Power to the People

People of South Africa threaten to go on strike

2010-11-30T08:08:00.001-05:00

Walmart offers R17bn for Massmart

30 November 2010

Massmart has received written notice from US firm Walmart of its firm intention to make an all-cash offer to acquire a 51 percent stake in the South African retailer.

Massmart's board said on Monday that it was "unanimous" in support of the proposed deal, which would see Walmart pay R148 per ordinary share, but that it still needed the support of a two-thirds majority of shareholders and the South African authorities.

The board said the offer from Walmart had followed a rigorous due diligence process.

"There are still a number of important conditions that need to be fulfilled before the transaction can be implemented. These include amongst others two thirds majority shareholder support (75 percent) and approval from the South African competition authorities."

"The Massmart board has considered the terms of the offer and the opinion of [bankers] Morgan Stanley, the independent advisor and is unanimous in its support for the proposed transaction. The total transaction is valued at approximately R17-billion for 51 percent of Massmart," the retailer said in a statement.

It said offers on comparable terms were being extended to the beneficiaries of the employee share trust, the Thuthukani trust and the black scarce skills trust.

"These offers will be inter-conditional with the offer to ordinary shareholders."

Strong growth potential

Massmart CEO Grant Pattison said the offer was a sign of confidence in the local economy and could create new jobs: "This is a milestone in Massmart's history and is a vote of confidence not only in Massmart and our employees, but also in the strong growth potential of South Africa and the continent," he said.

"If approved, the transaction promises to be very positive for the regional economy, facilitating job creation, providing new opportunities for small and medium businesses and improving competitiveness.

"In gaining access to Walmart's experience and capabilities, we expect to be able to offer consumers an even wider selection of products that are competitively priced and more consistently available, delivering an improved customer experience across all our stores."

Union deals 'to be honoured'

Pattison said Walmart had undertaken to respect existing agreements with trade unions, who had been opposed to the deal given the firm's reputation for being at loggerheads with labour in the United States.

"We reaffirm Walmart's commitment to honour existing union agreements and to maintain our broad-based black economic empowerment credentials, working diligently with all parties to grow skills, create jobs in the retail industry, advance transformation and further socio-economic development initiatives," he said.

Walmart's interest in acquiring a share of Massmart was announced to the market on 27 September.

The SA Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union had threatened to go on strike if the deal went ahead. Saccawu this month handed Pattison a set of demands pertaining to the proposed deal, including that employment conditions and agreements remain intact.

Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel had also set up a panel to advise the government of the likely implications of Walmart's bid.

South Africa considers its options to tackle HIV/Aids over next 20 years

2010-11-30T08:02:00.000-05:00

A new report, commissioned by the South African government, outlines three scenarios for tackling HIV/Aids in the country over the next two decades. Political will and donor funding will determine which the government opts to pursue

A volunteer is injected with an African-produced HIV vaccine during trials in Cape Town earlier this year. Photograph: Rodger Bosch/AFP/Getty Images

There are more people living with HIV/Aids in South Africa – 5.7 million - than anywhere else in the world. It hasn't got the highest prevalence – that unfortunate title goes to Swaziland, with one in four people infected (among women that amounts to a shocking 31%, compared with 20% among men). But South Africa has a huge mountain to climb to treat its people and protect those who are not infected – half a million become HIV positive every year.

There is every sign that the South African government is going to do all it can. Gone are the doubting days of Thabo Mbeki and his lemon and garlic-advocating health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. The present government has allocated increasing amounts of money to HIV prevention and treatment and obtained some grants from the US president's emergency fund for Aids relief (Pepfar) and smaller amounts from the Global Fund to fight Aids, TB and malaria.

South Africa is a middle-income country, not poverty-stricken on the scale of much of sub-Saharan Africa. It can fund some of its own response to the epidemic, but clearly the costs could be enormous at a time when every government is struggling to make ends meet. How to tackle it and how much money to spend, not just immediately but for the future, are huge issues.

A major inquiry has now been carried out by the aids2031 South Africa project at the request of the South African government. This is an investigation by the Cape Town-based Centre for Economic Governance and Aids in Africa with the Results for Development Institute from Washington DC. South African government officials sat on the steering committee. Their report paints three different scenarios for South Africa. It's not the good, the bad and the ugly. Nothing is so simple. The options on offer here are dubbed narrow, expanded and hard choices and it takes the long view, examining what shoould happen over the next 20 years.

Essentially, the narrow option is where South Africa's current Aids plan will take it. Between now and 2031, that will cost R658bn, which is US$88bn. The number of new infections will fall, but only gradually, to about 350,000 a year.

The expanded option is ambitious and has greater focus on prevention. Male circumcision programmes would be introduced, but also behavioural change initiatives, to reduce violence against women and empower commercial sex workers. There would also be some initiatives to reduce poverty and an increase in condom distribution and voluntary HIV counselling and testing. The total cost over the 20 years could reach R765bn, or US$102bn, but new infections would fall to less than 200,000 a year.

The hard choices programme envisages the government taking the difficult decision to focus on what works best, at a time of financial austerity. Male circumcision would be rapidly scaled up, but some other interventions, for instance to help orphans and vulnerable children, would be curtailed. It's the cheapest option, at R598bn, or US$79bn, but new infections would still fall to 225,000 a year, the group says.

The expanded scenario is clearly the best. This is what the report says:

"If considerably greater political will and financial resources can be mobilised and the South African society can be motivated to adopt important social and behavioural changes... a powerful change in the epidemic could occur, with lower rates on infection and mortality.
"If the financial resources for HIV/Aids are highly constrained and political backing remains strong but more moderate than under the expanded... scenario, then the more targeted approach under the hard choices is still an attractive alternative to the status quo."

Robert Hecht, one of the authors and managing director of Results for Development, pointed out that South Africa funds 70% of the US$2bn spent on HIV/Aids in the country itself. But South Africa will need donor help to get through a substantial scale-up, and donors, in these straitened times, may feel they should be helping the poorest countries more. The report offers a powerful argument for helping South Africa too.

"They need to get through this period of rapid increase in spending need, allow the donors to feel they are addressing the most significant HIV/Aids epidemic anywhere in the world and justify to their own population that the money is well-spent," he says, adding: "We don't want this to be a report that sits on the shelf."

On the government side, Mark Blecher, acting chief director, health and social development at the Treasury, who was co-chairman of the steering committee, said he thought it was "a valuable report... it suggests we need to keep accelerating our programmes quite rapidly".

He hopes that Pepfar and the Global Fund can be encouraged to support South Africa's scale-up of treatment and prevention for the next five years. If they do, the report suggests that the epidemic may level off to a point where the South African government can find most of the resources itself.

So which scenario will the government choose? Blecher hedges. "We need more thinking on that," he says. Undoubtedly. This is about political will as well as persuading the donors to help and there are few governments that engage in policies for the long-term. Twenty years is a very long time in politics. So even thinking about it should be warmly applauded.

Letter from Zambia

2010-10-04T23:36:00.002-04:00

Fantastic open letter from Zambia that I found on the Socialist Banner blog,another blog with a focus on Africa!

Africa is a vast continent comprised of nations which because of their colonial past have different histories, just as they have variegated geographical landmarks that distinguish them. Thus African nations do not share many things in common except the forcible grouping together of tribes regardless of the interaction that existed before colonialisation.

In the attempt to create nations, different ethnic groups have been split between boundaries and the expression of nationalism has therefore not been through the medium of cultural or ethnic identity, but defined within the context of the country in which the language of the colonial master became the lingua franca.

It is imperative to note, therefore, that such a situation in which countries find themselves has made nation building and African unity a difficult task.
The political developments taking place in Zambia today are African in nature and therefore similar and comparable to political events taking place elsewhere. In Africa, parliamentary democracy defined through multi-party politics still remains a test case today. Political leaders in Africa are finding it hard to relinquish power through the medium of the ballot box. The current political scenario in Zambia may easily degenerate into political violence if left unabated. The Catholic church and some western NGOs have kept on to criticise the ruling MMD government both through the press and privately-owned radio stations. Radio ICENGELO – owned by the Catholic church has become the mouthpiece of the voiceless people on the Copperbelt.

The widening gap between the rich and poor is something the ruling MMD government of President Rupiah Banda does not seem to be concerned about. Indeed, privatisation of the Zambian economic sector can only succeed by strengthening the private- and profit-making social sector, otherwise than defending and safeguarding the economic upkeep of the peasants and workers.

Massive and periodic job losses in the formal and informal sector have come to characterise the economic policy of Zambia’s economic liberation ever since the MMD came to power in 1991 to date. During the leadership of Dr. Kenneth Kaunda education was subsidised by the state and every child had a right to free education from primary school to university level. Every year the UNIP government carried out massive recruitments of teachers, doctors, nurses, policemen and soldiers.

The change from one-party participating democracy to multi-party democracy saw the implementation of economic liberalism (defined as privatisation) under the MMD government of President Fredrick Chiluba. This entailed the liquidation of state-owned mining, industrial and financial companies. The privatisation of state-owned companies led to massive job losses – in most cases the retrenched workers have not yet received their retirement salaries.

But we cannot mop up the fact that the UNIP government had experienced economic decline from 1980 to 1991 – the MMD inherited a bankrupt economy as the case may be. But it must be emphasised that the manner in which privatisation was carried out by the MMD was less than transparent.
It was in an attempt to monopolise power that Kaunda introduced a one-party state in 1973 on the excuse that Zambia was facing tribalism under multi-party politics. He introduced the philosophy of humanism in order to weld the different ethnic groups together under “One Zambia One Nation”. He declared a state of emergency – political detentions without trial (political criticism was banned). It is a fact that both the ruling MMD and political opposition have shown no restraint in manipulating the masses through feeding them with prejudices against other tribes in order to win their support. Thus tribalistic sentiments in Zambia originate from politicians or political parties. The voting patterns that emerged from the previous three general elections depict tribal and regional allegiances in the sense that people voted on the basis of ethnic patronage.

Every economic gain achieved under the late President Levy Mwanawasa has been dissipated by the global economic downturn of 2009, making it possible for the PF leader Michael Sata to increase votes in the coming 2011 elections. General elections in urban areas of Zambia are determined by economic factors, especially for food prices, the cost of education and availability of employment. The ruling MMD has concentrated on building roads, hospitals, schools and subsiding peasant farmers. In rural areas where the party received massive votes, working class political consciousness is visibly absent in rural village communities. The failure of African leaders to relinquish power through the medium of the ballot box means that elections in Africa are conducted in a win-or-die situation. The experience of many African nations with regard to their armed forces have been sad in that they have stifled democracy with their intervention, purportedly in their attempt to correct the mistakes of their political bosses also had failed to adhere to the principle of democracy through perceived violations of the constitution. When military leaders come into power, they not only breach the constitution, they become traitors to the oath of allegiance they swore to the nation.

The reluctance of the ruling MMD to accept the PF and UPND as viable future political options is a bad omen for multi-party politics in Zambia.

Socialism is the only practical political alternative to capitalism and our message to the workers of Zambia remains the same – the creation of a classless moneyless and stateless society.
KEPHAS MULENGA

PnP staff refuse to 'lose'

2010-10-04T01:32:00.000-04:00

Pick ‘n Pay employees in South Africa still deciding on strike action

The South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (Saccawu) is warning that a full-blown strike by Pick n Pay employees is on the cards.

The trade union said on Sunday if talks with management fail then workers could down tools in two weeks.

More than 20 000 staff members returned to their posts this week following three days of industrial action.

They are demanding a staff discount of 10 percent on basic food items, a R550 monthly pay hike and increased working hours for casual workers.

Saccawu's Jan Kotze said workers are fighting for a living wage.

"Workers feel very strongly in terms of their demands. They have indicated that they will not be agreeing with anything that will see them at the losing side of the bargain," he said.

Columnists | On the Blog Property Search | Property News Related News * Hout Bay resident threatens “an eye for an eye” for Helen

2010-10-04T01:30:00.000-04:00

A march organised by Cosatu saw hundreds of people converge on the Hout Bay police station today.

The march was in protest of the City of Cape Town’s plans to evict people living in informal settlements in Hangberg. A planned eviction by police two weeks ago descended into chaos as angry residents resisted and some threw stones at police and city workers who reportedly got aggressive with stubborn residents.

The marchers handed over a memorandum to the provincial police commissioner, Mayor Dan Plato and Premier Helen Zille. The memorandum demanded that Zille launch a commission inquiry into the violence that erupted on the day of the evictions. Zille was at the centre of a chaotic meeting with Hangberg residents a week before the evictions. Residents accused her of being arrogant and refusing to hear them out.

The memorandum also called for Zille tobe held personally responsible for :” all injuries, maiming, destruction of property and emotional trauma caused by her actions”.

Black is Back Coalition opposes FBI attacks on antiwar activists and movement

2010-10-03T13:01:00.000-04:00

FBI agents take boxes away from activist Mick Kelly's apartment

Uhuru!

The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations wants to state our unequivocal opposition to the September 24 multi-state Federal Bureau of Investigation harassment of a number of antiwar militants and activists.

For the Black is Back Coalition this recent aggression against political dissent is glaring evidence of the depth of the crisis of an imperialism that requires for its survival the permanent exploitation of the world's peoples, including Africans, Mexicans and others within the ghettos and barrios here within the US.

We see this crisis is one that is caused by the struggling masses of the world's peoples to reverse the verdict of imperialism that has resulted in the vast majority of the Earth's population being reduced to a status of poverty and oppression.

It is the struggles of the peoples of the Middle East, South America, Africa and elsewhere imperialism has left its bloody mark that has led to this crisis that the US white ruling class has attempted to quell through seduction with the selection of Barack Hussein Obama as US president. We recognize that Obama was imperialism's desperate response to the resistance of the world's peoples after the failed policies of George W. Bush served to deepen the crisis by winning more of the oppressed to the ranks of imperialist resistance.

The Black is Back Coalition is not hoodwinked by the phony charges imposed on the militants by the FBI under the guise of anti-terrorist investigation.

We know that this is an attempt to isolate the legitimate forces of resistance here in the US and throughout the world. We know that this is an attempt to intimidate those who currently oppose US imperialist foreign policy and to prevent any others from joining in the opposition.

The Black is Back Coalition is opposed to this blatant attack on free speech rights in the name of fighting against terrorism. We call on all activists and proponents of social justice to resist all government efforts to prevent solidarity with and between the oppressed peoples of the world, whether it be the people of Palestine who are locked in a life and death struggle with the illegitimate white nationalist settler state of Israel or the people of South America who are attempting to wrest their future from the oppressive grasp of its historical US imperialist enemy.

Finally, the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations wants to go on record as declaring that our response to these FBI attempts to silence legitimate opposition to US crimes against the peoples of the world must be to unflinchingly redouble our efforts. We must deepen our solidarity with each other and the peoples of the world fighting for a better world.

Toward this end, the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations is holding our second rally and march on the White House on November 13. It is a rally and march dedicated to support for resistance throughout the world and within the US. We call on all activists to join with us.

Down with intimidation!

Defend free speech and all democratic rights!

Victory to the oppressed peoples of the world!

from UhuruNews

DP World in labour dispute at Algeria port: sources

2010-09-10T16:38:00.000-04:00

By Lamine Chikhi and Christian Lowe

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Dockworkers at Algeria's busiest port, operated by Dubai-based DP World, have staged an unofficial strike in protest at a management drive to raise productivity, industry sources told Reuters.

The operator said the container port was functioning as normal and one of the sources said the union representing the workers reached a deal last weekend to end the protest.

But for weeks before that, stevedores at the port in the Algerian capital were operating an unofficial go-slow strike, with just a handful of containers being moved each day and a backlog of ships offshore waiting to unload, the sources said.

"I waited 25 days before my four containers were unloaded in the port of Algiers," Reda Rahmouni, a book importer who has regular dealings with the port, told Reuters.

"There is nothing official, but it seems that they are on strike ... They unload only eight to nine containers per day. This is not acceptable."

DP World, a unit of conglomerate Dubai World, took control of operations at the terminal last year under a 30-year operating concession.

The terminal, re-named DP World Djazair, handles more than 60 percent of Algeria's external trade, according to the company. None of OPEC member Algeria's crude oil and gas exports go through the port.

Asked by Reuters to comment on the labour dispute, a DP World said in a statement provided to Reuters: "We have been working with the union to increase the efficiency of the terminal and have reached an agreement that will see service improve there. DP World Djazair is operating as normal."

PORT DELAYS

The terminal, in the heart of the Algerian capital, was built by former ruler France and much of the infrastructure dates back to the colonial period.

Long delays at Algerian ports are common, causing supply problems for a country whose economy is dominated by oil and gas and which imports most of the goods that it consumes.

An industry source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the union go-slow was sparked by a dispute over pay and an attempt by DP World managers to introduce new shift patterns to improve productivity.

The source said he did not know the details of the agreement the union and management reached last weekend. "Whatever the case, productivity has now gone up and we expect the backlog and number of idle vessels outside the port to diminish."

But the source added: "I have a feeling that our woes in the port are not entirely over."

Indebted parent company Dubai World is prepared to sell DP World, among other assets, to help raise billions of dollars it needs to repay creditors, according to a company document obtained by Reuters last month.

ISO "Whitening"

2010-09-04T22:02:00.003-04:00

I found this piece to be very interesting

This is Just to Say

by Donna Chidi on Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 5:19pm

I sent this to you because I have enjoyed working with you in the ISO over the years or you knew how dedicated I was to my work with the ISO and deserve to know what happened with it.

This is just to say that I am no longer a member of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and did not leave on good terms by any standard. This is also to say that I am still a committed socialist activist and will not allow my negative experiences in the ISO taint my view of revolutionary politics or the amazing activists I met.

If you've got ideas or social justice struggles you're involved in and want to collaborate, then get in touch.

My story is divided into three chronological parts:

Stifling debate about diversity in NYC ISO
Mass expulsion and membership exodus on not-so-good terms in DC ISO - resulting in a 90% white branch in a 54% black city (Oh no, she didn't!)
Getting back to fighting capitalism - LET'S GET ON WITH IT

Appendix: The Full Response

I. Stifling debate about diversity in the NYC ISO
During the convention period in March 2010, three immigrant ISO members of color submitted a document calling for opening up a dialogue about recruiting and retaining members of color. Although I favored many of the ideas and issues raised in the document, the response to it was so hostile that I could not muster up the courage to speak up in defense of the ideas contained within it. It was clear that the leadership had taken a strong position, as quoted below, and any attempts to raise a different perspective would be shut-down without consideration.

Here is a quote from it, but the full four-page response is attached at the bottom in the Appendix:

“…In fact, the term “diversity” is itself a liberal term that sees combining as many different kinds of experiences and backgrounds as possible as an end in of itself, rather than a means to lead the working class to victory over exploitation and oppression.

The identity politics framework of the document is exposed when the document’s authors argue: “We do believe that comrades of color provide an important link between their communities and revolutionary Marxism.” This both assumes that Marxism is foreign to the fight against racism (and therefore requires special conduits) and that there are such things as “communities” based on racial identity. In fact, any racial or ethnic group is broken down into its various class components. Working class Blacks are no more a part of Barack Obama’s “community” as working class women are part of Hilary Clinton’s or gays a part of Barney Frank’s….”

-H.T. on behalf of the NYC District Committee in Response to “Recruiting, Developing, and Retaining Members of Color in the ISO”

The harsh and hostile response effectively shut down discussion – though the main point of “Recruiting, Developing, and Retaining Members of Color in the ISO” was to start such a conversation. As a comrade of color, I identified with the ideas presented in the document about paying special attention to developing members of color as leaders. It’s difficult to develop a person’s skills if you don’t know what their skills are or anything about them for that matter. So although the long-term leaders of the NYC ISO might have intended to train and develop me as a comrade, those intentions remained intentions as I was ignored for the most part and none of them ever initiated conversation with me. Since the call for open discussion about these issues was so harshly shut down, I got the message that I’d better keep my ideas to myself as these issues were not of concern to our leaders.

II. Expulsions and membership exodus on not-so-good terms in DC ISO - resulting in a 90% white branch in a 54% black city
After the Socialism conference in June 2010, a group of people from the DC branch got together to discuss ideas they had to improve upon the work of the branch and decided to put all their thoughts together in a Perspectives document to be presented to the entire branch during the political perspectives discussion/kick off to organizing for the remainder of the summer. Recognizing similar problems, such as stifling debate and democracy (see above), I signed on in support of the document.

However, before the Perspectives meeting was to take place, the leaders of the branch called an “Emergency Meeting” for the Monday evening before, in which we would discuss some important issues in our branch and which Ahmed Shawki of the national steering committee would attend and convene.

At this Emergency meeting, Shawki described reasons why the national steering committee had voted to expel Zach Mason and indefinitely suspend David Thurston of the DC branch, whom he met with and delivered the news that afternoon. Now, 5 hours later, they were not welcome to this “members only” meeting where the issue of their expulsions would be discussed by everyone else. In that meeting in June, now my last ISO meeting, I commented on how sad it was to see socialists stand up and slander and crucify people they had worked with for 14 years and 7 years respectively without even allowing them to attend and defend themselves.

Among several other hostile comments made in my direction because of this, Shawki closed the discussion by inviting me to leave the ISO, although he has never spoken to me before, “If you think these guys are being crucified, then maybe this organization is not the right organization for you.”

Here is the e-mail exchange that then occurred between myself, Michele Bollinger – the acting convener of the branch, and Ahmed Shawki of the national steering committee.
-------

show details Jul 2

Michele Bollinger to me

Donna,

We would like to meet with you as soon as possible about the status of your membership in the DC branch. Please email back with some dates and time that you are available.

Thanks,
Michele

show details Jul 4
Donna to Michele

Hi Michele,
I believe it was made undeniably clear in the last meeting that I attended that I am not welcome in the DC ISO branch - especially in the comments made by comrades Dave Zirin, Mike Stark, and Ahmed Shawki. Therefore, I am not sure what we would be discussing in particular. If you still need to meet with me, I'm available on Tuesday evening after 6pm.

-Donna

show details Jul 5
Michele Bollinger to Ahmed, me
Hi Donna,

Fair enough, then. I'll take you off the listserve. Any other questions, best to contact Ahmed.

Thanks,
Michele

show details Jul 6
Donna to Michele

Can I have Ahmed's contact info, just in case questions do come up in the coming weeks?

Thanks

show details Jul 6

Michele Bollinger to me

Sure – xxxxxx{Email address}

show details Jul 12
Donna to ashawki
Hi Ahmed,
I've been struggling with finding the words to describe to my NY comrades, what the status of my membership in the ISO is. Evidently, I am no longer a member but I did not resign. Michele Bollinger deferred to you on this question (see messages below) so specifics would be greatly appreciated.

The concerns I need for you to address are: 1) Is there an appeals process for me and 2) How do I explain my membership status to my NY comrades?

Thanks.
Donna

show details Jul 19
Donna to ashawki

Hi Ahmed,
I sent the message below to you last week and am still awaiting your response. It'd be much appreciated.

-Donna

show details Jul 21
Ahmed Shawki to me

Hello Donna:

It is my understanding from the email exchange below that you are no longer a member of the ISO. I base this on what you said in your email of July 4, explaining your decision not to meet with the DC branch committee to discuss your membership status.

So to answer your two questions: 1) I don’t know what you would be appealing and to whom 2) You can circulate this email exchange to comrades in New York to help explain what has taken place. Feel free to have any NYC comrades to email or call me to discuss these issues.

Best. Ahmed

show details Jul 27
Donna to Michele, Ahmed

Hi Ahmed,
I'll use the email exchange then, to describe my membership status. However, I must make the correction that I did not decide NOT to meet with the DC branch committee and offered a date and time that I was available to meet. I only intended in that message to Michele to find out what, said meeting would be about. No one has yet refuted the statement that I am not welcome in the ISO, even though I did nothing wrong by speaking up in that fateful meeting, but somehow I was taken off the listserve before I had a chance to read the email or even think about my membership. As for the Appeals process, obviously, I got the not-so-subtle message that you sent about me leaving the organization and would be a fool to try to claw my way into a group where I am not wanted.

I dedicated the first four years of my adulthood to organizing with the ISO in college in Ithaca, NY and also in New York City and made many personal sacrifices for the sake of my branch in Ithaca. After all that hardwork, including working in a fraction of two people to bring two busloads & carpools of people to the National Equality March last year, you can imagine how I'm feeling very short-changed here.

This terse response you've given to this matter is hardly fitting for the situation and is somewhat dismissive. In my time in the ISO, I saw many new people come and go, but never on such bad terms as the atmosphere in that aforementioned meeting. You said in that meeting "better be friends in the movement, than to be enemies internally," but in order for that to happen, people have to separate on good terms. Nothing about this email exchange implies that you or Michele care about any good terms or amicable relations between myself and the ISO.

However, I will not allow this negative experience color my perceptions of the amazing activists and fighters that I have met in the ISO over the years. This has been a very difficult experience for me and I have taken away important life lessons from it. Hopefully, you all have also learned something from all this as well.

Again, a response would be greatly appreciated.

-Donna

****To date, 8/26/10 no response****

Clearly, I was pushed out/expelled/whatever without a fair process and although it was my intention to resign, I thought I reserved the right to do that myself. In response to that hostile “Emergency meeting,” 6 others resigned from the DC ISO, not including myself. So in total 9 people left the ISO voluntarily and involuntarily as a result of the happenings that day and a realization of the depth of lack of democracy in the ISO.

Most disturbing about the mass-resignations is the complacency of the DC and National ISO leadership to losing a majority of their members of color without regard – almost willingly. They knowingly made the choice to push us out in order to keep the group free of dissenters and people who ask questions – even though it resulted in a much smaller group with a ghastly 90% white majority in a 54% black city, also known as Chocolate City. This may not have been the intention, but actions speak louder than words and over and over again the actions of the leadership ISO say that internal democracy is conditional.

Those of us who left, together with some others, are participating in social justice struggles around DC and are looking to link up with other socialists and activists who want to fight for a better world without tearing each other down along the way.

III. Getting back to fighting capitalism - LET'S GET ON WITH IT
If you've got ideas or social justice struggles you're involved in and want to collaborate, then get in touch – especially if you’re in the Washington DC area.

------------------------------------------------ ~FIN~ ------------------------------

Appendix – The Full Response

“Response to “Recruiting, Developing, and Retaining Members of Color in the ISO”
Comrades who submitted “Recruiting, Developing, and Retaining Members of Color in the ISO” stated as their goal: to “begin an organization‐wide conversation about racial and ethnic diversity in the ISO and our efforts and strategies to recruit, develop, and retain more members of color into it.” Putting aside for the moment the implication that this discussion has not “begun” in the more than 30 years of the life of the organization, the politics of the document are problematic and non‐Marxist.

Despite the authors’ hopes that the document is not “dismissed as one coming from a framework of identity politics,” the politics of the document are in fact based in ‐‐ or at best, influenced by ‐‐ liberal ideas of “diversity” as well as identity politics, “the idea that only those experiencing a particular form of oppression can either define it or fight against it.” (Smith 2008)

A Marxist approach to racism is based on an understanding that it is necessary to build a multi‐racial organization and multi‐racial working‐class struggle because that is the only way that either capitalism or oppression can be fought. And a multi‐racial struggle needs Marxism and the politics of class solidarity to succeed. As the Russian revolutionary V.I. Lenin, put it: “Working class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected.”

The need for a multi‐racial organization and fight‐back is not a secondary issue to be discussed (or one which comrades of color within the organization are responsible for raising), but is actually the whole purpose of our project. The question of oppression cannot be separated from an analysis of class exploitation and vice‐versa. This is especially the case in the United States, where the historic role of slavery, white supremacy, and Jim Crow segregation have ensured that racism (and particularly racism against African‐Americans) has become the key division used and manipulated by the American ruling class.

Of course we are not yet where we want to be in achieving our goal (whether that be regarding the racial composition of the group, our size, or our implementation in the working class), but unless we are dreaming up wish‐lists for where we want to be, a serious approach to the question would require a concrete assessment of our work, objective challenges, and specific next steps.

