later summarily execution of another longtime Libyan tyrant Gaddafi, on 20th October 2011 after committing countless atrocities. What is important is the similarity and lessons of the two killings of dictators. They’re all brutal that ended shamefully and brutally, and were felled by the people they used to rule ruthlessly. Once again, the office of president was degraded by a mere common man. He who lives by sword dies of sword.

The irony though is a tyrant like Gadaffi liked to be referred to as a beloved brotherly leader of Libya. Just like any other dictator, in dream and deception, Gadaffi was a beloved and brotherly leader. In reality though, it was opposite as his killing shows. This is the lunatic and megalomaniac who shamelessly told the world that Libyans loved him and were ready to die for him, little knowing they were ready to butcher him as it happened. This is after the nudity of his macabre rule was exposed.

Gaddafi went a mile ahead calling protesters drugged rats and roaches he were to massively kill without knowing his day were numbered. Though dicators deceive themselves that they are powerful compared to a common man and woman in the
street, the truth is vice versa surely, especially when the pent-up anger and vengeance of hoi polloi swell and explode. Who thought that a tyrant of Gadaffi caliber would be butchered by a group of young people the age of his children and grand children? What sane person can think about doing this to icons like Nelson Mandela or Sam Nujoma?

What transpired recently in Sirte, the birthplace for Gaddafi, speaks volumes when it comes to flushing dictators out. In a nutshell, Gaddafi was beaten to death like a chicken thief when he was captured and later felled. But how many have taken a note of it? How many dictators are still out there hallucinating that what befell Gaddafi cannot occur to them? So many, of course one may say.

Africa is currently full of dictators waiting to be toppled. Where are they? Logically, any country that has a ruler who has been in power for more than ten years it must understand it is under dictatorship. This is a simple criterion.

Robert Guei, former Ivorien dictator also died in a very mysterious way. He died along with his wife and other member of family in September 19, 2002. Guei’s punishment, apart from dying in mysterious circumstances, was his body to remain in the morgue for years. For, he was buried in August 18, 2006 almost four years after his death. What a curse!

What makes dictators think that they cannot be toppled and end up being killed brutally, as in the cases of Doe and Gadaffi, is another face of the ending of other former dictators who escaped the wrath of hoi polloi. This group includes Mobutu Seseseko of former Zaire currently DRC, Idd Amin (Uganda), Zine Abdel Din of Tunisia and Charles Taylor who is in custody in The Hague waiting to be tried for atrocities he committed against his people.

Jean-Bedel Bokassa, former Central African Republic self made king, died in the custody after being toppled. Like Gadaffi, Bokassa died a shameful death, although it did not result from being brutally killed. He died a pauper after squandering all the monies he had stashed abroad during the stint he spent in France before handing himself over after bankruptcy struck him badly.

Mohamad Siad Barre, former Somali strongman also died in exile in January 2, 1995 after being overthrown. His legacy is the failed state of Somalia.

Apart from sitting dictators, other bloodsuckers who faced the same fate of shameful death are Foday Saybana Sankoh the butherer of Siera Leone. Under his ragtag organization, Revolutionary United Front (RUF), Sankor killed over 50,000 as over 500,000 were displaced, not to mention thousands who were maimed, amputated and disfigured. After committing sacrilegious brutality to his nation, he died of stroke in July 29, 2003 in custody waiting for trial.

The open secret and a lesson from the crumbling of dictators aforementioned are that they live in an artificial and invisible warp that is not seen till they are brought down in whatever manner, be it noble or ignoble. When a moth self-commits to death by fire, there is another one preparing itself to suffer the same fate.Who will follow between Bashar and Bashir? May he be Saleh in Yemen or Bouteflika? Time will surely tell.

How many are bracing to become tomorrow’s dictators as they sire others? This is the world full of wonders.

Nkwazi Mhango is a Tanzanian living in Canada. He writes regularly for “The African Executive” and also has a blog entitled “Free Thinking Unabii”. He is a regular contributor to AfroSpear.

A comment from Amenta:

Osama Bin Laden was both a hero (to some) and, well , lunatic is not the word I would use, but he was, to some, evil incarnate. It depends on what side one chooses.
I came to this understanding about who or what was evil in certain circimstances by reading the bible. I often read the stories of the great god of Abraham delivering lands into the hands of the Israelites, by them, the Israelites “utterly” destroying the people. Killing not only the soldiers, but disabled men, the women, children and even the animals, leaving no one alive and taking only the silver and the gold.

Let’s say this was the attack on the Amalakites. Well, surely, any Amalakites that escaped or evaded the death and destruction of the Isralites knew with out a doubt, with great assurity, that the great god of Abraham, of the Isralites, was an evil and wicked being. Period. And, withour a doubt the Israelites knew their god was the greatest of of all the universe.

Similarly, of us in the U.S have studied and seen the evidence of just how far the U.S. government has gone and will go. Or at least entities within and without the government. Remember this is the only nation that has ever used a nuclear weapon against another nation. But, prior to that they destroyed many other lives while testing the limits of the weapon on the Marshall Islands, Bikini Island and many others. This is kept quiet.

The United States funded and backed many of the German industries during WWII, that was killing Jews and Africans in the Sudetenland. In fact Paul Warburg’s brother Max Warburg was a high ranking officer in the Wehrmacht during WWII. Max kept financing for banks backed by Paul Warburg, J.P. Morgan and others, running. And the Allies had specific orders never to bomb these banks or trains carrying money and gold. This is a conspiracy, but not a theory. It’s a fact.

During the time of Martin, Malcolm (El Hajj Malik Shabazz), and the Black Panther Party, the FBI and other entities would release fictional news articles for publication into the mainstream press disparaging these people or groups. This is not a theory, though it was a conspiracy. A conspiracy to undermine the authority Martin, Malcolm and the BPP may have garnered.

The release of false news articles by the government (FBI, local police, NSA, CIA…) has been verified and documented from the 1960′s and 1970′s under C.O.I.N.T.E.L.P.R.O. Are we now to believe these types of activities by the government have stopped? No one knew of these activities when they were taking place. In fact, know one would have believed it were true if they were made aware of them.

Because we know the government has conducted such business in the past, we should be wary as to their “news” releases. Today’s techonology allows for a much more comprehsive way of distorting or even creating events. Sadly, all too often, when someone calls out the fact that all of this could be a technological play for the world, the words conspiracy theory comes forth as if to say “C’mon you’re reaching.”

“Guys let’s write history by thinking instead of letting history unveil our fallacy.Thanks. Try to at least think a little bit.”

Then to think would be to consider the unthinkable. To think would be to consider the history of what this country has done in this sphere. To think would be to consider that all that glitters is not gold.

Peace my people.

“Piece for my Peace”

Amenta, this is why I’m pretty much done here. When I see our people, here, using the same loaded language of the colonizer/imperialist/globalizing monster – to make us NOT think – the man’s work is done. But, to use a word from recovery lingo, its the “easier, softer way.” And I understand that.

Its easier, when you have made an external authority your internal authority – to defer, to bend, to place or rate above you – something outside of yourself.  It makes it that much easier to swallow what other external authorities say. Answers come easier – when they are furnished, rather than worked for, be they from wise deities, or big governments and their media chihuahuas, who, of course, print all the truth and nothin’ but. 

When you respectfully maintain, nourish your own internal authority (instincts, emotion, intuition, intellect) – while  maintaining an openness to ALL of what’s out there – then you might have a chance. But it ain’t easy, or soft. And there is a chance of choosing the wrong path or source, chance of losing your way. But I’d rather that, than buy someone else’s moldy bread just because its warm, old and comforting.

I am skeptical of anything put out by governments. “All governments lie,” so said I.F. Stone, and they do so because they are not for the people, but the cabal behind the curtain. That’s a fact that I have learned from living and studying history. Carefully. And for a very long time.  Information has been “colonized,” just as surely as countries have been.  So the info you receive turns out to be ANOTHER lie. That is why, when one needs their OWN antennae, along with the ability to think, critique, feel and see straight – they’d better have one.

