http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/ The next level in Our community as we move our people from all talk and no action, to talk with action. In terms of organizing in respective communities to promote conscious discussion and solutions powered by The Talking Drum Collective. en Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:18:44 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/images/misc_2/rss.jpg http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/ http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/243-how-voodoo-vampires-suckered-mindless-living-dead.html Sun, 09 Nov 2008 20:53:15 GMT Fox News and the Right-Wing Blogosphere Cope with a Rout



This is a redacted version of a Mark Ames article at http://www.alternet.org/

The polls had just closed when the right-wing experienced its Agony of Defeat. Just after eight, when Fox’s “America's Election HQ” show returned from a commercial break, Brit Hume welcomed viewers back to his yeah, right, “Fair and Balanced” network of family values.

Something just wasn’t right-wing, like the lack of background banter, the golf-buddy joshing had stopped. Just a silence between every one of Brit Hume's hambone, dramatic pauses. Fox cameras wandered over an incredible scene: the scum of right-wing/neocon pundits slumped in their chairs in a state of depression. They seemed incapable of faking anymore, as if they'd been on a three-day Ecstasy binge at Burning Man. Or was it Burning Cross? Now they paid the horrible, serotonin-deprived price.

Bill Kristol appeared to suffer the worst. He slouched over the table, his grotesque Stewie-shaped head skulking down to his navel, his glazed eyes staring at the floor. He strained to lift his skull when Hume called on him to comment. Kristol spoke in a raspy, slow voice, not his usual smirking, tone.

I watched Fox News Election Day expecting a lot of last-minute shrieking about voter fraud, ACORN and Barack Hussein Osama terrorist-mongering. The strange thing that day was the relatively subdued, quasi-civil tone that Fox took. They pushed those buttons on Election Day, but only halfheartedly, like a vampire having to go for his own mother’s jugular. You'd have to have watched a lot of Fox News to detect the bloodsucking shift on Nov. 4.

Before the polls opened, vampire queen Ann Coulter appeared for a few minutes to riff against the liberals, but the 47-year-old MILF-goth-wannabe vamp resembled an oddly desperate mid-life crack ho in her micro-miniskirt and knee-high fem-dom storm-trooping boots, as if she stole her imaginary teenage daughter's clubbing outfit and wanted to show off. Her appearance creeped me out, like maybe a dead-end, swastika-tatted, neocon Marilyn Manson.

What was going on? The Fox News execs came up with a Plan B approach. Gone was the usual mob-incitement chest-beating that has made Fox News such a hit in Utah where pupils might get lucky with the teacher, yet they are home-schooled. (If you don’t get it, look in the mirror.) The witch doctors of the Republican right-wing zombies of voodoo economics threw in the towel. Just before the elections, Kristol tossed out his entire 30-year divide-and-quagmire playbook in favor of “hey, can‘t we all get along?” The right-wing scum rose to the top to let America kno (in so many words) that the vote for McCain-Palin was a vote for disaster.

The Fox execs also did their best to affect a civil, gracious tone. That's why watching the Fox News agony-of-defeat spectacle was more subtle than I'd expected: The vampires had decided to abandon their zombie ghouls. If I wanted to get a glimpse into the raw screeching agony that the right wing really feels I needed to venture into the blog world, where they could squeal their lungs out in cyberspace. The “patriots” at Freerepublic.com, which boasts millions of visitors, went through at least four rapid stages of decline on Election Day. They had hope, then utter shock at the realization of defeat. Then they become outraged and felt betrayal, and finally the right-wing living dead turned to Christian hypocrisy and puppet-mouth drivel about Red Dawn armed insurrection.

The Living Dead aren't just outraged at Obama and the communist-Islamo-terrorists taking over the White House; they are also outraged at the Republican Party that “betrayed” them, outraged at the American population that proved to be nothing but brainwashed “sheeple” (someone named kimchilover wrote, “For the first time, in my adult life, I am ashamed of my country … my little take on Michelle’s sentiments“), and even outraged at, yes, Fox News. Many couldn't make sense of being abandoned by Fox. As one commenter wrote, “Watch Fox with the sound off and you will be LESS aggravated.” Doh!

The most desperate, toothless woofing stance of all the spineless nerds in Freeperland said, All over but the shooting. Stock up on guns and ammo. Use them whenever necessary. (PermaRag)

B-list neocon blogzine Pajamas Media gave a feel of where the Republican elite and their lynch-mob followers are in Pajamas, which schleps with a more coastal, secular neocon demographic than the frenetic Freepers. You see what was only hinted at on Fox News.

On Pajamas, the savvier right-wing bloodsuckers, the ones with their real names attached, also adopted a grotesquely insincere “let's be civil and dignified” tone. One Election Day blog article was headlined “Let's Take Some Pride in Obama's Election -- No Matter Who We Voted For,” droning the puppet-mouth drivel first slavered by right-wing leaders.

No one on Pajamas exemplified this hypocritical shift more than Rick Moran, a bloodsucking toxic turd, the missing link between Neanderthal and spineless jellyfish. In August, pushing the Bill Ayers smear, Moran wrote, "we can say for certain that Obama is a liar of the first magnitude." J Edgar Hoover once said something similar about Martin Luther King. Just two weeks ago, Moran posted a vicious article entitled “Adolph Hitler Donates to Obama Campaign,” as if the right-wing must deny the uber rightist. Then, when it was clear to everyone in America except the stooges that Obama was going to sweep, Moran published a blog entry titled "Embrace the Future," in which he tried positioning himself as the leader of the Right-Wing Reconciliation Committee, denouncing the Obama hysteria that he promoted, distancing himself from his own divisive rhetoric.

They're already congratulating themselves for their own cynical new civility, as in “How the Rightosphere (Right-of-Fear?) Copes With Defeat.” Moran is a moron, but he's keeping up with the vampires rather than sticking with the zombies. That's the new official line for all the neo-con bloodsuckers angling to remain relevant in the new Obama era. Up in the cheap seats for the right-wing, it was all moaning against this GOP official line.