Instead, “Recruiting, Developing..” offers a confusing set of broad generalizations regarding objective difficulties, a two sentence throw‐away regarding the tremendous anti‐racist work of the organization over the years, and vague recommendations which mostly outline the work that the organization already does. Yet implicit in the idea that we need to be “systematic” in our approach to recruiting, developing, and retaining members of color in the ISO, is the assertion that we currently do not. Despite this very serious implication, there is no honest or concrete assessment of our current work anywhere in the document.

A quick look at even the last month in NYC alone would demonstrate the opposite—a city wide tour of Brian Jones speaking on civil rights sit‐in movement brought out a multi‐racial periphery (and a high proportion of African American contacts in particular) at every stop; a city‐wide meeting on Haiti that drew 150 people, chaired by a new member; a Campaign to End the Death Penalty anti‐lynching tour; an event at NYU about Marxism, Nationalism, and the Third World; teacher members organizing against school closings in predominantly African‐American and Latino neighborhoods; and as always a commitment to develop comrades, and particularly comrades of color, as meeting chairs, speakers, and most of all as Marxists.

Liberalism and Identity Politics
But more problematic than the generally non‐concrete, non‐serious assessment of our work, the document reads as a liberal appeal to consciousness and the “will” to build a multi‐racial organization, as though this can be achieved by exhorting ourselves to do so, or by developing a more savvy/sophisticated approach. This was also argued by one of the document’s authors at convention, who said we need a “more complex” approach to Chicano politics, the implication being that Marxism doesn’t adequately address oppression.

In fact, the term “diversity” is itself a liberal term that sees combining as many different kinds of experiences and backgrounds as possible as an end in of itself, rather than a means to lead the working class to victory over exploitation and oppression.

The identity politics framework of the document is exposed when the document’s authors argue: “We do believe that comrades of color provide an important link between their communities and revolutionary Marxism.” This both assumes that Marxism is foreign to the fight against racism (and therefore requires special conduits) and that there are such things as “communities” based on racial identity. In fact, any racial or ethnic group is broken down into its various class components. Working class Blacks are no more a part of Barack Obama’s “community” as working class women are part of Hilary Clinton’s or gays a part of Barney Frank’s.

As Sharon Smith wrote in a 2008 ISR article on identity politics: “There is no such thing as a common, fundamental interest shared by all people who face the same form of oppression. Oppression isn’t caused by the race, gender, or sexuality of particular individuals who run the system, but is generated by the very system itself—no matter who’s running it.”

She argues further, “Oppression is something that even most white male workers suffer to some degree. If one were to compare the self‐confidence of the vast majority of white male workers to that of the arrogant Hillary Clinton or Condoleezza Rice, it would be clear that something more than personal politics is a determining factor in oppression. The problem is systemic.”

Of course possessing a personal “identity,” or awareness of oneself as a member of an oppressed group, is an important and legitimate response to experiencing oppression. Smith explains:
No white person can ever understand what it is like to experience racism. No straight person can
understand what it is like to experience homophobia. And even among people who are oppressed by racism, every type of experience is different. A Black person and a Native American person, for example, experience racism differently—as does a person from Mexico versus a person from Puerto Rico. A gay man and a lesbian have quite different experiences.” But Personal experience is not the same as political strategy, which for Marxists is rooted in an understanding of the systemic nature of oppression under capitalism, and the shared interest of the working class across race, sex, and national borders.

Holding the ISO accountable?
Further, the document argues for affirmative action within the ISO, “because our organization does not exist in an egalitarian socialist vacuum and because there is no such thing as colorblindness. Just like we expect other institutions/organizations (many of which we protest) to include diversity development statements in their guiding principles and make structural changes to reflect those principles, we shouldn’t expect any less of our organization.”

Here the document’s authors compare the ISO to institutions under capitalism that need to be held accountable (and that we in fact protest)! In arguing that “there is no such thing as colorblindness” the comrades that wrote the document seem to be saying that the ISO suffers from racism within our organization. If this is in fact true, it is a grave accusation that needs to be explained.

Of course as individuals who live in an oppressive society, we all carry the internal baggage of that society, or as Marx put it, “the muck of ages.” A conscious attempt has to be made to develop women, people of color, working‐class people who have been told our whole lives that we are not good enough or smart enough to speak our ideas, let alone lead others.

Yet despite the fact that we don’t operate in an “egalitarian vacuum” the fact is that a socialist
organization, because of its very nature and goals, has a different material interest than capitalist institutions. It is made up of a self‐selecting group of individuals who voluntarily commit our lives to the emancipation of the working‐class and liberation of all oppressed groups. As Lenin put it, our vision of revolution is a “festival of the oppressed and exploited.” We are bound together by that common purpose and a self‐interest in making an organization fitted for that task.

An old debate within the Russian socialist movement helps shed light on this question. The 1903 congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) took up as its first agenda item the Jewish Labor Bund’s demand that it be recognized as the representative of Jewish workers living in Russia (to be a conduit, one could say). Jews at that time were of the most oppressed in Russia, living under harsh legal restrictions and terrorized by violent pogroms. The Jewish Bund was a genuine revolutionary organization who adamantly rejected Zionism.

Yet their demand to represent the Jewish working class showed a fundamental distrust of the RSDLP and its handling of oppression against Jews. “The Jewish proletariat,” a leader of the Bund argued, “is very much more strongly interested in the struggle against the exceptional restrictions that are imposed on it than the rest of the proletariat is, and for this reason it is also a more active fighter against this oppression.”

Leon Trotsky, a leading Russian revolutionary, and himself a Jew, responded:
If the Bund, lacking in confidence in the Party, is…demanding safeguards, that we can understand. But how can we put our signatures to this demand? ... To accept such conditions would mean that we acknowledged our own moral and political bankruptcy…

Lenin argued:
Is it not, in fact, the duty of our entire Party to fight for full equality of rights and even for the recognition of the right of nations to self‐determination? Consequently, if any section of our Party were to fail in this duty, it would undoubtedly be liable to censure, by virtue of our principles: it would undoubtedly be liable to correction by the central institutions of the Party. And if that duty was being neglected consciously and deliberately, despite full opportunity to perform it, then this neglect of duty would be treachery.

That is to say, if we cannot trust our own revolutionary organization, committed to the full liberation of the human race, through its own self‐interest to take seriously and systematically the building of a multiracial organization and cadre, then our organization is not worth very much at all.

Conclusion
Lastly, the document argues that comrades of color should be specially trained and developed in the politics of their own identities, “Chicano comrades on questions of ethnic nationalism,” etc. But the best way to train our entire organization to effectively build the movement against oppression and the system which produces oppression is to develop a strong Marxist core. The most effective means to develop comrades of color as cadre is to develop strong Marxists. And while having comrades of color that are confident and well‐versed in our politics certainly helps win others within our multi‐racial periphery, ultimately it is our politics not our identities that win people. That is why, for example, leading white members of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty in NYC carry so much weight and credibility within the work that they do.

Could there have been a document that effectively assessed our work in building a multi‐racial,
revolutionary organization rooted in the working class? Yes, and in fact convention documents that took up our work in particular struggles around the criminal justice system, housing, etc., provided a useful and concrete assessment of some of our work. Another useful contribution would be to assess the objective terrain, challenges and opportunities (for instance, the state of Black politics) that we face in building a multi‐racial organization.

Unfortunately, “Recruiting, Developing, and Retaining Members of Color in the ISO” made no serious attempt to do so. It implies that we do not take seriously, or make systematic, our work in building a multi‐racial organization, essentially race‐baiting the ISO. And it provides neither a Marxist framework nor next steps in achieving that goal.

We’ve made a lot of headway in past years in writing and publishing socialist literature on oppression; in participating and leading in struggles against racism, immigrant‐bashing, homophobia, Islamophobia, and sexism; and in developing a Marxist cadre steeled in the politics of liberation and self‐emancipation. We have a lot to be proud of, and still a long way to go. Political clarity and honest, concrete assessments will be key in moving forward.
H.T. on behalf of the NYC District Committee”

New Orleans Black Activists Denounce Obama and Shame Misleadership Class

2010-09-04T15:58:00.001-04:00

New Orleans Black Activists Denounce Obama and Shame Misleadership Class

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

"Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and trade union leaders denounced unemployment, home foreclosures and war in general, but did not dare to hold the corporate Democrat in the White House responsible for any of it."

This weekend saw two major Black demonstrations - one in Washington, one in Detroit - and a presidential speech at Xavier University, in New Orleans, on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Yet a small, hardly noticed protest outside what used to be a public housing project in the St. Bernard section of New Orleans, was probably more relevant to the burning issues of today than the rallies held by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

A relatively small group of New Orleans activists gathered in the rain outside the project to protest the visit to the city by President Obama, whose housing policies spell doom for the entire concept of public housing in the United States. When Katrina struck, the Bush administration's Department of Housing was quick to call for demolition of all the public housing units in New Orleans, even though most of the buildings were salvageable. The residents were locked out, 3,000 of them, like hundreds of thousands of others across the country since the early Nineties, victims of corporate greed for the land the projects sit on and a racist prejudice that holds that Black and poor people are inherently dangerous when concentrated in one place. Katrina was simply a convenient excuse to get rid of public housing in New Orleans, where four major projects were demolished.

In New Orleans and elsewhere across the country, the poor who are evicted from public housing are expected to disperse, get out of the way of corporate development that serves the needs of other people, and be quiet. But this weekend, the former residents of the St. Bernard project refused to scatter and be silent. They had earlier built a tent encampment nearby, called Survivors' Village. Now they denounced President Obama and his friend, Warren Buffett, the multi-billionaire hedge fund baron who is developing the site of their former homes under a new name, Columbia Parc, for a new class of residents.

"The former residents of the St. Bernard project refused to scatter and be silent."

The Obama administration has taken the anti-public housing policies of Bush and previous presidents to a new level, with a plan to abandon any federal commitment to building and maintaining housing for the poor. Instead, fat cats like Warren Buffett and huge private banking institutions will inherit the nation's public housing properties. In New York City, the Citigroup bankers now own a piece of 13 public housing projects - a taste of what Obama has in store for what remains of America's public housing stock.

At the start of this commentary, I said that the St. Bernard neighborhood demonstration was "probably more relevant to the burning issues of today" than Al Sharpton's Washington rally and Jesse Jackson's Detroit event. That's because the demonstrators in New Orleans knew whose policies they were protesting against, and called out his name: President Obama. In Detroit and Washington, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and trade union leaders denounced unemployment, home foreclosures and war in general, but did not dare to hold the corporate Democrat in the White House responsible for any of it.
Obama's wars range from Asia and Africa to the streets of America's cities, whose schools and housing he is turning over to the likes of Warren Buffett, rich finance capitalists that have already exported all the jobs. The demonstrators in New Orleans understand that. What currently passes for Black leadership, does not.

S African unions 'to widen strike'

2010-09-03T08:43:00.001-04:00

S African unions 'to widen strike'
Public workers threaten to cut ties with ruling party and expand strike if demands unmet.

South African labour unions have said that they will cut ties with the ruling party, and widen a national public sector strike, unless their pay demands are met.

There were no signs of a resolution on Friday, nearly two weeks after more than one million public sector workers walked off the job, shutting down many hospitals and schools.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said it filed seven-day strike notices on Thursday so that all its two million members could join the state workers strike, which they said would also target the mining and manufacturing sectors.

The labour unions were key supporters of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and Jacob Zuma, the country's president, helping him win the last election.

"We cannot sustain the status quo. We cannot allow the situation that nobody does nothing about the current situation within the alliance..." Sdumo Dlamini, president of Cosatu, said.

Alliance threatened

The latest comments by union leaders were some of the strongest signals to date that organised labour may be ready to cut, or change, its relationship with the ANC that was forged in the struggle to end apartheid.

The unions have set a deadline of September 2 for the government to provide a 8.6 per cent rise in salaries and a 1,000 rand ($138) monthly housing allowance.

The government is offering a seven per cent pay hike and 630 rand for housing, saying that it cannot afford the workers' demands.

Themba Maseko, the government spokesman, told Al Jazeera that the strike had raised concern and efforts were being made to resolve it.

Government services and the economy have been disrupted by the strikes, but the country's currency has suffered no major impact.

Workers frustrated

Zwelinzima Vavi, Cosatu's general secretary, said that the federation had not wanted a strike and had recommended civil servants accept the government's offer.

"We have to be loyal to our members. If they say this deal is not good enough, we have to march with them," Vavi told reporters.

"They are earning 4100 rand as a minimum wage, the lowest paid. They see a [government] minister issuing a statement about 'We must save the children' when [his] children are in a private school and he is driving a 1.3m rand Mercedes or BMW."

While the strike intensified, Zuma was in China leading a delegation of cabinet ministers and business people searching for business partnerships.

South Africa has been hit hard by the global recession, losing 900,000 jobs last year on top of already high unemployment.

The government has said it wants to devote funds to creating new jobs, not just raising the salaries of those already working.

Defend and Free Diop Olugbala!

2010-09-01T02:09:00.001-04:00

This article was taken from UhuruNews

Published Aug 29, 2010

PHILADELPHIA-On Tuesday, August 24, the US government gave another example of its desperation in the face of popular resistance with the conviction of Diop Olugbala in Philadelphia.

Despite all the efforts to paint imperialism with a new, benign and friendlier face, the US government, using its local arm of the law in Philadelphia, showed its vicious fangs for all to see, with a pretense of a trial that was designed to take Diop Olugbala off the streets and deny the ability of Africans to struggle against our own oppression.

The official felony charge that Diop was tried and convicted for, punishable by up to ten years imprisonment and fines, was Aggravated Assault on a cop.

He and his co-defendant, Shabaka Mnombatha, were also convicted of Disorderly Conduct and Resisting Arrest. Felony charges against Shabaka had been dropped in court proceedings earlier in the year.

However, for everyone familiar with the case, it is known that the charges were political.

The US pretends not to conduct political trials so the Philadelphia government went out of its way to criminalize political protest that is legal even by US constitutional standards.

Diop’s case stems from a demonstration at a Philadelphia city council meeting, where he and others were protesting the latest attempts to transfer the system’s economic crisis onto the backs of African workers and other exploited and oppressed people in the city.

As the video of the protest clearly shows, the government, concerned about the growing unpopularity of the vicious economic attacks on the people, had the police physically attack Diop and the protesters, snatching his protest banner and choking him in full public view.

But, as is usually the case, Diop was charged with attacking the police. A case of the thief yelling, “STOP, THIEF!”

If there was any doubt of the nefarious intent of the government to silence Diop, one only had to see the history of the events leading to the trial.

In Philadelphia, under Diop’s leadership, International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) held numerous demonstrations against the police violence in the African community and candlelight vigils for victims of police murders, sometimes being the only organized voice of resistance.

InPDUM held People’s Tribunals, one of which put the City of Philadelphia on trial fro crimes of genocide.

In the process of building the tribunal Diop physically served Mayor Nutter and Police Chief Charles Ramsey with the People’s Subpoena to appear at the Tribunal.

This subpoena was served on Mayor Nutter Chief Ramsey at a December 10, 2008 Townhall meeting at Ben Franklin High School, where Diop also exposed the 1.1 billion dollar police budget of the city.

And in addition to many other community based struggles, Diop also managed to unite the progressive black movement in Philadelphia against the selection of neocolonial District Attorney Seth Williams, who ran for office on a platform calling for the opening of Prosecutors’ Offices in every African community in Philadelphia, as well as calling for the execution of Mumia Abu Jamal.

To deepen the reality that these are political charges against Diop, in addition to the formal charges leveled in Philadelphia, there also exist the unspoken charge, which stems from the August 2008 Obama rally in St Petersburg, Florida.

Diop had the temerity to raise the question of Obama before millions of people around the world, the same question he has been raising with Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter’s regime: “What about the black community?”

Judge Roxanne Covington at left

The trial itself was a mockery of justice. It only took Judge Roxanne Covington ten minutes to review all the evidence, including witness statements and video of the meeting in question, to render a verdict of guilty on everything the State claimed Diop and his co-defendant did.

These 10 minutes were apparently used for her to go to her chambers, wipe the smirk off her face, put on her make-up, so that she could come back and read what did not even appear to be a sober or just verdict.

Here is a summary of some of the observations of the legal skullduggery that arose during the proceedings in Judge Roxanne Covington’s Courtroom:

Incompetent counsel: This should have been a jury trial. We should have given the judge the opportunity to sustain all of the prosecutions objections and overrule all of the defenses.

The colonial court was unchallenged. When comrade Diop objected to a Bench Trial, the Judge intervened, recessed the trial for five minutes and instructed attorney Michael Coard to confer with his clients with respect to the Bench Trial was already a done deal.

Coard’s advice was that “Hey, I just won a Bench Trial this morning before Covington, and I can do it again.” Thus, the bench lynching transpired.

There were many, many other legal travesties that occurred at this trial. Not the least of which our attorney failed to present a single witness for the defense that would have contradicted the police testimony, which the video would have clearly done.

The police testified that they did not put a hand on Diop. Our attorney led us to believe that he knew something, that he had the inside scoop. Maybe he did.

Our paid lawyer never put Diop or anyone else on the stand to testify to our right to free speech or the right to protest. We saw Diop raise a banner during an Obama meeting and he was not attacked by the police.

They must have been playing catch up at the Philadelphia city council meeting.

Michael Coard never solicited ACLU or National Lawyers Guild’s help to raise the question of free speech, which he assured us he would raise. He only cited one case law on free speech. And we can go on and on.

However, from years of experience of having to defend ourselves and our people in rigged US courtrooms, and having to go in with legal representation who has absolute confidence in US colonialist courts, there was no reason what-so-ever to believe that Michael Coard was any different.

Therefore, allowing this travesty to occur rests squarely on the shoulders of those who were leading the effort to Free Diop Olugbala.

This trial absolutely came to be because of the problems Diop and the InPDUM presented to the Michael Nutter and Barack Obama regimes in raising the question, “What about the black community.”

Black Liberation Movement has raised its head in the US, dealing with the oppression and colonial exploitation of our people as it represents itself today, at this moment. This is not just a rehashing of the past repression as exposed by the attempt to murder our dear brother, Mumia Abu Jamal, for something he is accused of from the 1980s; this is not the case of the San Francisco 8, those courageous brothers who fought for our freedom in the 1960s and 1970s.

Diop’s case is about resistance as it is necessary now. Indeed, the attack on Diop is clear evidence of the impact our movement is having in the struggle against imperialism within US borders today.

It is clear evidence of the fragility of a great “super power” that cannot even tolerate real, critical political and ideological debate. It is evidence of the fraudulence of US white ruling class democracy.

But, despite the efforts of the US capitalist-colonialist state, the genie is out of the bottle: the resistance has begun and it cannot be stopped by the arrest and conviction of Diop Olugbala.

The militant all day demonstrations in support of Diop Olugbala and the packing of the courtroom showed our determination to resist and struggle for our and Diop’s freedom.

The hundreds of phone calls and emails to the neocolonialist Negro judge, Roxanne Covington, demanding the freedom of Diop bear witness to our total commitment to fight and resist police and economic terror whose interest she ruled in favor of.

This movement to Free and Defend Diop Olugbala will do even more to build the resistance while exposing US imperialism under Barack Hussein Obama to its rotten core.

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE! AND BLACK POWER TO THE AFRICAN COMMUNITY!

FREE DIOP AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS AND PRISONERS OF WAR!

What You can Do:

Take Action! Support and Sympathy Must Transform Into Organized Resistance

InPDUM, our supporters and allies waged a fierce campaign to Free Diop. This campaign is far from over. In fact it has just begun. There is an appeal process that we have every intention to pursue as we await Diop’s sentencing hearing on October 13th.

The International Executive Committee of InPDUM is calling for our supporters and members to participate in the effort to carry out following plan of action:

Main Goals and Objectives of the Free Diop Campaign:

Build and Consolidate a Free Diop International Steering Committee comprised of (but not limited to) the following positions: Chair, Secretary, Fundraiser, Treasurer, Membership Coordinator, Political Action Coordinator and Outreach Coordinator.
Build and Consolidate local Free Diop committees in all the cities where support for the campaign exists.
Put Diop on tour. Bring Diop to speak to your community, college campus or high school.
Continue to call and write Judge Roxeanne Covington demanding the charges be dropped.

If you are willing to help out in any way described above, immediately fill out a membership form to join the Free Diop Committee or call 215-459-7551 or email info@inpdum.org.

see comment policy

African Bishops Unite to Denounce Homosexuality

2010-08-29T16:25:00.002-04:00

Kampala — The question of homosexuality reared its head for the umpteenth time this week at the all African Anglican Church conference that is taking place in Entebbe. Despite pressure from the western world, African bishops have renewed their condemnation of the practice of homosexuality in the church

The widely criticised practice in Africa has been viewed as a threat to the unity of the church. Homosexuality and ordination of women prelates are two of the underpinning practices that have put the Anglican Church at cross-roads over how its pastoral commitments should be exercised. Archbishop Nicholas Okoh of the province of Nigeria says the church has always had differences of opinion over certain issues.

Breeding disunity

"Homosexuality is not a new phenomenon in the society but the only trouble is that the issues dividing us (church) now are very difficult to handle. They are threatening the unity of the church because they disobey the authority of the scriptures," says Bishop Okoh. He says homosexuality is a result of some people engaged in making their culture to be superior to the biblical teachings. "It is two sided; while some people want to be obedient to their culture to determine the content of the church, others say no and it must be the guidance of the bible," he added.

The primates describe homosexuality as an imposed interpretation and alien culture that has hindered the growth of an authentic church which could respond to its people. "We are saying homosexuality is not compatible with the word of God. We are saying that this culture of other people is against the traditional belief of marriage held by the Anglican Communion," says the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Henry Luke Orombi. Bishop Orombi says that the Anglican Church will never accept homosexuality because the scriptures too do not allow people of same sex to join in marriage.

Evil practice

"Homosexuality is evil, abnormal and unnatural as per the Bible. It is a culturally unacceptable practice. Although there is a lot of pressure, we cannot turn our hands to support it," says Bishop Orombi.

The remarks came up during the conference jointly organised by the Church of Uganda and the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA) that attracted at least 400 bishops under the theme "Securing the future, unlocking our potential."

Other challenges on the agenda of African primates meeting are the problems of poverty, squander of public resources, pandemic diseases, justice and peace as well as the relationship between the Anglican Church and the state.

The Archbishop of the Province of Indian Ocean, Ian Ernest, says the bishops have to courageously raise their voices to counteract the false ideologies that creep into the church and put at stake the mission that Christ has entrusted to his church. "We cannot afford to continue to lurch from one crisis to the next in our beloved Communion. Despite attempts to warn some western provinces, action has been taken to irrevocably shatter the Communion. Sadly existing structures of the Anglican Communion have been unable to address the need for discipline," says Bishop Ernest, the chairman of CAPA. He says the teachings of homosexuality are irrelevant to the needs of Africans and are unrepresentative demographically hence the need for new structures that are credible and representative of the majority.

The anti-homosexuality voices from the bishops are a likely boost to proponents of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill (2009), before the Ugandan Parliament which proposes life imprisonment for acts of homosexuality and introduces "aggravated homosexuality" as a serious crime.

According to the proposed law, offenders must face death if they have sex with a minor or a disabled person, or are found to have infected their partners with HIV/Aids. The proposed law, if passed in its current shape, would also punish attempted homosexuality as well as the failure of a third party to inform the authorities of homosexual activity.

Bishop Orombi says the primates in Africa have since shared their stand with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. Bishop Okoh says Africa has various challenges of disease, young widows, divorce, single motherhood, poverty which affect the church. "The issue of moral failure in the community is another problem to the church. But we have to work hard to ensure that the church of God is not divided by some practices like the ordination of women clergy which we are still studying," he says.

Gabonese unions call off general strike

2010-08-29T16:13:00.002-04:00

LIBREVILLE — Trade unions in Gabon on Friday called off a planned general strike after the government met their demands for price cuts in electricity, gas and water, union spokesman Fridolin Mve Messa said.

"We have signed an agreement with the government. The strike has been cancelled. We won satisfaction on the cuts we wanted," Mve Messa, who spoke for 12 of the 14 union bodies, told AFP.

"The price of gas is going to go down from 6,000 CFA francs (9.14 euros a canister) to 5,450 CFA francs (8.31 euros / 10.57 dollars)", Mve Messa said. The unions had called for a cut to 5,300 CFA francs (8.07 euros) and the government had proposed 5,600 (8.53 euros).

The unions in the oil-rich central African country also obtained a cut in value-added tax of five percent for cement bags and for communal water and electricity meters, and 10 percent for individual meters.

The price of the kilowatt hour of electricity will be reduced by 2.5 percent and that of the cubic meter of water by 15 percent.

"We're greatly satisfied," Mve Messa said. "We can make savings. Things will change for people: the price of electricity, of water. On a canister of gas, we will save 550 CFA francs (0.83 euros). That's enough for half a taxi ride or for buying bread for your children."

The unions in Gabon, where many of the population of some 1.5 million live in poverty, initially threatened on May 1 to call a strike, but the stoppage was put off after the government cut some prices and promised to cut others.

The latest strike warning was issued on August 20.

Medics demand equal bonuses in another day of protests

2010-08-28T16:51:00.002-04:00

Scores of physicians, members of Egyptian Medical Syndicate and advocay group Doctors Without Rights, stand in protest at Dar Al Hekma (House of Wisdom), housing syndicate, against policies of Egyptian Minister of Health Hatem Al Gabaly. According to one placard, med school students do not practice medicine but spend internships at hospitals doing administrative work, moving files and filling in applications.

Scores of doctors in Mahalla, Gharbiya staged a protest demanding the distribution of bonuses equal to those received by colleagues at other hospitals and health departments.

Protesters demanded bonuses of 175 percent for doctors and pharmacists, and 125 percent for nurses. Those figures were stipulated in a ministerial decision adopted last April.

Fifty-five dentists and ophthalmologists said they refused the 75 percent they have been offered, and demanded full payment of their bonus.

Nurses said the money set aside for their bonuses had instead been transferred to Sammanoud health department.

In Qalyubiya, around 200 nurses from the public general hospital and the fever hospital in Toukh organized a demonstration to complain about a two-month delay in the payment of their bonuses.

In Suez, 70 paramedics continued a sit-in at the governorate's ambulance point for a second day, protesting a two-month delay in salary payments. Protesters said five ambulances were currently out of action and further strikes would be staged if demands are not met.

Meanwhile in the 6th of October governorate, 500 citizens rallied in front of the Hawamdiya city council to protest a month-long water cut in the vicinity of the city’s main Baghdad Street. In Ismailia, scores of citizens in Qantara Sharq protested against the demolition of their homes and farms by security forces.

Translated from the Arabic Edition.

Strike ends at Arcelor's Algeria plant

2010-08-28T16:38:00.002-04:00

ALGIERS (Reuters) - Workers at ArcelorMittal's

steel plant in Algeria ended on Thursday a three-day strike over pay increases that had halted production, a union official said.

The union chief at the plant said in a statement the strike had been halted on the orders of the national executive of the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA).

The union is the only one officially recognised in Algeria and it usually follows the government's line.

The strikers had said they would stay off work until their demands were met for a pay rise but they came under pressure to call the action off after a local court this week ruled that the strike was illegal.

"Following the instructions given by the leaders of the UGTA ... we declare the strike over and call on the workers to resume their activities," Smain Kouadria, the union leader at the plant, said in a statement.

He added that he would resign from his position as union chief at the ArcelorMittal plant near the city of Annaba, eastern Algeria. ArcelorMittal managers were not immediately available for comment.

The El-Hadjar factory, in eastern Algeria, produced 750,000 tonnes of steel in 2009. Most is for domestic consumption though some is exported to the Mediterranean region.

Police fire rubber bullets at striking teachers in South Africa

2010-08-28T16:24:00.003-04:00

Police fired with rubber bullets on teachers taking part in a nationwide civil servants' strike in South Africa on Thursday. The violence came on the second day of the strike for higher wages. At first the march was peaceful, with some strikers dancing and blowing vuvuzelas. However the situation quickly deteriorated, with police loading shotguns with rubber bullets and firing on the crowd. Several teachers fell as they were hit with the projectiles. Teachers threw bricks and stones at police - at least one officer was seen bleeding from the head.