Those of us who are in the process of learning some “deep” history that is beneath the lies of the conquerors, have to work our asses off. I don’t create or fabricate theories out of thin air. That’s not my thang. But I am aware that people in power don’t like to be questioned, particularly when they commit (war) criminal acts, treasonous acts. Any critique of such people, any questions that spring from the reality of their behavior are met with derision, character assassination – and sometimes REAL assassination.  Some of us know this; that some of us don’t ensures our continued marginalization.

Conspiracy theory is used pejoratively and on purpose  – by many – to silence, to close and cut-off discussions that might lead to truth, rather than more lies.  Its like “red baiting.” As soon as someone called you a communist back in the day, you could kiss your reputation – and career – goodbye.  And that was the intent.

Now, are there crazy-ass conspiracy theories out there? Of course there are! And some of those are put out there as “disinformation” Co-Intelpro-style, to keep people confused and ignorant, too.

Anyway, I’m wide open and maybe that’s my problem, but its mine and I’ll take it. To quote a particular disco band: “I love you, I love you all, but I have got to go!”

Peace to all of you. From the Bad Guy.

The Freeslave

On April 27 1994 the people of this country stood in long queues for many hours, waiting to cast their vote for the first time. In some parts of the country the weather was hostile, freezing cold, while in other parts it was scorching hot.

Our people were voting for the first time, voting for an end to racism and for democracy and a better life — for jobs, free education and decent housing. Over and above their vote for their material needs to be met, they were voting for their freedom. Or so they were made to believe.

The rays of that sunrise were breaking through the dark storm clouds. The first beams of the new sun were making their way through the clouds into the new blue sky. After centuries of oppression, hope was rekindled; a new nation, a rainbow nation, was born. Or so we were made to believe.

I remember watching the proceedings on television. I saw Archbishop Desmond Tutu casting his vote. The great man jumped for joy and said: “Free at last! Free at last!” Freedom is the ability of the people not to be oppressed and to be able to determine their own future collectively and by their own wills. Freedom is the realisation of the will of the people. When there is freedom, the government is for the people and by the people, because the people govern themselves. Freedom is the ability of the people to determine their own destiny. Freedom is self-government.

When there is freedom the people do not have to beg the government to recognise them as important. When there is freedom, people are free from hunger, poverty, disease, homelessness and the inability to meet basic needs. Justice, peace, dignity and access to the country’s wealth are central to freedom.

Freedom means that people must come first. It means people before profit. It means people before the big transnational corporations. It means that the people’s sovereignty and rights have been restored.

Freedom does not mean that the people vote for a few politicians to take their friends and relatives and join the old white capitalists as they feast off the devastation of the people behind high walls. Freedom does not mean police officers who shoot and kill us. Freedom does not mean that our so-called leaders become managers of capital, running the country and disciplining the people on behalf of capital.

Freedom does not mean that politicians become little gods. Freedom is not the rule of experts in civil society. Freedom is not the rule of the police. In a free country it is the voice of the citizens that matters the most. If South Africa were free, the voice of every South African and of every community would matter equally. Until everyone’s voice counts equally, we cannot say that we are free.

Against the nightmare
After 17 years of democracy, our townships are broken. All you see are drunk men and women walking aimlessly like zombies, their bloodstreams flowing with cheap alcohol. This is how we drug ourselves against the nightmare of a democracy that is really neo-apartheid and not post-apartheid. This is how we drug ourselves against a society that has no respect for us, no place for us and no future for us.

In the Eastern Cape they drink umtshovalale. In KwaZulu-Natal they drink isiqatha. In Gauteng they drink gavani. In the Western Cape they drink spirits. This alcohol has a hazardous effect. My people, young and old, have been silently taken to their graves because of the effects of alcohol. We are poisoning ourselves to drug ourselves against the horror of our lives. Throughout South Africa, young people smoke antiretroviral drugs. It is a well-known thing. We live below the poverty line and we have completely lost hope.

South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. The gap between the rich and the poor is vast — and it is growing. The unemployment rate is high, above 40%. Poverty rates are skyrocketing. In a place such as Alice in the Eastern Cape, residents drink unsafe water. At times there is no water at all. In Grahamstown we continue to use the bucket system to shit.

All around South Africa there are crumbling RDP houses and municipalities are falling under the strain of corruption, while Jacob Zuma’s family — his wives, children and relatives — are becoming billionaires. Sicelo Shiceka spent R640 000 in one year on rooms for himself and his staff at the One&Only hotel in Cape Town, flew to Switzerland first-class to visit an ex-girlfriend in jail and hired a limousine to drive him to the prison.

What kind of politician lives like this while the people are suffering as we are? What kind of politician lives like this while South Africa has become “the protest capital of the world”, with one of the highest rates of public protest in the world?

Shiceka is a predator and not a liberator. He is not the only one. In 2010 Eskom announced its decision to increase electricity tariffs by 35%, assaulting the unemployed and the poor while the ANC company, Chancellor House, rips the profit from the shaking hands of the people. Very soon the coffers of this country will run dry and we will be asked to give even more to the ANC, to Chancellor House and the Zuma family. The way they are looting our resources is beyond imagination. The way that they have privatised the struggle of the people is incredible.

We are a bleeding nation. All the power that belongs to us has been centralised in the control of the ruling elite. We are not consulted on the model of the RDP house that must be built. They decide for us. The Integrated Development Plan (IDP) meetings are a platform to manage us. There is no veracity. They choose those who must represent us in local chambers and then parade them as our leaders. When we ask to speak to these leaders, they call the police. We have no power. We have no voice. We have no freedom to celebrate. We live in a radically unjust society. We are oppressed.

The ANC tries to control the people with its police, social grants and rallies with celebrities and musicians. The ANC tries to drug us against their betrayal by keeping us drunk on memories of the struggle — the same struggle that they have betrayed. But everywhere the ANC is losing control. Protest is spreading everywhere. Everywhere people are boycotting elections and running independent candidates. Everywhere people are organising themselves into their own autonomous groups and movements.

As Mostafa Omara wrote about the Egyptian revolution: “People in Egypt will tell you: ‘Gone are the days when we felt helpless and little; gone are the days when the police could humiliate us and torture us; gone are the times when the rich and the businessmen thought they could run the country as if it were their own private company.’”

In South Africa we long for the same feeling. But revolutions do not spring from nothing. Revolutions come through the united action of men and women, rural and urban — action that springs from their needs. Revolutions happen when ordinary men and women begin to take action to seize control of their own lives.

The rebellion of the poor in this country is growing. More and more organisations are emerging. More and more people have become radicalised. More and more communities have lost their illusions after experiencing the violence of the predator state. More and more people are starting and joining discussions about the way forward for the struggle to take the country back.

We need to move forward with more determination, working all the time to build and to unite our struggles. As we connect our struggles, from Ficksburg to Grahamstown, from Cape Town to Johannesburg and Durban, we are, slowly but steadily, building a new mass movement. We are building a network of struggles in living solidarity with one another.

Ayanda Kota is the chair of the Unemployed People’s Movement in Grahamstown

Swiss scientists 95% sure that Bin Laden recording was fake

Cheney’s Plan: Nuke Iran (Great take on US media)

A witness to Bin Laden’s ‘death’ says it’s bullshit

“Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in the newspaper.”

George Orwell

“There is no such thing, at this stage of the world’s history in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my papers, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”

John Swinton

Chief Editorial Writer,

New York Times,

1860-1870

I am so thankful for the black blogosphere!! Yesterday, I received an email and youtube video from an unknown angel, passing on to me information about this beautiful, articulate, very ambitious sister! I had never heard of her, so you know I was more than happy! Her name is Mukami Kinoti-Kimotho and she’s based in Washington DC, if you don’t know. This is one sister who is destined to make her mark as the next Oprah! She was blessed last year with an opportunity to compete with many other hopefuls when Oprah announced a talent search for someone special to host a talk show on her OWN Network. So Mukami got busy creating a test video to introduce herself to the world. I guess she didn’t win after all, but that’s alright because she’s already on the media mogul fasttrack of her own making!