It's not just that the liberals overthrew the tobacco-spitting right-wing, but that their bullet-mouth leaders now find backwoods savagery a liability. It's the fury of living dead loyalists having been played for the biggest suckers in America by a party which trashed the greatest economic boom in history, bogged the country down in two half-baked wars, then totally sold out its constituency.

Despite all this, the zombies behave as if nothing is wrong, which is how zombies are programmed to behave. They go on as if they cannot wait for the next four years, or for Obama to die some kind of way, expecting some freak miracle or inbred jackass to off the black N-word prez so they can body surf at bigger and badder Lollipa-loser Burning Cross concerts.

It is an incredible spectacle to behold: the Republican elite abandoning a 30-year narrative at the snap of a finger just to make sure that it is positioned in the new Obama dynamic. The Republican elite has clearly decided that the "Real America" it had exploited is a liability. It's amazing how seamlessly and quickly it threw its own audience under the bus. Witness the smear campaign against the right-wingers heroic air-head dummy, Sarah Palin, now being taken down by none other than Bill O‘Reilly.

The living dead’s sense of rage and betrayal from all this is so great that you can feel and smell their neo-nazi hatred rising against Jews. Comments to a post-election article titled “Obama Receives 77% of Jewish Vote -- More Than Kerry” read like this: “I have always supported Israel and the Jewish people -- NO MORE -- if Iran throws a few missiles their way -- too bad! I don't care anymore!” A blind man can see the schools of racist bloodsuckers turning on their own like a rabid hydra.

All in all, Nov. 4 was a great day for us warm-blooded animals. Nov. 4 delivered not only hope, but satisfying comedy, to watch millions of Dean Wormers and Neidermeyers howling in right-wing rage. But Fox's sly response shows that the smarter ones are already strategizing, and that the split in the Republican Party between the crafty elite and the flesh-eating zombies who until now served as its base means that there's plenty more comic entertainment and gloating to come. ]]> Langalibalele http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/243-how-voodoo-vampires-suckered-mindless-living-dead.html http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/242-post-racialism-imperialism-thru-democracy.html Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:58:29 GMT by I. Langalibalele The landslide election of Barack Obama to the White House opens a critical new chapter in the world working class revolution. Obama’s victory came about because Imperialist contradictions have reached rotten ripe maturity. Marxists are fond of saying this and have been...
by I. Langalibalele

The landslide election of Barack Obama to the White House opens a critical new chapter in the world working class revolution. Obama’s victory came about because Imperialist contradictions have reached rotten ripe maturity. Marxists are fond of saying this and have been repeating it for a long time, however now it is more true than ever.

Indeed, this is apparent in the growing clash for global markets, intensified militarization, an expanding police State, the international financial meltdown cause by US domestic policy, and the colonized prison labor system. With laissez faire economic policy rapidly reaching its limitations, the friction of class contradictions can only sharpen the present crisis until the breaking point.

As the recent about face at the polls indicates, a renewed series of maneuvers has swung into play to extract the Imperialists from a potentially crippling situation. The Irak war and the world financial crisis, key to the Democratic Party victory, continues to compound the danger to the two-party State. The right-wing’s pervasive attacks on the notion of socialism, since no other discussion of socialist policy have genuinely entered the public debate, present in reality an offensive against democratic ideas. This trend presents an offensive against moderating the extremist, neo-fascist economic trends that have arisen under terms like neo-liberalism neo-conservativism, all popularly known as “voodoo economics”. It continues to spread the politic of divisiveness, ideological cleansing and ruling class warfare even while America has slowly, ploddingly but deliberately rejected that message.

With ebbing support for the parasitic, racist war and widespread fear of the economic situation, it became crucially important for the cynical bourgeoisie to win over the broadest segment of the population. The GOP put together the weakest possible ticket, one which would have conceded to the contending Democrats no matter what. This was necessary to save the republic from the disaster that a shrill, reactionary faction in American politics managed to achieve.

The logic of Milton Friedman’s laissez faire economic model played itself out over the past two years with all the terror and thrills of a white-water canoe ride. As the economy dashed itself upon the rocks following a 14,000 point historic high, crafted on the mortgage bubble, the free market philosophy of cut and spend went into free fall. Oil prices (not costs) continued to inflate, working class folks lost their homes and jobs, and suddenly neo-fascism lost its appeal. It became time for a change. So faster than you can say “regentrification”, a black man on the ballot didn’t seem so frightful anymore.

Now, the threat to the two-party State is a problem inherent in capitalist society. It arises from the very authoritarian character of the capitalist class (a demographic minority) and its need to consolidate as much power as possible in a crisis situation. In this case, the crisis was manufactured thru the logical outcome of neo-conservative ideology. We call that “historical determinism”. But it is merely logic, as precise and as cold as statistics bereft of human emotion. And this has been a financial crisis thirty years in the making, and could never have happened without Democratic Party collaboration.

Imperialism thru Democracy, and vice versa, remains the strategy for spreading Imperialism, not democracy. Democracy provides cover, but it is an exhaustible resource. Imperialism dragged the world into a pivotal, militaristic conflict which has already begun to transform the American political landscape. Then it dragged the world into an economic crisis which has started new wars in the Congo, Georgia, and places we have yet to take note.

Obama’s presidency is the era of Imperialism thru democracy. Imperialism must be rebuilt thru a new democratic ideal, the ideal that anybody can rise from any circumstance to become president of the United States of America. Imperialism’s new democratic theme is that racism is dead, that America is no longer afraid of the race question, that blacks have beat Italians and Irish to the White House. But this is not a victory for black people or even for democracy. It is a victory for Imperialism.

We have to say that. We have to say that, objectively, Imperialism needs Obama more than he needs it. Obama, leaping upwardly mobile from his middle class origins, infuses new blood into a bloodsucking class of international capitalists. This allows them to declare that the sharpest facet of the class struggle has been blunted, as it is, and they falsely say that we are beginning a “post-racial” era. While racism has become blunted, the class struggle that constitutes racism remains. The victory for Obama is not really a victory for working class Africans anywhere. Our victory will come when we can declare international unity for our people, when we have control over our resources and communities. Obama is not blunting the prison industrial complex, unemployment, the wars in Africa, or poverty in Haiti. There is no “post racial” era until those contradictions are solved.