Mass rebellion in South Africa

2009-07-24T09:11:00.001-04:00

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In South Africa the state is being confronted by an eruption of self organised popular protest on a scale not seen since the 1980s. This article, from the mainstream press there, gives a much better overview than the articles in the British press that miss the politics of the rebellion.

Burning message to the state in the fire of poor’s rebellion
Richard Pithouse

DU NOON, Diepsloot, Dinokana, Khayelitsha, KwaZakhele, Masiphumelele, Lindelani, Piet Retief and Samora Machel. We are back, after a brief lull during the election, to road blockades, burnt-out police cars and the whole sorry mess of tear gas, stun grenades and mass arrests. Already this month, a girl has been shot in the head in KwaZakhele, three men have been shot dead in Piet Retief, and a man from Khayelitsha is in a critical condition.

There are many countries where a single death at the hands of the police can tear apart the contract by which the people accept the authority of the state. But this is not Greece. Here the lives of the black poor count for something between very little and nothing. When the fate of protesters killed or wounded by the police makes it into the elite public sphere, they are generally not even named.

The African National Congress (ANC) has responded to the new surge in popular protest with the same patrician incomprehension under Jacob Zuma as it did under Thabo Mbeki. It has not understood that people do not take to the streets against a police force as habitually brutal as ours without good cause. Government statements about the virtues of law and order, empty rhetoric about its willingness to engage, and threats to ensure zero tolerance of “anarchy” only compound the distance between the state and the faction of its people engaged in open rebellion.

Any state confronted with popular defiance has two choices — repression or engagement. If it wishes to avoid shooting its people as an ordinary administrative matter, the first step towards engaging with popular defiance is to understand the dissonance between popular experience and popular morality that puts people at odds with the state.

A key barrier towards elite understanding of the five-year hydra-like urban rebellion is that protests are more or less uniformly labelled as “service delivery protests”. This label is well suited to those elites who are attracted to the technocratic fantasy of a smooth and post-political developmental space in which experts engineer rational development solutions from above. Once all protests are automatically understood to be about a demand for “service delivery” they can be safely understood as a demand for more efficiency from the current development model rather than any kind of challenge to that model. Of course, many protests have been organised around demands for services within the current development paradigm and so there certainly are instances in which the term has value. But the reason why the automatic use of the term “service delivery protest” obscures more than it illuminates is that protests are often a direct challenge to the post-apartheid development model.

Disputes around housing are the chief cause of popular friction with the state. The state tends to reduce the urban crisis, of which the housing shortage is one symptom, to a simple question of a housing backlog and to measure progress via the number of houses or “housing opportunities” it “delivers”. But one of the most common reasons for protests is outright rejection of forced removals from well-located shacks to peripheral housing developments or “transit camps”. Another is the denial or active removal of basic services from shack settlements to persuade people to accept relocation. Moreover, to make its targets for “housing delivery” more manageable, the state often, against its own law and policy, provides houses only for shack owners, resulting in shack renters being illegally left homeless when “development comes”.

It is therefore hardly helpful to assume that protests against forced removals and housing developments that leave people homeless are a demand for more efficient “delivery”. On the contrary, these protests are much more fruitfully understood as a demand for a more inclusive mode of development, in the double sense of including poor people in the cities and of including all poor people in development projects.

If the state actually engaged with any seriousness with the people to whom it has promised to “deliver services”, these kinds of problems could be resolved. But the reality is that the state very often imposes development projects on people without any kind of meaningful engagement. One reason for this is the pressure to meet “delivery targets” quickly — a pressure that was greatly worsened by the ludicrous and dangerously denialist fantasy of former housing minister Lindiwe Sisulu that shacks could be “eradicated by 2014”.

Another reason why the state systematically fails to engage with poor people is that when it does negotiate, it tends to substitute ward councillors and their committees, as well as local branch executive committees of the ANC, for the communities actually affected by development projects. But the fact is that in many wards the councillors and local party elites represent the interests of local elites, who often have very different interests to poor communities. Moreover, it’s entirely typical for these local elites to seize control of key aspects of development projects, such as the awarding of tenders and the allocation of houses, for their own political and pecuniary gain. It is not at all unusual for ward councillors and allied local elites to threaten their grassroots critics with violence. Ward councillors are often able to order the local police to arrest critics on spurious charges.

It is hardly surprising that ward councillors are a key target of popular protests.

Once a community has realised that their local councillor is hostile to their interests, there are often no viable alternatives for engaging with the state. Attempts at making use of official public participation channels generally fail to get any further than a solid wall of bureaucratic contempt in which everyone is permanently in a meeting. Polite demands for attention are frequently responded to as if they were outrageous. Outright contempt of the “know your place” variety is common. In the unlikely event that representatives from a poor community are able to access a politician higher up than their ward councillor, they are most likely to be sent back to their councillor. There is a very real sense in which we have already developed a sort of caste system in which the poor are simply unworthy of engaging with politicians on the basis of equality.

If development was negotiated directly, openly and honestly with the people who it affects rather than with consultants bent on technocratic solutions, and ward councillors bent on personal and political advantage, things would take a little longer but their outcomes would be far more inclusive and far more to people’s liking. If the ANC is serious about democracy, it should aim to subordinate the local state to the inevitably time-consuming, complex and contested mediation of the poor communities that need it most, rather than the often predatory aspirations of local political elites.

The heart of the moral economy behind the protest is a firm conviction that the poor are people who also count in our society. For some, this means that every citizen counts and one way of realising this is by turning on people seen as non-citizens. For others, everyone, documented or not, counts. But for as long as the state, in its actual practices, does not affirm the dignity of poor people by consulting them about their own future and including them in the material development of our collective future, the rebellion will continue.

http://libcom.org/news/mass-rebellion-south-africa-23072009

Strike Anywhere - To the World

2009-06-04T10:09:00.004-04:00

Strike Anywhere is a political band, with lyrics touching on such issues as police brutality, anti-capitalism, women's rights, animal rights, and globalization. They have also contributed tracks to political benefit albums, such as a live version of "Sunset on 32nd" for 1157 Wheeler Avenue: A Memorial for Amadou Diallo and "To the World" for the Rock Against Bush, Vol. 1 album. According to the liner notes for their album Change is a Sound, they support "the vegetarian lifestyle, the living wage movement and the fight against corporate globalization". With its 2006 release Dead FM, the band moved away from political slogans to address "more sociological ideas about why these (events) happen".

I got put on to them, even though, i'm not a punk fan, i bang with this song "To the World".

Look how the ruts cling to my footsteps
the fatal invisible tool
by which we define (we fight!) for our approval
and fear our removal from the safety of fools

From the tidal forces of our positions
not won (not one!) to take for granted
are our rebel hymns in canted
to sing in the mines of the fortunate sons?

Brothers in spirit, sisters in rage,
will we live out our lives in this concrete cage?
another heartbeat lost, another police murder
buried in the public eyes on the back page.
heartbeat lost in a new world order
hobbled and bound but still walking away

I pledge allegiance to the world
nothing more, nothing less than my humanity
I pledge allegiance to the world
searching for vision not invisibility
I pledge allegiance to the world
searching for vision not invisibility
I pledge allegiance to the world
until the last lock breaks none of us are free
none of us are free...

We fight to balance our minds
petty powers pushing profits over our lifetimes
world leaders mortgaging our lives with words
I don't need to be reminded of whom you really serve.

Brothers in spirit, sisters in rage,
will we live out our lives in this concrete cage?
another heartbeat lost, another police murder
buried in the public eyes on the back page.
{Too many} heartbeats lost in the new world order
{while we're} standing alone with our backs to the maze

I pledge allegiance to the world
nothing more, nothing less than my humanity
I pledge allegiance to the world
until the last lock breaks none of us are free
I pledge allegiance to the world
until the last lock breaks none of us are free
I pledge allegiance to the world
for nothing more, nothing less

In justice, in hunger united
searching for vision united
in justice, in hunger united
law and order {but} for whose order?

I pledge allegiance to the world
nothing more, nothing less than my humanity
I pledge allegiance to the world
until the last lock breaks none of us are free
I pledge allegiance to the world
under no nation will we ever be
I pledge allegiance to the world
for nothing more, nothing less
than my humanity, than my humanity, than my humanity (pledge allegiance!)
to our humanity, to our humanity, to our humanity (to the world!)

Mohawks march on border in protest of arming guards

2009-06-01T09:32:00.001-04:00

Mohawks march on border in protest of arming guards
Posted By Michael Peeling

Hundreds of Mohawks marched across the Seaway International Bridge into Canada from the U. S. on Saturday to protest a plan to arm border guards.

And things are taking a more ominous tone as the protesters claim they'll evict the federal government if necessary over the controversial issue.

The "unity rally," organized by the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, started with residents of the First Nation - which straddles the borders of Ontario, Quebec and New York State - being bused from a tent set up beside the Canada Customs and Immigration office on Cornwall Island (known in Mohawk as Kawehnoke) into the U. S.

The tent is the staging ground for a month-long protest, which began on May 1, of the arming of Canadian Border Services Agency officers across the country on June 1, but particularly at the Cornwall Island crossing.

The protesters returned on foot led by Grand Chief Tim Thompson. They walked over the southern span of the bridge to the island behind a large banner reading "No Guns!" and chanting, "End the occupation of Akwesasne."

Once the throng reached the yellow line indicating the border, they halted briefly before walking unchecked by CBSA officials into Canada. Many of the marchers made a circuit back around the customs and immigration building to stop by the checkpoint booths and office windows, where they chant, with signs reading: "The consequence of arming is eviction" against the windows and knock on the glass.

Photo Gallery

ZACF Analysis of the 2009 South African National and Provincial Elections

2009-05-16T22:52:00.000-04:00

The following analysis was presented by a member of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) at the Khanya College organised Seminar on the 2009 Election Results, held in Johannesburg on Sunday 10 May 2009. The topic of the seminar was “What do the 2009 Election results mean for the South African working class?”.

There were speakers from the following organisations present:

Bolshevik Study Circles & Che Guevara Film Club, Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF), General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA), Soweto Concerned Residents (S.C.R–A.P.F), NKUZI – Fieldworker of Farmworkers' Programme and Kathorus Concerned Residents (KCR)

It should be noted that - owing to the constraints of time allocated for this presentation - this is by no means a complete analysis of the 2009 elections, and what the ANC victory and Zuma administration means for the poor and working class of the region. It serves only to raise some of what we believe to be important issues for consideration going forward.

We've been hearing so much about Zuma. Zuma is great or Zuma is terrible. A hero or a criminal. A socialist or a 'moderate'. The election seems to have been all about Zuma, Zille and perhaps a few other dominant personalities.

What does it mean for the poor and working class that this election - supposed to be a key election - is discussed so much in terms of personalities? Not just in the media: this is how many many people have been thinking of it, since years before the election date.

Let's look at the role of Cosatu, the countries largest working class organisation. Cosatu’s support for Zuma clearly shows the ideological bankruptcy of its leadership. Since his victory at Polokwane Zuma has, time and again, assured the international capitalist class that economic policy will not change under his administration, and that the country - under the direction of a Zuma-led ANC government - will remain committed to the neoliberal capitalist policies of his predecessors. Despite suggestions from the capitalist media that Zuma is a socialist, and Cosatu’s and the SACP’s blind acceptance thereof, Zuma is a fully-fledged neoliberal capitalist. Since the ANC’s electoral victory the Rand has been getting stronger, and it strengthened when the charges against Zuma were dropped. This shows that Zuma’s efforts to ensure global capitalists that the economy would not change under his leadership were not in vein; the international ruling class does not see Zuma as a socialist, or as anything but a neoliberal. This only goes to show, once again, the ideological bankruptcy of the Cosatu and SACP leadership; that they do not even know what socialism, or a socialist, is.

It shows the idealistic and individualistic analysis of the ANC’s alliance partners that, with Thabo Mbeki having been replaced by the less autocratic Jacob Zuma, there will be more opportunity for the Cosatu and SACP leadership to influence decision-making and have a say on policy matters. As Zuma said during his inaugural speech, it was a “moment of renewal”. To the post-Polokwane victors, who are now lining up to loot state coffers, it is inconsequential that the bourgeois and capitalist aims of the ANC undoubtedly go back to the founding in 1912, and have never changed – except that it became neoliberal, because neoliberalism is the dominant form of capitalism today. Even this didn't just happen in 1996: the RDP was full of neoliberal elements. And the move to neoliberalism was supported by the entire ANC leadership, notably including Zuma.

So what does it mean that, firstly, these elections were fought on the grounds of personalities instead of policies and, secondly, that Jacob Zuma emerged the victor?

The fact that these elections were waged primarily between personalities shows us just how little the various parties contesting elections, and particularly the main parties, differ in their policies. All of the parties involved represent the same class interest of the ANC, and it is therefore futile to campaign on policy when the policies of one party are almost the same as those of the next. Each and every one of the major parties, and the majority of the smaller and insignificant parties - which are now starting to disappear - support GEAR and the neoliberal policies currently in place. Some, such as the DA, might like to fast-track privatisation and so on, but none are in and way whatsoever against capitalism.

And yet a large proportion of the working class have fallen for this idea that Zuma will change things. Because he is more approachable and down-to-earth than Mbeki, people want to think that he'll do things differently, in a way that matters. But we know he doesn't want to; and he probably couldn't do much even if he did want to.

The global economy is currently in its worst crisis since the 1930s. Millions of jobs have been lost worldwide, including hundreds of thousands in South Africa, and many many more retrenchments are expected, as well as short-timing and so on. The Zuma administration is unfortunate in that it is taking over the reigns of power at a time when, because of the crisis, it will be very hard to deliver. Banks and corporations are trying to recover money lost or maintain profits, which means more exploitation for workers. Likewise states are cutting back on social spending, which means even less service delivery. The economic crisis is therefore going to make it hard for Zuma to live up to his promises - if he really wanted to - but it also provides him with an excuse. At the end of his term, he can just turn around and say that it was the economic crisis, which is out of his administrations control, which prevented them from meeting their goals; and convince the electorate to give him another term in the presidency to try again. In the meantime it is the working class and poor who will be paying, some with their jobs or their lives, for the bosses’ crisis.

In this context, one of the first things we can expect from the Zuma administration is that they will start making a hype about 2010 like never before. They will make a fuss about all the jobs that are being created, and how good it will be for the economy. Workers will work around the clock in dangerous conditions to ensure that the stadiums are completed in time, and then what? Thousands of tourists will come from overseas to watch Bafana Bafana get knocked out in the first round; everyone will go home; and all the jobs that were created will be gone. The government will have, in the meantime, spent millions and millions of Rands on the short-lived World Cup instead of investing in sustainable job creation and service delivery. We need to work to expose this and, amongst other things, to campaign for the jobs created by 2010 to be permanent, which means we need to build working class militancy.

With Zuma as the figurehead of the anti-Mbeki campaign working class militancy has taken a backward step, the youth - amongst others - duped by the pseudo-militancy of the likes of Julius Malema, as many people who associated lack of service delivery with the Mbeki administration have taken up the campaign to oust him and get Zuma into power. Even the social movements have lost support to the Zuma cult, which has served to expropriate and tame working class militancy by drawing people into the battle between personalities instead of to the collective struggle, on a day-to-day basis, for a better life.

When it becomes clear for all to see that Zuma and his administration are not delivering, and that they are in fact both unable and unwilling to deliver, we hope that there will be a resurgence of working class militancy, and we hope that this will be a genuinely class conscious and revolutionary militancy.

But how many people’s lives will have been adversely effected by the neoliberal economic policies and chauvinistic attitude of the Zuma administration by the time it has shown itself incapable of and uninterested in providing a better life for all? How many more workers will have lost their jobs because of the economic crisis; how many more homosexuals and immigrants will have been killed; and how many more women raped?

We know that Zuma is a chauvinistic, neoliberal patriarch, and his ascendancy to power does not bode well for women, immigrants, homosexuals or the working class in general.

We need to make clear demands on the Zuma administration, especially in light of the current economic crisis. We must demand a halt to retrenchments, and support organisations such as Cosatu when they make such demands; although we can also advise that more militant strategies and tactics will be necessary to win such demands.
We need to continue to try to build the social movements by campaigning for service delivery, to hold the government accountable and to pressurise Zuma to make good on his promises. We must work to expose the homophobic, anti-women and anti-working class and poor character of the new administration.

The social movements, as with the class as a whole, have taken a knock because of the idea that any one individual in power, any leader, can change things for the better. Personality cults, such as that around Zuma, exist in the social movements too, and they must be resisted. It is the ideology of the ruling class, of opportunists and of authoritarians that any one individual leader - or a group of leaders - can improve the conditions of the working class and poor. Personality and leadership cults are built in order to keep people away from taking matters into their own hands, away from collective struggle and mass direct action. And this is exactly what this election, and all other elections, have been about: keeping people away from collective struggle by convincing them that, by marking an ‘x’ on a piece of paper every 5 years; by voting for a party or personality they are contributing to the political life of the country and the betterment of the class.

We anarchists have always rejected this ideology of the ruling class, because we know that working class emancipation does not come from voting for people to govern on our behalf, be it at national or local level. It comes from the self-management and democratic mass direct action of the class in struggle. Only the working class can free itself.

Nearly all the core social movements in South Africa took a boycott position in respect to the recent elections. We believe this to be the correct position, and we have consistently argued for it, and will continue to do so in the lead-up to the 2011 local elections.

Our job now is to consistently speak out against the anti-poor and anti-working class policies of the Zuma administration, push for direct action as opposed to electioneering and class collaboration, support all progressive demands and movements and consistently work towards building social movements and independent trade unionism.

Sooner or later people will see that Zuma deceived them. By exposing the contradictions between what Zuma says to the working class and poor, and what he says to and does for the ruling class, we can help this to happen sooner rather than later. We need to work now to strengthen the social movements and independent trade unions by means of direct action in order to provide a pole of attraction for working class militancy for when the Zuma honeymoon period eventually comes to an end, so that this militancy is not re-channeled into either the reformist direction of supporting another party-political or personality cult, nor into a more dangerous direction.

Neither Zuma, nor Zille, nor anyone else can deliver to the poor and working class. We must take.

“The Zimbabwean” hits home with worthless wallpaper

2009-05-04T10:16:00.002-04:00

An outdoor campaign for The Zimbabwean, a free newspaper for the Zimbabwean diaspora, makes a devastating (and need we say remarkably cost-effective) critique on the economic destruction Mugabe has wrought on Zimbabwe.

This is a fantastic, fresh-thinking ad. In these cash-strapped times it’s easy to forget that sometimes the communications with the most impact are the cheapest to produce.

The ad was featured on Creativity Online, a journal for creative branding communications.

To see more pictures, visit The Zimbabwean’s Flickr photostream.

from Afrodissident

Trafficking In Nigerian Girls - The Business Exposed

2009-04-29T13:18:00.001-04:00

Women trafficking from Nigeria is well organized. A Nigerian-based female called "Mama" or "Madam" plays a key role in recruiting and persuading young women to leave their Nigeria for Italy. Young women as young as 14 years are often enticed with the offer to work or study abroad, by physical threats or payments made to her family. Afterwards the deal is done. She is sold into slavery and forced to embark on a very long treacherous journey by land and sea to the ultimate destination, Italy. Before departing Nigeria they are made to swear oaths of secrecy to hold every information in confidentiality. However, on their way, the girls undergo many initiation rites including repeated gang-rapes, forced oral and anal sex, drug and sex orgies, etc to test their will to survive. Those who couldn't make it through the brutal rituals are sent back.

There are three levels of organization in the trafficking of Nigerian women and girls: A "Madam" living in Nigeria; the Nigerian "Madam" living in Italy; and the third, the "messengers," the persons transferring the money from Italy to Nigeria.

In another style of recruitment, prostitution is hidden by women claiming they are in well-paying jobs and need assistance to handle the volume of business. They make friends with unsuspecting young girls and shower them with lavish gifts. The girls are then gradually introduced into such business as hostesses, out-call prostitutes, club dancers, beauticians, masseuses, strippers, pornographic video actresses, entertainers, etc. Women in these positions are frequently trafficked. Since many of the girls are already in similar circumstances in Nigeria taking it abroad, for them, is not a problem. Some of them are aware of what they are going to do in Italy; some are intentionally deceived with prospects of an artistic career as dancers or actresses.

Nigerian girls are contracted in the suburbs of cities, such as Lagos or Benin City, and in the countryside in the south and east. Madams act as "go-betweens" for girls and women and the traffickers. Money is sent to the madam to pay the debt to the traffickers and to the girls’ families.

The trafficking of women to Europe is now a well-known phenomenon in Edo state. Many women therefore know they are likely to work as prostitutes if they agree to travel to Europe. However, they may have little understanding of the conditions under which they will work and of the size of the debt they will incur.

In anticipation of leaving Nigeria and helping one's family out of poverty, it is tempting for these women to believe in promises about good jobs. Whether this means being duped, or deceiving one's self, is not obvious. Importantly, the fact that the women may have known, or ought to have understood, that they would have to work as prostitutes does not excuse or legitimate subsequent abuse.

The women are particularly easily controlled because they and their families are forced to pay back huge debts to the trafficking organization for the cost of their trip and related expenses. It can take several years to pay off these debts.

Debts for travel are supposed to be paid off in 6 months, but in the majority of the cases after three or four years, the girls are still in prostitution to pay back the debt they owe.

A Nigerian madam, or "Mama," supervises and controls the women and girls. She organizes their activities and collects their profits in Italy. The women physically and psychologically fear the "Mama."

Very few of the women trafficked to Italy wish to return to their country of origin. Some say there are no opportunities there. Some fear reprisals from the traffickers, and others are ashamed to return without being able to show that they have been successful abroad. Unfortunately, some of them die in the process and never realize that goal.

http://www.imoonline.org/women.htm

Free Abdi Wali Muse: Free the real pirates!

2009-04-26T21:12:00.000-04:00

Free Abdi Wali Muse!

Jail the real pirates!

Nyabinga Dzimbahwe

Published Apr 23, 2009

The U.S. government is promoting lynch mob fervor against 15-year-old Abdi Wli Muse.

The stories about so-called “pirates” seizing ships off the coast of Somalia that have peppered the international imperialist media for at least the past year or two became center stage with the April 8 seizure of a ship filled with U.S. sailors called Maersk Alabama. Now with the determination of the U.S. government to try 15-year-old Abdi Wali Muse as an adult after having murdered his other three companions with sniper fire after they had apparently surrendered, a lynch mob fervor inside the U.S. is being mobilized.

However, the question that anyone who knows the history of the U.S. in the East Africa region — or anywhere else in the world, for that matter — has to ask is, “Who are the real pirates?”

The reality is that the Africans being characterized as pirates are mostly fisherman being starved by imperialism’s actions of real piracy. The waters in that region are being overfished by European and Asian companies who steal more than $300 million worth of fish from Somalia’s waters every year. On top of that, European companies have been using Somalia’s waters as a dumping ground for deadly toxic waste that they wouldn’t have anywhere near their own shores for the past two decades.

U.S. and European piracy in Somalia is longstanding

But the U.S. and Europe’s piracy in Somalia began long before the overfishing and toxic dumping became known. The reality is that the Somalia, which is also called the Horn of Africa, plays an important role for the U.S. and Europe’s looting of oil wealth in the region. They used to have a lot of problems stealing that oil so they cut a ditch called the Suez Canal to divide that area of Africa and facilitate ships carrying this stolen wealth getting to Europe.

However, large oil tankers can’t get through the Suez Canal, so they have to go around the Horn of Africa. This has made Somalia of serious geo-political significance for the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. was intervening in Somalia during its struggle with the Soviet Union for geo-political influence.

The Soviets then had a relationship with Said Barre who was in power in Somalia. However, when the Soviet Union developed a relationship with the government that went into power in Ethiopia in coup d’état in 1974, its relationship with Barre soured. This is because of conflicts between the Ethiopian and Somalian states as a result of the artificial borders carved into Africa by Europe for its own interests.

Said Barre then developed a relationship with the U.S. However, when Barre’s despotic regime was chased out of power in 1991, it created a problem for the U.S. The U.S. imperialists started manipulating the situation in Somalia. The forces who overthrew Barre were united by their opposition to Barre’s terrible regime, but with him out of power their basis of unity was gone. There began a struggle for power using U.S. arms and what was left of Soviet arms in the country.

During the time that the U.S.-supported Barre regime was in power the U.S. had him hand over two-thirds of Somalia to U.S. oil companies. So former U.S. president George Herbert Walker Bush initiated a military intervention in Somalia in the 1992 as a lame duck president to protect the U.S. control over what has been described as a “valley of oil” underneath Somalia. In fact, the Conoco oil corporation’s compound in Mogadishu was used as the U.S. government’s headquarters when U.S. Marines landed there.

It was during this vicious military operation to secure the U.S. piracy efforts in Somalia that the events falsely characterized in the Hollywood movie Black Hawk Down occurred. It was during this period that the U.S. was bombing hospitals and residential centers in Somalia in order to facilitate stealing the oil there.

Fisherman from Somalia demand end to imperialist piracy

So now Africans who have been victims of U.S. and European imposed poverty and starvation are now being characterized as pirates. The reality is that in the face of respiratory infections, mouth ulcers and bleeding, skin infections and abdominal hemorrhages resulting from Europe’s deadly toxic dumping — added to severely depleted food supply from the theft of about $300 million of fish per year from Somalia’s waters — African fisherman from Somalia began using speedboats to intercept the U.S., European and Asian pirates to convince them to stop dumping the toxic waste and stealing the food supply of the African people or charge them for compensation.

One fisherman, Sugule Ali, stated, “We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas."

Obama uses Somalia situation as easy political target

The U.S. intervention in Somalia was clearly a political tactic used by neocolonial U.S. president Barack Obama to silence those who have called him too soft militarily. From the moment it was said in the media that U.S. sailors were on the Maersk Alabama ship, it became an opportunity to show his willingness to kill for U.S. imperialism to those who doubted him.

Unlike the quagmires the U.S. has been caught up in both in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Bush regime’s invasions, these four Africans on a lifeboat in the middle of the Indian Ocean served as easy targets wiping out with three quick sniper shots any question of Obama’s ability to kill colonized people for U.S. imperialist interests.

Hands off Abdi Wali Muse

U.S. courts have determined that it doesn’t matter that the young African who surrendered to the U.S. troops is only 15 years old. They will treat him as an adult.

The reality is that young Abdi Wali Muse is not unlike any other young African held in the U.S. prison system. He has no humanity in the eyes of his oppressor. If U.S. imperialism has its way, he will spend the rest of his young life joining the 1.5 million other African people held in U.S. prisons.

His imprisonment has nothing to do with any criminality. The fact is that the law is nothing but the opinion of the ruling class that has the ability to enforce its will by force. His only crime is that he dared to challenge U.S. imperialism’s ability to steal Africa’s resources.

We must demand that this process where the thieves put the victims on trial for piracy end. It is the U.S. and European governments that must be put on trial for theft of African resources and false imprisonment of not only Abdi Wali Muse, but the millions of Africans held in prisons or tied to prison systems in the U.S. and Europe.

Free Abdi Wali Muse! Jail the Real Pirates!

Uhuru!

The first independent union in Egypt?

2009-04-23T12:46:00.001-04:00

An Historical day for the Egyptian Workers' Movement More than 300 representatives of the Real Estate Tax Authority Union's (RETA) General Assembly, containing 270,068 (twenty seven thousands and sixty eight) members, have gathered today at the Ministry of Manpower in Cairo to submit their application for the first independent union in Egypt.

RETA employees decided after their successful strike in December 2007 to establish their independent union. In December 20th 2008, more than 3,000 employees had convened at the press syndicate in Cairo to announce their independent union.

All RETA members, over the last four months, were involved in direct and free elections to elect the members of the RETA general constituency and governorate constituencies, which turned out to be 27 constituencies representing 27 governorates.