She has already created her own media company, MaWazo Media, and is right at the threshold of launching her own show MukamiTV on May 12, the flagship WebTelevision arm of her media company. In this show, she will be interviewing people with a firm grasp on their destiny! From those who have made it, to those who are on their way! I watched her introductory videos, and they are lovely. Her production is top notched, (Oprah you missed out) and she’s obviously right in her element! This sister has a very beautiful spirit, and her style is inspirational, encouraging, uplifting! Her forte is encouraging those people who are interested in doing great things to keep on pushing past all the obstacles. Her example of pushing forward to launch her own dreams will inspire you! This sister is doing it, and doing it well!!

As Mukami was saying in one of her videos, we all have a starting point that may not have been glamorous. So where is hers? Mukami was born in Nyeri , Kenya in a family of two boys and two girls. She was however raised in Nairobi’s Woodley area. She attended Kilimani Primary School and Moi Nairobi Girls High School. She received a degree in Management Information Systems from USIU-San Diego and a Masters degree in Applied Communication and Organizational Development from University of Denver in Colorado.

Mukami is married to Kim Muhota, a banker and they have two children. Her parents, Stephen and Tina Kinoti also live in the nation’s capital. read more

Mukami TV - Your Voice, Amplified! Click this picture

Ladies, do yourselves a favor and go to her Youtube channel and link up to her. You don’t want to miss her video about all that she went through to get her in home studio up and running! You don’t want to miss ANY of what this lady will be saying and doing!

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• Joseph Kinuthia Thiongo : Kenya (kiva.org)
• http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/lifestyle/entertainment_news/48/5006-Mkami-Kinoti-Kimotho-The-next-big-name.html
• http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/lifestyle/101/4962-Mkami-Kinoti-Kimotho-Oprah-Winfrey-Networks-next-Talk-Show-Host.html
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I mean, Geronimo hid in a cave, too, but he was trying to kick the colonial whites’ azz – and out of HIS country. On second thought, maybe the parallel, unintended, makes sense.

I guess O can kiss the Native American vote goodbye in 2012.

Americans rejoiced at the news, gathering at iconic landmarks – the White House, the “Freedom Tower” – cheering the extra-judicial killings of who knows how many people.

Reports from several sources, years ago, indicated that Bin Laden had died of renal failure. That this information never made it into the mainstream makes one wonder: why the quick disposal of the body? Which Bin Laden was this? Where’s the evidence?

Of course, dead men tell no tales. Nor provide receipts, faxes, or phone records.

Speaking of evidence, what happened to innocent until PROVEN guilty? And if Bin Laden was guilty of 9/11, who let it happen on purpose?! Who were his co-conspirators in the White House, in the FAA, Pentagon, because there is NO WAY it happened without help from deeply entrenched sources on the inside.

Here’s a sampling of other perspectives:

Farzana Versey “This business about death is not about Osama at all. It is about Barack Obama and his need to prove himself in times of recession and his own identity. His televised pronouncements and other statements clearly reveal that he is running an election: “Tonight, I can report to the people of the United States and the world, the United States had carried an operation that has killed Osama Bin Laden, a terrorist responsible for killing thousands of innocent people. Today, at my direction, the United States carried out that operation… they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body. The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date against al-Qaeda.”

No. One man’s death is not an achievement. He was a phantom figure, and the US has been fighting demons of straw. Is it even necessary to reiterate the historical genesis of al Qaeda and the making of bin Laden and CIA’s role in it? While the Saddam-Gaddafi prototypes, dictatorial within their shores, put up a fight against the US, Osama was beyond boundaries. He had no homeland and represented no nationality. He became as anti-Saudi as he was anti-American…”

Peter Martin and Alexander Lantier “Obama’s statement left critical questions unanswered and raised a host of new ones. First, Obama stated that “shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against Al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle and defeat his network.”In other words, Obama implied, without offering an explanation, that between 2001 and his inauguration in January 2009, the capture or killing of bin Laden had not been the major priority of the “war on terror.”

Second, the location of bin Laden’s killing is highly significant. Obama stated that US intelligence “had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan.” Obama then identified the location more precisely as Abbottabad. He did not explain that this town is located approximately 40 miles from Rawalpindi, the center of the Pakistani military establishment and only a few miles further from Islamabad, the country’s capital. This is the equivalent of a fugitive hiding next to a police station…”

Reuters: U.S. team’s mission was to kill bin Laden, not capture

“(Reuters) – The U.S. special forces team that hunted down Osama bin Laden was under orders to kill the al Qaeda mastermind, not capture him, a U.S. national security official told Reuters.

“This was a kill operation,” the official said, making clear there was no desire to try to capture bin Laden alive in Pakistan.”

Allan Nairn: “One Killer Killing Another…Every day, the U.S., directly with its own forces, or indirectly through its proxy forces, its clients, is killing, at a minimum, dozens of people. I mean, just since Obama came in, in the one limited area of drone strikes in Pakistan, something like 1,900 have been killed just under Obama. And that started decades before 9/11. We have to stop these people, these powerful people like Obama, like Bush, like those who run the Pentagon, and who think it’s OK to take civilian life. And it doesn’t seem that they can be stopped by normal, routine politics, because under the American system, as in most other systems, people don’t even know this is happening. People know the face of bin Laden. They know the evil deeds that he’s done. They see that he is dead, and they say, “Oh, great, we killed bin Laden.” But they don’t see the other 20, 30, 50, 100 people who the U.S. killed that day, many of them children, many of them civilians. If they did, they probably wouldn’t be out in the street cheering about those deaths.”

Robinson is my new/old hero. I needed to share this brilliant, powerful black man with ya’ll. Its old history – if you’ve heard it at all – but its relevant.

I love Toussaint! I love Randall Robinson!! I love Haiti!!!

Dame Shirley BASSEY!

On the radio, I heard the song below. Young as I was, I was terribly moved by it. Back then, in spite of the assassinations, gassings and general repression, there was hope, not merely rhetorical, but real hope. Idealism was not just a word in the dictionary, but a core value, shared by many.

I miss those times.

Ivory Coast: Ouattara wants EU sanctions lifted

Ivory Coast’s internationally recognised President Alassane Ouattara has urged the EU to lift sanctions, in a bid to restart the ailing economy.

Mr Ouattara now controls the main cocoa-exporting port of San Pedro, and wants to restart the trade.

But his troops are still not in control of all of the main city Abidjan, where his rival Laurent Gbagbo remains holed up in the presidential residence.

Aid agencies are warning of a deepening humanitarian crisis in Abidjan.

Residents of the city are without basic amenities such as running water and power, and food supplies are running low.

Witnesses say bodies are lying on the streets after days of bitter fighting between loyalists of the two presidential claimants.
‘Question of principle’

Mr Ouattara, widely recognised as the winner of a presidential election last November, told French TV channel La Chaine Info he was taking measures to get the economy back up and running.

“I have asked that European Union sanctions on the ports of Abidjan and San Pedro and certain public entities, be lifted,” he said.

Ivorian turmoil

28 Nov 2010: Incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and challenger Alassane Ouattara in election run-off
2 Dec: Electoral commission announces that Ouattara won 54% of vote
3 Dec: Constitutional Council declaring Gbagbo the winner; UN says Ouattara was victor
30 Mar 2011: Pro-Ouattara forces enter the capital, Yamoussoukro
4 Apr: UN launches air strikes on Gbagbo in main city, Abidjan
5 Apr: Three generals negotiate Gbagbo’s surrender
6 Apr: Gbagbo denies he is ready to leave

Ouattara’s political tightrope

Ivory Coast is the world’s biggest cocoa-producing nation, but uncertainty and violence since the disputed election has badly damaged the industry.

Mr Ouattara said the central bank would begin reopening its branches, and the army would secure delivery of medical supplies to hospitals and food to markets.

He blamed Mr Gbagbo for plunging the country into crisis, but said his forces now had the presidential palace under blockade.

Advisers to Mr Gbagbo, who insists he won the election, say the embattled incumbent is determined not to surrender.

