http://allafrica.com/stories/200912040787.html

Africa: Conflict Minerals - Cover for Western Mining Interests?

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As global awareness grows around the Congo and the silence is finally being broken on the current and historic exploitation of black people in the heart of Africa, a myriad of Western-based 'prescriptions' are being proffered. Most of these prescriptions are devoid of social, political, economic and historical context and are marked by remarkable omissions.

The conflict mineral approach or efforts emanating from the United States and Europe are no exception to this symptomatic approach, which serves more to perpetuate the root causes of Congo's challenges than to resolve them.

The conflict mineral approach has an obsessive focus on the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) and other rebel groups, while scant attention is paid to Uganda (which has an International Court of Justice ruling against it for looting and crimes against humanity in the Congo) and Rwanda (whose role in the perpetuation of the conflict and looting of Congo is well documented by UN reports and international arrest warrants for its top officials).

Rwanda is the main transit point for illicit minerals coming from the Congo irrespective of the rebel group (FDLR, CNDP or others) transporting the minerals. According to Dow Jones, Rwanda's mining sector output grew 20 per cent in 2008 from the year earlier, due to increased export volumes of tungsten, cassiterite and coltan, the country's three leading minerals with which Rwanda is not well endowed. In fact, should Rwanda continue to pilfer Congo's minerals, its annual mineral export revenues are expected to reach US$200 million by 2010. Former assistant secretary of state for African affairs Herman Cohen says it best when he notes 'having controlled the Kivu provinces for 12 years, Rwanda will not relinquish access to resources that constitute a significant percentage of its gross national product.' As long as the West continues to give the Kagame regime carte blanche, the conflict and instability will endure.

According to Global Witness's 2009 report, Faced With A Gun What Can you Do, Congolese government statistics and reports by the Group of Experts and NGOs, Rwanda is one of the main conduits for illicit minerals leaving the Congo. It is amazing that the conflict mineral approach shout loudly about making sure that the trade in minerals does not benefit armed groups, but the biggest armed beneficiary of Congo's minerals is the Rwandan regime headed by Paul Kagame. Nonetheless, the conflict mineral approach is remarkably silent about Rwanda's complicity in the fuelling of the conflict in the Congo and the fleecing of Congo's riches.

Advocates of the conflict mineral approach would be far more credible if they had ever called for any kind of pressure whatsoever on mining companies that are directly involved in either fuelling the conflict or exploiting the Congolese people. The United Nations, the Congolese Parliament, the Carter Center, Southern Africa Resource Watch and several other NGOs have documented corporations that have pilfered Congo's wealth and contributed to the perpetuation of the conflict. Some of these companies include but are not limited to: Traxys, OM Group, Blattner Elwyn Group, Freeport McMoran, Eagle Wings/Trinitech, Lundin, Kemet, Banro, AngloGold Ashanti, Anvil Mining, and First Quantum.

The conflict mineral approach, like the Blood Diamond campaign from which it draws its inspiration, is silent on the question of resource sovereignty, which has been a central question in the geo-strategic battle for Congo's mineral wealth. It was over this question of resource sovereignty that the West assassinated Congo's first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba and stifled the democratic aspirations of the Congolese people for over three decades by installing and backing the dictator Joseph Mobutu. In addition, the United States also backed the 1996 and 1998 invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda instead of supporting the non-violent, pro-democracy forces inside the Congo. Unfortunately - and to the chagrin of the Congolese people - some of the strongest advocates of the conflict mineral approach are former Clinton administration officials, who supported the invasions of Congo by Rwanda and Uganda. This may in part explains the militaristic underbelly of the conflict mineral approach, which has as its so-called second step a comprehensive counterinsurgency.

The focus on the east of Congo falls in line with the long-held obsession by some advocates in Washington who incessantly push for the balkanisation of the Congo. Their focus on 'Eastern Congo' is inadequate and does not fully take into account the nature and scope of the dynamics in the entire country. Political decisions in Kinshasa, the capital in the West, have a direct impact on the events that unfold in the East of Congo and are central to any durable solutions.