The RETA Union has also laid the groundwork for the basic organizational statute, formulated in accordance with international standards.

CTUWS calls upon the international unions and labor organizations to support RETA employees for setting up their independent union, which is a basic granted right as stated in international treaties ratified by the Egyptian Government.

Zambian mine lays off 1,300 staff

2009-04-19T12:52:00.002-04:00

Zambia's biggest copper mining company, Konkola Copper Mines, has laid off 1,300 workers as it struggles with a fall in both demand and copper prices.

The redundancies represent about 10% of the company's entire workforce.

Konkola said it was embarking on a programme to streamline operations and increase labour productivity in response to falling copper prices.

Many of Zambia's mining companies have been forced to make dramatic job cuts during the global economic downturn.

Price slump

Last month, the Mineworkers' Union of Zambia said about 8,200 jobs had been lost in the sector since December last year.

Copper accounts for a large proportion of Zambia's exports.

The price of copper has fallen dramatically since the summer of last year, when it stood at almost $8,000 (£5,500) a tonne.

By the end of the year, it had dropped to just over $2,800 a tonne.

The price now stands at more than $4,500 a tonne after a major stimulus package in China, the world's biggest consumer of copper, raised hopes that demand for the metal would increase.

More recently, the price has jumped on reports that China is rebuilding its state reserves of the metal, according to Mark Elliot at Fairfax Investment Bank.

But Mr Elliot says the price if copper is notoriously volatile and could slip back if confidence in global demand takes another hit.

Zambia: Zulawu Urges Unions to Be Unanimous On Review of Act

2009-04-16T22:58:00.000-04:00

THE Zambia United Local Authorities Workers Union (ZULAWU) has called on all labour unions to unite in ensuring that the law relating to the minimum wage is reviewed to match the current trends.

ZULAWU general secretary Noah Kalangu said in an interview in Ndola yesterday that there was need to intensify efforts aimed at ensuring that the law governing the minimum wage was reviewed.

He said council workers, who played a vital role in country's development process, were the most affected because their salaries were very low.

"Some council workers are still being paid less than K260,000, which is the statutory stipulated minimum wage," he said.

Mr Kalangu said it was sad that the people still expected councils to be efficient in the service delivery when many workers were still being paid what he called peanuts.

"I have just completed a tour of North-Western province and I came across some workers in some rural councils such as Chavuma and Mwinilunga where some permanent employees still get as little as K150,000 and K250,000," he said.

He observed that the immediate review of the minimum wage would help to narrow the gap between the most affected workers in the councils and some chief officers who were getting as much as K5 million.

"As long as the council workers remain exploited as far as getting living wages is concerned it will remain difficult for the country to attain the much-needed development," he stated.

Zabalaza No. 10 Now Available Online

2009-04-12T20:45:00.001-04:00

The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) is pleased to announce that issue number 10 of our organ Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism is now available online.

In this issue:

Southern Africa

Editorial by Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF)
Unite Against the Minority, Then Unite Against the Majority? (Zambia) by Malele D. Phirii, Zambia
The Jacob Zuma Cargo Cult and the “Implosion” of Alliance Politics (South Africa) by Michael Schmidt (ZACF)
A Bitter Taste to the Sugarcane (Swaziland) by Michael Schmidt (ZACF)
Four Tools for Community Control – Part I: “Mutual Aid” (Southern Africa) by Stefanie Knoll (ZACF)
Zimbabwe’s Party-Political Stitch-Up - How the Zanu-PF/MDC Deal Ignored Civil Society by Jonathan P. (ZACF)

Africa

The Anarchist Movement in North Africa: 1877 - 1951 by Michael Schmidt (ZACF) & Lucien van der Walt
Socialists and Gaullists Haunted by the Ghosts of Genocide (Rwanda) by Guillaume Davranche (Alternative Libertaire), France

International

Jalan Journal: A New Asian Anarchist Voice is Born with introduction by Michael Schmidt (ZACF)
30th Congress of the National Confederation of Labour (France) by CNT-F
Hamas, the Left and Liberation in Palestine by Sevinc (Workers’ Solidarity Movement), Ireland
Interview with Ilan Shalif from Anarchists Against the Wall - Israel/Palestine
A Hot Winter in Greece by Stefanie Knoll (ZACF)
Something Smells Different in Cuba by Movimiento Libertario Cubano, with introduction by Michael Schmidt (ZACF)
Imperialism, China and Russia by Pier Francesco Zarcone (Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici), Italy
Against Political Terror in Russia, We Mobilise! by the Internatioal Secretary, Alternative Libertaire, France/ Belgium
Change We Need: An Anarchist Perspective on the 2008 US Election by North-Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC), USA, with introduction by Michael Schmidt (ZACF)

Theory

Tangled Threads of Revolution: Reflections on Anarchist Communists: A Question of Class by James Pendlebury (ZACF)

The .pdf version of the journal can be downloaded here

The texts will appear online soon

The truth on the Somali 'pirates'

2009-04-10T15:49:00.002-04:00

All the media is reporting on how 'Pirates' have Struck a U.S. cargo ship, But Is the Media Telling the Whole Story?

First, I'm not here to paint the Somalis responsible as heroes or as vigilantes, but i'm not going to condemn them as well. The issue is very complicated and this story sheds alot of light on the situation.

http://www.alternet.org/audits/13571...y/?page=entire

According to Hari:

Quote:

As soon as the [Somali] government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.
…

This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia -- and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence."

Here is a youtube of the Somali hip hop artist K'naan speaking on this very issue.

+ YouTube Video
ERROR: If you can see this, then YouTube is down or you don't have Flash installed.

Because the is no Somali government, there is no State. There is no institution that police the water and enforce international or national laws,rules, regulations. Consider what one pirate told The New York Times after he and his men seized a Ukrainian freighter "loaded with tanks, artillery, grenade launchers and ammunition" last year. "We don't consider ourselves sea bandits," said Sugule Ali:. "We consider sea bandits those who illegally fish in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas. We are simply patrolling our seas. Think of us like a coast guard." Now, that "coast guard" analogy is a stretch, but his point is an important and widely omitted part of this story.

Soldiers assassinate Guinea-Bissau president

2009-03-02T14:57:00.000-05:00

BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau – Soldiers assassinated the president of Guinea-Bissau in his palace Monday hours after a bomb blast killed the army chief who had been his political rival for decades.

A military statement broadcast on state radio attributed President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira's death to an "isolated" group of unidentified soldiers whom the armed forces said they were now hunting down. It said the military was not planning a coup in the West Africa nation, which has been a transit point for the cocaine trade to Europe.

The capital, Bissau, was calm despite the pre-dawn gunfight at the palace, which erupted hours after armed forces chief of staff Gen. Batiste Tagme na Waie — a longtime rival of the president — was killed by a bomb blast at his headquarters.

The former Portuguese colony has suffered multiple coups and attempted coups since 1980, when Vieira himself first took power in one.

Following an emergency Cabinet meeting on Monday, military spokesman Zamora Induta said top military brass told government officials "this was not a coup d'etat."

"We reaffirmed our intention to respect the democratically elected power and the constitution of the republic," Induta said. "The people who killed President Vieira have not been arrested, but we are pursuing them. They are an isolated group. The situation is under control."

The constitution calls for parliament chief Raimundo Pereira to succeed the president in the event of his death.

Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Jr. said the fact that the military did not go through with a coup deserves praise. "The military showed their patriotism by not seizing power," he said, adding that both Vieira and Waie will receive state funerals in the coming days.

Vieira had ruled the impoverished nation on the Atlantic coast of Africa for 23 of the past 29 years. He came to power in the 1980 coup, but was forced out 19 years later at the onset of the country's civil war. He later returned from exile in Portugal to run in the country's 2005 election and won the vote.

The armed forces' statement dismissed claims that the military killed Vieira in retaliation for Waie's assassination late Sunday. The two men were considered staunch political and ethnic rivals and both had survived recent assassination attempts.

Vieira, from the minority Papel ethnic group, once blamed majority ethnic Balanta officers for attempting a coup against him, condemning several to death and others to long prison sentences.

Among them was Waie, who in the late 1980s was dropped off on a deserted island off the coast of Guinea-Bissau, according to Waie's chief of staff, Lt. Col. Bwam Namtcho. Waie was left there for years before he was allowed to return and officially pardoned by Vieira.

Namtcho said the bomb that killed Waie had been hidden underneath the staircase leading to his office.

Hours later, volleys of automatic gunfire rang out for at least two hours before dawn in Bissau and residents said soldiers had converged on Vieira's palace.

The Portuguese news agency LUSA reported that troops attacked the palace with rockets and rifles. The president's press chief, Barnabe Gomes, escaped but was struck by a bullet in his right shoulder, LUSA said.

It was the second attack on Vieira in recent months. In November, Vieira's residence was attacked by soldiers with automatic weapons who killed at least one of his guards. The president complained later that the army never intervened, leaving his presidential guard to fight off the attackers.

In January, Waie received a call from the presidency asking him to come at once, said Namtcho. But when Waie stepped outside to get into his car, unidentified gunmen opened fire on the car. Waie narrowly escaped and Namtcho says he assumed the attack had been ordered by the president.

Luis Sanca, security adviser to Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Jr., confirmed that the president had died but gave no details.

The African Union condemned the killings, calling them "cowardly and heinous attacks which have come at a time of renewed efforts by the international community to support peace-building efforts in Guinea-Bissau."

In Lisbon, the Portuguese Foreign Ministry lamented Vieira's death and said it was "fundamental that all political and military authorities in the country respect the constitutional order."

Portugal said it would call an emergency meeting of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries, an eight-member organization based in Lisbon.

They steal elections! Don’t they? States Rights Rot Rides Again

2008-10-31T09:00:00.001-04:00

They steal elections! Don’t they? States Rights Rot Rides Again

By ‘bro.zayid’

They steal elections, don’t they…

They stole the2000 election in Florida for ‘Dubya by roadblocking Black and Latino voting districts, by using confusing ballots, the so-called ‘hanging chads’, by purging scores of eligible and duly registered voters, the overwhelming majority being Black, as being “convicted felons,” and by arbitrarily closing down polling sites while scores of people were still on line waiting to vote. (I’ll never forget Ted Koppel’s Nightline capturing that in living color.) And most importantly, they got away with it.

Al Gore did nothing. Bill Clinton did nothing. The Democratic Party as a body did nothing about it.

They stole the 2004 election in Ohio for ‘Dubya using a house negro secretary of state, Kenneth Blackwell, as an even more arrogant cover. (See the moving documentary American Blackout to catch this vile piece of overseer work in action.) They did it by using almost the same tactics that were previously used in Florida with the emphasis here on the voter rolls purge, or the socalled ‘felon list’ and with voter machine shortages in black voting districts. This was especially done in an in your face callousness in the Black community of the state’s capital of Columbus! And here again, they got away with it.

Before that election, John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee, said that he was not going to stand for another Florida 2000. But when it was all over, he conceded the election the very next day! No fight. No investigation. No recount. No outrage. And, most importantly, no consequence for the perpetrators to be sure.

Fast forward to 2008.

According to NY Times reporter Ian Urbina, whose October 8th article States Purges of Voter Rolls Appear Illegal, is a must read, not only are Florida and Ohio again involved in the same purging process they employed in 2000 and 2004, they have a lot of company, including several so-called ‘swing’ states, or states whose electorial tally could swing an election either way in a close election, who are using the same practices, Nevada, Colorado, Indiana, Michigan and North Carolina. Not to mention Louisiana and Alabama.

Make no mistake about it, this paradigm could easily be responsible for several hundred thousand voters being made ineligible to vote and knocked out of the equation on election day…Several hundred thousand!....

Maybe more than enough to steal an election. To be sure, this is happening on this scale, happening in all these areas, as a concerted effort to undermine Obama’s wide popularity, a popularity that neither Gore nor Kerry had against ‘Dubya.

In my modest judgment, Barack Obama should win by a landslide given his enormous popularity and given his relative puny opposition in a ‘free and fair election.’ But an election, certainly a close one, can easily be stolen from him, just like it was in 2000 and 2004. If he is to have a real chance at a fair election, and give himself a real chance to win, he, as the new leader of the Democratic Party, and that’s what he is now, must call out the guard…He must be prepared to defend those voters rights now and on the day of the election!

“But bro.zayid, that’s means he going to have to talk about race! And he’s not going to do that now! It’s too risky!”

It’s too risky not to, given these set of circumstances.

Here’s what that talk means. It means at the very least demanding that the Justice Department be on full and visible alert at all polling sites in all of these contested areas. It means not standing alone when he makes the demand. He should have Bill and Hillary Clinton stand with him. He should have Al Gore and John Kerry stand with him. He should have New Mexico’s Latino Governor Bill Richardson, the man who set aside his own candidacy to clear the way for Obama’s ascendance and who, in my mind, should have been chosen as his running mate, -He should certainly have that man stand with him. He should have ‘Yahoo’ Howard Dean stand with him. He should have Senate majority Harry Reid and House majority leader Steny Hoyer stand with him. They should all stand with him in a united front for a ‘free and fair election’! And let the chips fall where they may!

Failure to do that, no matter how polite or strategic he and his machine mean to be could easily result in another heartbreaking debacle.

If he doesn’t, don’t be surprised to hear stories about immigration officers doing sweeps or otherwise detaining and harassing Latinos in states like California, New Mexico, Texas and McCain’s own Arizona. Don’t be surprised to hear about scores of Black people turned away from the polls because their address did not match up or that they’ve been purged because they were “convicted felons.” Don’t be surprised to hear about long lines and shorts on available voting machines. Don’t be surprised to hear about roadblocks near Black and Latino voting districts like they also did in Florida…Because they’ll do it. They’ve

done it with it success before and they’ll do it again unless somebody stops them.

So what do we do?

This election is a going to be a global event. Organizations that the NGO status at United Nations should take a page out of Malcolm’s book and call on the UN to have monitors in all those contested areas.

Individually, voters should consider the following: One, bring proper government accepted ID with you to the polls and bring proof of address and if you recently moved or reregistered because you moved if you have something with the previous address as well, bring that too. Nip identity and address issues in the bud if you can on the spot. One of the last things you want to happen is to be offered a ‘provisional ballot’. Provisional ballot are for the most part political placebos, because they are given to prospective voters contesting their right to vote, but the ballot they are given is counted as a matter of law “after the election,” which means it more than likely would not even count. See the Help America Vote Act if you don’t believe me; Two, if you receive a sample ballot in the mail before election with the designation of your polling site, bring that with you along with proper id to avoid being runaround about “where you can vote.’ That happened in Ohio too; Three, Go to the polls early. We tend to go late. After work. Scores of our people who got doors slammed in their face in Florida and Ohio ran into that at night. This also gives you time to address any identification issues should they emerge. Four, make your voting that day an event. It is. Bring your children with you! My longtime friend and comrade Larry Hamm of the Peoples Organization for Progress said he is going to bring his daughter with him to be apart of that historical moment one way or another. By the God of our ancestors, I wish I could bring mine. But seriously bring your children with you! If you run into difficulty, let them see how you stand up for your rights and defend your dignity. Let them see how democracy really works along racial lines, so they can be prepared to face whatever this racial landscape may have them face. Finally, go in groups. If you belong to an organization, set up groups to go together. Be witnesses for each other. Take pictures bring video cameras. Document your voting as long as the process will allow.

Dear Family,

Not talking about race, and not wanting to fight racism, is not going to make it go away. Only organized and well mobilized hell-raizin is what puts racism on its nasty flat behind. Nothing else.

Seize the time!

On Monday, November 3rd, Black Solidarity Day, we will be marching In Defense of the Black Vote from Broad and Market Streets, in Newark at 12 noon, to sound the drum.

Every shut ain’t sleep; every goodbye ain’t gone…

“And you stand there with a rope around your neck talking about ‘forgive them lord, they know not what they’re doing.’ As they’ve been doing it, they’re experts at it.”

-Malcolm X

©2008 all rights reserved

‘bro.zayid’

Bro.Zayid Muhammad is the national minister of culture for the New Black Panther Party. He can be reached at 201 602 0780 and babazayid@yahoo.com. This is essay is the first of several called ‘The Obama Essays.’

Ground Noise & Static

2008-10-07T20:27:00.001-04:00

Good evening comrades,
Hope everyone is well.

In case you haven't heard, SubMediaTV has teamed up with Pepperspray Productions to produce a 30 minute documentary chronicling the amazing resistance movement at the recent RNC and DNC. It has tons of never-before-seen footage and it shows definitively that the surveillance and policing efforts at each of the conventions went way over the line, but that also demonstrators and resistance members didn't back down for one second. It's truly a great film and shows that the resistance movement against State oppression is alive and well and gaining ground.

Check it out here: http://submedia.tv/stimulator/2008/10/06/ground-noise-and-static/

WSA Statement on the RNC Protest

2008-09-07T11:46:00.000-04:00

WSA Statement on the RNC Protest

In the opening days of September 2008 people from all over the country
came together in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St.
Paul to
protest the agenda of the Republican National Convention.
And in
response, police cracked down, hard.
And even before the events had
begun police responded to mere calls for protest through strong-arm
tactics reminiscent of a police state, including infiltration and
spying by state agents against protest organizations and preemptive
raids with guns drawn against private protest centers.
During the
event police responded with the indiscriminate arrest of hundreds of
protesters, and even journalists recording the event where arrested.

Decked out in full military garb masses of police indiscriminately
assaulted numerous protesters with batons, pepper spray and other
weapons, that though listed under the term "less then lethal"
nevertheless inflict great pain and suffering, and have been
implicated in
serious medical complications and even death.
Fortunately no one was
killed in the Twin Cities, but the use of tactics befitting a police
state should be a cause of grave concern for all people of good
conscience.

In response we at the Worker Solidarity Alliance (WSA) call upon all
poor and working people everywhere to reach out in support of the 284
protesters that have been jailed by the cops.

Please make a donation to help cover the legal fees of our jailed
comrades, and to cover any medical fees that may arise among
protesters due to the brutal tactics utilized by police on behalf of
the Republican Party.
One place you can donate is the web site of the
Coldsnap Legal Collective: http://coldsnaplegal. wordpress. com/

Although the Workers Solidarity Alliance extends unconditional
solidarity and support to the victims of state repression during the
RNC, we also call for a critical evaluation of the approach taken by
anti-authoritarians and anarchists.
The repression of RNC activism
demonstrates that new organizing models will be needed if
anticapitalists are to mount a genuine challenge to the power of
capital and the state.
Specifically, we must avoid playing into the
hands of the state by using rhetoric, rituals, and tactics that
isolate us from the majority of the world's population that suffers
under capitalism.
We call for a resistance based not exclusively on
the advanced tactics of a jail-ready minority, but the
solidarity and militancy of a revolutionary social bloc, organized in
workplaces and neighborhoods, fighting for self-determination.
As the
raids on activists spaces have already shown, anything less is
political suicide.

The reasons people protested were varied, as was the political
background of the protesters.
Some of the protesters came seeking to
end the U.S.
military occupation of Iraq, some economic justice,
others out of criticism of the current Republican administration in
Washington.
Some protesters came to voice their dissent and in support
of Obama.
Some came to protest the havoc that the endless pursuit for
capitalist profits has wrecked upon the environment.
And yet others
still came to protest the political rule of the U.S.
government,
whether under the leadership of Republicans or Democrats, or other
would be contenders for the throne.

The "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent came to protest the war,
for economic justice, for a healthy environment, and against white
supremacy, nationalism, sexism and homophobia --- and to promote the
idea that simply changing office holders does not do away with
capitalism and the political state.
This contingent called for a new
world, a world without bosses, states and bureaucrats.

The Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) seeks the self-empowerment of
ordinary poor and working class people through democratic
self-management of their workplaces and their communities without
mediation by elite's from above.
Those of the "Red & Black
Anti-Capitalist" contingent, and their supporters in the WSA and
elsewhere, are sick and tired of living in a society that is dominated
by the special interests of wealthy men and the political system that
these elites have set in motion to protect their interests at the
expense of the genuine interests, the aspirations and collective well
being of the vast majority of the population, the working class.
As
supporters of the "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent we of the
WSA denounce both the Republican and Democratic parties, as we
understand that the true motivating cause of all political parties, in
every part of the globe, is that of keeping a small elite entrenched
firmly in political and economic power over, and to the detriment, of
the working class across the earth.

The WSA also denounces the Patriot Act, under which the state has
charged eight (RNC 8) prominent protest organizers with "Conspiracy to
Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism," this despite the fact that the RNC
8 were arrested days prior to the beginning of both the convention and
the actual protests and had not carried out any actual protest actions
whatsoever.
The provisions of the Patriot Act grants the state power
to charge people with "conspiracy" for simply planning a nonviolent
protest, and in turn to saddle them with a felony for making calls for
dissent to state policy.
Thus the true purpose of the Patriot Act is
to criminalize exercises of the right to free speech, peaceful
assembly and protest.
In light of the true intentions of the Patriot
Act the WSA calls for the working class to get together in solidarity
to put pressure upon the state to rescind and abolish the Patriot Act.

Yet despite all of the terror and mayhem unleashed by the police the
fact that ordinary people maintained their presence, their solidarity
and their dissent against the unjust policies of the political elite
for the duration of the convention is in the last analysis a
demonstration of the courage of the working class.
The protesters that
made up the "Red & Black Anti-Capitalist" contingent, and others as
well, have a positive vision of a better society.
A society in which
ordinary folks come together in brotherly solidarity to create a new
system based upon the moral value of "Mutual aid" and free from the
rule of a lying, scheming and predatory elite.
For a society in which
"freedom and liberty for all" are not mere sentiments regulated to
paper, or simply buzz words to throw about by self-interested
politicians looking for your votes, but are instead the overwhelming
living reality of society, and not just in the United States but
throughout the entire earth.

Workers Solidarity Alliance
339 Lafayette Street - Room 202
New York, NY 10012 USA
www. workersolidarity. org.

Zabalaza No.9 Now Available Online

2008-09-05T10:50:00.000-04:00

Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Class Struggle Anarchism
Issue No.
9, September 2008

Issue number nine of the theoretical journal of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front is now available online.

In this issue...

Southern Africa:

* Workers, Bosses and the 2008 Pogroms
* "Ba Sebetsi Ba Afrika": Manifesto of the Industrial Workers of Africa, 1917
* Ninety Years of Working Class Internationalism in South Africa
* Unyawo Alunampumulo: Abahlali baseMjondolo Statement on the Xenophobic Attacks in Johannesburg
* Xenophobia, Nationalism and Greedy Bosses: An Interview with Alan Lipman
* Interview with Two Libertarian Socialist Activists from Zimbabwe

Africa:

* Kenya's Troubles are Far from Over
* Will EU troops stop the Central African cycle of violence?
* Brutal Repression in Sidi Ifni (Morroco)

International:

* Obama and Latin America: a Friendly Imperialism?

Theory:

* Anarchism & Immigration
* The Poison of Nationalism
* Nostalgic Tribalism or Revolutionary Transformation?: A Critique of Anarchism & Revolution in Black Africa

A .
PDF version of the journal can be downloaded here: http://www. zabalaza. net/pdfs/sapams/zab09. pdf

RNC protests

2008-09-02T09:12:00.002-04:00

Hello Everyone,
Hope you all are doing well.

In case you haven't been following, the protests of the RNC have gotten started with a bang.

Yesterday (Monday), independent journalist Amy Goodman and two producers of acclaimed "Democracy Now" were arrested and detained simply for asking to speak with cops. They have since been released. This past Friday, St. Paul police raided the training headquarters for the RNC Welcoming Committee, the largest organizing group for the protest. At the time, occupants were eating dinner and watching films. Children and senior citizens were present, and cops busted down the doors with guns drawn.

Also over the weekend, police raided a couple of houses in the residential neighborhoods suspected of harboring information and supplies to create bombs, also with guns drawn. Who were occupying the houses? Members of Food Not Bombs - a group that prepares and serves free meals, and I-Witness Video, an independent media group. One of the houses actually were successful at deterring cops because the officials had the wrong address on their warrant - the address for the other side of the building. The building actually holds two addresses and two families.

If you haven't heard, Hurricane Gustav has stagnated many of the plans for the RNC. Bush and Cheney canceled their trips, and the convention itself has been drastically scaled down to just business. That hasn't stopped the protestors though. Video footage has captured many protestor groups in the streets using mail boxes as blockades and blocking traffic, as well as freeing their own people from police detainment.

Pepper spray and rubber bullets are already out in full force, according to participants.

Check out this site - SubMediaTv - for raw video. Check out the other features as well, such as the blog and shop - this is a great underground resource. By the way, SubMedia cameramen were also arrested and detained.

http://www.submedia.tv/

Here are a few more websites:

Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/

RNC Welcoming Committee
http://www.nornc.org/

I-Witness Video
http://iwitnessvideo.info/

Brave New Films (contains lots of other videos from the protests)
http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/51152-police-bust-thru-attic-to-detain-democracy-now-journalist

Be sure to hit up the group discussion board to add your two cents on the rebellion in the Twin Cities. More news to come as it is made available.

Peace, Love and Freedom
Kourtney

"Anarchists" turn violent in march to GOP convention

2008-09-01T20:25:00.003-04:00

Self described anarchists turned violent at the Republican National Convention according to news websites. Is the black bloc a positive or negative aspect of the anarchist and anti-war movements?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080901/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_convention_protests

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Protesters attacked delegates, smashed windows, punctured car tires and threw bottles Monday, a violent counterpoint to an otherwise peaceful anti-war march at the Republican National Convention. Police wielding pepper spray arrested at least 56 people.

The trouble happened not far from the Xcel Energy Center convention site, and many of those involved in the more violent protest were clad in black and identified themselves to reporters as anarchists. They wrought havoc by damaging property and setting at least one fire. Most of the trouble was in pockets of a neighborhood near downtown, several blocks from where the convention was taking place.

Police estimates of the crowd shifted several times during the event, ranging from 2,000 to 10,000. The crowd was clearly in the thousands. Late Monday afternoon, long after the antiwar marchers had dispersed, police requested and got 150 Minnesota National Guard soldiers to help control splinter groups near downtown.

Members of the Connecticut delegation said they were attacked by protesters when they got off their bus near the Xcel Center, KMSP-TV reported. Delegate Rob Simmons told the station that a group of protesters came toward his delegation and tried to rip the credentials off their necks and sprayed them with a toxic substance that burned their eyes and stained their clothes.

One 80-year-old member of the delegation had to be treated for injuries, and several other delegates had to rinse their eyes and clothing, the station reported.

Five people were arrested for lighting a trash bin on fire and pushing it into a police car, St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said. Authorities didn't have immediate details on the other arrests.

The antiwar march was organized by a group called the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, whose leaders said they hoped for a peaceful, family-friendly event. But police were on high alert after months of preparations by a self-described anarchist group called the RNC Welcoming Committee, which wasn't among the organizers of the march.

About 20 people dressed in black tried to block a key intersection. Police quickly dispersed the group, then shot two tear gas canisters at them as the fled.

Pictures taken by Associated Press photographers showed officers using pepper spray on people who appeared to be trying to block streets.

Up to 200 people from a group called Funk the War noisily staged their own march. Wearing black clothes, bandanas and gas masks, some of their members smashed windows of cars and stores. They tipped over newspaper boxes, pulled a big trash bin into the street, bent the rearview mirrors on a bus and flipped heavy stone garbage bins on the sidewalks.

One member of the group carried a yellow flag with the motto "Don't Tread on Me." The group chanted: "Whose streets? Our streets!"

At one point, people pushed a trash bin filled with trash and threw garbage in the streets and at cars. They also took down orange detour road signs. One of them used a screwdriver to puncture the back tire of a limousine waiting at an intersection and threw a wooden board at the vehicle, denting its side. Another hurled a glass bottle at a charter bus that had stopped at an intersection. The bottle smashed into pieces but didn't appear to damage the bus.

After the official march ended, police spent hours dispersing smaller groups of protesters, employing officers on horses, smoke bombs and tear gas.