“President Gbagbo will not cede,” said his Paris-based adviser Toussaint Alain.

“It’s a question of principle. President Gbagbo is not a monarch. He is not a king. He is not an emperor. He is a president elected by his people.”

French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said Mr Gbagbo had fewer than 1,000 troops left loyal to him.
Divided nation

Mr Ouattara’s forces launched a sustained offensive last month, rushing southwards from their northern strongholds.

They rapidly took over most of the country, but much of Abidjan is dominated by Gbagbo supporters, and days of fighting has now plunged the city into crisis.

“There are armed rebel groups who don’t know which side they are on looting not only private houses but also some stocks of humanitarian agencies – that is unacceptable,” said the UN’s Elisabeth Byrs.

Last November’s election had been intended to reunite the former French colony, which split in two following a northern rebellion in 2002.

But the result highlighted the divide in the country, with Mr Gbagbo dominating the south and Mr Ouattara winning most of the votes in the north.

As the crisis deepened in the past week, the UN and French forces have joined the battle for Abidjan.

On Monday, they launched air strikes on pro-Gbagbo military bases, after Mr Gbagbo’s forces were accused of using heavy weapons to attack civilians and UN peacekeepers.

The UN has repeatedly called for Mr Gbagbo to step down.

Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court says it will investigate alleged human rights abuses by both sides during the fighting, which has left hundreds dead.

In his TV address, Mr Ouattara promised to punish the perpetrators of violence.

“On behalf of you all I would therefore like to express our recognition to the Republican forces of Cote d’Ivoire for having done their duty,” he said.

“I urge them to be exemplary in their conduct and to refrain from any crimes, any violence against the people or any act of looting. All those involved in such deeds will be punished.”

John Henrik Clarke

“Powerful people cannot afford to educate the people that… they oppress, because once you are truly educated, you will not ask for power. You will take it.”

Krishnamurti/Freedom from the Known, p.11: DISORDER :”The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another… It is a most extraordinary thing that although most of us are opposed to political tyranny and dictatorship, we inwardly accept the authority, the tyranny, of another to twist our minds and our way of life.”

J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life/Relationship Is a Mirror

Surely, only in relationship the process of what I am unfolds, does it not? Relationship is a mirror in which I see myself as I am; but as most of us do not like what we are, we begin to discipline, either positively or negatively, what we perceive in the mirror of relationship. That is, I discover something in relationship, in the action of relationship, and I do not like it. So, I begin to modify what I do not like, what I perceive as being unpleasant. I want to change it;which means I already have a pattern of what I should be. The moment there is a pattern of what I should be, there is no comprehension of what I am. The moment I have a picture of what I want to be, or what I should be, or what I ought not to be, a standard according to which I want to change myself;then, surely, there is no comprehension of what I am at the moment of relationship.
I think it is really important to understand this, for I think this is where most of us go astray. We do not want to know what we actually are at a given moment in relationship. If we are concerned merely with self-improvement, there is no comprehension of ourselves, of what is.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

George Orwell

The bombing of Libya will begin on or nearly to the day, of the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the destruction of Iraq, 19th March, in Europe. Libya too will be destroyed – its schools, education system, water, infrastructure, hospitals, municipal buildings. There will be numerous “tragic mistakes”, “collateral damage”, mothers, fathers, children, babies, grandparents, blind and deaf schools and on and on. And the wonders of the Roman remains and earlier, largely enduring and revered in all history’s turmoils as Iraq, the nation’s history – and humanity’s, again as Iraq and Afghanistan, will be gone, forever.

The infrastructure will be destroyed. The embargo will remain in place, thus rebuilding will be impossible. Britain, France and the US., will decide the country needs “stabilising”, “help with reconstruction.” They will move in, secure the oil installations and oil fields, the Libyan people will be an incidental inconvenience and quickly become “the enemy”, “insurgents”, be shot, imprisoned, tortured, abused – and a US friendly puppet “government” will be installed.

The invaders will award their companies rebuilding contracts, the money – likely taken from Libya’s frozen assets without accounting – will vanish and the country will remain largely in ruins.

And the loudest cheerleaders for this, as Iraq, will be running round TV and radio stations in London, Europe and the US, then returning to their safe apartments and their UK/US/Europe paid tenures, in the knowledge that no bombs will be dropping on them. Their children will not be shaking uncontrollably and soiling themselves with terror at the sound of approaching planes.

And this Libyan “Shock and Awe”?  Shame on France, shame on Britain and the US and a UN avowed: “… to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Every shattered body, every child maimed or blown to bits, every widow, widower, orphan, will have their name of those countries, and the UN., written in their blood in their place of death.

And the public of these murderous, marauding Western ram raiders, will be told that we were bringing democracy, liberating Libya from a tyrant, from the “new Hitler”, the “Butcher of Bengazi.”

The countries who have ganged together these last days to overthrow a sovereign government have, again, arguably, conspired in Nuremberg’s: ” … supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”, and yet again, plotted to overthrow a sovereign government, with a fig leaf of “legality” from an arm twisted UN. We have seen it all before.

In time, it will emerge, who was stirring, bribing, de-stabilizing – and likely few will be surprised at the findings. But by then, Libya will be long broken and its people, fleeing, displaced, distraught.

When it comes to dealing with the usual “liberators”, be careful what you wish for. In six months or so, most Libyans, whatever the failings of the last forty years rule, will be ruing* the day.

* an old word, used in early poetry meaning a deep, haunting regret which remains embedded

Here’s a sad commentary. I have noticed that there have been clothing donation bins appearing all over Oakland, overnight it seems. What’s sad is that they are appearing in all the ‘hood areas. The poorer areas in Oakland, and other cities, I’ve learned, and I’m suspicious about it. That is sad. Because it seems that this should be a good thing. For one thing, that the bins are strategically placed near businesses in our communities, which supposedly increases foot traffic near the business that “hosts” one of the bins. That it’s green for another thing. How many green companies do you see in the ‘hood? That it’s convenient for another thing. Now I can walk three blocks and be right at this bin.

bins brooklyn ny

But I have a suspicious mind when it comes to this kind of thing. For one thing, who ARE these invisible people, and what are they doing with my old clothes? So I decide I’m gonna find out who these folks are before I donate any more goodies to them. (I did drop off a couple of bags) After nearly two months of forgetting to do that research, I finally got to it. I went online using “USAgain” and found their website. But their website looked a bit too cheesy for me. Too unprofessional looking. I didn’t truss it. So I dug a little deeper to find out about these people, and hit the jackpot with this link: (Allegedly)

http://www.tvindalert.com/companies/usagain/

So I found the above link to the above group of “investigative journalists” that have been following this company owned by Chicago based Mattias Wallender, who is danish. There’s all kinds of international intrigue here! It appears that Mr. Wallender is part of a danish organization calling itself the Teachers Group, Tvind and it has been said that these people are not into works of charity. Instead, they collect the millions of pounds of clothing from this country and African and South American countries as well, and sell it all for profit, which they admit. But the lion’ share of the money goes back to them, not to charity, and it’s alleged that they live extremely lavish and high lifestyles. And they seem to be untouchable.

List of Teachers Group clothing bins

humana bins berlin germany

According to this website, they have a long list of other “companies” that they start and fold at will, staying steps ahead of the authorities! And used clothing is not the only business that they are in–they also have “colleges” here in the US and in other countries, that supposedly train missionary minded people how to help the people of Africa, India, and South America. Unfortunately the whole thing is a front to collect tuitions from good hearted young people. They started off in Europe–Germany, Denmark, and England and were shut down after being investigated. But they slithered over here to America and it seems to be too difficult to put the finger on them. So now they are in my community and others here in the San Francisco Bay Area, taking free clothing, reselling it to the tune of millions, all under a tax exempt status!

Tvind Teachers Group list of businesses

The following is an excerpt from the investigative website, Tvindalert concerning one of their “colleges”:

According to informants, CCTG college in Etna, Ca suddenly closed in December 2009 due to a severe flood. Would-be ‘development instructor’ students have since then been directed to other Teachers Group ’schools’ in the USA – IICD Michigan and IICD Massachusetts. In spring 2010, the building was put up for sale at $229,000 and it has now been sold.