What Obama represents for us is critical breathing room to intensify our organizational capacity. We, as black organizers, must take advantage of this time to redouble our efforts. We have to put Imperialism on the defensive by ideologically defeating it first, then by out-organizing it. We have to organize the unions, community groups, Latinos, whites and everybody in this country who does not have the power to weather the coming storm. Democracy is not in trouble. We are. And we have to fight to win. ]]> Langalibalele http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/242-post-racialism-imperialism-thru-democracy.html http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/190-imperialism-neo-colonialism-black-liberation.html Fri, 05 Sep 2008 01:46:30 GMT Imperialism, Neo-Colonialism and Black Liberation By Iskandar Langalibalele So it is, the Black Liberation dialectic has become blurred as the international struggle for survival in a hostile capitalist world economy take precedence. Aside from opportunists diluting the line, ambiguities... Imperialism, Neo-Colonialism and Black Liberation

By Iskandar Langalibalele


So it is, the Black Liberation dialectic has become blurred as the international struggle for survival in a hostile capitalist world economy take precedence. Aside from opportunists diluting the line, ambiguities within our own victories against Imperialism have left the national democratic struggle in jeopardy.

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --
Today, Capitalism is in crisis, grasping for anything to keep it afloat.
The role of black revolutionaries is to make sure this system drowns.
------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- --

South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique have all become tinderboxes. Imperialism has sworn to destabilize these states. Zimbabwe has been singled out for special demonization, with black-skinned critics leading the charge. Yet, while we uphold the right to criticize, Zimbabwe’s critics consistently depart from rendering concrete support for the Zimbabwean African masses.

Anti-Zimbabwe criticism is also linked with increasing criticism of South Africa because of recent attacks inside the country mis-characterized as “xenophobic pogroms”, as well as the fact the South Africans were slow to pressure the Zimbabwean government for its missteps. Very few observers have struggled to analyze this phenomenon. The Black Commentator imitated Imperialist propaganda styles in cartoon condemnations. It gave the impression that an anti-Zimbabwe element has arisen in South Africa, when workers from all neighboring African countries have been attacked, not just Zimbabweans.

It also ignores the counterinsurgency which has opposed and delayed revolutions in all three countries. In fact, not one anti-ZANU or “anti-xenophobic” article in The Black Commentator even mentions counterinsurgency. Renamo in Mozambique, Inkatha in South Africa and forces inside Zimbabwe all still receive Imperialist financing to turn back the revolutions to colonial times.

So this is the neo-colonialist element inside the Black Liberation Movement itself, posing as revolutionary, posing as black. But we have to be clear that a line exists between revision and dialectics, and that line is not always blurry. In this instance, the line is very clear. It uses anti-imperialist catch-words and near-revolutionary phraseology, yet we have crystal clarity that they have only contributed revision to the black revolutionary struggle.

America, the great enemy of black liberation, drags its black slaves out of the ghetto and around the World to showcase its purported democracy, based on a new colonialism. This neo-colonialism fragments the unstable US black community, and further separates us from other Africans because the racist “culture war” maintains victory by dashing Black unity to pieces.

Neo-colonialism, having reached near total saturation, screams out to the masses to join in on the genocide against their own class and nation. It first screamed out in a most obvious form, in open collaboration with Imperialism. Now ne(gr)o-colonialism screams from podiums and newspapers for African workers to sell out everywhere. However, Imperialism cannot genuinely accommodate a total population sell out saturation. America lacks the democratic space and the political will to achieve justice for all those whom it invites into its fold. Imperialism only requires a class peace with the appearance of niggros having achieved the American dream.

This limitation defines the essential contradiction rooted within the Imperialist crisis sweeping thru American neighborhoods, factories, and banks. It exposes the fundamental limitation of Capitalism. We have to be clear that Capitalism is a finite system with finite resources and finite ideas and finite policies. It only has finite solutions for humanity. Capitalism only accommodates a small, numerically insignificant proportion of persons, who themselves own wealth and power far out of proportion to their numbers.

Capitalism has severe limitations, and capital completely lacks the ability to relieve oppression and repression and exploitation. Capitalism’s very existence remains based in perpetuating reactionary, subhuman conditions, which is why it must be down thrown.

America tenders not one cent toward helping African people transform their economies. These valiant workers and peasants inherited racist economies slanted entirely against them, weighting them down, and having only a handful of educated and trained personnel to help make the transformation. America has done nothing to expedite their prosperous ascension within the family of nations. America has never recognized their uphill fight against the fascism of apartheid and colonialism. But the United States has been quick to condemn the errors of the Black Liberation Movement, and hinder its efforts.

And whereas, on the neo-conservative side Clarence Thomas once cited Malcolm X to express his neo-colonialist ambition at the expense of African people, the negro-colonial Left currently repudiates Malcolm to preface their public betrayals of the great Black Liberation Movement. However, dialectics and revision do not go together, and all remarks by the neo-colonialist sector can never taint Malcolm X’s revolutionary martyrdom in the hearts of the masses.

Mao Zedong once discussed, in Selected Military Writings, the interior and exterior lines of combat. He talked about this because of the dialectic involved in maintaining principled and steeled revolutionary clarity, even on the battlefield. Mao didn’t say anything about blindly obeying orders. He didn’t elaborate on intangibles like honor and glory, or metaphysics. Mao Zedong discussed issues meant to help build a revolutionary fighting force which would help develop China following the communist victory.

Neo-colonialism within the Black Liberation Movement may seem like a paradox, yet it exists because Imperialism needs to undermine the workers struggle.

The Black Liberation Movement exists for the masses of African people, for them to seize and exercise power. Black liberation overthrows and dismantles the instruments of exploitation and oppression which rules over Africans, and builds a human social system to abolish private ownership, arms races and wars, and the crises in production and social relationships. At times, black revolutionaries have fallen short of our goals, because we lacked the democratic space to complete our work.