Protesters put eye drops in each other's eyes after police used chemical irritants such as pepper spray and tear gas. Some wore bandanas and masks to protect themselves.

Protesters were seen lying on an interstate exit ramp to block traffic in downtown St. Paul and linking arms to block other roads.

Terry Butts, a former Alabama Supreme Court justice who is a convention delegate, was on a bus taking delegates to the arena when a brick through the window sprayed glass on him and two others. Butts said he wasn't hurt.

"It just left us a little shaken," he said. "It was sort of a frightening moment because it could have been a bomb or a Molotov cocktail."

Small Arkansas Town becomes Police State

2008-08-13T09:57:00.002-04:00

Police State? A glimpse of Martial Law to come? Unconstitutional? Weigh in.

Crime-ridden Arkansas town expands 24-hour curfew

By JON GAMBRELL, Associated Press Writer Wed Aug 13, 6:41 AM ET

HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark. - Officers armed with military rifles have been stopping and questioning passers-by in a neighborhood plagued by violence that's been under a 24-hour curfew for a week.

On Tuesday, the Helena-West Helena City Council voted 9-0 to allow police to expand that program into any area of the city, despite a warning from a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas that the police stops were unconstitutional.

Police Chief Fred Fielder said the patrols have netted 32 arrests since they began last week in a 10-block neighborhood in this small town on the banks of the Mississippi River long troubled by poverty. The council said those living in the city want the random shootings and drug-fueled violence to stop, no matter what the cost.

"Now if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I'm fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here," Mayor James Valley said. "The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution."

The area under curfew, in what used to be a West Helena neighborhood, sits among abandoned homes and occupied residences in disrepair.

White signs on large blue barrels warn those passing by that the area remains under curfew by order of Mayor James Valley. The order was scheduled to end at 3 p.m. Tuesday, but Valley said the city council's vote would allow police to have the same powers across Helena-West Helena.

Among the curfew operation's arrests, 10 came from felony charges, including the arrest of two people carrying both drugs and weapons, Fielder said. The police chief said the officers in the field carry military-style M-16 or M-4 rifles, some equipped with laser sights. Other officers carry short-barrel shotguns. Many dealing crack cocaine and marijuana in the city carry pistols and AK-47 assault rifles, he said.

"We've had people call us, expressing concern for their children," Fielder said. "They had to sleep on the floor, because of stray bullets."

Fielder said officers had not arrested anyone for violating the curfew, only questioned people about why they were outside. Those without good answers or acting nervously get additional attention, Fielder said.

However, such stops likely violate residents' constitutional rights to freely assemble and protections against unreasonable police searches, said Holly Dickson, a lawyer for the ACLU of Arkansas who addressed the council at its packed Tuesday meeting. Because of that, Dickson said any convictions coming from the arrests likely would be overturned.

"The residents of these high-crime areas are already victims," she said. "They're victims of what are happening in the neighborhoods, they're victims of fear. But for them to be subject to unlawful stops and questioning ... that is not going to ultimately going to help this situation."

The council rejected Dickson's claims, at one point questioning the Little Rock-based attorney if she'd live in a neighborhood they described as under siege by wild gunfire and gangs.

"As far as I'm concerned, at 3 o'clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law," Councilman Eugene "Red" Johnson said. "Anyone out at 3 o'clock shouldn't be out on the street, unless you're going to the hospital."

The curfew is the second under the mayor's watch since the rival cities of Helena and West Helena merged in 2006. That year, Valley set a nightly citywide curfew after a rash of burglaries and other thefts.

Police in Hartford, Conn., began enforcing a nightly curfew for youths after recent violence, including a weekend shooting that killed a man and wounded six young people.

Helena-West Helena, with 15,000 residents at the edge of Arkansas' eastern rice fields and farmland, is in one of the nation's poorest regions, trailing even parts of Appalachia in its standard of living.

In the curfew area, those inside the homes in the watch area peered out of door cracks Tuesday as police cruisers passed. They closed the doors afterward.

APOC Northeast Gathering: Aug 8-9

2008-07-12T14:17:00.000-04:00

(from illvox.org)

APOC Northeast Gathering

August 8th-9th in Philadelphia, PA

“La gente fuerte no necesita un lider, ellos por si mismos son lideres” - Emiliano Zapata

Autonomous/ Anti-Authoritarian/ Anarchist People Of Color from across the Northeast (and beyond) are gathering in Philly this summer to build a new vision for the future, and a new plan of action for today. We want to expand our understanding of race, class, gender, autonomy, and freedom - while attacking white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, and ALL borders, boundaries, and barriers.

Please join us Friday and Saturday, August 8th-9th for the APOC Northeast Regional Conference in Philadelphia!

WHAT: APOC Northeast Regional Conference

WHEN: Friday and Saturday, August 8th-9th

WHERE: The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St, Philadelphia, PA

Friday evening will feature films related to APOC movement.

Saturday will feature a full day of talks, panels, and workshops.

Saturday night will culminate with an APOC Rocks! hip hop, punk rock, and poetry concert.

There will also be free (and cheap) food available as well as APOC ‘zines, books, t-Shirts y mas for the masses.

NAACP calls for probe of shootings

2008-06-17T09:13:00.000-04:00

NAACP calls for probe of shootings

The group wants CMPD to make outside investigations a standard procedure when police use deadly force.

The state chapter of the NAACP is calling on Charlotte-Mecklenburg police to require outside investigations after a spate of shootings involving officers this year.

Last month, 21-year-old Aaron Winchester died from gunshot wounds to the back as he was being pursued by a police officer who had stopped him for questioning just north of uptown.

The Winchester shooting was the third time in seven months a suspect has died in a confrontation with CMPD. Of the 36 shootings by Charlotte police in the past decade, 31 were ruled justified in the department's investigations. The most recent five, all in 2008, remain under investigation by the department, which reviews its own deadly force cases.

“We are asking not only that they address the immediacy of the current incident but also this recent pattern of events,” said the Rev. William Barber II, state president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The NAACP Wednesday called the state attorney general's office and Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory to stress the importance of the Winchester shooting being investigated properly, Barber said.

The group is calling for broad policy changes – including asking CMPD to make it standard for an outside agency to investigate all police shootings, Barber said. The NAACP also wants CMPD to use an officer's history of use of force in promotion decisions and recommends the department keep detailed records of use of force by race and gender.

For the first time in more than 30 years as Charlotte-Mecklenburg district attorney, Peter Gilchrist asked the State Bureau of Investigation to look at the Winchester shooting. The incident involved a white police officer shooting a black man and raised questions among relatives and eyewitnesses in the Lockwood neighborhood.

Gilchrist declined to give his reason. The request came on the heels of a meeting with interim police Chief David Graham, officials said Wednesday.

The NAACP said it will begin working today with a coalition of Charlotte ministers to study the shootings.

The organization's statement followed a meeting Wednesday between Charlotte City Manager Curt Walton and members of the N.C. State Conference of National Action Network, an advocacy group formed by the Rev. Al Sharpton. He is expected to visit Charlotte in the next couple of weeks.

“This isn't about race,” said Tanya Wiley, executive director of the organization. “Anytime someone gets shot in the back, it sends up a red flag.”

After the incident, Charlotte City Councilman Anthony Foxx said he also asked the city manager if the Police Department would seek an outside investigation. He did so after receiving many calls from concerned residents.

“It is very important to and for the Police Department to be perceived as protecting our citizens and not crossing over the line,” Foxx said Wednesday. “There are some issues of trust here that we have to pay attention to.”

Death in the Amazon: Uncontacted Tribes

2008-06-13T09:06:00.002-04:00

Photographs published two weeks ago of an uncontacted tribe in Brazil near the Peruvian border have provoked public outrage, with over 1,300 people writing letters to Peru’s government to demand an end to illegal logging. The logging is threatening uncontacted Indians in the area.

The unique pictures of the Brazilian tribe hit the world’s headlines last week. At least one other tribe in the area is thought to have fled over the border from Peru into Brazil, fleeing illegal loggers who are razing their forest home.

Since the pictures were published, the Peruvian government has said it will investigate the issue. Peru’s President Alan Garcia had previously questioned the tribes’ existence.

Survival International is campaigning to support the rights of Peru’s estimated fifteen uncontacted tribes, who are threatened by oil exploration as well as logging.

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said today, ‘These pictures have really struck a chord with people. The uncontacted tribe’s message, with their arrows pointed up at the aeroplane, could not be clearer – they want to be left alone. People understand this, and want to make sure their wishes are respected.’

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Amazon Indians from one of the world's last uncontacted tribes have been photographed from the air, with striking images released on Thursday showing them painted bright red and brandishing bows and arrows.

The photographs of the tribe near the border between Brazil and Peru are rare evidence that such groups exist. A Brazilian official involved in the expedition said many of them are in increasing danger from illegal logging.
"What is happening in this region is a monumental crime against the natural world, the tribes, the fauna and is further testimony to the complete irrationality with which we, the 'civilized' ones, treat the world," Jose Carlos Meirelles was quoted as saying in a statement by the Survival International group.
One of the pictures, which can be seen on Survival International's Web site (http://www.survival-international.org), shows two Indian men covered in bright red pigment poised to fire arrows at the aircraft while another Indian looks on.
Another photo shows about 15 Indians near thatched huts, some of them also preparing to fire arrows at the aircraft.
"The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct," said Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, which supports tribal people around the world.
Of more than 100 uncontacted tribes worldwide, more than half live in either Brazil or Peru, Survival International says. It says all are in grave danger of being forced off their land, killed and ravaged by new diseases.

Jay Griffiths wrote an article in the Guardian on the issue of the forced invasion and unwarrented contact of the tribes; how it is racist and potentially dangerous.

The message could hardly be clearer: leave us alone. In photographs taken from a low-flying plane, men from an uncontacted group deep in the Amazon forests, body-painted in red and black, draw their bows and arrows to shoot at the intruders in anger and fear. Another tribe living in voluntary isolation is being hunted out of existence.
There was massive public interest when these images were released by the Brazilian government last week, revealing an enormous curiosity about tribal people. And many indigenous people want non-indigenous people to listen to their ecological warnings and their philosophies. But, in sharp contrast, those living in voluntary isolation, the so-called uncontacted tribes, wish no such thing. They want nothing to do with the dominant culture, and they communicate this clearly to "contacted" tribes nearby, begging their help to be left alone.
The risks are well known: uncontacted people have died in their millions from diseases brought by outsiders, whole tribes wiped out. In the Amazon, indigenous campaigners vigorously oppose people going into the territories of the voluntarily isolated. But now, as well as the loggers and miners, there will be dozens of missionaries, television companies and adventurers determined to ignore their message.
Go and talk to Tarzan, I was told, when I was in the Peruvian Amazon, at the invitation of indigenous activists there. (They had asked me to go with them as a witness when they were throwing illegal gold-miners off their lands.) Tarzan, I was told, has a tale to tell about forced contact. A Harakmbut man in his nineties, he is old enough to remember the day in 1952 when his world ended. He is gentle and thoughtful, but still angry.
Missionaries came in a plane which, said Tarzan, "we thought was a huge and frightening eagle. We fled to the hills". The missionaries set up a mission station and a school. "No one wanted to go to school, and anyway after the missionaries came, our children died." After the missionaries' arrival, an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 people died of the illnesses they had brought. The missionaries said they wanted people to know their God, but Tarzan didn't see it that way: "Now we know money." Further, thanks to the missionaries, he says: "Now we know we lack money, which we hadn't known we lacked before."
Astonishingly, this is still happening. Earlier this year a British film crew went to the Peruvian Amazon to find tribal people for a reality TV programme. The crew were accused of visiting an isolated community, bringing a disease that left four people dead.
In the Peruvian Amazon, I met an evangelical missionary who was hunting out uncontacted tribes, claiming he would ease the way for oil workers. The links between missionaries and the other extractive industries are well documented. He spoke of making a "responsible contact", but was risking bringing death. Which of the 10 commandments encourages that?
Anthropologists, activists and many in the media know how to report on indigenous issues with respect; but there is still a profound racism against indigenous people in our culture. The forced invasion of uncontacted peoples is the arrowhead of this racism, and it extends far beyond the irresponsibility of individuals, into whole institutions.
The publishing industry promotes the adventurer, the churches fund the missionary, the corporations send the loggers and miners, the TV company commissions the film crew. In a just world, all should be liable for attempted murder.

Power to the People.

POCC CALLING FOR CONTINGENT TO U.N. IN LA

2008-05-22T22:27:00.001-04:00

THE UNITED NATIONS IS COMING TO LOS ANGELES TO INVESTIGATE RACISM IN THE U.S.. LA IS ONE OF 8 CITIES WHICH INCLUDE NEW ORLEANS, NEW YORK, CHICAGO, AND SAN JUAN AMONG OTHER PLACES, WHERE THE UN IS CONDUCTING ITS INVESTIGATION. WE ARE ASKING FOR PEOPLE TO JOIN UP WITH THE POCC IN ADDRESSING THE RACISM THAT EXIST TODAY, AND THAT OUR PEOPLE HAVE SUFFERED FOR OVER 400 YEARS. WE ARE AWARE THAT THE UN IN MOST CASES ARE SUBORDINATE TO US INTEREST IN MOST CASES LIKE WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CONGO WITH PATRICE LAMUMBA, LIKE WHAT HAPPENED IN HAITI WITH THE UN SHOOTING INNOCENT PEOPLE AFTER THE OVERTHROW OF PRES. ARISTIDE, AS WELL AS LIKE WHAT IS HAPPENING IN IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, AND CUBA RIGHT NOW. AT THE SAME TIME, THIS IS OUR CHANCE TO DOCUMENT GOVERNMENT TERRORISM IN AN INTERNATIONAL FORUM, AND WE NEED TO LET THE WORLD KNOW WHAT HAPPENS ON THESE SHORES WITH OUR PEOPLE.

THE UN WILL BE IN LA ON MAY 27TH,28TH, AND 29TH.

ON THE 27TH - 2:30PM THEY WILL BE AT LA COMMUNITY ACTION NETWORK WITH UCLA PROFESSOR GARY BLASI, THEN THEY WILL GO TO THE MENS CENTRAL JAIL.

AT 3:30PM THEY WILL GO TO SKID ROW AND NEW IMAGE HOMELESS SHELTER. THE TOPICS WILL BE HOMELESSNESS, OVERCROWDIN, AND RACISM AMONG OTHERS.

ON THE 28TH - AT 4PM THEY WILL BE AT UCLA

ON THE 29TH - UCLA

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT KATHERINE LELAND - 213-977-9500
FREE'EM ALL!

The Death of Boubacar Bah in the Hands of ICE

2008-05-09T11:03:00.002-04:00

Originally Posted by Mike Ely of Kasama, when suggested by Kalash Prolet that he'd report it on his website. Power to the People reproduces this article here to spread awareness on the death and coverup of an African Immigrant in US custody.

See the VIDEO on this horrific death of an African immigrant and shameful coverup that followed.

Few Details on Immigrants Who Died in Custody

By NINA BERNSTEIN NYT, May 5, 2008

Word spread quickly inside the windowless walls of the Elizabeth Detention Center, an immigration jail in New Jersey: A detainee had fallen, injured his head and become incoherent. Guards had put him in solitary confinement, and late that night, an ambulance had taken him away more dead than alive.

But outside, for five days, no official notified the family of the detainee, Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had overstayed a tourist visa. When frantic relatives located him at University Hospital in Newark on Feb. 5, 2007, he was in a coma after emergency surgery for a skull fracture and multiple brain hemorrhages. He died there four months later without ever waking up, leaving family members on two continents trying to find out why.

Mr. Bah’s name is one of 66 on a government list of deaths that occurred in immigration custody from January 2004 to November 2007, when nearly a million people passed through.

The list, compiled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after Congress demanded the information, and obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, is the fullest accounting to date of deaths in immigration detention, a patchwork of federal centers, county jails and privately run prisons that has become the nation’s fastest-growing form of incarceration.

The list has few details, and they are often unreliable, but it serves as a rough road map to previously unreported cases like Mr. Bah’s. And it reflects a reality that haunts grieving families like his: the difficulty of getting information about the fate of people taken into immigration custody, even when they die.

Mr. Bah’s relatives never saw the internal records labeled “proprietary information — not for distribution” by the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs the New Jersey detention center for the federal government. The documents detail how he was treated by guards and government employees: shackled and pinned to the floor of the medical unit as he moaned and vomited, then left in a disciplinary cell for more than 13 hours, despite repeated notations that he was unresponsive and intermittently foaming at the mouth.

Mr. Bah had lived in New York for a decade, surrounded by a large circle of friends and relatives. The extravagant gowns he sewed to support his wife and children in West Africa were on display in a Manhattan boutique.

But he died in a sequestered system where questions about what had happened to him, or even his whereabouts, were met with silence.

As the country debates stricter enforcement of immigration laws, thousands of people who are not American citizens are being locked up for days, months or years while the government decides whether to deport them. Some have no valid visa; some are legal residents, but have past criminal convictions; others are seeking asylum from persecution.

Death is a reality in any jail, and the medical neglect of inmates is a perennial issue. But far more than in the criminal justice system, immigration detainees and their families lack basic ways to get answers when things go wrong.

No government body is required to keep track of deaths and publicly report them. No independent inquiry is mandated. And often relatives who try to investigate the treatment of those who died say they are stymied by fear of immigration authorities, lack of access to lawyers, or sheer distance.

Federal officials say deaths are reviewed internally by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which reports them to its inspector general and decides which ones warrant investigation. Officials say they notify the detainee’s next of kin or consulate, and report the deaths to local medical authorities, who may conduct autopsies. In Mr. Bah’s case, a review before his death found no evidence of foul play, an immigration spokesman said, though after later inquiries from The Times, he said a full review of the death was under way.

But critics, including many in Congress, say this piecemeal process leaves too much to the agency’s discretion, allowing some deaths to be swept under the rug while potential witnesses are transferred or deported. They say it also obscures underlying complaints about medical care, abusive conditions or inadequate suicide prevention.

In January, the House passed a bill that would require states that receive certain federal money to report deaths in custody to their attorneys general. But the bill is stalled in the Senate, and it does not cover federal facilities.

The only tangible result of Congressional concern has been the list of 66 deaths, which names Mr. Bah and many other detainees for the first time, but raises as many questions as it answers.

For Mr. Bah’s survivors, the mystery of his death is hard to bear. In Guinea, his first wife, Dalanda, wept as she spoke about the contradictory accounts that had reached her and her two teenage sons through other detainees, including some who speculated that Mr. Bah had been beaten.

In New York, a cousin who is an American citizen, Khadidiatou Bah, 38, said she was unable to bring a lawsuit, in part because other relatives were afraid of antagonizing the authorities.

“They don’t want to push the case, or maybe they will be sent home,” she said. “This guy was killed, and we don’t know what happened.”

Lingering Questions

The list of deaths where Mr. Bah’s name surfaced is often cryptic. Along with 13 deaths cited as suicides and 14 as the result of cardiac ailments, it offers such causes as “undetermined” and “unwitnessed arrest, epilepsy.” No one’s nationality is given, some places of detention are omitted, and some names and birth dates seem garbled. As a result, many families could not be tracked down for this article.

But when they could be, they posed more disturbing questions.

In California, relatives of Walter Rodriguez-Castro, 28, said they were rebuffed when they tried to find out why his calls had stopped coming from the Kern County Jail in Bakersfield in April 2006. Then in June, his wife went to his scheduled hearing in San Francisco’s immigration court and learned that he had been dead for many weeks, his body unclaimed in the county morgue.

The coroner found that Mr. Rodriguez-Castro, a mover from El Salvador in the country illegally, had died of undiagnosed meningitis and H.I.V., after days complaining of fever, stiff neck and vomiting. The cause of death on the government’s list: “unresponsive.”

Immigration authorities said on Friday that the case was now under review, but would not answer questions about it or other deaths on the list. Sgt. Ed Komin, a spokesman for the jail, said the death had been promptly reported to immigration officials, who were responsible for notifying families.

Four sons in another family, in Sacramento, described trying for days to get medical care for their father, Maya Nand, a 56-year-old legal immigrant from Fiji, at a detention center run by the Corrections Corporation in Eloy, Ariz. Mr. Nand, an architectural draftsman, had been ailing when he was taken into custody on Jan. 13, 2005, apparently because his application for citizenship had been rejected, based on an earlier conviction for misdemeanor domestic violence. In collect calls, the sons said, he told them that despite his chest pains and breathing problems, doctors at the detention center did not take his condition seriously.

The Corrections Corporation said he had been seen and treated “multiple times.” But a letter to the family from an immigration official said his treatment was for a respiratory infection. The letter said that Mr. Nand was taken to an emergency room on Jan. 25, where congestive heart failure was diagnosed, and that he “suffered an apparent heart attack while at the hospital.” He died on Feb. 2, 2005, shackled to a hospital bed in Tucson.

Boubacar Bah had more going for him than many detainees. He had a lawyer and many friends and relatives in the United States, and his detention center in New Jersey was one of the few frequented by immigrant advocates.

But three days after he suffered a head injury in detention last year, no one in his New York circle knew that he was lying comatose in a Newark hospital, where he had already been identified as a possible organ donor.

“Thank you for the referral,” an organ-sharing network wrote on Feb. 3, 2007, according to hospital records. “This patient is a potential candidate for organ donation once brain death criteria is met.”

Four days after the fall, tipped off by a detainee who called Mr. Bah’s roommate in Brooklyn, relatives rushed to the detention center to ask Corrections Corporation employees where he was.

“They wouldn’t give us any information,” said Lamine Dieng, an American citizen who teaches physics at Bronx Community College and is married to Mr. Bah’s cousin Khadidiatou.

On the fifth day, they said, a detention official called them with the name of the hospital. There they found Mr. Bah on life support, still in custody, with a detention guard around the clock.

“There was one guard who knew Boubacar,” Ms. Bah said. “He told me on the down-low: ‘This guy, you have to fight for him. This guy was neglected.’ ”

Within the week, word of the case reached a reporter at The Times, through an immigration lawyer who had received separate calls from two detainees; they were upset about a badly injured man — named “something like Aboubakar” — left in an isolation cell and later found near death.

But advocacy groups said they were unaware of the case. And Michael Gilhooly, the spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that without the man’s full name and eight-digit alien registration number, he could not check the information.

For those who knew Mr. Bah, it was hard to understand how such a man could lie dying without explanations.

“Everybody liked Boubacar,” said Sadio Diallo, 48, who has a tailor shop in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where he and Mr. Bah had shared an apartment with fellow immigrants since arriving in 1998. “He’s a very, very, very good man.”

For six years, Mr. Bah had worked for L’Impasse, a clothing store in the West Village, sewing dresses that sold for up to $2,000 with what a former manager, Abdul Sall, called his “magic hands.” Mr. Bah often spent Sundays at the Bronx townhouse his cousins had inherited from the family’s first American citizen, a seaman who arrived in 1943.

In Africa, Mr. Bah’s earnings not only supported his first wife, sons and ailing mother, but in Guinean tradition, allowed him to wed a second wife, long distance. It was his longing to see them all again after eight years that landed him in detention. When he returned from a three-month visit to Guinea in May 2006, immigration authorities at Kennedy Airport told him that his green card application had been denied while he was away, automatically revoking his permission to re-enter the United States. An immigration lawyer hired by his friends was unable to reopen the application while Mr. Bah waited for nine months in detention, records showed.

Mr. Bah died on May 30, 2007, after four months in a coma. His lawyer, Theodore Vialet, requested detention reports and hospital records under the Freedom of Information Act. But by the time the records arrived last autumn, the idea of a lawsuit had been dropped.

So Mr. Vialet just filed the records away — until a reporter’s call about a name on the list of dead detainees prompted him to dig them out.

After the Fall

There are 57 pages of documents, some neatly typed by medics, some scrawled by guards. Some quote detainees who said Mr. Bah was ailing for two days before his fall on Feb. 1, and asked in vain to see a doctor.

The records leave unclear exactly when or how Mr. Bah was injured in detention. But they leave no doubt that guards, supervisors, government medical employees and federal immigration officers played a role in leaving him untreated, hour after hour, as he lapsed into a stupor.

It began about 8 a.m., according to the earliest report. Guards called a medical emergency after a detainee saw Mr. Bah collapse near a toilet, hitting the back of his head on the floor.

When he regained consciousness, Mr. Bah was taken to the medical unit, which is run by the federal Public Health Service. He became incoherent and agitated, reports said, pulling away from the doctor and grabbing at the unit staff. Physicians consulted later by The Times called this a textbook symptom of intracranial bleeding, but apparently no one recognized that at the time.

He was handcuffed and placed in leg restraints on the floor with medical approval, “to prevent injury,” a guard reported. “While on the floor the detainee began to yell in a foreign language and turn from side to side,” the guard wrote, and the medical staff deemed that “the screaming and resisting is behavior problems.”

Mr. Bah was ordered to calm down. Instead, he kept crying out, then “began to regurgitate on the floor of medical,” the report said. So Mr. Bah was written up for disobeying orders. And with the approval of a physician assistant, Michael Chuley, who wrote that Mr. Bah’s fall was unwitnessed and “questionable,” the tailor was taken in shackles to a solitary confinement cell with instructions that he be monitored.

Under detention protocols, an officer videotaped Mr. Bah as he lay vomiting in the medical unit, but the camera’s battery failed, guards wrote, when they tried to tape his trip to cell No. 7.

Inside the cell, a supervisor removed Mr. Bah’s restraints. He was unresponsive to questions asked by the Public Health Service officer on duty, a report said, adding: “The detainee set up in his bed and moan and he fell to his left side and hit his head on the bed rail.”

About 9 a.m., with the approval of the health officer and a federal immigration agent, the cell was locked.

The watching began. As guards checked hourly, Mr. Bah appeared to be asleep on the concrete floor, snoring. But he could not be roused to eat lunch or dinner, and at 7:10 p.m., “he began to breathe heavily and started foaming slightly at the mouth,” a guard wrote. “I notified medical at this time.”

However, the nurse on duty rejected the guard’s request to come check, according to reports. And at 8 p.m., when the warden went to the medical unit to describe Mr. Bah’s condition, the nurse, Raymund Dela Pena, was not alarmed. “Detainee is likely exhibiting the same behavior as earlier in the day,” he wrote, adding that Mr. Bah would get a mental health exam in the morning.

About 10:30 p.m., more than 14 hours after Mr. Bah’s fall, the same nurse, on rounds, recognized the gravity of his condition: “unresponsive on the floor incontinent with foamy brown vomitus noted around mouth.” Smelling salts were tried. Mr. Bah was carried back to the medical unit on a stretcher.

Just before 11, someone at the jail called 911.

When an ambulance left Mr. Bah at the hospital, brain scans showed he had a fractured skull and hemorrhages at all sides of his swelling brain. He was rushed to surgery, and the detention center was informed of the findings.

But in a report to their supervisors the next day, immigration officials at the center described Mr. Bah’s ailment as “brain aneurysms” — a diagnosis they corrected a week later to “hemorrhages,” without mentioning the skull fracture. After Mr. Bah’s death, they wrote that his hospitalization was “subsequent to a fall in the shower.”

The nurse, Mr. Dela Pena, and the physician assistant, Mr. Chuley, said that only their superiors could discuss the case. The Public Health Service did not respond to questions, and the Corrections Corporation said medical decisions were the responsibility of the Public Health Service.

Mr. Bah’s cousins demanded an autopsy, but the Union County medical examiner’s confidential report was not completed until Dec. 6. It was sent to the county prosecutor’s office only as a matter of routine, because the matter had been classified as an “unattended accident resulting in death.”

Prosecutors said they did not investigate. “According to the report, Bah suffered a fall in the shower,” Eileen Walsh, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors, said in an e-mail message. “We are not privy to any other bits of information.”

In the home movies Mr. Bah made of his last journey home, he is only a fleeting presence: a slim man with a shy smile. But without his support, relatives in Africa say they have little money for food and none for his sons’ schooling.

His body went back to Guinea in a sealed coffin.