In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the closure and sale of CCTG was planned. In October of 2009, CCTG submitted forms to the IRS informing it of a change of address from Etna to Richmond, California. Two months later came the ‘flood’ which forced the college to close. We can speculate that CCTG and the Teachers Group may have made a financial gain from the closure. The event certainly fits in with a pattern of other Teachers Group businesses abruptly closing or filing for bankruptcy (see for example the story of EC Trading).

Story link: MyFoxDC.com

This entire “cult” was built by the Danish man, Amdi Petersen, who started it all as a counter culture teaching commune back in the late 1960s. Back in the day, their mission was to change the world by travelling it and learning as they went. They bought a bus and did just that, being thrown out of country after country. Later on, the commune turned to a for profit business enterprise, taking the flea market sales model to a whole new international level back in 199o. Then the man and his group of teachers disappeared for 20 years, no doubt amassing his fortune and controlling his underling teachers in a cult like fashion according to Danish authorities. Read more at the following link.

http://www.tvindalert.com/featured/amdi-petersen/

There is so much more to this story that I simply can’t write it all here. For those who are interested, the website Tvindalert has many, many links, testimonials from people who have been burned, and news reports of this group and how they have operated over the past 40 years. Amazing!

For me, it’s all very fascinating, yet sad for those people of color who have been used, and all those used who just wanted to help others in developing countries. It never ceases to amaze me how so many people can find ways to become amazingly rich off of the backs of poor people of color, yet so many of us remain in back breaking poverty. It’s all so perplexing, to say the least.

All of this from the little clothing bin on my block. Well, I guess I won’t be donating anything more.

green world bin

 

Related Articles–listen as Mattias “teaches” about responsibility.

• Mattias Wallander: New Year’s Resolution to Declutter Your Closet? Great, Here’s How to Do It Responsibly (huffingtonpost.com)

I’ll tell you what they gave them: a handjob. They gave them record bonuses, the highest being almost half a billion dollars. They, meaning the people charged with regulating them aka, the SEC, the Federal Reserve, the President, the Congress, gave these corporate pirates a free pass – along with ‘no strings attached’ taxpayer bailout money – that was used, in part, for more management bonuses.

There was no recouping of individual lost savings, of employee retirement plans looted. In other words, there was no bailout for the little people RAPED by their own government.

They say the financial system was out of control.  I say: the people who control the system conspired to take what they could get and trot out the usual cover story of some vague, rogue, unnameable other, who can’t be found and can’t be prosecuted

No prosecutions or jail time for any of these KNOWN criminals has been sought. Let me repeat that: NOT ONE OF THE PEOPLE BEARING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FINANCIAL CRISIS OF 2008 HAS SERVED JAIL TIME. Nor has anyone in authority SOUGHT to put them in jail – OR, sought to get them to give back what they took.

In fact, your President Noir has placed the foxes firmly in control of the chicken coop. The “great community organizer” has more Goldmund Sachs reps in his administration than a pimp has pocket change. Geithner.  Summers.Etc, etc, etc…

(As an aside, this is what Larry Summers had to say about YOU:

“DATE: December 12, 1991
TO: Distribution
FR: Lawrence H. Summers
Subject: GEP

‘Dirty’ Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.”)

‘Impeccable. Logical. Environmental racism is good business which is why we practice it wherever darkies can be found.

Signed,

Larry Summers and President Obama.’

Why else would Obama appoint the same Larry Summers Director of the National Economic Council? Naivete? Or complete and utter contempt??

The Oscar winning documentary film, “Inside Job” – which I have just seen – tracks the lurid story of how the regulatory oversight of the US financial infrastructure/economy was hacked, gutted, beginning with President Romnesia Raygun,  the bookend Bushes who flanked that fake, down home, Kentucky-fried cracka, Bill Pimpton… And now leading the charge, the chariot-driving HNIC, ‘comin’ fo’ to carry me home’ a-preachin’, Black Jeezus hisself….. Lawdy ham mercy!? Weeez free, weeez free I tells ya!!

What we need to do  is go Egyptian on these bitches. Tunisian. Libyan. Yemen. Wisconsin. If we had any kind of social conscience, we would be spreading the revolt throughout the Mother Country. But I know: niggas don’t roll that way no mo’. We gonna give Obama more time because, “he inherited so many problems,” “he can only do so much,” “its too early.” Yadda, yadda, yadda.

As Malcolm said of  Lyndon Johnson and his strong friendship with a Southern Dixiecrat: “How can Obama be your friend and Wall Street’s friend, too?!” He can’t, but ya’ll don’t heah me tho’.

If we are going to have a government, it should be a government of the many – or we shouldn’t have one at all. Until we gain critical consciousness about where we are and what we live under, we will continue to allow our politicians – the REAL criminals – to speak “reform” and “change” out of their golden mouthpieces, while continuing to practice racism/white supremacy, imperialism/globalism/macro-theft out the side of their devilish necks.

FREE WESLEY SNIPES

And

“JAIL THE AIG/GOLDMUND SACH/MERRILL LYNCH/Federal Reserve/SEC 4000!!!!”

Read this brother, this very real brother, a brother to humanity:

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Barack Obama and the “End” of Racism

Barack Obama and the “End” of Racism

By Juan Santos

“It’s impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg. The system in this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, period… And if a chicken ever did produce a duck egg, I am certain you would say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken.”

– Malcolm X – 05/29/64

________________________

“Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes.” -MLK – 12/24/67

“The judgment of God is on America now!” - MLK – 08/ 06/67

___________________________

“What life has taught me
I would like to share with
Those who want to learn…

- Bob Marley -

Barack Obama deeply troubles me. As a Mexican who grew up in a Black neighborhood in the U.S. at the height of the Black Power era, I absorbed Black people’s rage- their righteous rage with the aim of justice and, ultimately, with the aim of healing – until it had sunk into my very bones. It was not a rage aimed at me; and no one “taught” it to me, no one schooled me in it. School was just everyday life in a Black senior high, for example; school was having my own personal cop who stopped me every time he saw me, the first pig who ever took me to jail. I didn’t try to act Black; I didn’t try to talk Black; I never tried to walk Black or dress Black; I didn’t even particularly listen to Black music outside of Motown and funk – the crossover stuff.

So, I was a little stunned and more than a little confused when, as I entered my 20’s, I had to confront how different I was from people in the white world and in the Mexican world. I didn’t realize it as a teenager, of course; It was just natural. But as I came into deeper contact – and sharp conflict – with the world I had not grown up in – the world outside of the working class area that people now would call the “ghetto,” I came to realize that while I had not adopted Black culture, I viewed the world through a Black lens; and since I had only been a kid when I developed the lens, there was little about it I could articulate, and almost nothing I could find to help me illuminate my experience of what post modernists and other people who long to go slumming these days now call “the borderlands”- a phrase they ripped out from under Gloria Anzaldua, a Chicana lesbian feminist writer, poet and cultural theorist. They talk about “alterity” and “difference,” and it’s nothing more than chic poses and impotent cultural elitism by those who have no authentic experience of what difference really is.

Growing up on the border I grew up on was not exotic; nor did I think of it as a kind of crucifixion or torment. It was just normal. The Black world and my odd presence in it were just normal. The sense of torment would only come later, when I learned that I reacted to white middle class bullshit – the “polite” evasions of naming the daily realities of power and pain that characterize the white middle class – just the way any Black youth of my time would have reacted. They dumbfounded and enraged me. It took a long time to get that they are not just outright phonies, straight-up deliberate hypocrites, almost every one of them – but that they don’t see – and that for that reason, they are very dangerous to those who do. My reality was not their reality.

Today, I am blessed to have a radical white friend, Tim Bennett, who gets this clearly. He calls white people like this “Not-Sees.” His pun is intentional. But I didn’t get the white world at all as a kid. They just enraged me. Not one of them talked straight, as far as I could see. The “nicer” they were the more they enraged me.