The central claim of the conflict mineral approach is to bring an end to the conflict; however, the conflict can plausibly be brought to an end much quicker through diplomatic and political means. The so-called blood mineral route is not the quickest way to end the conflict. We have already seen how quickly world pressure can work with the sidelining of rebel leader Laurent Nkunda and the demobiliation and/or rearranging of his CNDP rebel group in January 2009, as a result of global pressure placed on the CNDP's sponsor, Paul Kagame of Rwanda. More pressure needs to be placed on leaders such as Kagame and Museveni who have been at the root of the conflict since 1996. The FDLR can readily be pressured as well, especially with most of their political leadership residing in the West. This, however, should be done within a political framework, which brings all the players to the table as opposed to the current militaristic, dichotomous, good guy/badguy approach where the West sees Kagame and Museveni as the 'good guys' and everyone else as bad. The picture is far more grey than black and white.

A robust political approach by the global community would entail the following prescriptions:

1. Join Sweden and Netherlands in pressuring Rwanda to be a partner for peace and a stabilising presence in the region. The United States and Great Britain in particular should apply more pressure on their allies Rwanda and Uganda to the point of withholding aid if necessary.

2. Hold to account companies and individuals through sanctions trafficking in minerals, whether with rebel groups or neighbouring countries, particularly Rwanda and Uganda. Canada has chimed in as well but has been deadly silent on the exploitative practices of its mining companies in the Congo. Canada must do more to hold its mining companies accountable as is called for in Bill C-300.

3. Encourage world leaders to be more engaged diplomatically and place a higher priority on what is the deadliest conflict in the world since the Second World War.

4. Reject the militarisation of the Great Lakes region represented by AFRICOM, which has already resulted in the suffering of civilian population: The strengthening of authoritarian figures such as Uganda's Museveni (in power since 1986) and Rwanda's Kagame (won the 2003 'elections' with 95 percent of the vote); and the restriction of political space in their countries.

5. Demand of the Obama administration to be engaged differently from its current military-laden approach and to take the lead in pursuing an aggressive diplomatic path, with an emphasis on pursuing a regional political framework that can lead to lasting peace and stability.

To learn more about the current crisis in the Congo, visit www.friendsofthecongo.org and join the global movement in support of the people of the Congo. Kambale Musavuli is spokesperson and student coordinator for Friends of the Congo.

Dump Obama


We had such great expectations when we elected Obama. He filled us with the audacity of hope. He had not only the enthusiastic support of American people, but the whole world. Obama is very intelligent, eloquent and charismatic. What good is it for the president to be very intelligent, eloquent, charismatic and black like me, but act like George Bush? Obama has been stringing us along while carrying out Republican policies. According to the Bible, “ By their fruits ye shall know them”. Well that Democratic tree has been bearing Republican fruits.

But despite our hopes, he has proceeded to ignore true Democrats. Republicans should be ecstatic with him. For he has continued most of the notorious George Bush atrocities and followed Republican policies which would have done McCain proud, such as:

• He has failed to end the Iraq war, with over US 50,000 troops still there and thousands of ‘private security contractors (mercenaries), whose numbers continue to increase.
• He increased troops in Afghanistan completely ignoring thousands of petitions against that escalation from an array of groups who had worked tirelessly to elect him.
• Instead of stopping wars, he has gone beyond the middle east to start war in Africa, by bombing Libya.
• He continues to use drone aircraft to bomb civilians in much greater numbers than George Bush ever did in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and now Libya.
• He was silent as Israel heaped terror on innocent men, women and children of Gaza, by bombing schools, hospitals, homes and trying to starve them out by blockade.
• He continued George Bush’s tax breaks for the rich while the middle class faces economic meltdown
• He is knee-deep in wall street millionaires
• He intervened to keep Democratic traitor Joe Lieberman as senate chairman
• He has not intervened to stop or influence the resignation of his loyal impressive supporter Anthony van Jones as as special adviser for green jobs for the Council on Environmental Quality
• He promised to close Guantanamo but has officially abandoned that idea
• He did not intervene to stop or influence the resignation of White House Counsel Greg Craig, described as the “hero of Guantanamo” for his pivotal role in urging the president to announce the closing of that hellhole.
• Prisoners are still held illegally( including some who are known to be innocent) in Guantanamo without trial for more than 9 years.
• Prisoners in Guantanamo will not face the justice of American courts, but will face the kangaroo courts of military tribunals.
• As a candidate, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, but has stripped away their protection and has used ‘nationa security leaks’ as a pretext to ruthlessly intimidate, silence and prosecute whistle-blowers. He has been using the Espionage Act this way for such prosecutions more than all previous Administrations combined.
• He did not intervene to stop the inhuman treatment of Wikileaks whistle- blower Bradley Manning, who has not been found guilty of any crime, but he has been kept in solitary confinement, often in the nude nightly and sleep deprived, for over a year.
• He had State Department spokesman PJ Crowley fired for describing the inhuman conditions under which Bradley Manning was being held as “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid.”
• He did not allow the UN to visit Bradley Manning in response to the inhumane confinement conditions report.
• He blocks every attempt to try war criminals Bush, Cheney and others
• He refused to ban extreme rendition
• He is vague on torture or prosecuting for torture
• He opposed the return of Haiti’s legitimate president Aristide from the US imposed exile in South Africa
• He renewed the illegal embargo on Cuba
• He has signed an agreement for American troops of intimidation to occupy Columbian army bases
• He has announced that like George Bush he will not sign a treaty on global warming
• He reneged on his support for single payer healthcare plan for some convoluted plan, which though an improvement, will be a financial bonanza for insurance companies, burden the public coffers and still leave millions uninsured.
• He forgave illegal wiretapping of American citizens
• He made no move to stop or influence the stripping of federal funds from Acorn without any real investigation of acts committed by a couple part time employees who were not representative of that great advocate of the poor.
• Acorn was destroyed while Blackwater, charged with crimes ranging from murder, illegal arms smuggling, and child prostitution and also expelled by the Iraq government, continues to draw more than $174 million in "security services" alone in Iraq and Afghanistan and tens of millions more in "aviation services".
• He named no real progressives to his cabinet or as close advisors
• He has avoided black leaders like the plague, even those like Cornel West, who campaigned 65 times for him in his successful presidential bid.
• He has refused to sign the international treaty banning landmines.
• His Supreme Court nominees voted for warrantless searches by police in recent Kentucky ruling.
• He refused to send a US rep to the 2009 World Conference Against Racism held in Geneva, Switzerland.