“I stayed here seven years, waiting for him,” his second wife, Mariama, said in French, recalling their long separation and the brief reunion that led to the birth of their son, now a toddler, while Mr. Bah was in detention.

“I wanted them to open the casket,” she added, “to know if it was him inside. Until today, I cry for him.”

Margot Williams contributed reporting.

From Haymarket to Sebokeng: the Struggle Continues

2008-05-05T11:10:00.001-04:00

A comrade fighting for water and housing in Sebokeng, south of Johannesburg, was murdered by police on the night of April 30. The ZACF condemns the latest outrage in a long tale of repression of working class movements, and calls on the oppressed to stand firm in struggle.

On 1 May 1886, the workers of the United States went on strike for the eight-hour day. It was not long before they faced the wrath of the police, the repressive forces of the state, the defenders of capital. The cops murdered four workers at a picket in Chicago on 3 May. A peaceful gathering was held the following day in Chicago's Haymarket Square to protest; the cops ordered the workers to disperse; an unknown person threw a bomb at the forces of repression; the defenders of capital opened fire; at least 50 people were killed, including several cops who shot at each other. Eight anarchists were charged with the bombing. There was never any evidence that any of them had anything to do with it; but in a farcical trial, all were convicted, for no other reason than their commitment to the liberation of the workers. Four were executed.

Every May Day, the workers of the world remember the martyrs of the struggle for the eight-hour day. But the struggle continues. And to this day, the cops, far from defending justice and the rule of law, remain ready to murder working class militants in defence of capital.

On 29 April 2008, the people of Sebokeng Ward 2 (south of Johannesburg) blockaded the Golden Highway to campaign against the introduction of prepaid water meters; to protest against houses that had been built on a landfill and were sinking into the earth; and to demand the resignation of the municipal councillor who had lied to them and refused to respond to their complaints. Once again, the police opened fire with live ammunition. This time no one was injured; but that night the cops went from door to door in Sebokeng, and arrested more than 10 working class militants. As is usual with social movement militants in South Africa today, those arrested were charged with public violence. As usual, the cops knew the charges would not stand up. The comrades were released the following day, and the charges have been dropped.

But this is not the end of the story.

One comrade, Mathaseni, a militant of the Sebokeng Ward 2 Concerned Residents and the Coalition Against Water Privatisation (CAWP), was severely beaten in custody, and hospitalised. He was released from hospital on 30 April. He was arrested again that evening. Today, 1 May 2008, 122 years after the Haymarket strike, he was found dead. (The ZACF has not yet been able to learn comrade Mathaseni's surname.)

As at Haymarket, the cops are determined to crush the working class struggle. As at Haymarket, if they cannot suppress us legally, they turn to lies, violence and murder. It may be that they seek those who they see as "leaders" of the resistance, or it may be that they wish to throw the whole movement of the working class into fear and terror, but their aim is clear: to keep us in poverty and slavery by force.

But we will not be cowed. The struggle continues.

The CAWP and the Concerned Residents have called for an investigation of Mathaseni's murder, and for the disbanding of the local Community Policing Forum, which has been heavily involved in the repression of the working class movement. The ZACF supports these demands.

At the same time, we go further, seeing Mathaseni's murder as part of the repression of the working class that has been going on since Haymarket and long before.

Yesterday, 30 April, the Johannesburg high court ruled that the forced installation of prepaid water meters was illegal, violating the constitutional right to water. This was a victory for the working class, organised in the Coalition Against Water Privatisation and the Anti-Privatisation Forum. But against the armed force of the state, legal decisions alone will not secure the needs of the workers and the poor. The Johannesburg metro council is proposing to increase water tariffs, and to cut down even the paltry "free basic water" they have promised to deliver. Why should they be deterred by a mere court decision, when they have the cops to crack down on us? The people of Sebokeng demanded nothing other than their rights to water and housing, recognised even under South Africa's capitalist constitution. But their demands were met with denial, with bullets, with arrest, with torture, with murder.

The police force exists for no other purpose than to keep the workers and the poor in slavery, the capitalists and the politicians in power. We cannot call on the cops to protect us from crime, when they are the armed force of the biggest criminals of all. It is only by self-organisation, self-defence and direct action that we can win water, houses, electricity or decent working conditions – and ultimately build a great global movement of the workers, the poor and the peasants, to free ourselves of the cancers of greedy capitalists, lying politicians and murderous cops.

THE WORKING CLASS UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED!

Issued by Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front
and Anarchist Black Cross South Africa,
1 May 2008

22nd Carnival of Socialism

2008-05-04T12:31:00.001-04:00

The 22nd Carnival of Socialism has been hosted by the Socialist Unity Blog, and is divided into sections on feminism and China. Feminism is a fundamental left issue, and it is worth noting that there is an excellent Carnival of Feminism for further reading. Meanwhile, as the world's media begins looking for China stories in advance of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, they could do worse than begin at Andy's selection of blog posts on Tibet, human rights and central planning in China.

A special May Day Carnival was hosted on Carnival of Socialism ON MAY 1ST. Please check it out!

Canadian Labor Congress expresses Solidarity With Zimbabwe Workers

2008-05-02T10:04:00.001-04:00

Solidarity Statement with Zimbabwean Workers

May 1, 2008

On behalf of 3.2 million Canadian working women and men, and their families, I would like to extend our message of solidarity with workers in Zimbabwe, as part of May 1.

We want to commend the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) for being a strong voice representing the social, economic and political rights of Zimbabwean workers. In particular, I want to congratulate your leadership for its success in maintaining solidarity amongst all workers during the present political crisis, irrespective of gender, region, sector or political affiliation.

We believe that unions in Zimbabwe will remain a critical institution in ensuring respect for workers' rights, democracy, and the protection of human rights. We support your efforts to protect the principle of a free and fair electoral process and the current political efforts to "protect the Votes" of millions of Zimbabwean citizens who went to the polls to elect their political leadership.

The Canadian Labour Congress considers the ZCTU a crucial voice in our global struggles to defend working families everywhere.

Rally for Justice for Sean Bell

2008-04-25T15:38:00.001-04:00

Please come out to the RALLY at the Queens District Attorney's office TODAY at 5:30pm @ 125-01 Queens Blvd. (between Hoover Ave & 82nd Ave.) E or F train to Union Turnpike.

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From:
stic.man of deadprez
Date: Apr 25, 2008 10:55 AM

50 shots!!! how is that NOT murder? fuck this system...

NEW YORK - Three detectives were acquitted of all charges Friday in the 50-shot killing of an unarmed groom-to-be on his wedding day, a case that put the NYPD at the center of another dispute involving allegations of excessive firepower.

Justice Arthur Cooperman delivered the verdict in a Queens courtroom packed with spectators, including victim Sean Bell's fiancee and parents, and at least 200 people gathered outside the building.

The verdict provoked an outpouring of emotions: Bell's fiancee immediately walked out of the room. His mother cried.

Outside the courthouse, which was surrounded by scores of police officers, many in the crowd began weeping as news of the verdict said.

Others were enraged, swearing and screaming "Murderers! Murderers!" or "KKK!"

Bell, a 23-year-old black man, was killed in a hail of gunfire outside a seedy strip club in Queens on Nov. 25, 2006 — his wedding day — as he was leaving his bachelor party with two friends.

Officers Michael Oliver, 36, and Gescard Isnora, 29, stood trial for manslaughter while Officer Marc Cooper, 40, was charged only with reckless endangerment. Two other shooters weren't charged. Oliver squeezed off 31 shots; Isnora fired 11 rounds; and Cooper shot four times.

The officers, complaining that pretrial publicity had unfairly painted them as cold-blooded killers, opted to have the judge decide the case rather than a jury.

The judge indicated that the police officers' version of events was more credible than the victims' version. "The people have not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that each defendant was not justified" in firing, he said.

A conviction on manslaughter could have brought up to 25 years in prison; the penalty for reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor, is a year behind bars.

The case brought back painful memories of other NYPD shootings, such as the 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo — an African immigrant who was gunned down in a hail of 41 bullets by police officers who mistook his wallet for a gun. The acquittal of the officers in that case created a storm of protest, with hundreds arrested after taking to the streets in demonstration.

The mood surrounding this case has been muted by comparison, although Bell's fiancee, parents and their supporters, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, have held rallies demanding that the officers — two of whom are black — be held accountable.

Still, a phalanx of police officers, some uniformed and some in the department's community affairs polo shirts, was stationed outside the courthouse Friday. The building was ringed by metal barricades. Some in the crowd wore buttons with Bell's picture or held signs saying "Justice for Sean Bell." After the verdict was read, some in the crowd approached officers but were held back; the jostling quickly died down.

After the verdict, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly acknowledged that some people were disappointed with the acquittals.

"We don't anticipate violence, but we are prepared for any contingency," he said.

The nearly two-month trial was marked by deeply divergent accounts of the night.

The defense painted the victims as drunken thugs who the officers believed were armed and dangerous. Prosecutors sought to convince the judge that the victims had been minding their own business, and that the officers were inept, trigger-happy aggressors.

None of the officers took the witness stand in his own defense. Instead, Cooperman heard transcripts of the officers testifying before a grand jury, saying they believed they had good reason to use deadly force. The judge also heard testimony from Bell's two injured companions, who insisted the maelstrom erupted without warning.

Both sides were consistent on one point: The utter chaos surrounding the last moments of Bell's life.

"It happened so quick," Isnora said in his grand jury testimony. "It was like the last thing I ever wanted to do.

"

Bell's companions — Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman — also offered dramatic testimony about the episode. Benefield and Guzman were both wounded; Guzman still has four bullets lodged in his body.

Referring to Isnora, Guzman said, "This dude is shooting like he's crazy, like he's out of his mind.

"

The victims and shooters were set on a fateful collision course by a pair of innocuous decisions: Bell's to have a last-minute bachelor party at Kalua Cabaret, and the undercover detectives' to investigate reports of prostitution at the club.

As the club closed around 4 a.m., Sanchez and Isnora claimed they overheard Bell and his friends first flirt with women, then taunt a stranger who responded by putting his right hand in his pocket as if he had a gun. Guzman, they testified, said, "Yo, go get my gun" — something Bell's friends denied.

Isnora said he decided to arm himself, call for backup — "It's getting hot," he told his supervisor — and tail Bell, Guzman and Benefield as they went around the corner and got into Bell's car. He claimed that after warning the men to halt, Bell pulled away, bumped him and rammed an unmarked police van that converged on the scene with Oliver at the wheel.

The detective also alleged that Guzman made a sudden move as if he were reaching for a gun.

"I yelled 'Gun!' and fired," he said. "In my mind, I knew (Guzman) had a gun.

"

Benefield and Guzman testified that there were no orders. Instead, Guzman said, Isnora "appeared out of nowhere" with a gun drawn and shot him in the shoulder — the first of 16 shots to enter his body.

"That's all there was — gunfire," he said. "There wasn't nothing else.

"

With tires screeching, glass breaking and bullets flying, the officers claimed that they believed they were the ones under fire. Oliver responded by emptying his semiautomatic pistol, reloading, and emptying it again, as the supervisor sought cover.

URGENT - STOP CHINESE ARMS SHIPMENT TO THE ZIMBABWEAN REGIME

2008-04-22T09:23:00.001-04:00

THE WORKING CLASS TAKES A STAND:
STOP CHINESE ARMS SHIPMENT TO THE ZIMBABWEAN REGIME!
by Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front

We welcome and support the decision by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union for their workers neither to unload nor transport the shipment of Chinese-made armaments destined for Zimbabwe. This is a very encouraging sign of working class solidarity and internationalism, and we hope that such actions will indeed prevent this weapons consignment from reaching its destination - the Zimbabwean Defence Force.

At the same time, if the transport workers should fail, if President Robert Mugabe's friends should find a way to bypass their resistance, all who stand with the Zimbabwean people should be ready to take a stand. Should the action taken by Satawu fail to prevent the armaments from being transported across South African territory to Zimbabwe, we call on all progressive elements across the country to intervene.

On 29 March 2008, parliamentary, presidential and local elections were held in Zimbabwe. This represented the last-gasp attempt of the Movement for Democratic Change to oust the 28-year-old regime of incumbent President Robert Mugabe, after a series of contestations since 2000 had resulted in an impasse.

The results of the parliamentary election show that the MDC has a narrow majority, but the results of the presidential election have been unaccountably delayed – presumably to allow Mugabe's regime to reassert its authority over the masses of the people who have been brutalised and impoverished.

These facts are well known to the world's progressive forces and to those who struggle for economic, social and political justice and equality. Now, in the hour of Mugabe's ultimate betrayal, a new threat has arisen in the form of a shipment of Chinese armaments – including rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 assault rifle rounds and mortars – which, we fear with justification, will be used to forcibly suppress the democratic forces in Zimbabwe, and could lead directly to the murder of thousands of Zimbabwean people.

We are fully aware of the heroic resistance of the Zimbabwean people to racist domination and their successful defeat of the regime of Ian Smith in 1980. This resistance was both pluralistic via the guerrillas of both Zanla and Zipra, and multiracial – even if the majority of white "Rhodesians" chose to abandon their country after independence.

But we are equally aware of the grievous injury done to the cause of the people by Mugabe's paranoia over the years – even if this paranoia was well-founded on apartheid attempts on his own life – and the dead of Matabeleland [1] and the displaced of Operation Murambatsvina [2] cry out for social justice.

Now, with the whole world watching – and the Southern African Development Community vacillating as predicted in its usual ineffective "engagements" – Mugabe has again stolen not only a march on the opposition, but the future of his people.

Journalists are being expelled and election observers have already fled the roost, allowing blood to flow in the streets unseen and unchecked: scanty reports now emerge of torture, murder, evictions, dispossessions and beating.

And now we have caught, red-handed, a Chinese shipment of arms to this regime, a regime that by all accounts is in terminal decline, with the highest inflation rate in the world and an elite that is already displaying the most grotesque elements of social decay imaginable.

We call on all progressive groups, organisations and individuals to physically prevent, whether peacefully or with necessary force, the shipment of arms to one of the world's most despised pariah dictatorships. This call extends to the progressive world community to do whatever they can to bring this to public attention and to prevent possible massacre.

This could include:

Targeting and putting pressure on South African Port Authorities not to allow the consignment to come onto land.

Targeting South African, Chinese and Zimbabwean embassies and diplomatic missions with pickets, protests and other non-violent direct actions - against representatives of these governments - and not the ordinary citizens of these states. (We will not tolerate any actions against Chinese, Zimbabwean or South African people on the basis of their ethnicity and/ or nationality).

Gathering intelligence about the whereabouts, planned route and mode of transport for the armaments, and publicising these.

Blockading these routes in a non-violent manner with an eye to preventing the armaments from reaching their destination.

Blockading the South African border with Zimbabwe should the armaments reach it.

Supporting and sustaining the transport workers in their refusal to unload and transport the weapons
Defending the transport workers and anyone else who faces repression as a result of their efforts to stop the weapons reaching their destination.

Link this struggle directly to global opposition to China's campaign to suppress the Tibetan people and turn the 2008 Olympics into a replica of the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany – where nationalist sporting events were used as a cover for gross human rights abuses.

What we know:

A Chinese ship, An Yue Jiang - owned by the parastatal Chinese Ocean Shipping Company - carrying armaments destined for Zimbabwe has anchored at Durban harbour.

The shipment contains almost three million rounds of ammunitions for small arms and AK-47s, about 3 500 mortars and mortar launchers, as well as 1 500 rockets for rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and is valued at R9,88million.

The ship's cargo documentation was allegedly finalised just 3 days after the Zimbabwean elections.

The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union has refused to unload or transport the arms consignment, although this does not mean someone else won't.

About 10 Chinese soldiers armed with pistols have been seen with Zimbabwean military officials in Harare.

THIS SHIPMENT WILL BE STOPPED BY THE DIRECT ACTION OF THE PEOPLE!
MUGABE WILL FALL!
BUT WE, THE AFRICAN PEOPLE, WILL STAND IN HIS STEAD!

For further information contact Michael Schmidt, ZACF International Secretary on 082 334-6665 or Jonathan Payn, ZACF Regional Secretary on 084 946-4240

Footnotes:

[1] The Matabeleland Massacre, between 1982 - 1983 was an attempt by ZANU-PF on the ethnic cleansing of people of the Ndebele ethno-political group living in the Matabeleland region. An estimated 20 000 people were murdered.

[2] Known in English as Operation Drive Out Trash, Operation Murambastvina was a large scale government campaign to forcibly clear out slum areas, effectively displacing an estimated 2.4 million people.
See http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Operation_Murambatsvina

Postet Suite 47, Private Bag X1, Fordsburg, 2033, South Africa
zacf@zabalaza.net
www. zabalaza. net

Anti-Authoritarianism and the Black Experience: Draft

2008-04-11T12:27:00.007-04:00

African Americana study group draft of Anti-Authoritarianism in the Black Experience.

Introduction / What is Anti-Authoritarianism

The Black Experience is one which has found African Americans on the opposite side of America's rapid accumulation of capital. If the process of capital accumulation is a principal motor of modern history, then the brutal exploitation of Blacks, particularly slavery, is what set the wheels in motion. The high rate of exploitation, combined with the expropriation of surplus value from Black labor is not only the cause of America's vast amount of wealth, but also the reason why that wealth is disproportionately allocated.

"America's democratic government and free enterprise system are structured deliberately and specifically to maximize Black Oppression", notes activist and scholar Marable Manning. Capitalist development not only created and maintained institutional racism through it's state apparatus, but inherently depends on it. Consequently, structural inequality did not end after the abolition of slavery, but continued into present times. The Urban League's The State of Black America 2008 executive summary points out that Black unemployment is over 2 times of that as whites, widening an economic divide where three times as many Blacks as whites live below 125% of the poverty line.

This paper however is not a comprehensive reference to the economic, social and political history of Black America; nor is it explanation for the current status and underdevelopment of Black America. It is, instead, a discussion of what we come to understand as key features that have sporadically appeared throughout the Black Liberation Struggle.

African resistance occurred at every stage in American history. Slave rebellions exploded in all corners of the "New World"; from North America to the West Indies to South America. The Civil Rights movement rebelled against Segregation and Jim Crow laws that denied Blacks the most basic of rights. The Black Power Movement further challenged structural inequality and state oppression. At present times the African American community continually finds itself at odds with the State in the form of police brutality and gentrification.

In all cases Liberty, the right to act according to one's own will, were denied from African Americans. The conditions African Americans suffered from the State during these periods developed anti-statist and/or anti-authoritarian tendencies within the community. As CLR James said,"What Negro, particularly below the Mason-Dixon line, believes that the bourgeois state is a state above all classes, serving the needs of all the people? They may not formulate their belief in Marxist terms, but their experience drives them to reject this shibboleth of bourgeois democracy." Ultimately, the Black Experience is one which constitutes an ongoing struggle by African Americans to free themselves from oppression, tyranny, exploitation and control.

We argue that both historically and in the future, anarchistic principles and values play an integral part in the struggle for Black Liberation in the United States. The framework from which we constructed our analysis is twofold: (1)An empirical observation of anarchistic values and practices in the struggle; and (2)to try to explain these occurrences in their proper historical context. Our argument centres on the analysis of the ways in which anarchistic values, such as anti-authoritarianism, have developed within the Black Liberation struggle both by the circumstances of the Black Experience and by certain ideologies and political currents of the times. And although there are obviously vast differences between the main ideologies in the struggle for Black Liberation, we argue that these struggles shared a generalized value of anti-authoritarianism and an acute sense of anti-establishment.

We have to come to realize that anti-authoritarianism is not conditional - it doesn't exist to an "extent", doesn't stop at a point where convenience becomes a factor. Anti-authoritarianism is not an element of a movement - it IS the movement. As such, even though the target of African Americans were anti-authoritarian in nature, there were not always organized along the same values. If the next stage of Black Liberation is to be successful it must fully adopt anti-authoritarianism and other anarchistic values(self-management, solidarity, etc) in practice. We support the development of mass anti-authoritarian organizations controlled by its membership. We advocate this method of self-management in order to counteract bureaucratic or authoritarian tendencies from developing within the organization and movement. In order to fully grasp the reasoning behind this call, Africana people must connect past with present.

Slavery

Mary Prince in her narrative declared, “All slaves want to be free” and states, “I can tell by myself what other slaves feel, and by what they have told me. The man that says slaves be quite happy in slavery – that they don’t want to be free – that man is either ignorant or a lying person. I never heard a slave say so.”

Mary Prince’s The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself is the earliest know slave narrative by a woman, which highlights the treatment of slaves. It was published in 1831, almost 300 years after the first African slave was transported from the African coast. It is a saga of overwork, abuse and sexual violence that well over 15 million unnamed slaves had experienced during Colonial Slavery.

The practice of slavery existed in many societies, however American chattel slavery developed a more brutal and racial character. Tens of millions of Africans were enslaved and transported to perform unfree labor in the Americas, Asia and Europe. The population of Africa soon became the source of cheap labor needed by Europeans to accumulate capital. It is estimated Portugal was responsible for transporting over 4.5 million Africans, not counting the many millions who perished inroute to the Americas. As black historian W.E.B DeBois noted, "It was the rape of a continent seldom if ever paralleled in ancient or modern history".

Legally owned throughout their lives, black labor created the wealth that made economic growth possible in the US and further developed capitalist production. The slaves went unrewarded for the work they were forced to regularly perform. The product of their labor was not owned by them but by their slaveowners. This surplus labor - unpaid labor - was both the source of wealth for the slave owning class and the industrializing North. South Carolina delegate Rawlin Lowndes said, "Without Negroes, this state would degenerate into one of the most contempible in the union..Negroes are our wealth, our only natural resource".

The exploitation of black slave labor was the backbone for US economic activity and prosperity. It was essential then for the US state apparatus to "facilitate the expansion and entrenchment of institutional racism in both slave and non-slave holding states". The Barbados Slave Code of 1661 served as the basis for the slave codes that would be developed in British North America. South Carolina in 1696 passed a law reducing the status of enslaved Africans to that of chattel property and other colonies soon followed. In 1705 Virginia passed a law stating that only people of African descent can be slaves. Similar to the Virginia laws, Kentucky defined enslaved Blacks as real estate legally speaking, with no civil or human rights. The evolution of slave codes further stripped away any protection enslaved and free blacks would have under the law.

The Constitutional Convetion of 1787 was essentially a compromise between the slaveholding class of the South and the monied North. The delegates "chief concern was the the creation of a strong national government that would gurantee property rights - slavery being among them. The convention First, for purposes of electoral represention and taxation slaves were counted as three-fifths of a human being. Second, federal authorities were prohibited from interfering with the slave trade before the year 1808. Lastly, states were obliged to return all fugitive slaves to their rightful owners.The ratification of the US Constitution protected the institution of slavery and wove institutional racism into the fabric of American society. White supremacy trumped Black liberty, as various states established laws prohibited blacks from voting, leaving the plantation without certification, owning weapons, and gathering with other blacks for more than four hours. Though these laws were installed essentially to protect the institutions for economic and political prosperity, the underlying cause for their creation in most cases were in fact due to African resistance.

Numerous black slave rebellions and insurrections took place in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries. There is documentary evidence of more than 313 uprisings or attempted uprisings of ten or more slaves. Virginia had 84 documented cases of slave insurrections, twice as many Louisiana and South Carolina. As early as 1663 black slaves in Gloucester County, Virginia conspired with white indentured servents to revolt but were betrayed by the servents. The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 was the result of enslaved Africans communicating and conspiring with other enslaved Africans and free blacks. On the night of April, 1712 the men set fire to a building and attacked the white colonists as they tried to put out the flame. Their actions left 9 whites dead and new slave codes to be created prohibiting blacks from carrying firearms andgathering in groups of more than three. The Stono Rebellion was a slave rebellion begun on Sunday, September 9, 1739, in the colony of South Carolina. The rebellion started with a group of 20 before recruiting 60 other slaves. Chanting the word "liberty" as they marched, the group burned seven plantations and killed around 20 whites before being suppressed by a South Carolina militia. The rebellion inspired future slave uprisings in South Carolina and prompted officials to enforce stricter slave codes; prohibiting assembly, movement and education of enslaved blacks. Yet, at each corner slaves defied laws denying them their liberty and continued to learn to read and assemble to plot their freedom. Inspired by the Haitian Revolution, former slave Denmark Vessey in (year) plotted with other slaves and free blacks to lead an insurrection to slay plantation owners and seize the city of Charleston before fleeing to Haiti. Arguably though the most famous revolt was Nat Turner's slave rebellion of 1831. Slaves in the rebellion killed approximately 60 whites, the highest number of fatalities caused by slave uprisings in the South. Again the natural response of the state apparatus was to further limit the liberty of blacks, both slave and free, by denying the rights to assemble or for education. However, it seems the moreso black liberty was stifled the resistance and struggle for freedom increased.

It must be also noted that rebellion often took place even before slaves took foot on foreign soil. Captured Africans often mutinied on board slave trading vessels. In 1765 Africans launched an unsuccessful revolt onboard the Connecticut vessel Hope, killing one crew member and injuring several others before being suppressed. In November of 1841 the 135 Africans onboard Creole overpowered it's crew members and changed the course of destination from New Orleans to the Bahamas where they were declared free. In 1839, Africans, led by Cinque, rebelled and killed the captain and three crewmen. They ordered the cew to sail to Africa but instead the ship was steered the ship along the coast of the US where it was seized by US authorities. In January 1841, the Supreme Court rendered its decision relating to the Amistad affair. The court ruled in favor of the slaves and the Africans were returned to Africa.

Throughout the America resistance to slavery and the plantation system took the form of runaway slave communities called maroons, quilombos or mocambos.The most famous runaway slave community of the Americas was Quilombo dos Palmares, a series of Brazilian mocambos founded in the end of the 16th century which survived up until 1694 before being crushed by Portuguese, Indian and white forces. Palmares was formed when a small group of slaves escaped from their home plantation after a rebellion . They violentetly turned on their masters before taking to the forrests with supplies and all of their worldly possessions. They ventured over the harsh terrain and settled in a valley that came to be the quilombo at Palmares. What began as a small fugitive camp quickly grew in size and complexity. Estimates place the population of Palmares in the 1690's at around 10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants. The autonomous region succesfully defended the territory while simultaneously performing raids on nearby plantaitions, freeing slaves, destroying crops and stealing supplies. When the territory was finally captured 200 Palmarista soldiers committed suicide rather than return to bondage. In an effort to demoralize and intimidate Africans, the Palmarista general Zambi was decapitated in a public execution and head put on display. But instead, quilombos continued to exist in Brazil and lore of Zambi spread, as more fugitive slaves formed settlements in Brazil. In the United States, at least 50 maroons existed between 1672 and 1864. In the late 1600s large amounts of African slaves fled the British American colonies to Spanish Florida to establish maroons. Establishing an alliance with Seminole Indians, by 1822 it was estimated the maroons of Florida had a population over 800. However, the existence of free and armed black communities was a major concern to American slaveholders. A effort to relocated the Seminole Indians(and possible re-enslavement of Blacks) led to the rebellion. The Black Seminole rebellion in Florida evolved into a maroon war that inspired the country's largest slave rebellion. Eugene Genovese claims the "most impressive slave revolts in the hemisphere proceeded in alliance with maroons or took place in periods in which maroon activity was directly undermining the slave regime or inspiring the slaves by example." Over 400 slaves rebelled on plantations and fled to join the Seminoles in their pursuit of freedom from US opression.

The Black Experience is different from other ethnic groups in America due to the fact they did not immigrate "in search of Liberty" but were transplanted by force and subsequently denied Liberty. As such, resistance towards domination occured at the very beginning of the history of Africans in America. As noted, resistance took the form of running away, the establishment of slave communities, sabotage, and "slow downs". These actions of rebellion , particularly mass flight to the North drained the Southern economy of its human property - the creator of its wealth. DuBois,argued that the massive flight of slaves from the Southern plantations during the Civil War constituted a "general strike" of workers: "This was not merely the desire to stop work," but "a strike on a wide basis against the conditions of work," which "directly involved in the end perhaps a half million people." The struggle for emancipation displayed by Blacks both enslaved and free was a leading cause to the destruction of the institution of slavery.