Clearly, the Black Liberation Movement must forcefully mark its territory. It must create splits thru out the neo-colonialist infrastructure. It must make its ideological attacks on Imperialism. Capitalism itself supplies a vast source of agitational material for revolutionary organizers.

Black revolutionary workers have a duty to undermine confidence that the system will straighten out this crisis. We must make short shrift of the State ideology, the functions of its branches, its relationship to big Capital, and its alienation from the masses of people.

The Imperialist power structures, or capitalist central committees, have failed to realize the deep set aversion to occupation war -- and hence its obsolescence -- within their societies. With the bailouts of parasitic banks in the midst of a widespread housing crisis, the Imperialist power structure has overestimated society’s tolerance for exploitation. Energy prices have shot up because of supply-side deregulation, a doctrine of neo-conservative government, which also auctions off public assets to the highest bidder. Anti-democratic laws from the Telecom Act to the Patriot Act undermine workers rights and set the stage for sweeping repression.

Capitalism is a class-based system which dominates relationships between nations, between societies and classes, the rich and the poor, the great and the small, and between women and men. This degenerate system, birthed in human trafficking and genocide, today strives for validation thru the ascendancy of black slaves to positions of power formerly reserved for Imperialism’s white colonial masters. Today, Capitalism is in crisis, grasping for anything to keep it afloat. The role of black revolutionaries is to make sure this system drowns.


BRC Reparations2
BRC Reparations1
URC Discuss ]]> Langalibalele http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/190-imperialism-neo-colonialism-black-liberation.html http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/176-dialectics-revolution.html Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:41:18 GMT *The Black Liberation Struggle against Imperialism* So it is, the Black Liberation dialectic has become blurred as the international struggle for survival in a hostile capitalist world economy take precedence. Aside from opportunists diluting the line, ambiguities within our own victories... The Black Liberation Struggle against Imperialism

So it is, the Black Liberation dialectic has become blurred as the international struggle for survival in a hostile capitalist world economy take precedence. Aside from opportunists diluting the line, ambiguities within our own victories against Imperialism have left the national democratic struggle in jeopardy.

South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique have all become tinderboxes. Imperialism has sworn to destabilize these states. Zimbabwe has been singled out for special demonization, with black-skinned critics leading the charge. Yet, while we uphold the right to criticize, Zimbabwe’s critics consistently depart from rendering concrete support for the Zimbabwean African masses.

Anti-Zimbabwe criticism is also linked with increasing criticism of South Africa because of recent attacks inside the country mis-characterized as “xenophobic pogroms”, as well as the fact the South Africans were slow to pressure the Zimbabwean government for its missteps. Very few observers have struggled to analyze this phenomenon. The Black Commentator imitated Imperialist propaganda styles in cartoon condemnations. It gave the impression that an anti-Zimbabwe element has arisen in South Africa, when workers from all neighboring African countries have been attacked, not just Zimbabweans.

The Black Commentator also ignores the counterinsurgency which has opposed and delayed revolutions in all three countries. In fact, not one anti-ZANU or “anti-xenophobic” article in The Black Commentator even mentions counterinsurgency. Renamo in Mozambique, Inkatha in South Africa and forces inside Zimbabwe all still receive Imperialist financing to turn back the revolutions to colonial times.

So this is the neo-colonialist element working its way inside the Black Liberation Movement itself, posing as revolutionary, posing as black. But we have to be clear that a line exists between revision and dialectics, and that line is not always blurry. In this instance, the line is very clear. It uses anti-imperialist catch-words and near-revolutionary phraseology, yet we have crystal clarity that they have only contributed revision to the black revolutionary struggle.

Meanwhile America, the great enemy of black liberation, drags its black slaves out of the ghetto and around the World to showcase its purported democracy, based on a new colonialism. This neo-colonialism fragments the already unstable US black community, and further separates us from other Africans because the racist “culture war” maintains victory by dashing Black unity to pieces.

Neo-colonialism, having reached near total saturation, screams out to the masses to join in on the genocide against their own. It first screamed out in a most obvious form, in open collaboration with Imperialism. Now ne(gr)o-colonialism screams from podiums and newspapers for African workers to sell out everywhere. However, Imperialism cannot genuinely accommodate a total sell out population.

America lacks the democratic space and the political will to achieve justice for all those whom it invites into its fold. Imperialism only requires a class peace with the appearance of niggros having achieved the American dream.

This limitation defines the essential contradiction rooted within the Imperialist crisis sweeping thru American neighborhoods, factories, and banks. This contradiction exposes the fundamental limitation of Capitalism. We have to be clear that CAPITALISM IS A FINITE SYSTEM, with finite resources and finite ideas and policies. It only has finite solutions for humanity. Capitalism has a finite lifespan as a mode of production. Its built in antagonisms guarantee that it must be destroyed for the survival of humanity.

After all, Capitalism only accommodates a small, numerically insignificant proportion of persons, who themselves own wealth and power out of proportion to their numbers.

Capital (money, assets, accumulated wealth, expropriated land) has limited life and utility, as I have stated many times. Capitalist democracy has severe limitations, and concentrated wealth -- which defines the Capitalist social structure -- completely lacks the ability to relieve oppression and repression and exploitation. Capitalism’s very existence remains based in perpetuating reactionary, subhuman conditions; it was born thru the genocidal fascism of colonialism and slavery, and it maintains its Imperialist world domination thru neo-colonialism.

For this reason, America tenders not one cent towards helping African people transform their economies. These valiant workers and peasants inherited racist economies slanted entirely against them, weighting them down, and having only a handful of educated and trained personnel to help make the transformation. America has done nothing to expedite their prosperous ascension within the family of nations. America has never recognized their uphill fight against the fascism of apartheid and colonialism, or its own Jim Crow.

But the United States has been quick to condemn the errors of the Black Liberation Movement, and hinder its efforts.

