News
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| 30/5/06 |
‘Black People Remain Oppressed’ | Lendman’s soup is seasoned with sincerity, sanity as well as lots of hope… |
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Date: 30 May 2006 Recomended link: Author and performance poet, M. Laurent to present panels and workshops at St. Martin Book Fair-June 1-3, Legal Matters We Are Not the Ones who are the Kidnappers, Site Soley wants Peace: The whites bring war to the people of Haiti, interview direct from Haiti, translated by Frantz Jerome, Ezili Danto Witness Project, May 22, 2006 Kreyol Audio: We Are Not the Ones who are the Kidnappers, Site Soley wants Peace Hope and Humiliation: HLLN?s analysis of May 18, 2006 and the Inaugural of President Rene Preval by Marguerite Laurent, Haitian Perspectives, May 18, 2006 – Web inventor warns of ‘dark’ net – Lendman’s soup is seasoned with sincerity, sanity as well as lots of hope… Ezili Danto’s note. Stephen Lendman is a regular contributor to the Ezili Danto/HLLN listserve with several good articles on Haiti’s current situation. I found the piece “Lendman’s Soup” interesting and covering our global crisis, where Haiti is just one of the samples of plunder and for profit ideology that is further wrecking the lives of the “wretched of the earth.” Lendman, this 72-year old white man’s observations and analysis in “Lendman’s Soup,” combined with Africa’s Cde Chen Chimutengwende’s ‘Black People Remain Oppressed’, also in this post, make a powerful statement denying regular spins of the white saviors and their “local African quislings,” (ie. Condi Rice, Kofi Annan or Gerald Latortue, et al..), who are destroying the Southern Hemisphere of this planet for profit and plunder and calling it “humanitarian aid.” ‘Black People Remain Oppressed’ The Herald (Harare) AFRICA is one of the richest continents in the world, yet most of its people are some of the poorest on earth, a Cabinet Minister has said. The Minister of State for Public and Interactive Affairs, Cde Chen Chimutengwende, said one reason why Africans were poor was because the continent’s resources were being used mainly for the benefit of European and North American capitalist whites and their local African quislings. Cde Chimutengwende was speaking at an Africa Day symposium held in Harare ahead of Africa Day celebrations today. “As a result, Africa remains a social, cultural, political and economic catastrophe which is continuously and dangerously getting worse,” he said. He said centuries after the abolition of slavery and decades after the end of colonialism, black people all over the world remain relatively more oppressed and exploited than any other people on earth. Cde Chimutengwende said about 850 million people live in Africa, which was 13 percent of the world’s population and yet the continent had one percent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Africa, he said, produced one percent of the worl d’s manufactured goods, had two percent of the world’s trade, and one percent of the world’s foreign investment. More than 50 percent of Africans, he said, lived on less than US$1 a day. He said the world’s average mortality rate was 63 per 1 000 and Africa had 108 which was the highest in the world while the industrialised countries had only 12 per 1 000. “Life expectancy has dropped in recent years from over 60 years to about 40 years. Only three percent of its students go to universities. “The West receives US$10 for every US$1 it puts into Africa. In this case, who is giving aid to who or to put it more correctly, who is exploiting who?” asked Cde Chimutengwende. He said Western capitalism had always wanted to retain Africa as its backyard for exploitation in order to enrich itself. “The West uses the tactics of divide and rule. It also corrupts and bribes the leaders of Africa and their immediate lieutenants. It does this to as many of them as possible. Therefore if Afr ica remains capitalist, there will be no working together or integration or development in Africa,” he said. The long-term objectives of black liberation, he said, could only be fully achieved through the second liberation struggle leading initially to the formation of a Pan-Africanist and Socialist United New Africa or a United States of Africa as the main centre of the black world. Said Cde Chimutengwende: “The enemy has adopted sophisticated strategies and tactics which means the African people also now require an equally sophisticated struggle in the form of a second liberation struggle as President Mugabe said.” He said that struggle should be based on revolutionary Pan-Africanism, socialism and class struggle as advocated by Africa’s heroes like Dr Kwame Nkrumah. Speaking at the same symposium, the Dean of the diplomatic community Mr Mahmoud Azzabi said colonial masters divided Africa into small countries. Mr Azzabi, who is also the Libyan ambassador to Zimbabwe, said Africa was rich in natural resources that could be used to develop its people but 90 percent of the resources go out of the continent and come back as expensive finished products. “As Africa, we can speak at the United Nations as one voice. At the United Nations Security Council, we must also have permanent seats on the Security Council with veto powers,” said Mr Azzabi. He said despite the challenges the continent faced, it was working hard in conflict countries such as Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). University of Zimbabwe pro-vice chancellor Professor Austin Chivinge said the spirit of pan-Africanism should continue to be observed on the continent. “We are happy to celebrate a fully decolonised Africa and we salute our leaders for unwavering stance on pan-Africanism,” he said. Prof Chivinge said it was a good thing that the continent had found collective action on different issues such as the fight against HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and other challenges. “Africa bears the responsibility of shaping its future but the continent still faces challenges in conflicts such as those in Sudan, DRC, Cote d’Ivoire and Burundi and the debt burden still affects many countries,” he said. African leaders met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in May 1963 to form the Organisation of African Unity, now the African Union. The theme of this year’s Africa day is “Working Together for Integration and Development.” The Association of African Heads of Missions and the University of Zimbabwe organised the symposium. Copyright © 2006 The Herald. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). *************************** news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5009250.stm The SavetheInternet.com Coalition is an alliance of organizations, citizens, businesses and bloggers that have banded together to protect Internet freedom. The Coalition believes <www.savetheinternet.com/=principles> that the Internet is a crucial engine for economic growth and free speech. We are working together to urge Congress to preserve Network Neutrality, the First Amendment for the Internet that ensures that the Internet remains open to innovation and progress. From its beginnings, the Internet has leveled the playing field for all comers. Everyday people can have their voices heard by thousands, even millions of people. The SavetheInternet.com Coalition — representing millions of Americans from all walks of life — is working together to ensure that Congress passes no telecommunications legislation without meaningful and enforceable Network Neutrality protections. The threat is real Congress is pushing a law that would abandon the Internet’s First Amendment — a principle called Network Neutrality that prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you — based on what site pays them the most. If the public doesn’t speak up now, our elected officials will cave to a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign. ******************************************************** Lendman’s soup is seasoned with sincerity, sanity as well as lots of hope… Hello to all – No barbeques for me on the long holiday weekend commemorated for the wrong reason as most of them are. It should pay tribute to all those (military and civilian) on all sides who died in our imperial wars of conquest in service to the giant corporations that profit from them. Fat chance that ever happening in “the land of the free and home of the brave” where all (rich white men only) are created equal but no one else. I spent my weekend answering an emailer to VHeadline.com, where I’m a regular commentator, who wasn’t happy about the “Lendman soup” he emailed me about. I decided to have some fun with him in my first paragraph, stopped laughing and settled down to write a serious article explaining why I started writing in the first place, and then showed the stark difference between Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and George Bush’s USA. Some difference indeed as I hope you’ll read and see – like night and day. My editor uses his editorial license to choose titles Hope you all enjoyed your long weekend as much as I Steve y, May 29, 2006 Lendman’s soup is seasoned with sincerity, sanity as well as lots of hope… VHeadline.com commentarist Stephen Lendman writes: Despite the jaded palate of my persistent critic whose name rhymes with phooey and hooey, I savor the splendor of my special soup I brew with sincerity and sanity. That’s quite different from my gadfly whose comments are little more than shameless servings of senseless and sanctimonious slobbering. I understand his situation as so many others suffer from the same insufferable, sorrowful and stuporous state of insensibility. The sap has been seduced by the self-serving sickness of shallowness, subservience and surliness from having sold out to the simpletons he sucks up to and sanctifies. I’ve tried before to save the silly sucker, but he prefers to sink in his insipid stew and stay a schlump. Such a shame. Why an aging retired small businessman decided to write: Living in the US for nearly 72 years, I’ve seen what ails our system, know how I want to heal it, and understand we’d better get about working for it or face a future no one will relish — or maybe no future at all. I rail about this all the time because our way is flawed, corrupted and based on plunder and exploitation for profit to benefit the privileged few and no one else. It treats people like commodities to be used and discarded like trash when no longer needed. It allows giant predatory corporations carte blanche to operate with no restraints on their divine right of capitalism, with no rules except the ones benefiting them. It needs endless war on the world for new markets, essential resources and cheap labor. It tolerates no “outliers” like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales who have the temerity to think they can serve the interests of their own people above those of their dominant Northern neighbor that always had it the other way. It’s a flat borderless world where people everywhere lose out to the interests of power, profit and privilege. It’s a world falsely extolled as the best of all possible ones, but, in fact, is just the opposite. It’s a corrupted and failed world that can’t be repaired. It’s a cancer consuming us we must expunge before it’s too late. It’s a world unfit to live in unless you happen to be