The real torment came later, when I had to learn, not only to see, but to fully articulate what I see. And for someone in my position, there were very few guideposts then for me to follow. I had to learn for myself and largely from myself which part of me was which, what was Mexican, what was absorbed from white culture, and what was Black in how I experienced myself and the world I lived in. It’s easy now; I can switch culture and tone like switching a channel or clicking a link. I can do it, but usually I don’t bother; I just come from where I am at the moment, secure in who I am and what I know about the world and the dynamics of it that I am meeting in the moment. I rely less on my own tone than on understanding and knowing how to listen. Then, however, it was all sheer suffering.

I came from both inside and outside the Black world. My reality was Black reality, a Black world – and even at that it wasn’t really mine, in a sense, although I grew up in it. The Mexican community wasn’t quite mine either: I was lacking in the proper resepto, and there was nothing – or very little, of the agachado in me. I was arrogant, a sinvergüenza. Besides, my Spanish was poor. White people very often had no idea what to make of me; I felt they instinctively feared me, and I despised their thinly veiled brutality.

I reacted to the world like a Black youth, not as a Mexican or white youth would react, and I didn’t understand it.

When I was 16, I used to buy The Black Panther newspaper at a little convenience store across from the local supermarket on what is now called Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. It came to haunt me. I always bought it- for a quarter – from the same brother. Then, one day, I was listening to the radio. The pigs had the local Panther headquarters under siege. There was a shoot-out. I don’t know what may have happened to him, but I never saw the brother again. And I never talked to anyone about it. There was no one to talk to. It never occurred to me to talk to anyone about it. As I said, I had no teacher. I was just a kid, I wasn’t Black, and no one in my family cared – just me. I remained silent. Millions of people from the oppressed nationalities in the US remain silent; and it’s not just that white people don’t care about oppression – it’s that we are punished for speaking out, for saying what we really see.

Here’s one simple example. About half the workers at my place of employment are people of color. Supervisors are hired in-house, as a rule. The boss is a “liberal” white woman in a company whose work is devoted to “liberal” causes. She came to our office after busting a union on behalf of the company in another city. In her first year and a half here not a single person of color became a supervisor. In my case, she tried to fire me – she sent my case to the corporate president and the corporate lawyers to see if they could fire me for having organized a union in another, similar workplace in the past. I came to work every day for four and a half months last year not knowing, if, that day, I would be fired. That’s the way it is, that’s the atmosphere white Amerikkka – liberal and conservative alike – has created for poor people and minorities.

Yes, of course, those of us who work there are the working poor. The “passionate” liberals who run the company act like they never heard of a living wage – but there is a shelf in the kitchen with “free food” for the people whose paycheck didn’t stretch far enough this week. It’s bought with money the liberal boss solicits from the workers. No one says anything. We all know the nature of the white liberal façade; We all know we’ll be punished if we speak up, if we demand equality in hiring or a raise, much less a living wage. So, our rage simmers in a pot with a tight lid. There’s one guy, though, who has blown up at work a couple of times over racist incidents at work. He’s one of the company’s most productive employees. I was told by a lower level supervisor that he was passed over for a promotion only because he’d gotten angry on the floor about racism – he’d created “conflict.” He wasn’t trustworthy.

So we stay silent, as a rule, on the job. We stay silent as a rule, in the white world.

Barack Obama is the living symbol of our silence. He is our silence writ large.

He is our Silence running for president –

With respect to Black interests, Obama would be a silenced Black ruler: A muzzled Black emperor. A Black man at the head of the White Amerikkkan State – one who’s unwilling to speak truth to power, but more than willing, like a Condi Rice or a Colin Powell, to become that power and to launch wars of aggression against other people of color.

In Obama’s case the targets will be Iran (which he has threatened with “surgical” missile strikes) and Pakistan, rather than Iraq. That’s the only difference between Obama and Rice and Powell, or Bush, for that matter.

Even ABC News notes that “Obama, one of the more liberal candidates in the race, is proposing a geopolitical posture that is more aggressive than that of President Bush.” Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan, in a column entitled “Obama, the Intervensionist,” cites Obama’s claim that “he wants the American military to ‘stay on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar.’” To help the empire stay on the offensive, and despite the fact that US military spending is breaking the bank at over $1 trillion a year, and far outstrips the spending of any potential imperial rival, Obama wants to beef up military spending, adding 65,000 troops to the Army and 27,000 more Marines beyond the obscene levels already under arms in the so-called “War on Terror.”

That’s another matter. Most of us at my workplace, for example, don’t want to become that power, we don’t want to lord it over others or punish them if they disobey the corporate rules, much less the rules of Pax Amerikkkana. We don’t want to “succeed” that badly, not badly enough to sell our souls and boss around – and certainly not kill – people who, we know, suffer every day just like we suffer.

Nor do we want to be cops – pigs – or to be the commander in chief of pigs, be they local police or the cops of the world. No one imagines themselves the commander.

We’d like things to be better in our personal lives, of course, if we could have them better and still feel clean.

And that’s the Obama equation. Keep your Black/ Brown mouth shut and you can “succeed.” And you can still feel “clean.” Here we have the real story behind Obama’s portrayal of his squeaky clean-ness. Yes, Black man, yes, Black woman, you can have power in this killer-racist system and stay “clean.” In Obama’s carefully constructed image lies a symbolic resolution of a profound inner conflict that all people of color in the US face in their daily lives.

Obama plays the role of a Black Cinderella. He does for Black folks what Cinderella does for girls. He shows that oppression and silence can be good for you – at least if you are the one the prince chooses, or if you are the one who gets to be the prince. It’s total fantasy. It’s a glass slipper that will break at the arch and be turned on us like a broken beer bottle or a jagged-edged knife; the same knife Obama has threatened to turn on the people of Iran and Pakistan.

But, he’s getting over with it, if for no other reason than that the inner conflict I’ve described remains largely unconscious for oppressed people in the US. That’s why one Black poet, spoken word artist Darian Dauchan, wrote a piece called “Damn You Barack Obama You Pretty Mothafucka.” It’s because Dauchan was trying to sort it through. Even though he fails – he buys into the Obama myth- nonetheless he had to sort it through as best he could, because Obama is the walking illusion of the realization of an impossible dream; the dream that in white racist Amerikkka a Black man could be judged on the content of his character, not the color of his skin.

There is, of course, a racist subtext to Obama being called “pretty”- it’s the subtext of internalized racism and the imposition of an internal color-caste system within the Black nation itself, a color-coded stratification held over from the era of slavery – the era of the “mulatto, the “half-breed,” “quadroon” and “octoroon”; a caste system in which “whiter” is better – smarter, “prettier,” more worthy, etc.

The rest of the racist subtext is this: Obama, with his extraordinary intelligence and presence (by any standard), is, in the eyes of white Amerikkka,(and, according to the standards of the so-called “Enlightenment,” which still rule the thinking of Euro-Americans) the half-white, and thus, half-redeemed “Black savage” – “redeemed” by his “white blood”, “civilized” by it – redeemed by his relative whiteness- ultimately redeemed and refined by the white nation itself.

The question from the Black perspective has been posed as to whether Obama is “Black enough” – which is to say, “Is he loyal enough to the Black nation? The more decisive question, viewed from the white electorate’s standpoint, at least, is this; “Is he white enough, is he loyal enough to whiteness and to the white nation?” That’s why the question of his religion, and of his Arabic name, are points of attack and vulnerability from the standpoint of the more openly racist and xenophobic sectors of the white public. That’s why his “patriotism” is also questioned, unlike any white candidate. After all, everyone in the US knows that people of color with Arabic names are the enemy. It doesn’t matter, apparently, how many nukes Obama wants to hit Iran with, he’s got to stand up and recite the pledge of allegiance to prove he’s not a terrorist – at least not an anti-US terrorist.

Obama is not being judged on the “content of his character” – the question of how his character is perceived in a racist nation and, conversely, among a colonized African people, is a question that is sociologically inseparable from the color of his skin.