And whereas, on the neo-conservative side Clarence Thomas once cited Malcolm X to express his neo-colonialist ambition at the expense of African people, the negro-colonial Left currently repudiates Malcolm to preface their public betrayals of the great Black Liberation Movement. However, dialectics and revision do not go together, and the discredited neo-colonialist sector can never taint Malcolm X’s revolutionary legacy.

Mao Zedong once discussed, in Selected Military Writings, the interior and exterior lines of combat. He talked about this because of the dialectic involved in maintaining principled and steeled revolutionary clarity, even on the battlefield. Mao didn’t say anything about blindly obeying orders. He didn’t elaborate on intangibles like honor and glory, or metaphysics. Mao Zedong discussed issues meant to help build a revolutionary fighting force, which would also help develop China following the communist victory.

Ideological struggles inside the Black Liberation Movement may seem paradoxical, but they reveal splits which lead to opportunism. Declaring neo-colonialism within the Black Liberation Movement may seem like a paradox, yet it exists because Imperialism needs to undermine the workers struggle.

The Black Liberation Movement exists for the masses of African people, for them to seize and exercise power. Black liberation overthrows and dismantles the instruments of exploitation and oppression which rules over Africans, and builds a human social system to abolish private ownership, arms races and wars, and the crises in production and social relationships.

At times, black revolutionaries have fallen short of our goals, because we lacked the democratic space to complete our work.

Clearly, the Black Liberation Movement must forcefully mark its territory. It must create splits thru out the neo-colonialist infrastructure. It must make its ideological attacks on Imperialism. Capitalism itself supplies a vast source of agitational material for revolutionary organizers.

Black revolutionary workers have a duty to undermine confidence that the system will straighten out this crisis. We must make short shrift of the State ideology, the functions of its branches, its relationship to big Capital, and its alienation from the masses of people.

The Imperialist power structures, or capitalist central committees, have failed to realize the deep set aversion to occupation war -- and hence its obsolescence -- within their societies. With the bailouts of parasitic banks in the midst of a widespread housing crisis, the Imperialist power structure has overestimated society's tolerance for exploitation. Energy prices have shot up because of supply-side deregulation, a doctrine of neo-conservative government, which also auctions off public assets to the highest bidder. Anti-democratic laws from the Telecom Act to the Patriot Act undermine workers rights and set the stage for sweeping repression.

We must articulate the contradictions these depredations pose to the workers and feed their indignation to build a fighting black soviet, a Kilombo Republic, if you will.

Capitalism is a class-based system which dominates relationships between nations, between societies and classes, the rich and the poor, the great and the small, and between women and men. This degenerate system, birthed in human trafficking and genocide, today strives for validation thru the ascendancy of black slaves to positions of power formerly reserved for Imperialism’s white colonial masters.

Today, Capitalism is in crisis, grasping for anything to keep it afloat. The role of black revolutionaries is to make sure this system drowns. ]]> Langalibalele http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/176-dialectics-revolution.html http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/173-anti-colonial-struggle-draws-line-sand.html Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:10:27 GMT *Propaganda Putsch Posing as Anti-Xenophobia* The Black Commentator on June 26 featured three cartoons depicting the violence in South Africa, the first accompanied by a brief text on the struggle inside Zimbabwe. A startling aspect about each of the three cartoons was their anti-African... Propaganda Putsch Posing as Anti-Xenophobia

The Black Commentator on June 26 featured three cartoons depicting the violence in South Africa, the first accompanied by a brief text on the struggle inside Zimbabwe. A startling aspect about each of the three cartoons was their anti-African depictions. Each cartoon seemed to criticize the attacks by South Africans against workers from neighboring countries.

The cartoons couched this depiction in a way which held all South Africans responsible for the attacks. As if South Africans were united in reactionary consensus against the influx of workers from Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland.

However, those of us who participated in anti-apartheid work from the Seventies thru the Nineties recall the spate of reactionary violence by the neo-colonialist Inkatha against the South African liberation movements. As paid thugs of the apartheid regime, Inkatha behaved as a counterrevolutionary force militating against fighters and workers based inside South Africa.

Perhaps, it could be the editors intended to portray the violence as supportive of ZANU-PF and the suspect political process in Zimbabwe. We kno that Horace Campbell, Bill Fletcher and the white left have very strong objections about the black power regime that shot its way into power and renamed the former colony called Rhodesia, as well as the capital.

So does The Black Commentator mean to say the South African government, dominated by black liberation forces strongly sympathetic to ZANU-PF, has unleashed these forces against Zimbabweans or, more accurately, MDC supporters?

No, that interpretation can’t be true. Two of the cartoons explicitly included the word “xenophobia”. We have to call propaganda by its correct name.

The Black Commentator’s so-called xenophobia must be contextualized. It is not “black-on-black” crime. Neither is it tribalism. It is not xenophobia, either. Africans from neighboring states have been working in South Africa at least since the Forties. That is not xenophobia when the liberation movements thru out Southern Africa were knit together as one large family fighting an enemy at once foreign and yet taking root on African soil. Counterinsurgency has nothing to do with xenophobia, but with preserving the status quo set by Imperialism.

By the same token, planting the South African flag in the back of a figure with “Zimbabwe” written across its back feeds the impression that Zimbabweans have nowhere to turn. This has more to do with The Black Commentator's axe-grinding. That is not art nor it is dialectics, it is typical Imperialist propaganda. Such polemics have nothing to do with developing clarity.

Anybody who wants a real taste of xenophobia, read the blogosphere' s inflammatory, racist comments on Barack Obama's bid for the White House.

Bill Moyers hosted Campbell to give a platform to the neo-colonialists who want to take Zimbabwe down the same road traveled by Africans from Sierra Leone and Liberia to Rwanda, Burundi and Congo.

Bourgeois democratic standards cannot be imposed on Africa, especially since the bourgeoisie undermine them, anyway. But all international human rights standards must be defended. This includes the rights of combatants, and President Mugabe declared this election a war against re-colonization.