rich and powerful. It’s a world unable to endure the abuse inflicted on it and will one day expire from it unless stopped and reversed. It’s not the world I want, and I work every day for the one I do. I know how daunting a task that is because too few of us understand the problem, how it affects our own welfare, or have joined the fight to overcome it while there’s still time. It’s not easy marshalling opposition to an empire when so many living under it are as easily seduced by its message as my gadfly. I too was once an adherent, was weaned to be a believer in the system and remained faithful to it much too long. It’s hard feeling otherwise when the power of the message is so great, begins early on, and never ends. It starts in the schools where everyone is fed only acceptable doctrine up to the highest levels. It was ingrained in me there, especially in college and through grad school where I was taught by experts who knew why they were there and did their job well. The idea was and is to make us all “proper” citizens and accept without question the notion of American “exceptionalism” and that we’re blessed to live in the best of all possible countries. It’s all a myth but one easy to sell to young minds ready to believe almost anything repeated often enough and from sources we think we can trust: our teachers in school, our favorites in the corporate media, the clergy, and all other institutions of power. The reality, however, belies their false message, and the only thing holding up their house of cards is its constant repetition backed up with invented fears of threats that don’t exist and brute force at home and abroad to show we’re fighting them. It’s something Gandhi understood when he was once asked what he thought of Western civilization and answered “I think it would be a good idea.” And he said that long before the age of George W. Bush. It took me a while in the real world to awaken to the way things really are. Like everyone else, I was focused on work and family and early on didn’t make the effort I should have. But once I started years ago I continued and then couldn’t stop. For me, it was a gradual awakening, and it came by reading the works of many dozens of great social thinkers, scholars, and activists. ? They taught me what I now know and never learned at two of the most prestigious of all institutions of higher learning including the one where I got my MBA in 1960 before that credential got popular. That noted university ranks at the top among the “finishing schools” that train future corporate CEOs, some of them came from my class, and I knew a couple when they were just classmates. I chose not to follow in its tradition nor do I believe in its dogma that profit is “the be all and end all” and plunder is an acceptable way to achieve it. I doubt they’d welcome me back now, think of me as one of their own or cite me as one of their many success stories. I preach and practice a much different philosophy than theirs. My view of things and the kind of world I want to live in and leave for others is one where people and their needs come first — not the message I got from Econ or Marketing 101. Despite my modest means, I think of myself as one of the privileged. But I identify myself with what Martinique born thinker, writer and activist Frantz Fanon called “The Wretched of the Earth” (the title of his best known book which I’ve read and own). Fanon deplored the horrors of colonial subjugation and championed the liberation of all people under its oppressive yoke. I’m no Fanon, but so do I, and I recognize and look at all people everywhere as my brothers and sisters and support them all and their right to social equity and justice. That’s why I take on the leaders of my country, their one-sided support for giant corporate interests and the rich, and the policies they adopt at home and abroad to work on their behalf and against ours. It’s a tradition that goes back to our roots, born in the original sin of slavery and white supremacy, best expressed by one of the nation’s Founders and First Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay when he said “Those who own the country ought to govern it.” That notion is more alive now than ever and barely disguised anymore. But today is just an extension of the past in a nation weaned on war, imperial expansion, extreme racism and classism and the belief that all the (white only) rich and powerful were created equal but no one else. I guess that leaves me out and most everybody else. How Hugo Chavez treats his people compared to George Bush … pick the Leader you’d prefer. Compare how things are in the US now to the way they are today under Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. The stark difference between them almost seems like they’re happening on two different planets. My country is the hostile planet earth of George Bush that’s indifferent to essential human needs and believes imperial oppression is good for us. Venezuela is quite different because of Hugo Chavez’ alternate vision. It’s a people-friendly one dedicated to helping all Venezuelans (especially the most needy) by providing an array of essential social programs and services unimaginable in the US: free universal health and dental care for all, free education to the highest levels, food security and clean water, micro credit and support for small business, land and home ownership for the people, worker cooperatives and independent community radio free from the poison spread by the corporate-owned media and much more. And along with all that, Chavez instituted a participatory democracy under which ordinary people have a real say in how the country is governed. Can anyone imagine those