He often quoted FDR ‘elect me president and make me do it’. We liberals thought he was referring to us. We did not realize that message was intended for Republicans because they made him do their bidding. On the other hand, we liberals instead get insulted by his cronies like his Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates by calling us ‘professional left’. Even worse, his former henchman Chief-of-Staff, Rahm Emanuel, now mayor of Chicago, referred to us as f….king retards. Nope this did not come from some Tea Party zealot, but Rahm Emanuel! I feel so betrayed.

With four more years under Obama, more wars are inevitable and medicare, social security and more civil liberties will be in grave danger. He is in the pocket of Wall Street and Republicans. Obama has betrayed Democratic principles. He does not deserve to be the Democratic nominee for president for the next election. If George Bush had done the things Obama has done, we would be outraged. Let Obama run as the Republican he is. But let us seek and nominate a real Democrat to be the next president of the USA.Let us face it, we thought we were getting Thurgood Marshall but we got Clarence Thomas instead.

Michael Phillips, 
Editor, Hot Calaloo
http://www.hotcalaloo.com/
Author, Boycott Money and Save Your Soul
- Launching The Goodwill Revolution".
http://www.goodwillie.org/

Slavery destroyed the fabric of Afrikan society. Warriors and protectors, mothers and fathers, farmers and traders, artists and craftsmen, the very best of Afrikan nations were stolen away into the Maafa of slavery. We lost our language, names, our way of worship, our way of living. Rites of Passage is one of the ways we must recover what we lost to this tragic era of history. Ignoring the legacy of slavery won't make it go away. We must heal as a people and become whole again. We must first know who we were and who we are to become.

“I want to say categorically and very clearly that these policies of war … are not what the people of the United States stand for and it’s not what African-Americans stand for,” she told state TV.


Former U.S. congresswoman McKinney speaks on state TV in Libya


CYNTHIA MCKINNEY

May 21, 2011
By the CNN Wire Staff

A former U.S. congresswoman slammed U.S. policy on Libyan state TV late Saturday and stressed the "last thing we need to do is spend money on death, destruction and war."
The station is fiercely loyal to Moammar Gadhafi and her interview was spliced with what appeared to be rallies in support of the embattled Libyan leader.
"I think that it's very important that people understand what is happening here. And it's important that people all over the world see the truth. And that is why I am here ... to understand the truth," former Rep. Cynthia McKinney said during a live interview.