The interest that Britain and the US have taken in Zimbabwe create suspicion. Of course the American media does not report on the activities of embassy personnel. Yet they have played a big role in how the news is processed in the media. Tafataona P. Mahoso shed some light on this in Africa Focus:

“The white Anglo-Saxon axis is in panic over Africa; and Zimbabwe is at the epicentre of the white tremors currently wearing the black faces of James McGee and Morgan Tsvangirai. Not only did [US ambassador McGee and UK ambassador Andrew Pocock] follow the same route Morgan Tsvangirai has been travelling since the March harmonised elections; [US ambassador] Diskin and Pocock have, in fact, followed McGee and Tsvangirai back to Zimbabwe as the campaign for the June 27 run-off election starts.

“But is there a panic? Why is there a panic? There is a panic because these ambassadors have been co-ordinators of what the US expert saboteur, John Perkins, calls the ‘CIA jackals’ phase of the regime change project against Zimbabwe. There is panic because the key activities of the ‘CIA jackals’ in the last month have produced results which have backfired on the sponsors. ...”

That's why people use their ability to look thru the smoke screens of an analysis posing as revolutionary, posing as Leftist, posing as black. Campbell, as late as 2003, stated in a Black Commentator article that UNITA chief Jonas Savimbi belonged to the anti-colonial trend.

A notorious counterrevolutionary then escorted around town by CORE’s Roy Innis -- a civil rights traitor on the neo-con dole -- and paraded by Ronald Reagan as a “freedom fighter”, Savimbi was listed on payrolls from the CIA and MI-6 to the apartheid-era South Africa Defence Force.

He was declared an international war criminal by the United Nations and wanted in the Hague. Savimbi fostered so much hatred against African liberation that his own troops finally assassinated him. With Savimbi dead, peace immediately came to Angola with the resultant coalition government.

Southern Africa is immersed in a power struggle which has enveloped African people since the anti-colonial movements picked up steam. It derives from the political expression of the African petty bourgeoisie and all its attendant inadequacies. It exists because the black petty bourgeois class inherited a society which was weighted against African people.

Contradictions within Zimbabwe and South Africa, respectively, are remnants of ages old scores which have not been settled despite decisive, anti-colonial victories. South Africa's problem is derivative of the world wide struggle against Imperialism, colonialism and capitalist domination.

People are moving ahead despite Fletcher and Campbell. Campbell's divisive position on Zimbabwe was defeated at the BRC tenth convention held this past month in St. Louis.

Meanwhile, Fletcher continues to use The Black Commentator to acrimoniously attack the Southern Africa liberation movements.

Southern Africa continues to symbolize and represent black America's own fierce, anti-colonial sentiments, with many proud moments and a few not-so-proud ones. But still we salute the internationalist Black Liberation Movement thru out that region!

People in thru out the US, the Caribbean and Africa kno that the Zimbabwe question offers up some critical points. Yet the people are not poised to allow US Imperialism to intervene. They are unprepared to play the sucker role for attacks against African people anywhere by a bloodsucking capitalism. African people united will never be defeated! ]]> Langalibalele http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/173-anti-colonial-struggle-draws-line-sand.html http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/156-malcolm-x-birthday-zimbabwe.html Mon, 19 May 2008 18:44:26 GMT *Malcolm X Birthday and Zimbabwe* Today, May 19, is the anniversary of Malcolm X’s birth. I like to say that we should commemorate martyrs and revolutionaries on their death anniversary, because we didn’t kno what they would be when they were born, but we kno them by the time they die. Yet... Malcolm X Birthday and Zimbabwe

Today, May 19, is the anniversary of Malcolm X’s birth. I like to say that we should commemorate martyrs and revolutionaries on their death anniversary, because we didn’t kno what they would be when they were born, but we kno them by the time they die. Yet Malcolm X was such a dynamic individual and thinker who struggled with his every fiber to connect with people, particularly African people, but mostly all people, that folks ought to celebrate his birthday, not just commemorate it.

Malcolm, before he died, had risen to the status of an African Internationalist. He was the first in America to analyze how Imperialism overthrew Patrice Lumumba and democracy in the Congo. He also traveled to Ghana and other African countries to declare his unity with the Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan African ideal.

Malcolm defended African people, not abstractions like democracy nor constitutional fiction like the Voting Rights Act. One of the most reproduced photos of Malcolm X shows him peering out of a window while holding a pump shotgun.

The gun, white folks came to say in the Wild West, made all men equal.

It was the gun which liberated Southern Africa. The gun redefined relationships if it has not as yet redrawn boundaries. The gun set Africans free from the apartheid of Rhodesia, Southwest Africa and South Africa. It set black folks free from Portuguese colonialism in Angola and Mozambique. Now they want Africans to put down the gun, starting in Zimbabwe. The place where America’s racist commentators ridiculed its very name upon its independence, saying Africans were too stupid to build stone masonry structures, such as we made at old Dzimbabwe.

Malcolm X On African-American History presents a photo of pyramids in Nubia, so old they are crumbling into dust. Malcolm didn’t play. Malcolm was thoro.

And we are going to remain thoro, we are going to continue in his tradition, because he is not just an ancestor, he is a revolutionary martyr. We do this, in part, by showing our unconditional support for Zimbabwe, ZANU-PF and President Robert Mugabe. We don’t have a black president, a black political party or even a black country. Zimbabwe is a BLACK country. We must not permit it to go back to colonialism. We must not allow the Imperialists to have it. Zimbabwe must remain ours. It is the closest thing we have to a revolutionary center.

You think that I may be exaggerating, but COSATU is the largest trade union movement in all of Africa. COSATU has been reported as opposing the post-election ZANU stance in Zimbabwe. Western media have stated that ZANU has refused to off load weapons shipped thru Cape Town destined for Harare. That may be true, it may be total fabrication. But the COSATU Daily News reported that pro-ZANU solidarity marches would be held by trade unions in South Africa. The following is a 2001 statement made by Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary of COSATU:

“The history of Zimbabwe has deep personal meaning for me and many activist of my generation. When Zimbabwe was liberated in 1980 and ZANU installed as the new governing party I was a young activist in the Eastern Cape. The liberation of Zimbabwe was a source of inspiration to me and many others - it inspired us to double our efforts to defeat apartheid. More importantly the wave of decolonisation that swept through Africa particularly the liberation of Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe proved to us that the enemy could be defeated. The liberation of Zimbabwe also dramatically altered the balance of power in the region and denied the then apartheid regime an erstwhile partner in the form of Ian Smith and opened a new front for the South African liberation movement.