things happening in the US? Impossible. There’s more, lots of it but here’s just a sample … Hugo Chavez aids his neighbors and doesn’t threaten to invade them or any others; the country has no secret prisons; no illegal political prisoners or illegal detentions; doesn’t practice torture; doesn’t ethnically cleanse its population from neighborhoods wanted for redevelopment or entire cities like the US did to its black population of New Orleans to turn that city into a giant theme park for the rich and tourist trade; has never suspended constitutional law even in the face of a coup d’etat, mass street riots and a crippling US-instigated oil lockout and shutdown; and is working to clean up and change a legacy and systemic climate of corruption and inefficient state bureaucracy. Now compare that record to how the US operates… It devotes its immense resources to plunder, slaughter and destruction and treats ordinary people like production inputs or commodities — to be used as needed and dumped when they no longer are. The Bush administration, in its infinite arrogance, claims the right to forcibly oust any government it views as a threat to its security. It doesn’t matter if it is, just that we say it is. It sees Chavez as such a threat and has tried and failed three times to remove him with a fourth attempt likely well underway. I’ve said before Hugo Chavez is the greatest of all threats to US hegemony everywhere — the threat of a good example that left in place may grow and spread to other countries in the region and beyond. The Bush administration won’t tolerate that, and is either fomenting another coup to oust Chavez, likely with intent to kill him so he won’t rise again from the deposed, or will go to war if that’s what it takes to get the job done. ? Should it happen, as I’m convinced it will, it will be no different from how the US has treated its Latin American neighbors for over 150 years. Over that time, the US invaded Mexico and stole the half of the country it wanted. That began what became a tradition as from then until now it continued to remove the governments of a dozen Latin American countries it disapproved of (none of which posed a threat except to our hegemony) by coup or armed incursion and did it four dozen different times for whatever convenient reasons it concocted to justify its action. We even gave names to our hostile actions using benign language Orwell would have approved of. My favorite was Herbert Hoover’s (and later Franklin Roosevelt’s) Good Neighbor Policy. It was about as good as his economic policy at home that with lots of help from the Federal Reserve caused The Great Depression that ravaged the country for a decade and took the German and Japanese aggression and world war they started (with our nudging) to pull us out of it. War is good for business, and a big one is terrific. Look at more examples of how different things are in Venezuela… Hugo Chavez wants no part of the destructive neoliberal policies imposed by the WTO, IMF and World Bank but preferred by Washington because they only favor us. Instead he’s used the nation’s resources for the public good and promoted the Bolivarian notion of Latin American integration through economic aid and joint ventures that benefit those countries participating in them equally. Some difference from the Washington Consensus that’s a one-way street with a dead-end for developing countries sucked into it. Now, look at the differences between the two countries in some of their current economic data. In Venezuela, an economic boom lifting all boats is the result of Chavez’ policies (helped by high oil prices, of course). The economy is soaring, inflation and unemployment are down, and Chavez has continued his policy since 2000 of raising the minimum wage each year by 20 – 30%. He just raised it again in the first quarter of 2006 by another 10%. Data from Venezuela’s National Statistics Institute show the result. The poverty rate stood at 80% for many years before Chavez was elected. A year before he came into office in 1997 it was an official 61%. The latest figures available as of the end of 2005 show the rate now down to under 44%, a dramatic change in a short time. It was all different before Chavez’ Bolivarian Revolution that began in 1998. The country was a sham 40 year elite-controlled “democracy” (for the rich and powerful only) with 80% of the people in desperate poverty and 75% of the arable land owned by 5% of the population; its schools and hospitals were crumbling and two-thirds of the people had no access to basic medical care and most everything else; it was mostly an oil-based economy and political system controlled by and benefiting the rich and well-off middle class only and all under the giant shadow and dominance of the US that just cared about it’s access to and control of the nation’s oil and as much other wealth as it could suck out of the country. It took plenty. In all of Latin American from 1990-2002, US banks and transnational corporations earned about $1,000,000,000,000 ($1 trillion) in profits and were the main beneficiary of nearly $180 billion of state-owned enterprises privatized and thus expropriated from the people. Now compare the Chavez achievements to the US under George Bush… We’re by far the richest country in the world with nearly enough resources to be able to pave the streets with gold if they were used responsibly. The US’s 2005 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was over 90 times greater than Venezuela’s with a population about 12 times greater. Here’s another comparison I cited in an earlier article on VHeadline.com. The largest US corporation in 2005, Exxon-Mobil, alone had gross sales about 