ZACF Statement on the Murder of Pudemo Deputy President Dr. Gabriel Thandokuhle Mkhumane

2008-04-09T14:25:00.000-04:00

The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front was saddened and concerned to learn of the murder of Pudemo Deputy President Dr. Gabriel Thandokuhle Mkhumane.

Although the truth behind his murder seems unclear, with some mainstream newspapers in Swaziland reporting that C'de Mkhumane was victim of a violent robbery, and although township life is by definition far from safe from random criminality; the murder took place close to Swaziland, in an area where many Swazis live and in which their intelligence and undercover cops operate, so we feel the likelihood is great that this was a politically-motivated assassination.

It appears to indicate the murderous nature of the Mswati regime, and the degree to which the regime will go to protect its interests, and though it creates a martyr for Pudemo, the hit (if it is such) must be seen as a blow against the very idea of popular democracy in Swaziland, a blow directed at the people as a whole by targeting a figure representative (in the state's mind at least) of that people.

Our sympathies go out to all those who have lost a friend, comrade or family member. We urge Swazi revolutionaries and freedom fighters not to be disheartened or deterred from their revolutionary duties, and we hope that anyone who is in a position to delve deeper and get to the truth behind C'de Mkhumane's murder does so.

It is true that many a freedom fighter, both in Swaziland and exiled around the world, have lost a friend and a comrade, but the struggle continues. Let us all be inspired by the life of a comrade dedicated to the overthrow of the Tinkhundla system, as well as being incensed by his murder; resolving to do all that we can, in our own way, to strengthen, advance and support the Swazi people in their struggle for freedom.

Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front
April, 2008

Egyptian Forces Face Tough Internet Activists

2008-04-08T09:08:00.003-04:00

Interesting article on how technology in Egypt has been fanning the flames for democracy and better working conditions. Blogging, Facebook and SMS text messages have become powerful tools in the Egyptian activists arsenal, informing Egyptians of planned actions and providing up to date reports of ongoing situations such as strikes, protests, rallies,etc .

In the old days when you wanted to suppress a general strike you just sent in the troops to crack some heads. Nowadays, Egypt's security forces are facing an army of Internet-savvy activists using Twitter, Facebook, text messaging and blogging as their weapons.

By JOHN EHAB in Cairo and ALEXANDRA SANDELS in Beirut

In order to better squelch street protests Egyptian authorities have taken to preemptive arrests of activist bloggers. © Jano Charbel

BEIRUT/CAIRO, April 7, 2008 (MENASSAT) – It's Monday morning, the day after a general strike in Egypt was partly thwarted by a preemptive crackdown by the country's security forces. In his Cairo apartment, award-winning blogger Wael Abbas is frantically typing away on his blog, Egyptian Awareness, and uploading photos from the street rallies. The Egyptian news is blaring in the background and Abbas' mobile phone is constantly beeping from incoming text messages.

Abbas has been at it for hours; providing fellow activists, the media, and random Internet users with the latest updates on the uprisings that are currently sweeping through his country. Photos on his blog show protesters shouting slogans in Cairo's main square, Midan Tahrir, before a field of security troops and plainclothes officers. On Abbas' blog is a link to his Twitter account where one can find out precisely who has been arrested, released, and re-arrested over the past two days.

It is a picture of Egypt that the authorities do not want the outside world to see. And while the state-run mainstream media routinely oblige the government by ignoring the protests, Egypt's bloggers are not so easily shut up.

Which goes a long way to explain why among yesterday's detainees were not only demonstrators and political activists but also a number of bloggers.

"Malik, Sharkawy and several independent bloggers as well as some web activists from the labor party were detained," Abbas told MENASSAT over the phone.

The strike in Cairo and in the industrial city of Mahalla el-Kubra was directed against rising prices, stagnating wages and the increasing gap between rich and poor in Egypt.

'Pyjamahedeen'

To be sure, last weekend's protest was not quite the national uprising against the regime of president Hosni Mubarak it was billed to be – thousands of riot police made sure of that.

Nearly 300 demonstrators were reportedly arrested. At least two schools were burned to the ground and security troops were met by stone-throwing crowds around the factories of Mahalla el-Kubra, the nucleus of the nation's textile industry.

In downtown Cairo, the streets were mostly empty as demonstrators were confronted by hundreds of trucks filled with anti-riot troops. One security official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told MENASSAT that the security forces had been given the green light to use "tough methods" in order to retain control of the streets.

Egypt’s outspoken bloggers constitute one of the most active blogging communities in the Arab world and their online activism has become a constant pain for the authorities. Waging war on the regime from their bedrooms, they sometimes proudly refer to themselves as the "pyjamahedeen."

In a country where rights groups cite a deteriorating press environment and severe crackdowns on free speech, the web activists are often the first to break stories on sensitive issues, such as police abuse and torture. Moreover, their activities often play a key role in the organizing of demonstrations and anti-governmental rallies.

"The role of the bloggers in Egypt is really important. People depend on us to receive news and to know what’s happening in the country," blogger Wa7damasrya (Egyptian girl) told MENASSAT.

A journalist in Cairo said, "One must read the blogs these days in order to find out what’s really happening in Egypt."

But the authorities are catching on, and web activism in Egypt comes with a price tag these days. Many bloggers claim to have been subjected to arrest, harassment, detainment, and even imprisonment - an indication to that the regime is becoming increasingly aware of the power of web activism.

Last weekend's protests were no exception. Egyptian activists started campaigning online a few weeks ago, urging their fellow citizens to participate in a nation-wide protest.

Preemptive arrests of bloggers

The crowds soon mobilized in large numbers on the blogs and through the popular social networking site Facebook and mobile phone text messaging. The Facebook group that was created for the event has almost 2,000 members.

"I first heard about the strike through an email and then I joined the Facebook group," said Dahlia, a public relations employee at a private firm in Cairo.

Emails and text messages urged people to not leave their homes on Sunday. "Don't go to work, don't go to school," became the adopted slogan.

On Sunday afternoon, the virtual protest moved into the real world when a thousand protestors gathered in downtown Cairo shouting anti-government slogans such as "Down down with Mubarak" - and were met by a huge force of very real members of the security forces.

Wa7damasreya, who attended the rally, referred to the event as a clear illustration of the "terrorism of the state," saying she came close to being arrested herself.

"State security tried to confiscate my camera. Several students from the American University were taken away. It was completely chaotic," she told MENASSAT.

Wa7damasreya shortly thereafter gave an eyewitness account of the Cairo tumult to the sattelite TV channel Al-Hurra.

Further proof of the importance of web activism is that the authorities have taken to preemptive arrests of bloggers ahead of street protests. On Saturday night, Egyptian police reportedly paid an unannounced visit to the apartment of blogger Mohammed el-Sharkawy in Cairo and arrested him. Another prominent web activist known as ‘Malik’ was also arrested before Sunday’s big showdown.

Mohamed Abdel Kuddous, a journalist and a member of the opposition movement Kefaya (‘enough’ in Arabic), says he was detained by plainclothes police when leaving his house in the early morning hours to attend the protest.

"They blindfolded me and took me to a police camp on the outskirts of Cairo. This is evidence that this is a weak dictatorship, a military regime which is based on repression," Kuddous told MENASSAT.

Meanwhile, in the state-run media...

The bloggers were quick to respond, setting up several 'web hotlines,' among them http://6april08.blogspot.com, where activists could find up-to-date information and useful phone numbers. Abbas' own hotline served as "one of the most important outlets for activists," said Wa7damasreya.

Predictably, the government-controlled mass media provided a somewhat different picture of Sunday than that of the blogs and the independent media.

State-owned TV stations and newspapers broadcast a statement from the Ministry of Interior warning people against participating in the "illegitimate strikes." During Sunday's protests, the same TV stations showed students on their way to school in an aim to prove ‘the failure of the strike’.

Egypt's most prominent state-run daily, Al-Ahram, ran a first page article entitled "Work went on as usual across Egypt," while the Rosalusef newspaper featured titles such as "The failure of the chaos campaigners."

The country's opposition press did not quite agree with the official reports and instead described the strikes as ‘successful’.

El Dostour featured photos showing the main squares throughout Egypt jam-packed with security police while the independent daily al-Masry el-Youm emphasized the mass detentions of demonstrators. "Security aborts demonstrations - Citizens stay home in fear of violence," read one of the headlines.

"The state media want to convey that everything is OK and that nothing took place while in reality the strikes illustrated a deep political and economic crisis," commented journalist Yehia Kallash.

Source
http://www.menassat.com/?q=en/news-articles/3438-revenge-pyjamahedeen

More here:
http://mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=local&newsid=73656
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hOFEsjEDDvEraJGGY_VDdNaflEUQ

Chicago 10 Animated Feature Film

2008-04-07T10:40:00.001-04:00

Chicago 10 is a 2007 partly animated film written and directed by Brett Morgen and tells the story of the Chicago Seven. The film features the voices of Hank Azaria, Dylan Baker, Nick Nolte, Mark Ruffalo, Roy Scheider, Liev Schreiber, and Jeffrey Wright in an animated reenactment of the trial based on transcripts and rediscovered audio recordings. It also contains archive footage of David Dellinger, Abbie Hoffman, William Kunstler, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale, and Leonard Weinglass, and of the protest and riot itself. The title is drawn from a quote by Rubin, who said, "Anyone who calls us the Chicago Seven is a racist. Because you're discrediting Bobby Seale. You can call us the Chicago Eight, but really we're the Chicago Ten, because our two lawyers went down with us." [1]

It premiered January 18, 2007 at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. It later premiered at Silverdocs, the AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival in Downtown Silver Spring. The film opened in limited release in the United States on February 29, 2008.

This film is a must see and i have been following it's development for a while now. You can find more clips on youtube by typing in Chicago 10. I encourage all to see this film and support this filmmaker!

Remembering Africa's Fela Kuti

2008-04-05T22:22:00.004-04:00

Fela Anikulapo Kuti (born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, October 15, 1938 - August 2, 1997), or simply Fela, was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick.

He was ranked at number 46 in a list of the top 100 most influential musicians compiled by HMV.

The man who ex-Beatle Paule McCartney referred to as "the best band i've ever seen live...When Fela and his band eventually began to play, after a long crazy buildup, I just couldn't stop weeping for joy". McCartney wanted to use African musicians for the album he was working on but was denounced by Fela as "stealing Black Man's music".

A typical early swipe at the ruling elite was contained in the 1973 album GENTLEMAN, in which Kuti lampooned the black middle-class fetish for wearing western clothing in a tropical climate: ‘him put him socks him put him shoes, him put him pants him put him singlet, him put him trouser him put him shirt, him put him tie him put him coat, him come cover all with him hat; him be gentleman; him go sweat all over, him go faint right down, him go smell like shit’. Not surprisingly, the Nigerian establishment did not enjoy hearing songs like these—nor did they approve of Kuti's high-profile propaganda on behalf of igbo (Nigerian marijuana).

Listen to the man who shook up Nigeria during it's most brutal years. We miss you Fela Kuti.

Mugabe Plot to Steal Zimbabwe Election

2008-04-01T10:28:00.003-04:00

What follows below is a very interesting article about a plot by current Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to steal the rig the elections. The article claims that ZANU-PF were shocked to find MDC overwhelmingly being supported by the Zimbabwe populace. Instead of backing out and beginning a government transition, they either opted to enforce military rule or assert martial law. It was then decided to trickle down votes to show MDC in lead, but as time wore on have ZANU-PF and Mugabe suddenly win the election.

This is an issue that is not peculiar to Zimbabwe, but as we seen earlier, to Kenya and Congo and other African nations. It comes from a lack of an institutionalized state and civil society. In industrialized states such as America and UK, win officials lose Presidential elections, there is not civil wars. The losing candidate continues to be Senator, Congressmen, etc or will run again following term. In Africa, it is not the case. Due to patronism or clientism, positions are granted due to loyalty to factions. This is very dangerous when certain factions instrumentalize violence or have a monopoly of it. Things can get quickly out of hand as we seen in Kenya and Congo. A more indepth analysis of African nation-states will be posted this weekend.

-blackstone

A crisis meeting of Robert Mugabe's security cabinet decided to block the opposition
from taking power after what appears to have been a comprehensive victory in Zimbabwe's elections but was divided between using a military takeover to annul the vote and falsifying the results.

Diplomatic and Zimbabwean sources who heard first-hand accounts of the Joint Operations Command meeting of senior military and intelligence officers and top party officials on Sunday night said Mugabe favoured immediately declaring himself president again but was persuaded to use the country's electoral commission to keep the opposition from power.

The commission began releasing a trickle of results yesterday, more than 36 hours after the polls closed, but the opposition Movement for Democratic Change said it believed the count was being manipulated.

Nonetheless, the first results, for 52 seats in the lower house of parliament, cost Mugabe one of his closest allies with the defeat of the justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa, whom the MDC has accused of abusing the law to persecute the ruling Zanu-PF party's opponents. Other cabinet ministers are also believed to have lost their seats.

However, the few parliamentary results offered no guide to the outcome of the presidential race. Independent monitors collating the count from polling booth returns say the MDC presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won about 55% of the vote and Mugabe 38%. The MDC also gained control of both houses of parliament, according to the monitors.

The MDC said the slow pace of releasing vote tallies - likely to take days at the present rate - was further reason to suspect they were being tampered with.

Sources with knowledge of the JOC meeting said the Zanu-PF leadership was "in shock" after it was informed of the scale of the victory of the MDC's presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai.

A senior diplomatic source who received accounts from two people privy to the JOC meeting said it discussed shutting down the count and Mugabe declaring himself re-elected or the army stepping in to declare martial law on the pretext of defending the country from instability caused by the opposition claiming victory.

"In the JOC meeting there were two options for Mugabe: to declare victory on Sunday or declare martial law," said the diplomat. "They did not consider conceding. We understand Mugabe nearly decided to declare victory. Cooler heads prevailed. It was decided to use the [election commission] process of drip, drip where you release results over a long period, giving the opposition gains at first but as time wears on Zanu-PF pulls ahead."

Another source said that some JOC members favoured a less hardline approach by reaching out to the opposition but were overruled.

If the government does attempt to fix the result it will not go unchallenged. The election commission will have to substantially alter a large number of polling booth returns in order to overturn Tsvangirai's significant lead. But the MDC has photographed results declarations pinned to the doors of more than 8,000 polling stations. If the numbers announced by the election commission are different, the party says it will have indisputable evidence of fraud.

"Unlike previous elections no one can privatise the result as it is posted outside the stations," said the MDC's secretary general, Tendai Biti. "This country stands on a precipice. We still express our great misgivings about [the election commission's] failure to announce the results. It raises tension among the people that is fertilising an atmosphere of suspicion."

The opposition is attempting to reach out to the military. A senior MDC source said Tsvangirai has approached the former army chief, Solomon Mujuru, to reassure the military that it has nothing to fear from a transition of power and to ask what its concerns are so they can be addressed.

Mujuru is widely respected in the military but is treated with suspicion by Mugabe and other Zanu-PF hardliners after being tied to the presidential campaign of Simba Makoni, the Zanu-PF dissident who has done poorly in the election. Mujuru has yet to respond to Tsvangirai.

International pressure on Mugabe to respect the result is growing. Britain has little influence over Zimbabwe but the foreign secretary, David Miliband, said he and Gordon Brown will be speaking to other African leaders about the situation. They can be expected to urge South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki, in particular to pressure Mugabe to recognise defeat.

Source
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/01/zimbabwe

Google Maps to show Zim election abuses

2008-03-30T12:19:00.002-04:00

Sokwanele (”enough is enough”), the Zimbabwe Civic Action Support Group that is campaigning for freedom and democracy in Zimbabwe recently issued a press release. The release outlines how Google Maps is being used on their site to show where electoral code breaches (from gerrymandering and vote buying to abduction and murder) is happening.

Click here to check out the map. Below is the press release:

Sokwanele has mapped a sample of breaches logged under our Zimbabwe Election Watch (ZEW) project using Google’s map function.

The interactive map aims to give a visual impression of the scale and many ways in which the Zimbabwean government has breached the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections. Elections are a process, not an event, and the same applies to rigging: the scene has been set for unfree and unfair elections on March 29th, and the conditions on the ground have been developed through many months of non-compliance with regional electoral standards.

The events and incidents mapped on the Zimbabwe Election Watch map represent a small sample of the breaches identified under the project since we started monitoring the government’s non-cooperation with regional standards in July 2007. All the information logged under Zimbabwe Election Watch is derived from media sources.

Zimbabwe has a highly restrictive media environment, and fuel shortages make remote rural areas inaccessible to those brave journalists who do manage to circumvent the repressive media legislation and attempt to report regardless. This naturally means that urban areas have a greater representation on the map. It also means that empty areas on the map may not indicate ‘uneventful’ areas; on the contrary, they are more likely to represent stories we are unable to tell and incidents that have not been reported.

The map is interactive: check and un-check icons to refine focus; click on icons on the map to read more; double-click anywhere on the map to zoom in on an area in Zimbabwe, and use your mouse to click, hold and drag on the map to pan to different locations.

Despite the fact the map is based on a small sample of information we have logged since July 2007, and despite the fact that our ability to gather a full picture has been curtailed by a restrictive media environment, the ZEW map clearly shows that conditions in the country are not conducive for free and fair democratic elections.

For more detail on the full range of breaches we have logged through the duration of the project, and more information on the SADC Principles and Guidelines, please visit the Zimbabwe Election Watch section of our website and explore the data through the database interface.

Sokwanele is a great resource to find out what’s really going on in Zimbabwe, so check it out. Click here to visit their blog, This is Zimbabwe.

thanks to Afrodissident for the information.

Carnival #20 over at Leftwing Criminologist

2008-03-29T08:59:00.003-04:00

The twentieth Carnival of Socialism has gone live over at Leftwing Criminologist with a load of posts around themes of crime, criminal justice and socialism.

He points out that issues around crime are seen as the natural territory of the right and he feels that the left needs to put across its analysis on crime more vocally. This is very true, since the left are under the impression, or illusion perhaps, that crime disappears when workers have since seized the point of production. Yet, this isn't true. Just as sexism,racism,homophobia will not be extinct after the means of production have been socialized.

Thus, this is an excellent carnival going into discussions that are hardly discussed on the left, or arrogantly brushed off. Head over to Leftwing Criminologist and read what he has put together for our community!

Leftwing Criminologist

New Message from Assata Shakur!

2008-03-27T21:45:00.000-04:00

New Statement from Assata!!

First of all, let me say thank you, to the many people who have helped me to celebrate my 60th birthday. Thank you for your beautiful birthday cards and for your warm and eloquent messages. Thank you for your activism, your radiant energy and most of all for your love. I am sincerely grateful for your support and for your commitment to social justice, truth and freedom.

It is somehow surprising for me to realize that I have lived on this planet for 60 years. I never imagined that I would live this long. Some of those years were very hard years, other years were happier, but I have never forgotten who I am or where I came from. For as long as I can remember, I was acutely aware of my oppression and of the oppression of my people.
In some ways it was easier for my generation. Racism was blatant and obvious. The "Whites Only" signs let us know clearly, what we were up against. Not much has changed, but the system of lies and tricknology is much more sophisticated. Today young people have to be highly informed and acutely analytical, or they will be swept up into a whirlpool of lies and deception.

Freedom, justice and liberty are words that are thrown around a lot in the United States, but for most of us, it is empty rhetoric. With each and every passing day the country becomes more repressive, the police more viciously aggressive and the so-called constitutional guarantees obliterated by scare tactics. The so-called ’Conservatives’ are only interested in conserving their privileges and power and helping their rich friends to become richer. Black ’Conservatives’ serve their "masters" and are basically interested in grinning, shuffling and ’Uncle Tomming’ all the way to the bank. This is the most corrupt administration that has ever existed. They have blatantly stolen not millions, but billions of dollars. They are actively seeking to preserve the old colonial order with a new face, where the oppressed people of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East are expected to suffer happily, and sing praises to imperialism to the tune of the star spangled banner.

It is extreme arrogance to attack and occupy a country and expect its people to rejoice and lick your feet. Not even Roman Emperors were involved in such misguided conceit. The U.S. government has no right whatsoever, to force its undemocratic "democracy" on the rest of the world. I am 60 years old and I cannot remember a time when my people ever experienced true democracy. It is still the active policy of the U.S. government to use a wide variety of tactics to prevent poor people and people of color from voting. And when we do get to vote, our votes usually do not count. For the most part, there are no decent candidates to vote for, because the U.S, government is a "dollarocracy" where candidates have to beg and pander to the corporate rich in order to be elected.

I am 60 years old, and I have never in my life seen such widespread violence and cruelty. The U.S. government has more people in prison than any other country in the world, and it is now actively involved in creating prisons all over the world. Abu Gharib is only the tip of the iceberg. People all over the world are being imprisoned in secret prisons, with no formal charges being made against them. They are imprisoned under the most inhumane conditions, and detained for indeterminate periods of time, with no rights, no trials, and no justice whatsoever. In short, the leaders of this country are war criminals. All the U.S. government has to do is call them terrorists or extremists, enemy combatants or whatever and they can do anything they want to these people. I live in Cuba, and the Cuban people watch horrified, as the U.S. Army illegally occupies their land in Guantanamo and commits unspeakable acts of torture on their soil, in the name of "freedom." The U.S. government not only destroys the lives of people around the world, many mothers have cried because many of our young people have had their lives destroyed as well. I believe that this earth was meant for tenderness and not terror. The imperialist countries not only implement terrorist policies in the Third World, their actions also provoke terrorist activities and internal disputes between people. I believe that when Western governments learn to respect the sovereignty of Third world governments, and to offer solidarity and support rather that imperialist policies and exploitation, most of the world’s problems will be close to being solved.

Inside the belly of the beast, conditions are also disastrous. Most of the victims of Katrina are still waiting for decent housing and public services. Schools and hospitals around the country are either deteriorating or closing down. Around the country social programs to help poor and working people are mostly a thing of the past. Our young people are being marginalized, criminalized and brutalized. It is often an act of courage to go to school, or simply drive down the street. The U.S. government’s occupation of Afghanistan has produced a record increase of heroin production, and the "war on drugs" continues to be a war on poor people and people of color. The police brutality in our communities is not a simple matter of randomly "bad" cops. This government is more repressive than ever and more and more of a police state. When you have a trigger happy president, a trigger happy vice-president, a trigger happy office of homeland security, you are bound to have an increase of trigger happy police and many of our young people are bound to end up dead or imprisoned. The social policies of the United States have deteriorated from so-called benign neglect to malignant hostility or indifference.

The role the press and the media have played in all this has been increasingly malignant. There is no such thing as a free press in the United States. Journalists receive big salaries for telling "official" lies. The media both knowingly and naively became the vehicle for misinforming the people of the United States and convincing the people that it was "necessary" to go to war. Their "reporting" was based on outright lies. Now they "embedded" in the military, continuing to misinform the people, and distort the truth.

I am 60 years old and I am proud to be one of those people who stood up against the ruthless, evil, imperialist policies of the U.S. government. In my lifetime I have opposed the war against the Vietnamese people, the illegal contras – war in Nicaragua, the illegal coup in Chile, the invasion of Haiti and of Grenada, and every other illegal, immoral and genocidal war the U.S. government has ever waged. I have never been a criminal and I never will be one. I am 60 years old and in spite of government repression, in spite of the media’s lies and distortions, in spite of the U.S, government’s COINTELPRO Program to criminalize and demonize political opponents, I feel proud to count myself as someone who believes in peace and believes in freedom. I am proud to have been a member of the Black Panther Party although the U.S. government continues try to distort history and continues to persecute ex-members of the Black Panther Party. Just recently, the U.S. government has indicted and arrested 8 ex-Black Panthers in a case that was dismissed 30 years ago. The case was dismissed some 30 years ago when it became obvious that the most vicious forms of extreme torture were used to extract false confessions from some of the so-called defendants.

I am 60 years and it is doubtful that I will ever live to see my people free of oppression and repression. But I am totally convinced that our collective dream of freedom will some day be realized. I sincerely implore young people to develop their minds, to develop their skills, to expand their states of consciousness, and sharpen their abilities to analyze reality. Those Africans who conspired with the European slave trade to sell us into slavery were seduced by trinkets. I hope and pray that our young people will not continue to fall into the same traps. I have always loved my people and always loved our culture. The culture of my people has always been rich and always been filled with the seeds of resistance. I hope that young people hold fast to that tradition. I sincerely hope that all young people will have the courage and the wisdom to hold on tight to their humanity and their historical mission. Most people in the Americas, were either indigenous people whose ancestors were victims of genocide, or brought to this hemisphere as slaves, or came to this continent seeking freedom. I believe that it is our collective duty to make freedom a reality. I truly believe that it is possible to end oppression and repression on this planet. If we all see ourselves as citizens of this planet, and citizens of the world, it will be easier for us to save this planet and recognize the human rights of human beings around the world.

Much love, Much Solidarity,
May we all make freedom a reality,
Assata Shakur

Women of Zimbabwe Arise - Stand up for Your Child

2008-03-25T20:12:00.004-04:00

Women of Zimbabwe Arise or WOZA was formed in 2003 to fill a gap left by various NGOs, church organizations and political parties that left women nationwide voiceless on issues concerning women. It is derived from the idea that the women have common issues and the solutions to which are not to be found in political affiliations. WOZA was thus envisioned to provide a platform for women to use the power of their numbers to press for policies and programmes to solve current issues, not to gain political power.

One of the more recent campaigns being spearheaded by WOZA is the Stand Up for your Child. Flyers saying "Intando yakho, ivoti yakho, yikukhonona kwakho" or "Your choice, your voice your protest" and encouraging to "Be ready to stand up and be counted!" are being plastered in urban and suburban neighborhoods. The message as the WOZA website centered on encouraging Zimbabweans to vote and to vote wisely for candidates that will deliver a future for the children. WOZA has taken a position to mobilise Zimbabweans to vote for any candidate that they feel will deliver social justice rather than follow blindly party loyalties.

Recently, eight members of WOZA were arrested in Pumula Frida as they put up posters encouraging Zimbabweans to stand up for their child and vote in the upcoming elections. They were subsequently taken to the Pumula Police Station. They were interrogated as to why they were wearing t-shirts encouraging voting and about the Stand Up for Your Child campaign. They were warned to cease their actions and finally released after 30 minutes of questioning.

With elections looming, the wanton arrest and physical abuse of citizens, as well as sexual abuse on female citizens who were not campaigning for any political party, but merely encouraging people to exercise their democratic right to vote is obvious human rights violation and example of the instrumentalization of violence by the Mugabe regume. Nonetheless, WOZA continues to encourage Zimbabweans to be ready to stand up and be counted on 29 March.

For more on WOZA check out their website http://wozazimbabwe.org/

Real Human Freedom Not Fake Human Rights

2008-03-22T17:45:00.001-04:00

Message from the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front

South Africa is said to have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. It enshrines the rights of every person, of every background, from workers and immigrants to women and homosexuals. As such you would think that, especially for people from oppressed groups, South Africa would be a safe haven.

But if you look a bit closer you will surely see that, despite all the rights we hold on paper, people living in South Africa are far from guaranteed a safe and enjoyable existence. Our so-called human rights, as enshrined by the constitution and gloated over by politicians, are violated on a daily basis.

Workers have the right to strike, but only if they first warn their bosses of their intentions and after they have exhausted all other avenues for addressing their concerns. Workers who decide to strike without first giving their boss a chance to hire scab labour, and even when they do - as we have recently witnessed with the excessive use of force by the SAPS on striking Samwu workers in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropole (137 of whom were arrested and held over night after being shot at without warning) - are likely to be arrested, fired or violently attacked.

Workers do not have the right to decide what they produce and how they distribute it, and in what quantities, because everything that a worker produces belongs to his or her boss - the owners of the factories and machines, those to whom the workers sell their labour for a wage in order to survive. In the constitution workers do not have the right to take over the factories and occupy the land, in order to produce the goods they need to survive, because that would be violating another sacred right, the property rights of the bosses and land-owners.