“Due to the historical ties between ZANU-PF and the South African liberation movement, COSATU instinctively is biased towards ZANU. The leadership of ZANU and FRELIMO defied the apartheid government by openly supporting the liberation movement. We owe our liberation to the sacrifices that were made by these governments. It is no secret that South Africa destabilised these countries and its western allies also ostracised these progressive governments. Zimbabwe paid a heavy price for supporting the liberation movement - sanctions, economic exclusion and sabotage, and direct military attacks. All these actions were taken to intimidate the leadership of these countries to withdraw their support for the ANC but admirably stood their ground. Against this background, I am jealous about the direction and future of Zimbabwe and the rest of the region.”

I felt ostracized after writing a series of articles defending Zimbabwe, over what was viewed even by my comrades as an attack on Bill Fletcher over this issue, but it is healthy to recognize the splits in what we consider the Black Liberation Movement. That is the only way to begin the healing. Besides, I have come across a great deal of support for the position I have taken; rather, I should say, all Pan Africans and African Internationalists appear to share principled unity on this position. That has healed my wounds.

I admit writing some harsh words, but don't apologize for them. Casualties in the war of words are nothing compared to casualties caught up in the Imperialist firefights raging thru out the African world.

Zimbabwe is the second most important location on the continent at this time, after Darfur. Wafawarova was the first person I came across who had a similar position, but I was unsure what the author was trying to say with the Mid East, Iraq-Iran metaphor, and have some problems with his presentation there. It became a bit confusing.

However he says, “Zimbabwe has a history of military supremacy in the region. They played major roles in stopping Angola’s Jonasi [sic] Savimbi, defeating Mozambique’s Renamo and also in stopping the overthrow of Laurent Kabila of the DRC in 1998.” I cannot confirm that Zimbabwean military forces participated in Angola; otherwise that statement tells the story. It lays the basis for Imperialism seeking to bring Zimbabwe to her knees. Plus Wafawarova made accurate observations about Tsvangirai, who will no doubt transform Zimbabwe into a camp for Imperialism.

That is why, one burning reason, the Black Liberation Movement, in the United States as such, needs to develop a strategy for providing mutual aid to Zimbabwe thru its revolutionary forces. Africans can do this similar to the way that churches conduct mission work. Black folks can out hustle the government, if not out finance it, to the greater good of African people. It is not that ambitious, in that it is realistically attainable, and will do wonders for rebuilding the credibility of a semi-bankrupt sector in our community. We have to resurrect the notion and the reality of Black Political Power in America. Long Live Malcolm X! Long Live Zimbabwe! ]]> Langalibalele http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/156-malcolm-x-birthday-zimbabwe.html http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/144-black-liberation-primer-zimbabwe-pt-iii.html Sun, 04 May 2008 11:25:39 GMT *THE SOUTHERN AFRICA BATTLEFRONT* During the 1970s liberation war, ZANU waged armed struggle against the Rhodesian settlers’ Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) because the racist, unprincipled British colonial government washed its hands of the situation, anticipating the UDI to become... THE SOUTHERN AFRICA BATTLEFRONT
During the 1970s liberation war, ZANU waged armed struggle against the Rhodesian settlers’ Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) because the racist, unprincipled British colonial government washed its hands of the situation, anticipating the UDI to become Rhodesia’s Isandhlwana. Treating the settler issue in Southern Africa as tho white people were autochthonous, Imperialism also contradictorily supposed the UDI had a principled starting point for solving the land question.

At the same time, ZANU assisted their FRELIMO comrades in Mozambique against Portuguese colonialism. Portugal had lost control of the situation, simultaneously having to wage warfare on three African battle fronts, and struggling to preserve a democracy at home.

Portugal itself soon became a formal fascist regime under Salazar, deploying NATO weapons and the most insidious operations against poor African peasants. In Return to the Source, Amilcar Cabral retells how the small PAIGC anti-colonial movement confronted this vicious spectacle in Guinea-Bissau, capturing NATO-issued munitions that Portugal had used against villagers.

To offer a bloody tidbit of Luso-colonial atrocities, the Portuguese murdered three of the brightest African leaders on the continent. That included Cabral in Guinea-Bissau, Mondlane in Mozambique, and Neto in Angola, all medical doctors. Portuguese Africa only produced three African physicians in its 400-year African colonial history; the racists feared them as such a threat that they assassinated all three. No international body ever discussed prosecuting Portuguese military commanders as war criminals.

The Portuguese fascist army coordinated with the UDI apartheid-regime of Ian Smith to dispatch Renamo rebels with machetes, to maim and butcher Mozambican peasants. This is where the post-colonial practice of machete butchery had its origins. Counterinsurgency Renamo took the assignment of stripping away guerilla bases in Mozambique, to stop the threat posed by ZANU and FRELIMO. In this strategy, ZAPU was never considered a military threat.

As the legendary Field Marshal Samora Machel took leadership rein over FRELIMO fighters in Mozambique, the UDI increasingly sent Renamo to destabilize Tete Province to the effect that ZANU guerillas (ZANLA) there had to simultaneously fight Renamo and the Rhodesian Selous Scouts to defend rear bases provided to them by FRELIMO.

It is necessary to give some background on the grave conditions dictating political circumstances in Southern Africa. The counterinsurgency group Renamo was formed under Rhodesia’s murdering racist Selous Scouts, infiltrating Mozambique’s Tete Province to terrorize peasants and strip material support away from FRELIMO and ZANU. After the Ian Smith UDI apartheid-regime collapsed before ZANLA freedom fighters, Renamo was then transferred to the SADF command.