She said she was invited to Libya by the "nongovernmental organization for fact-finding," adding that she intends to bring more people to the country soon so that "they too can understand."
NATO warplanes have been pounding military targets since March after the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution to protect civilians by any means necessary as Gadhafi's forces try to quash a nearly three-month revolt against the leader's roughly 42 years of rule.
Gadhafi's government has repeatedly urged the international community to send fact-finding teams to Libya to report what's happening on the ground.
At one point during the interview, state TV cut to what it said were live airstrikes, hitting Gadhafi's compound.
"Is that a bomb?" McKinney asked.
"I want to say categorically and very clearly that these policies of war ... are not what the people of the United States stand for and it's not what African-Americans stand for," she told state TV.
The former Georgia representative also slammed the economic policies of U.S. President Barack Obama and said the government of the United States no longer represents the interests of the American people.
"Under the economic policies of the Obama administration, those who have the least are losing the most. And those who have the most are getting even more," she said. "The situation in the United States is becoming more dire for average ordinary Americans and the last thing we need to do is to spend money on death, destruction and war."
Separately, McKinney appeared on state-run Press TV this week in Iran. She was reported to be in Tehran attending the International Conference on Global Alliance Against Terrorism for a Just Peace.

Killing Democracy One File at a Time: Justice Department Loosens FBI Domestic Spy Guidelines

June 19, 2011
by Tom Burghardt

While the Justice Department is criminally inept, or worse, when it comes to prosecuting corporate thieves who looted, and continue to loot, trillions of dollars as capitalism’s economic crisis accelerates, they are extremely adept at waging war on dissent.

Last week, The New York Times disclosed that the FBI “is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.”

Under “constitutional scholar” Barack Obama’s regime, the Bureau will revise its “Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide.” The “new rules,” Charlie Savage writes, will give agents “more latitude” to investigate citizens even when there is no evidence they have exhibited “signs of criminal or terrorist activity.”

As the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) recently pointed out, “When presented with opportunities to protect constitutional rights, our federal government has consistently failed us, with Congress repeatedly rubber-stamping the executive authority to violate civil liberties long protected by the Constitution.”

While true as far it goes, it should be apparent by this late date that no branch of the federal government, certainly not Congress or the Judiciary, has any interest in limiting Executive Branch power to operate lawlessly, in secret, and without any oversight or accountability whatsoever.

Just last week, The New York Times revealed that the Bush White House used the CIA “to get” academic critic Juan Cole, whose Informed Comment blog was highly critical of U.S. imperial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The former CIA officer and counterterrorism official who blew the whistle and exposed the existence of a Bush White House “enemies list,”, Glenn L. Carle, told the Times, “I couldn’t believe this was happening. People were accepting it, like you had to be part of the team.”

Ironically enough, the journalist who broke that story, James Risen, is himself a target of an Obama administration witchhunt against whistleblowers. Last month, Risen was issued a grand jury subpoena that would force him to reveal the sources of his 2006 book, State of War.

These latest “revisions” will expand the already formidable investigative powers granted the Bureau by former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey.

Three years ago, The Washington Post informed us that the FBI’s new “road map” permits agents “to recruit informants, employ physical surveillance and conduct interviews in which agents disguise their identities” and can pursue “each of those steps without any single fact indicating a person has ties to a terrorist organization.”

Accordingly, FBI “assessments” (the precursor to a full-blown investigation) already lowered by the previous administration will, under Obama, be lowered still further in a bid to “keep us safe”–from our constitutional rights.

The Mukasey guidelines, which created the “assessment” fishing license handed agents the power to probe people and organizations “proactively” without a shred of evidence that an individual or group engaged in unlawful activity.

In fact, rather than relying on a reasonable suspicion or allegations that a person is engaged in criminal activity, racial, religious or political profiling based on who one is or on one’s views, are the basis for secretive “assessments.”

Needless to say, the presumption of innocence, the bedrock of a republican system of governance based on the rule of law, like the right to privacy, becomes one more “quaint” notion in a National Security State. In its infinite wisdom, the Executive Branch has cobbled together an investigative regime that transforms anyone, and everyone, into a suspect; a Kafkaesque system from which there is no hope of escape.

Under Bushist rules, snoops were required to open an inquiry “before they can search for information about a person in a commercial or law enforcement database,” the Times reported. In other words, somewhere in the dank, dark bowels of the surveillance bureaucracy a paper trail exists that just might allow you to find out your rights had been trampled.

But our “transparency” regime intends to set the bar even lower. Securocrats will now be allowed to rummage through commercial databases “without making a record about their decision.”

The ACLU’s Michael German, a former FBI whistleblower, told the Times that “claiming additional authorities to investigate people only further raises the potential for abuse.”

Such abuses are already widespread. In 2009 for example, the ACLU pointed out that “Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as ‘low level terrorism’.”