Many people, nonetheless, think Obama is the realization of Dr. King’s dream. The power of this archetype is immense. It’s why the completely empty catch-phrase “Change” works for him, and it’s the deeper reason for the quasi-religious wave of “Obama fever.” Obama is Cinderella and King’s Dream rolled into one. He’s even had the myth of Kennedy’s so-called “Camelot” invoked on his behalf. For many, he’s not only phenomenally charismatic, but irresistible. There’s even been talk of an “Obama Cult.” {The comments at this link, many of which attack the essay, are every bit as interesting as the essay itself.}

But, if Obama is the realization of King’s dream, then the price of the dream is silence. And, as the slogan goes, “Silence = Death.” If Obama is the realization of King’s dream, then the price is silence about the oppression of Black people – and the abandonment of the millions locked away under the conditions of mass incarceration that have replaced Jim Crow. If Obama is the realization of King’s dream, then being Black means being white – then Black is white, or at least it’s Black on white terms. It’s a Blackness that dare not speak its name.

Obama’s shot at the presidency doesn’t signal the end of racism in the U.S. It is made possible, rather, by the new form racism itself has taken, a form that offers a prison cell to poor people of color, and, for the middle class, on the other hand, an Apartheid-style pass card stamped “SILENCED.”

The functioning of this new dynamic of racism is plain to see in Obama’s attitude toward the newest persecuted “Other” in U.S. society – Brown migrants. On one hand, in one of his most impressive moments, he very rightly called attacks on migrants “scapegoating” (although he failed to critique NAFTA or US Imperialism at any level.)

His campaign even lifts and translates the migrant chant of “!Si Se Puede!” into English as “Yes we can,” and uses it as a slogan. (Obama himself has been a prime beneficiary of the mass opposition of the wrongly labeled “New Civil Rights Movement” in 2006 – the pro-migrant movement that not only cracked open and deeply divided the Republican Party so severely that it has not been able to re-group, but that also put white Amerikkka on notice that a it would never get by with making instant felons of millions of Brown people, and that openly racist persecution, at least, would not be tolerated from Republicans or anyone else.)

Obama favors driver’s licenses for the undocumented, but he’s all for the Apartheid Wall being built on the US side of the Mexican/ US border. Obama is willing to issue pass cards to migrants who make no trouble, since – after all – they’re here, for god’s sake.

Obama’s attitude toward brown migrants is the much the same as that of white liberals toward the Black middle class. It’s much the same as the attitude of the white ruling elite toward him. Keep up the racist wall, but give the “trustworthy ones” a pass. In the case of the Black middle class, the “trustworthy ones” are the ones who maintain silence about oppression. In the case of immigrants the “trustworthy ones” are the ones who have “learned English”, and “ have paid a fine,” as Obama puts it, for the violation of having been driven from their countries by hunger – by the gutting of their nation’s economies by the global capitalist empire headquartered in the U.S.

Even more telling is Obama’s refusal to recognize the right of Palestinians to return to the land stolen from them by Israel during the Nakba of 1948– the disaster of the birth of the Israeli regime. Obama supports and promotes the character of Israel as an exclusively Jewish state – in other words, as an Apartheid state, a Jim Crow state that not only keeps Palestinians separate, but which uses its military might to bomb them at will.

Like the Israelis themselves, Obama wants a separate Palestinian state – separate, but certainly not equal.

There can be no authentically autonomous Palestinian state located on the border of a nuclear-armed Israel – only a subjugated state militarily controlled by its neighbor – its oppressor. Such a state can be nothing but a Bantustan. In the meantime, while the whole world condemned the recent Israeli closure of Gaza, including a cut off of electricity that impacted its hospitals, Obama asserted that “Israel was forced to do this.”

Obama knows the rules of the game, after all – he is the rules of the new race game- his candidacy itself is a manifestation of the new system of racism.

He knows how to make white Amerikkka feel good about the status quo, here and abroad.

There’s a reason for that.

If he told the truth, if he stood up for justice, and on that basis, authentic healing, he couldn’t be president.

Under those circumstances, if he’d attracted any measurable attention, much less the global attention he’s gained today, more likely be dead.

Like King.

Like Malcolm.

Dead, like Steven Biko of the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania / South Africa, or Fred Hampton from Chicago.

Or imprisoned for decades, like Nelson Mandela was.

But Barack Obama doesn’t have that kind of vision and courage.

And he’s not, in the end, even a street activist. He’s been bought. What kind of “street activist” or “community organizer,” after all, ends up a millionaire?.

One who won’t say what white people don’t want to hear.

What white Amerikkka doesn’t want to know, Obama is not about to tell them. That’s a large part of why they like him; it’s key. Whites don’t want to know, as a rule, the actual conditions of Black America, just as the German people, as a rule, didn’t want to know the actual conditions of the Jews and Gypsies, even as the smoke of the crematoria drifted through their streets.

Here’s one part of the core truth that Obama is silencing:

The U.S., which has roughly 6% of the world’s human population, imprisons 20% of the world’s prisoners. The vast majority of those it imprisons are men of color. American Indians have the highest incarceration rate on the planet. Black men have the world’s next highest rate, although their absolute numbers make up the largest group of US prisoners. Mexicans and other Spanish speaking Natives in the U.S. have the third highest rate of imprisonment of all the world’s peoples.

According to a report from MSNBC, about 16% of black men in their twenties who are not college students are currently either in jail or in prison, while almost 60% of black male high school dropouts in their early thirties have spent time in prison.

Human rights Watch notes that in the U.S., “Nationwide, blacks are incarcerated at 8.2 times the rate of whites. That is, a black person is 8.2 times more likely to be in prison than a white person. Among individual states, there are even more extraordinary racial disparities in incarceration rates. In seven states — Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — blacks are incarcerated at more than 13 times the rate of whites. Minnesota has by far the highest disparity — blacks in that state are incarcerated at 23 times the rate of whites. In the District of Columbia, blacks are incarcerated at 34 times the rate of whites. Even in Hawaii and Vermont, the states with the smallest racial disparities in incarceration rates, blacks are still incarcerated at more than twice the rate of whites.”

But to hear the mainstream media spin it, racism in the US is over.

After all, Barack Obama might be president of the US.

To hear Barack Obama tell it, “There is no divide that we can’t bridge.” The easiest divide to “bridge”, of course, is the one you pretend doesn’t exist, the one you never mention.

White Amerikka wants to believe it is innocent- that racism is over. It doesn’t want to know that its rulers solved the “problem” presented to them by the end of Jim Crow segregation and by the eruption of the Black Power movement by replacing the de facto chains of Jim Crow with the even more literal shackles of mass imprisonment.

Obama rejects the Black militant stance – even the pro-Black stance of Dr. King or Reverend Jackson– not only by distancing himself from Jackson, but, much more importantly, by remaining silent about the fact that the white imperial ruling class met the challenges they faced with the end of segregation and the rise of the Black Power movement by flooding Black streets with crack cocaine and guns – creating a “gang problem” out of nowhere – then by inventing “The War on Drugs” and “The War on Gangs” to carry out the greatest mass imprisonment in human history, a campaign more Draconian and Machiavellian than anything most dictators, even the demonized Saddam Hussein, ever dreamed of.

The isolation engendered by a quarter-century of the War on Drugs and the War on Gangs – which is actually a war on poor people of color in the US – is overwhelmingly intense. It’s suffocating: and the silence about the war on poor people of color in the US has been punctured only twice – first, by the Los Angeles rebellion in 1992, and secondly by the mass marches of millions of Brown people protesting the State’s efforts to retroactively turn even more millions of migrants into instant felons in 2006.

The war against the oppressed nationalities in the US is real. In the ghettos, the barrios and on the rez it’s a palpable phenomenon: Millions of families are missing their sons and daughters. Again, their children make up roughly 20% of the prison population of the world, again – not just of the US – of the world.

But for white Amerikkka, it may as well be taking place in Baghdad, not next door. They know a little about what’s up in Iraq, of course, but not about what is happening to much more intimately, right next door, and in their names.

Barack Obama, in the meantime, says that the invasion of Iraq was misdirected. It was the wrong war. The Empire’s real enemy, he says, lay elsewhere.