Under capitalism, the economic system of the world, people are allowed by law to own, buy and sell private property. Those who can afford to buy property, be it a piece of farm land or a factory and its machines, very often use this property to enrich themselves from the labour of those who have no property, and thus have no choice but to work for a wage under the direction of those who have property. In this way the group of people who own private property - and it is a relatively small group - exploit the labour of those who do not own private property - a much larger group.

They get rich through the labour of the poor, simply for having already been rich enough to buy property in the first place; and their right to exploit the workers and poor is protected by the same constitution which protects the rights of the workers not be be exploited! Ironic, isn't it?

Similarly, the equal rights of women with men are written into the constitution and upheld by law, but, as recent events - such as that at Noord street - have once again shown, so too are these rights violated on a daily basis. Women in South Africa are not treated as the equals of men, they are harassed, abused, raped and degraded by virtue of the fact that they were born women. It matters very little to a woman who is beaten by her husband, or raped by a taxi driver, whether or not this is allowed under the constitution. What she cares about is not being raped, not being beaten. This is a security that cannot be guaranteed to her under the present capitalist system, because the same system that defends the rights of the bosses to exploit the workers, also relies on the patriarchal oppression of women by men, in order to keep the poor and working class divided from itself, thus unable to find the strength to challenge the system which protects the rights of the propertied classes at the expense of the workers, poor and oppressed minorities.

We anarchist communists believe that constitutional human rights mean next to nothing as long as we are living in a world which thrives on the violent exploitation of the masses by a ruling minority, a system in which the majority of the population - the workers and poor - are divided from each other by means of sexism, racism, nationalism and religion. We believe that, as long as we live under the threat of starvation and imprisonment, oppression and exploitation, our human rights will never be safe. It is impossible for the workers and poor, for women and oppressed minorities to live in dignity under capitalism. As long as there is a price on our labour, as long as we are under threat of attack because of our identifies, and as long as we live under threat of unemployment, hunger and disease, our rights to live with dignity and free from violence will never be realised.

Under such circumstances, in which we find ourselves today - as many of us did under Apartheid - the only way to live with dignity is to take up the fight against the system of capitalism, the system which defends the profits and property of the rich and powerful at the expense of the human rights of the exploited and oppressed. The only way to live with dignity is for us to live and struggle for a new system; a new world in which we are no longer divided, where there is no private property, and where we are all workers and in which we all have control over what we produce and how it is distributed, according to the principle "from each according to ability, to each according to need". A world in which, because we are all workers, and we all work for the benefit of our fellow human beings, we treat each other with the respect that each one of us deserves.

Capitalism cannot guarantee human rights for all, only real human freedom can guarantee and protect our rights, rights which are safeguarded by our belonging to an international community of free workers, not by writing them onto paper. If we had real freedom, there would be no need for the phony rights of the bourgeois constitutions of South Africa and other so-called democracies.

We are supposed to have the freedom of choice, but the only choice we have under capitalism is either to be exploited and oppressed, or to organise and resist. Anarchist communists have chosen to organise and resist, to fight for a better future, and in so doing to live and die with dignity. Join us.

-Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front

ACTION ALERT! MOVE 9 Parole Campaign/New Petition!

2008-03-20T14:13:00.001-04:00

MOVE 9 Needs Letters & Calls Now!

Time Frame: 2 Months

Phil Africa says that the MOVE 9 can really use letters and calls to the PA
Parole Board this month and next [February & March]. Letters supporting their
release can make a big difference. The Board will be having a hearing in
April. After THIRTY years, our brothers and sisters are finally up for parole.
If not given probation this year, they may all be forced to serve another
SEVENTY. They have almost completed their minimum sentence [of the 30-100 year
sentence].

For supporters to brush up on the history of MOVE and the "MOVE 9," this
recent 45-minute talk by Ramona is great:

http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2007/08/27830.php

Purpose of Action;
This April parole hearing is SO important. Letters and calls to the Parole
Board now can really help. Phil is asking that folks send copies of their
letters to him. He wants to take a pile of copies of our letters to the hearing
as a show of public support.

What you should do now- Plan of Action

Letters and phone calls to the Board are needed NOW. Let's bring 'em HOME.
30 years is too much already, 70 more is unthinkable!!

It is probably a good idea for folks to send letters to each of the nine
Board members. The chairperson was appointed by Ed "1985 Bomber" Rendell so
don't count on her getting your message to the whole Board. Their individual
names are on this web page:

http://www.pbpp.state.pa.us/pbpp/site/default.asp

Letters can all be sent to this address:

[name of Board member]
Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole
1101 South Front Street, Suite #5100
Harrisburg, PA 17104-2517
tel: (717) 787-5699

Please send copies of the letters to Phil at:

William Phillips Africa #AM-4984
SCI-Dallas
1000 Follies Rd.
Dallas, PA 18612

Goal:
Let's bring them home where they belong in August 2008!

WHO ARE THE MOVE 9?

The MOVE 9 are innocent men and women who have been in prison since August 8, 1978, following a massive police attack on us at our home in Powelton Village (Philadelphia). This was seven years before the government dropped a bomb on MOVE, killing 11 people, including 5 babies. The August 8, 1978 police attack on MOVE followed years of police brutality against MOVE and was a major military operation carried out by the Philadelphia police department under orders of then-mayor, Frank Rizzo, whose reputation for racism and brutality is well known; it followed him up thru the ranks of the police department to the police commissioner's office to the mayor's office. During this attack, heavy equipment was used to tear down the fence surrounding our home, and cops filled our home with enough tear gas to kill us and our babies, while SWAT teams covered every possible exit. We were all in the basement of our home, where we had 10 thousand pounds of water pressure per minute directed at us from 4 fire department water cannons (for a total of 40 thousand pounds of water pressure per minute). As the basement filled with nearly six feet of water we had to hold our babies and animals above the rising water so they wouldn't drown. Suddenly shots rang out (news reporters and others know the shots came from a house at 33rd and Baring St., not our home, because they actually saw the man shooting) and bullets immediately filled the air as police through-out the area opened fire on us. Officer James Ramp, who was standing above us on street-level and facing our home, was killed by a single bullet that struck him on a downward angle. This alone makes it impossible for MOVE to have killed Ramp, since we were below street level, in the basement. MOVE adults came out of the house carrying our children through clouds of tear gas, we were beat and arrested. Television cameras actually filmed the vicious beating of our brother Delbert Africa (3 of the 4 cops that beat Delbert went to trial on minor charges). Despite the photographic evidence, the trial judge (Stanley Kubacki) refused to let the jury render a verdict and himself acquitted the cops by directed order. Nine of us were charged with murder and related charges for the death of James Ramp. Within a few hours of our arrest, our home (which is supposed to be the "scene of the crime" and therefore evidence) was deliberately destroyed, demolished, by city officials when they were legally obligated to preserve all evidence, but we were held for trial anyway. We went to trial before Judge Edward Malmed who convicted all nine of us of third degree murder (while admitting that he didn't have "the faintest idea" who killed Ramp) and sentenced each of us to 30 - 100 years in prison. Judge Malmed also stated that MOVE people said we are a family so he sentenced us as a family; we were supposed to be on trial for murder, not for being a family. It is clear that the MOVE 9 are in prison for being committed MOVE members, not for any accusation of crime. Three other adults that were in the house on August 8th did not get the same treatment as those that this government knows are committed MOVE members. One had all charges dismissed against her in September of 1978 with the judge saying that there was no evidence that she was a committed MOVE member when the issue was supposed to be murder. The second one was held for trial but released on bail; she was acquitted. The third one was held for trial with no bail, convicted of conspiracy and given 10-23 years; she was paroled in 1994. It is obvious that everything depended on whether or not the courts thought it was dealing with a committed MOVE member, court decisions had nothing to do with the accusation of murder. It has been 25 years since the August 8, 1978 police attack on MOVE, 25 years of unjust of imprisonment, but despite the hardship of being separated from family-members, despite the grief over the murder of family-members (including babies), the MOVE 9 remain strong and loyal to our Belief, our Belief in Life, the Teaching of our Founder, JOHN AFRICA. We have an uncompromising commitment to our Belief, which is what makes us a strong unified family, despite all this government have done to break us up and ultimately exterminate us.

It will take a massive amount of public pressure to force this rotten corrupt government to release the MOVE 9 and all political prisoners----What can YOU do to add to the pressure?

WRITE THE MOVE 9 AT THE FOLLOWING ADDRESSES

Debbie Sims Africa #006307; Janet Hollaway Africa #006308 Janine Phillips Africa #6309
451 Fullerton Ave.
Cambridge Springs, PA. 16403-1238

William Phillips Africa #AM 4984; Delbert Orr Africa #AM 4985
1000 Follies Rd.
Dallas, PA. 18612

Michael Davis Africa #AM 4973; Charles Sims Africa #AM 4975
P.O. Box 244
Graterford, PA. 19426-0246

Edward Goodman Africa #AM 4974
301 Morea Rd.
Frackville, PA. 17932

CONTACT US THROUGH ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:
THE MOVE ORGANIZATION
P.O. Box 19709 Phila., PA. 19143
610 499-0979
onamovellja@aol.com

Teacher Strike Ends, But Their Demands Don't!

2008-03-19T09:23:00.002-04:00

Zimbabwe’s teachers, who were this week awarded huge salary increments, are now demanding new salaries of Z$10 billion a month warning that they would resort to more strike action to press their demands.

Raymond Majongwe, the secretary general of the militant Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe, said the new government elected during the 29 March elections should brace for more crippling strikes from teachers.

“We should remain organised for action. We have new demands for the second quarter - April to June 2008. Our demand for the second quarter is Z$10 750 600 (officially about US$325 000 but a mere US$300 on the widely used parallel market).

“Whichever party shall form the next government after the March elections should brace for more strike action from teachers because we are still not happy with the increments,” said Majongwe.

Teachers were pleasantly surprised this week when they saw huge salary deposits into their bank accounts.

The lowest paid teachers now earns about $3.9 billion a month, a huge jump from the $500 million they earned last month while the highest paid teacher now earns about $5.7 billion a month.

Political analysts said the move to award teachers and other government workers huge salary increments, a few weeks before a key election, smacked of vote-buying tactics by President Robert Mugabe.

The Zimbabwe government is desperate to placate hundreds of thousands of workers who are battling to make ends meet as they struggle with rampant inflation that at over 100 000 percent is the highest in the world. - ZimOnline

Liberation politics and Internationalism

2008-03-13T20:04:00.022-04:00

Welcome to Carnival of Socialism #19 on Liberation politics and Internationalism . If there are posts I've missed which relate to the topic, feel free to leave a link in the comments.

Solidarity,

This carnival i wanted to highlight posts in the left blogosphere which not only hardly receive coverage in the mainstream media, but independent and left press as well. My only hypothesis is that since what we know of as the revolutionary left is mostly made up of comrades from Western countries, their focus tends to be on,well, Western countries.

Is it because there is no class struggle in Africa, Latin America or Asia? As the following posts show, it is certainly not the case. There is intense class struggle in Argentina, South Africa, Egypt and other "third world" countries. Is race, gender and sexuality second to economic class? Will racism, sexism and homophobia vanish when the last factory has been expropriated from capitalists and production, consumption and allocation is determined not by a small elite but by all? If not, why are some issues swept under the rug only to appear again or take center stage on certain Days or Months like Black History month or International Women's day. A rain coat only to be worn when the time is right, before being thrown in the back of the closet with the rest of your dirty laundry.

Not here, not no more.

I hope you enjoy this post and the links the comrades have worked hard to share to the world. If not all, check a few of the links out and drop a comment to the posters showing solidarity.

Now, let's get on with the show.

Race, Gender and Sexuality

Afrodissident wrote a revealing piece on the race toture going on at University of Free State in South Africa. Saying "For those of you who thought that the racist UFS [University of the Free State] student video was a storm in a teacup, think again. The Mail & Guardian has uncovered accounts of race-based victimisation, torture and intimidation at UFS residences. Much of this occurred during drunken initiation rites but it is clear from the article that day-to-day life for black students in formerly white hostels hasn’t been much better:".

Stroppy bird wrote a post on how, Mehdi Kazemi, 19, who sought sanctuary in Britain in 2005 when he discovered that his partner had been hanged in Tehran for engaging in homosexual acts, is expected to be returned to Iran in the next few weeks. Gay Uganda and Gay Nairobi Man both comment on this event and it's international impact.

Also, Diary of an Angry Black Woman wrote on Decolonizing Feminism. She states, "I think we need to think of ways to reframe how such women[Congolese] are positioned - not as helpless victims dependent on white or "developed" women over here but as powerful agents doing all they can to resist such oppressive forces and calling on those of us in privileged positions - whether in the U.S. or in Africa, middle-class or working-class - to join them in solidarity." Penny Red delivered a strong speech that she was nice enough to share to the blogosphere". There was recently released an an essay by Parvati, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and head of that party’s Women’s Department on Woman's leadership in Nepal's People of War. These selected posts highlight how race, gender and sexuality cannot be ignored by those fighting for liberation of all peoples. Which can be witnessed by the recent demo to protest the cut in funding to southall black sisters. Solidarity must be given to these people and groups.

Africa
A very public sociologist wrote a very penetrating piece on the economics of Ethiopian coffee. Last year around this time Ethiopia was in a heavy dispute with Starbucks over the beans it supplies. Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the world, wanted to trademark the names of three coffee-growing regions to force companies that sell its beans to sign licensing agreements and to gain higher prices for its produce. For at that time, the networth of a pound of coffee beans was $1, yet in America, the same pound of coffee would fetch for over $20. Phil BC states,"As long as production is subordinate to the market, as long as workers are not paid the full value of their labour power, superexploitation and one-sided development/underdevelopment will remain the lot of Africa. And no amount of consumption with a conscience will change that." View from Steeltown notes powerfully, "Capitalism cannot win the war on poverty. The notion that social reform and economic development under capitalism will someday overcome and eradicate poverty around the world is absurd. A system which creates vast and profound economic inequalities among people and nations, rewarding a tiny minority while leaving behind the vast majority, cannot, by definition, provide for the most fundamental needs of the majority". In addition, Socialist Banner has an interesting article on Migrating Capital. Ajohnstone posits that "Over and over again , workers learn the hard lesson that businesses exists to accumulate capital and will forever seek fresh pastures and new exploitation."

And learn they shall.

A strike and subsequent sackings at Chambishi Copper Smelter (CCS) in Zambia have attracted widespread media focus on Chinese investments in extractives in Africa. On March 2, More than 500 workers at CCS staged a work stoppage to press for improved wages and conditions. Mine Watch Zambia provides an excellent resource of frequently updated news and events correlating to the Zambian mines.

Egypt has been a hotbed for working class action in Africa, and Northern Africa in particular. There has been alot of great activity in the last year, specifically the strikes and workers actions in the text tile industry. Hossam has been writing as well as posting vivid pictures of the strikes and protests going on in Egypt, such as the doctor's strike. Keep your eye on these North African countries for the next year or so. They are the more industrialized nations in Africa and are very critical for the revolution in Africa. Hossam has also issued A Call to Blogo-Arms to try to build up a definitive list of IST bloggers.

Latin America

One of the biggest topics in leftists discussion on Latin America is Cuba, Venezuela and Columbia. Venezeula and Columbia found themselves in a very tense standoff that evenutally cooled down. Renegade Eye, posted information how the accusation that FARC recieved $300 million from Chavez was false. Lonestone Revolution wrote a piece revealing how it is actually Columbian para-militaries and not FARC who are responsible for 70% of human right violations and how in that regard US is backing terrorism. Red Mantis claimed, "In some ways I am both baffled and not surprised at all to see the U.S. media campaign launched in support of Colombia." and goes on to unravel the chirade of US support behind Columbia in the Latin American crisis. There's a web of lies that need to be uncovered and Red Mantis and Renegade Eye both posted released information that the slain Columbian insurgent was having talks with US diplomats.

In regards to Cuba, Leftwing Criminologist made a very interesting statement. That in Cuba "the revolutionary conditions already existed, what was missing was a correct leadership. The leadership that Castro and his comrades gave did influence the direction of the struggle in Cuba dramatically, leading to an overturn of the dominance of capitalism in that country, but a movement led by the workers in that country would have been even more dramatic and fruitful." This was part of a larger piece on the role of the individual in history. The role of the individual is a big debate in leftist theory. Read the article as well as one on the Daily Maybe by Jim Jay and weigh in on it.

Asia
Tristen, a South African human rights organizer wrote a speech on Tibet and posted it on Contrary to Authority. He claims, "The situation in Tibet continues to deteriorate in regards to the basic human rights of the Tibetan people and the prospects for self-rule or independence are still remote."

Mike Ely, from the infamous 9 letters blog, posts frequent information the events in Nepal. He claims, "In Nepal, the anti-monarchy struggle and the peoples war has produced a situation where a broad range of parties have agreed to a “Constituent Assembly” — an extra-ordinary gathering outside the ordinary parliamentary framework to decide the future framework of Nepali society and government."

Middle East
SB news reported that"The electricity Workers in many locations had organized series of protest rallies, on Monday morning 4-2 - 2008 after giving a warning to the Ministry of electricity in case their demands were not met."

Sursock relays a report from BBC on young workers. The report claims, "Most of the children work unsupervised. Some wield potentially lethal tools and machines with no protective clothing at all."

Bahrain Youth Society reports, "A NEW law to control websites and radio broadcasting in the region has been attacked by Bahrain human rights organisations under a regional campaign. Thirty-four groups, including three from Bahrain, have rejected the law stating that it is against human rights because it imposes restrictions on freedom of expression."

The latest issue of Al-Manshour, Lebanon's leading left wing magazine, is available online (in Arabic).

Forward from Here
I hope I opened some comrades eyes to the international scope of liberation politcs, for those whom are already aware, I hope I cemented that fact. There's more blog posts that exist that i can cover, but my objective wasn't to report on every report. No, I wanted us to show solidarity to the working class and working peasentry the world over in their struggle for liberation and our collective pursuit for a classless, stateless society. Individually we are weak, but when we come together as a fist, we can knock down anything standing before us.

Put your fist in the air.

Power to the People
-blackstone

Chinese and Zambia in Collision Course

2008-03-10T11:13:00.000-04:00

A strike and subsequent sackings at Chambishi Copper Smelter (CCS) in Zambia have attracted widespread media focus on Chinese investments in extractives in Africa. The Chambisi Copper Smelter is at the heart of the African Economic and Trade Zone that was inaugurated by Chinese President Hu Jintao during his African tour in 2007. The smelter is a joint venture between China Nonferrous Metal Mining (CNMC) and Yunnan Copper Industry (YNCIG).The German company Norddeutsche operates in conjunction with the Chinese companies at Chambisi. Ord River Resources Limited, an Australian company, also has a stake in the venture.

China is about to invest another $300m into mining and manufacturing in the Copper Belt in top of the $900m previously invested, according to a recent announcement by the Zambian government. President of Mineworkers' Union of Zambia, Rayford Mbulu, says the Chinese have the worst safety record and pay the lowest wages. The average salary is 250,000 kwacha ($65) a month. In 2005 50 workers died in an explosion at a Chinese-owned copper mine nearby. In 2003 the smelter had to cease operation when 55 workers fell ill from poisoning.O

On March 2, More than 500 workers at CCS staged a work stoppage to press for improved wages and conditions. Reports stated that workers were earning as little as K291, 200 (US$78) per month and that Chinese management was allegedly not following Zambian labour laws. The following day workers rioted, injuring a Chinese manager and damaging property and Chinese managers were taken hostage. Later, Zambian workers set fire to a truck and a guardroom and damaged other property, which in turn caused Chinese management to fire 500 employees involved in the riots.

However, under intense scrutiny and tension, Chinese management reinstated the 500 workers. Yet, this action by management has not relieved tension but attracted widespread media focus on Chinese investments in extractives in Africa. The mines deputy Chief Executive says part of China's purpose in opening the mine was to help the local economy, but there is little sign of improvement in the township of Chambishi or in regards to the economic status of Zambians.

Strikes spread across Zimbabwe

2008-03-06T10:32:00.000-05:00

Teachers, nurses, doctors and civil servants have been taking industrial action since last Wednesday calling for an immediate review of salaries and benefits.

In the capital Harare, the strike has been compounded by the ongoing strike by council workers who downed tools last Wednesday, demanding a rise in their salaries.

The Public Service Association (PSA - affiliated to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions) said its members were forced to take action after giving the government until the end of February to the review their wages. These local government workers are especially angry due to military and police personnel being awarded substantial salary raises and soft loans. Work at government offices have ground to a halt in the last week as staff were either taking 'go-slow' or full-blown strike action.

Meanwhile, teachers have gone on strike across all of Zimbabwe as the pro-government Zimbabwe Teachers Union (ZIMTA) joined the protests of the Progressive Teachers Union (PTUZ). The strike by teachers has effectively paralysed operations in schools across the country. PTUZ secretary general Raymond Majongwe said there was no going back on the strike unless the government capitulated to the union’s demand of a minimum of Z$1.7 billion salary for teachers, currently earning around Z$400 million.

Nurses and doctors have also joined the strike shutting down council hospitals and clinics across the whole country.

A Girl Like Me: Complexion, Hair and Facial Feature Issues in African Community

2008-03-04T15:17:00.001-05:00

A Girl Like Me is a 2005 award-winning documentary by Kiri Davis. The seven-minute documentary examines such things as the importance of color, hair and facial features for young African American women. It won the Diversity Award at the 6th Annual Media That Matters film festival in New York City, and has received coverage on on various American media sources, such as CNN, ABC, NPR. The documentary has been shown on HBO and is available, in its entirety, on mediathatmattersfest.org. The documentary was made as part of Reel Works Teen Filmmaking.

The video begins with interviews with Kiri and her peers about how 'black' features did not conform to society's standards of beauty. The next section was a repeat of an experiment conducted by Kenneth Clark in the 1940s where African-American children were asked to choose between black or white dolls. In the original experiment(s) the majority of the children choose the white dolls. When Davis repeated the experiment 15 out of 21 children also choose the white dolls over the black, giving similar reasons as the original subjects, associating white with being "pretty" or "good" and black with "ugly" or "bad". The dolls used in the documentary were identical except for skin colour.

My jaw dropped when i first seen this documentary a few years ago and had to spread it around. Not that I didn't know of these issues of the black community, but it's completely different when looking from the outside in.

I hope this video will have an impact on you as it did to me. If so, please spread this around and leave a comment!

Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism, No.8 now available

2008-03-03T11:11:00.001-05:00

We are happy to finally announce the long-overdue publication of the eighth issue of "Zabalaza - A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism". Our organisation having recently undergone some changes, we hope to get back on track and to meet our goals of publishing Zabalaza twice a year.

In this long-awaited issue:

* Asgisa: A Working Class Critique
* S.A. Public Sector Strikes
* The 2010 World Cup
* Protests Against University Privatisation
* Introduction to the ABC
* Vigilante Farmers Want Refugee Camps
* Swaziland: The Assassination of Our Dear Comrade
* Europe, Africa and the Neo-Liberal Strategy of Co- Optation
* Fallacies of the Darfur War
* The Congo's Dilemma
* A New Guantanamo in Africa?
* Misrepresentation of Self-Management in the Caribbean
* Some Thoughts on Theoretical Unity & Collective Responsibility
* Clarity on What Anarcho-Syndicalism Is
* Towards an Anarcho-Syndicalist Strategy for Africa

Download the PDF here:
http://www.zabalaza.net/pdfs/sapams/zab08.pdf

"I Can End Deportations" Video Game Release

2008-03-02T16:08:00.000-05:00

Found this interesting post on the blog LeftSpot, please spread the word comrades. If you tried it out, let me know what you think.

I am very excited to announce the launch of Breakthrough's new free
and downloadable video game ICED - I Can End Deportation. ICED lets
you experience first hand the unfair nature of immigration laws on
detention and deportation.

You can be Ayesha, the Green Card holder, who was deported for a
school essay; or Marc, a Green Card holder, who fought for the
country
and ended up in detention.

Play the game, spread it far and wide, and visit the website for
action ideas. I encourage you to get involved in the campaign for
fair immigration laws. Because when we let the government deny due
process and human rights to some people, we put all of our freedoms
at
risk.

Warm regards,

-Mallika

Dear Friends:

After two years of hard work and lots of support from many of you, I
am pleased to announce that ICED is finally out. The game can be
downloaded at www.icedgame.com and we would really appreciate your
support in spreading this to your networks. We'd particularly be
interested in reaching out to youth groups and educators with the
upcoming curriculum. But please - everybody – download and play the
game!

We've already started to get media coverage - here are a few links.
Thanks for all the quick responses for the Orange County Register
request.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/19/scitech/pcanswer/main384337
9.shtml

Extensive report on GameDaily:
http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/news/iced-faces-deportation/?biz=1

and here's the version on AOL Latino:
http://noticias.aol.com/inmigracion

http://immigration.freedomblogging.com/2008/02/18/immigrants-try-to-
keep-status-in-online-game/

Thank you again for all the support and input. I hope ICED will
contribute positively to our struggle for due process and human
rights
in the United States.

Warm regards,

Mallika

mallika@breakthrough.tv // www.breakthrough.tv

Operation Saving Baby Brian

2008-02-28T09:03:00.000-05:00

From the fellow African blog Insight Kenya

This is probably the most important post I will ever publish on this Blog. This post goes beyond mere rhetoric and Pictures that capture the plight of a People. This will directly change a life and re-enforce the nortion of the Kenya that we know of loving, caring and a nation that believes we are family. A few weeks ago, we all saw the picture of Grace(below) shot in the head by a rogue Policeman as the security forces carried out Operations in Naivasha. In a baby crib beside her lifeless, bleeding body was a terrified 14 month baby crying in terror. The baby now identified as Brian had just witnessed his mother shot in the head.

In the light of this tragedy, I got together with Lillian Muthoni and Eddie Njogu, my contacts in Kenya and we all whole heartedly sought the whereabouts of Brian and His family. With earnest devotion, Lillian found the village this weekend and managed to meet with Jeremiah, Baby Brian’s father. She was able to get some important information that we desperately needed in order to get assistance for the family. So I commend her for her tireless work.

Folks, we have an opportunity to turn things around in the life of this family and more so, this innocent child! I know many of you visit this site from all over the world and many of your have written offering assistance for Brian. This is the time for that assistance. Carol has offered to pay for the Post-Mortem and I thank her for her kindness. The family needs this post-mortem conducted by a qualified pathologist who may be required to testify in Court. Jeremiah needs to bury his wife so we need funds for the funeral. We also need to get this family basic necessities like food, clothing and toys for Brian. This child’s life has become extremely personal to me and I believe its time to move beyond our dismay and actually do something.I am in this knee deep, but I cannot do this alone, I need you to partner with me. email me at josephkaroki@hotmail.com or get in touch with Lillian at loumso2002@yahoo.com. My Cell Phone numbers are 214-708-1554 and 214-208-4713.

We are called for a time such at this. If you are an attorney in Kenya willing to help or if you know of one who is willing to partner with us in bringing justice to this family, contact me ASAP. Tell your friends, your family, your coworkers. If you are a well wisher who would like to visit the family they are at Gwa Kanywa, Magumu village near Naivasha.

THE FOLLOWING IS WHAT IS NEEDED:

30,000 Kenya Shillings (US$425) for funeral and Mortuary expences

Milk for Baby Brian

Food for his siblings

Clothes, toys and Books

Well wishers to visit and encourage the family

A scholarship/educational fund for Brian and his siblings

A legal fund for the pursuit and prosecution of those involved in the murder of Grace Mungai

Those in Kenya can donate money at the following bank account at EQUITY 0200190674408 under the name Jeremiah Mungai, ID No. 7156255.

we will have a bank account open on Monday on behalf of the family for those in the United States. I would like to thank Lillian for doing a wonderful job this weekend and Eddie for joining me in this. In the meantime we have work to do. Looking forward to hearing from all of you!