So now how did Renamo function? Choppered in from Malawi by South African Defense Forces, Renamo terrorists invaded villages, destroyed food stores, killed livestock, mined fields, raped women, and mutilated people by hacking off hands, feet, lips, buttocks, whatever. Renamo had no self-led objectives of its own until after the death of Samora Machel, when the international community cried out against their very existence. Suddenly, the South African regime began selecting counterinsurgents for leadership.

Now while the American newspapers had always published ZAPU’s impressive press releases, which reported ZANU’s battlefield successes as its own, ZAPU therefore had little leverage during the negotiated settlement. After the power transfer, Nkomo’s ZAPU took to the field and created more problems for Harare than they ever had for Salisbury. Southern Africa promised to dissolve into a hot mess as Renamo continued to destabilize Mozambique’s remote areas. When America sent mercenaries to destabilize Angola during this period, Ronald Reagan also declared Jonas Savimbi a freedom fighter. Savimbi’s UNITA stirred carnage in Angola, eventually inviting the racist, apartheid SADF to invade Cuito-Cuanavale. UNITA was Chinese-backed and made for havoc. But Zimbabwe still managed to help in an important way.

Thru out it all, ZANU-PF maintained the tradition of destroying Renamo inside of Mozambique years later, as a gesture of revolutionary unity. Yet Renamo had the last cruel laugh. The SADF clandestinely brought down a Soviet aircraft in 1986, killing the revolutionary Samora Machel inside South African territory on his return from a critical tri-partite summit in Tanzania, held to solve the Renamo problem.

ZANU Fights Ongoing Genocidal Imperialism
ZAPU had not played the vicious, counterrevolutionary role of Renamo or UNITA, but it had played a devil’s advocacy in Zimbabwe’s internal development, until it merged with ZANU in 1987.

Imperialism’s all racist invective has infected black people in America against anything in Africa. Professors from Zimbabwe hate Mugabe. They will side with anybody to depose him. During the 70s liberation war, Joshua Nkomo sat on his thumbs until ZANU came to power. After the negotiated settlement and up until he was ousted from the cabinet, Nkomo-led ZAPU’s contention for power had delayed the political stabilization process.

This state of affairs grinded thru the 1980s, and prevented Zimbabwe from contributing a greater share towards assisting Angola’s hard, uphill fight against the combined military forces of UNITA, alongside South Africa and Southwest Africa. Angola led this war against the invasion on its territory, with the military assistance of Cuba and Zimbabwe, adding liberation forces from AZAPO, PAC-A, ANC and the Namibian liberation movement, SWAPO.

Imperialism has made a huge issue of ZANU-PF’s desire to make settlers unass land they have historically jacked off of Africans, and turn it over to war vets. Imperialism must not be given any legitimate claims to Africa. Still, the US Congress wants laws to return land seized from Cuban exiles following the Revolution led by Fidel and Che. If crackers can have it both ways, so can ZANU-PF.

A small anti-colonial fighting formation, ZANU-PF was poor, like all the African liberation movements, but it successfully fought wars on multiple fronts. Under Mugabe’s leadership ZANU-PF unselfishly assisted black revolutionary struggle in Mozambique and Azania. After coming to power, only Zimbabwe and Tanzania consistently helped Mozambique fight against the SADF-guided Renamo counterinsurgency.

Carrying out an outstanding policy under difficult circumstances, ZANU-PF did not allow its 1981 arrangement with HJ Heinz to derail its responsibility to the Black Revolution. Having cut the best deal for itself despite the fears of many onlookers, Zimbabwe at one time had the strongest economy in black Africa. It led many Third World countries in food exports and food surpluses when other African countries were importing maize, soy and other goods. Heinz’s Zimbabwe agricultural sector outperformed all its other overseas holdings combined, look up the portfolio. However, the Imperialists have steadily eroded those gains. Imperialist violence on Namibia, Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe (the “former” Frontline States) has led to the desertification of Southern Africa, and climate change.

Neither South Africa, the ANC’s Jacob Zuma nor Nelson Mandela carry the historical leadership mantel in Southern Africa. Only one republic is ideologically strong enuf to provide security in the region over the long term; even if its democratic style seems suspect. Hands down, that country is Zimbabwe, under Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF leadership.

Neither Angola nor Namibia must leave Zimbabwe whistling in the dark should the “shoot-to-kill” SA pres Zuma formulate a policy which backstabs Harare after supporting ANC’s struggle against apartheid rule. Zuma may be that stupid and treacherous, risking his neck in Soweto. If the Congressional Black Caucus steps up to the plate by intervening in this affair, hopefully, the African street will oppose all such betrayals. The African Union better respect the Southern Africa Development Community to solve this issue, and Zimbabwe will determine its own future.

Yet even with his hands tied, Robert Mugabe is a giant. When the Imperialists destabilized Central Africa, Zimbabwe was one country that moved decisively to stabilize the situation. However, the forces of Imperialism militated against immediate success during that period, playing the ambitions of its client states (Zambia, Uganda, Congo, Rwanda and Burundi) against African interests. How people interpret this period informs us about who is who and what is what in Africa, and America.

Mugabe’s Zimbabwe has contributed far greater revolutionary sustenance to African liberation than Kwame Nkrumah ever dreamt, tho we studiously uphold Nkrumah’s thought.

Portside can call its Ivy League fact checkers or anybody else to do the research. Maybe they can prove me wrong because, like I sed, these are things I kno from heart, not from having just read the Jamaica Gleaner. Malcolm X once sed something to the effect that if the white man says north, I’m going south. And when it comes to Africa and Africans, I heed his advice. You won’t catch me behaving like a white man’s nigger! I kno better. Besides, nobody can make up my mind on Africa. I do it myself.
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The Zimbabwe constitution says a runoff must take place if one party fails to win by 50% plus one vote. MDI supposedly had 47% of the vote and ZANU 43%, and that's in the COSATU DAILY NEWS. Let Africa have Mugabe in place of Bush, Sarkozy and Brown, too. ]]> Langalibalele http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/blogs/langalibalele/144-black-liberation-primer-zimbabwe-pt-iii.html