He says nothing at all about the War at Home against his own people.

It’s not after all, that racism is over. It’s that whites imagine that they can now be at peace about it – that the race war in Amerikkka is over as a two-sided affair. Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report, in a fascinating and important debate with Michael Eric Dyson, says the Obama campaign is “relentlessly sending out signals to white people that a vote for Barack Obama, an Obama presidency, would signal the beginning of the end of black-specific agitation, that it would take race discourse off of the table.” Ford says, “Barack Obama does not carry our burden, in addition to other burdens. He in fact promises to lift white-people-as-a-whole’s burden, the burden of having to listen to these very specific and historical black complaints, to deal with the legacies of slavery. That is his promise to them.”

An exhaustive NAACP report indicates that there is very little difference between the stances of Obama and Clinton on issues important to Blacks. Others have noted the centrist nature of the Obama campaign more broadly. Black legal scholar Vernellia Randall, of the University of Dayton, Ohio, says that Obama has No specific plan for addressing institutionalized racism, and that he doesn’t even acknowledge the issue. (Others have noted the centrist nature of the Obama campaign more broadly.)

In the white imagination, Barack Obama represents, not the “End of Racism” (racism has an experiential, existential meaning for only the barest sliver of the white population), but, he represents, rather, the end of the struggle to end racism.

The “End of Racism,” like the ”End of History” proclaimed by Francis Fukuyama with the fall of the Soviet Union, is meant to signify and hail the end of polarization and struggle, a final assimilative victory in which the antagonist (Communist or Black, respectively) is absorbed into the benevolent embrace of the white capitalist empire – there to disappear as a problem – even as a distinct entity.

Obama, in this context, can be viewed as a kind of Gorbachev, a figure that surrendered the sovereignty and independence of his nation, opened it to overt capitalism, collapse and chaos, and who, in the process, became the darling of the capitalist world; who became, in the West, at least, a figure representing “reconciliation and peace” – not capitulation and betrayal.

In the Amerikkkan imagination, Obama signals the co-optation, not of the pseudo-Marxist Soviet style socialism, but of the drive for Black liberation, autonomy and self –determination – the end of Black Nationalism, of the Black nation as a distinct people with a distinct history, distinct needs, a distinct culture, a distinct oppression and a distinct agenda. It signifies the supremacy of the white nation over the Black nation, just as the so-called “End of History” is meant to signify the supremacy of capitalism over all anti-capitalist potentials for organizing society.

The only awareness most whites have of racism comes as a result of the immediate and very short term impact of the struggle of peoples of color upon their consciousness. The silencing of that struggle means only the end of its painful intrusion into white awareness – not the end of racism as an omnipresent, violent burden on the oppressed, not the end of racism as omnipresent oppression and degradation. As noted above, Obama has no plan, and thus, it is fair to say, no intention of ending systemic racism in the US. It’s easier to pretend for popular consumption, that it no longer exists.

Barack Obama is priceless. If he didn’t exist, as the saying goes, they’d have had to invent him. And, no matter Obama’s subjective intentions – white people did just that in their imaginations and in setting the social terms of the New Racism. The very best one can say is that Obama’s let them get by with it by pandering to it. I’ll leave the worst one can say to you. It’s closer to the point, and to the truth.

It should be more than clear by now that Barack Obama will not save us. But neither is the point to expose the man as an individual, or even as a hypocrite, betrayer or oppressor. The point is to see him in context,

within the limits of the system, the matrix, the cultural and political environment in which he arose and in which he operates. It’s not that Barack Obama, per se, is worthless, it’s that none of the dreams in us that he speaks to so deeply in us can be fulfilled under the system of oppression he is an expression of and that his candidacy concentrates in visible form.

There is nothing wrong at all in the hopes we have that Obama’s rhetoric speaks to. The problem lies in what Herbert Marcuse called “repressive desublimation – a hope, a need, that has been buried and denied by an oppressive system, is allowed some room to breathe, then co-opted and redirected back into a form that ultimately reinforces the oppressive system that denied and suppressed out hopes and needs in the first place. That’s what Obama represents.

He speaks to our dreams of connection, of reciprocity, of balance, sanity and a noble way of life. He speaks to our hope for a world worth living in, to our hope for the future generations that have been crushed for decades now under the heel of the Bush regime and its predecessors. The enormous energy for change unleashed in the 1960s has been buried deeper and deeper under the weight of oppression, and, especially for the last 7 years, under the weight of the most cynical, sadistic, apocalyptic regime of our lifetimes, a regime that has embraced a vision of global destruction and that has denied every life-giving hope.

The Bush regime was and remains an expression of a conscious plan by the far right – especially of the Christian fascists under the leadership of Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage Foundation and co-founder of the Moral Majority – to crush everything that came to life in the upheavals of the cultural revolutions of the 60s era. They meant, as they consciously expressed it, to counter the counter culture, the culture of hope, and offer a new “hope” of a “purpose driven life” in the context of the old traditions of oppression. They meant to, as they put it, “reframe this struggle as a moral struggle, as a transcendent struggle, as a struggle between good and evil” along traditional Christian lines.

The Christian Fascist strategist Eric Heubeck wrote, “We will maintain a constant barrage of criticism against the Left. We will attack the very legitimacy of the Left. We will not give them a moment’s rest. We will endeavor to prove that the Left does not deserve to hold sway over the heart and mind of a single American. We will offer constant reminders that there is an alternative, there is a better way. When people have had enough of the sickness and decay of today’s American culture, they will be embraced by and welcomed into the New Traditionalist movement.”

The regime of Bush the Lesser was the pinnacle of this effort – he carried the agenda as far as it could go, before it began to fracture and collapse under the weight of its own madness – before it met the determined resistance of society’s most vulnerable, scapegoated and openly stigmatized targets, as they marched in their millions refusing to be victims. The combined force of the Christian fascist juggernaut, the repressive powers of the State, and the US war machine looked unstoppable until it met this opposition at home, and until it met the mad and fierce resistance of the people of Iraq who have, however chaotic and horrifying their tactics, refused to be conquered. With these events, the aura of invincibility and unstoppable momentum was destroyed, the lid of repression began to crack, and what had been suppressed in us rose again to the surface. Literally, in terms of time in office, and as a sweeping reactionary social agenda, the Bush regime is coming to an end. With its end, inevitably, comes a wave of hope and euphoria.

This is the wave Obama is riding, the ocean of energy he is trying to steer into an acceptance of the same old deal, the same old wars, the same old systemic racism, packaged as if it were something new. This wave of energy is not something he’s inspired, it’s something he’s riding and that he is uniquely qualified to channel toward his own ends – which are not our ends.

As we have seen, Obama doesn’t represent peace – he represents an expansion of war and the power of Empire. He’s even more extreme on this than Bush himself, except in his public rhetoric. He doesn’t represent the real and legitimate needs, desires and hopes of Black people – he refuses to speak openly of the most fundamental issues affecting Black people. He doesn’t represent the “end of racism,” but the perpetuation of oppression in a new guise.

Obama doesn’t represent a new system or the new way of life we dreamed of and fought for and that has been suppressed – he represents the old one. He represents a system that is fundamentally rooted in exploitation, oppression and destruction on a global scale, and he is living proof that no fundamental change for the better can – or will – come about under the system he represents and upholds. It doesn’t work that way. To tell the truth is to betray the system, and he can’t bring himself to do it, even though he is far too conscious not to know it.

Attaining authentic freedom requires, as its barest starting point, the naming of what keeps us subjugated. What keeps us subjugated is the very system Obama wants to rule. The system, even with Barack Obama as its first Black emperor, is not our hope. It’s our enemy, the enemy of the world, and, because this system is rapidly undermining the ability of the planet to foster and sustain life, it is the enemy of all Life on Earth. This is exactly the understanding that the Christian fascists like Weyrich and Heubeck wanted to crush out of our awareness, and the lack of such awareness is exactly what Barack Obama depends on if he is to remain a symbol of the impossible dream that the system can be something other than what it is.