2.8 times greater than Venezuela’s total GDP. So with all that wealth, what do the numbers show? Over 46 million Americans have no health insurance and millions more have too little; inner city schools are so deliberately degraded that millions of kids in them finish up unable to read, write or do math; the official US Department of Education illiteracy rate is about 20% compared to Venezuela where it’s virtually zero; adjusted for inflation, the average working person in the US earns less than 30 years ago and the federal minimum wage (a paltry $5.15 an hour) hasn’t been raised since 1997; the growing wealth gap between rich and poor has never been greater in modern times; the average CEO in 2004 earned 431 times the income of the average working person, a ten-fold increase in the spread since 1980; the official poverty rate is 12.7% or about 37 million people in 2005 and rising, but it’s widely acknowledged the number is rigged and true figure is much higher; the prison population is the largest in the world and growing by 1000 new inmates a week; higher paid manufacturing and many high-tech jobs are being exported to low wage countries and replaced by low-paying service ones with few or no benefits; the ranks of organized labor have dropped from about one third of all workers in 1958 to under 13% today; and the level of racism is as great as before the landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s that was passed to end it. Had enough, or can I throw in one more for good measure for those who follow the monthly reports from the US Labor Department. The official unemployment rate it reports is dead wrong according to some economists willing and honest enough to speak out about it. They claim (and I agree with them) the true current figure would be about 12% instead of the reported 4.7% if the rate today was calculated the same way it was during The Great Depression when it rose to a peak of 25% and the Roosevelt administration was alarmed enough to think its consequences might cause a Russian-style revolution. That’s why we got all the great New Deal social programs from a government that cared enough or was scared enough to give them to us. Now George Bush wants to end them all including our landmark Social Security along with Medicare, Medicaid and about everything else to transfer more wealth to the rich and fund his war machine. Bush’s policies are the opposite of Franklin Roosevelt’s … he’s the greatest wrecker of social programs since the late 19th century and age of the “robber barons” when the country had few social gains to reverse and didn’t think about adding any. And in case any VHeadline readers need reminding: under the Bush Big Oil administration, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the US is just under $3 as a result of blatant market manipulation mostly at the refinery level to deliberately keep it high. That’s perfectly acceptable to the Bush administration run by former oil men and one woman who had an oil tanker named after her. Compare that to Venezuela where gasoline costs 12 cents a gallon. Anyone detect a strange odor? It’s coming from the smell of corruption from the Capitol and White House. Anyone thinking it’s about time we stopped putting up with this outrage and began acting to take our government back. It’s up to us to do it because no one there will give it to us. Back to my splendid soup I want to share with all! I know why I write and hope my readers do as well. The world today is not the one I want, and I intend to work not just to change it but to help save it before it’s too late. I agree with Noam Chomsky who fears that unless we change course we face the possibility of one or more three unpleasant outcomes: the real threat of passing from a republic to tyranny, a nuclear holocaust and/or environmental destruction. None of us would relish those alternatives … but we’d better realize they’re real and one or more of them may happen in our lifetime or even quite soon. I intend to keep brewing my special soup and season it well with sincerity, sanity as well as lots of hope and hard work for social equity and justice for all. It’s even there for the naysayers and disbelievers to sample. They ought to try some. They might discover a whole new flavor far better than the witch’s brew they now prefer. Stephen Lendman Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net ****************************** We Are Not the Ones who are the Kidnappers, Site Soley wants Peace: The Kreyol Audio: We Are Not the Ones who are the Kidnappers, Site Soley wants Author and performance poet, M. Laurent to present panels and workshops at HLLN on USAID/OTI – More Than 10 million U.S. Dollars spent since May 2004 to Report of AUMOHD’s May 3, 2006 Press Conference, Partial list of Kreyol Audio : Rene Preval’s May 18, 2006 at Lakaye, Source: Radio Soleil ***************************** Join HLLN’S MEDIA Campaign to expose the corrupt role of the UN, US, Canada, Demand that these coup d’etat implementers, FREE the people before giving – 3 Sample Letters for HLLN’s media campaign to protect the Feb 7th mandate, – HLLN’s Urgent Action Request to the UN/US/France/Canada – RELEASE THE Turning Haiti into a Penal Colony: The Systemic Criminalization of Young ****************************** ****************************** See, Urgent Media Alert: HLLN’s Media Letter Writing Campaign: Stop Mainstream Media libelously Letter to the New York Times from Hazel Ross-Robinson office Why we cannot forget the past by Harry Comeau, A letter to Washington, Letter’s to the Media – It’s the INTERNATIONAL EFFORT that has brought ******************************* |
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