As I reported in 2009, citing a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Bureau’s massive Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW), is a data-mining Frankenstein that contains more “searchable records” than the Library of Congress.

EFF researchers discovered that “In addition to storing vast quantities of data, the IDW provides a content management and data mining system that is designed to permit a wide range of FBI personnel (investigative, analytical, administrative, and intelligence) to access and analyze aggregated data from over fifty previously separate datasets included in the warehouse.”

Accordingly, “the FBI intends to increase its use of the IDW for ‘link analysis’ (looking for links between suspects and other people–i.e. the Kevin Bacon game) and to start ‘pattern analysis’ (defining a ‘predictive pattern of behavior’ and searching for that pattern in the IDW’s datasets before any criminal offence is committed–i.e. pre-crime).”

Once new FBI guidelines are in place, and congressional grifters have little stomach to challenge government snoops as last month’s disgraceful “debate” over renewing three repressive provisions of the USA Patriot Act attest, “low-level” inquiries will be all but impossible to track, let alone contest.

Despite a dearth of evidence that dissident groups or religious minorities, e.g., Muslim-Americans have organized violent attacks in the heimat, the new guidelines will permit the unlimited deployment of “surveillance squads” that “surreptitiously follow targets.”

In keeping with the Bureau’s long-standing history of employing paid informants and agents provocateurs such as Brandon Darby and a host of others, to infiltrate and disrupt organizations and foment violence, rules governing “‘undisclosed participation’ in an organization by an F.B.I. agent or informant” will also be loosened.

The Times reports that the revised manual “clarifies a description of what qualifies as a “sensitive investigative matter”–investigations, at any level, that require greater oversight from supervisors because they involve public officials, members of the news media or academic scholars.”

According to the Times, the manual “clarifies the definition of who qualifies for extra protection as a legitimate member of the news media in the Internet era: prominent bloggers would count, but not people who have low-profile blogs.”

In other words, if you don’t have the deep pockets of a corporate media organization to defend you from a government attack, you’re low-hanging fruit and fair game, which of course, makes a mockery of guarantees provided by the First Amendment.

As I reported last month, with requests for “National Security Letters” and other opaque administrative tools on the rise, the Obama administration has greatly expanded already-repressive spy programs put in place by the previous government.

Will data extracted by the Bureau’s Investigative Data Warehouse or its new Data Integration and Visualization System retain a wealth of private information gleaned from commercial and government databases on politically “suspect” individuals for future reference? Without a paper trail linking a person to a specific inquiry you’d have no way of knowing.
Even should an individual file a Freedom of Information Act request demanding the government turn over information and records pertaining to suspected wrongdoing by federal agents, as Austin anarchist Scott Crow did, since the FBI will not retain a record of preliminary inquiries, FOIA will be hollowed-out and become, yet another, futile and meaningless exercise.
And with the FBI relying on secret legal memos issued by the White House Office of Legal Counsel justifying everything from unchecked access to internet and telephone records to the deployment of government-sanctioned malware on private computers during “national security” investigations, political and privacy rights are slowly being strangled.
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, he is a Contributing Editor withCyrano’s Journal Today. His articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military “Civil Disturbance” Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.

LIBYA: Rebels execute black immigrants while forces kidnap others




ADDIS ABABA — While much of the world’s attention is focusing on crude oil prices and the Libyan pipelines in the east of the country– human right groups say rebels are committing crimes against humanity.
In east Libya, African hunt began as towns and cities began fall under the control of Libyan rebels, mobs and gangs. They started to detain, insult, rape and even executing black immigrants, students and refugees.
In the past two weeks, more than 100 Africans from various Sub-Sahara states are believed to have been killed by Libyan rebels and their supporters.
According to Somali refugees in Libya, at least five Somalis from Somaliland and Somalia were executed in Tripoli and Benghazi by anti-Gaddafi mobs. Dozens of refugees and immigrants workers from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Ghana, Nigeria, Chad, Mali and Niger have been killed, some of them were led into the desert and stabbed to death. Black Libyan men receiving medical care in hospitals in Benghazi were reportedly abducted by armed rebels. They are part of more than 200 African immigrants held in secret locations by the rebels.
In many disputes involving Libyan residents and black Africans, the Libyans are turning in the Africans as mercenaries.
Thousands more Africans caught up in this mercenary hysteria are terrified. Some barricaded themselves in their homes, while others hid in the desert. Insulted, threatened, beaten, chased and robbed. Their only crime was being black and therefore treated as “mercenaries” of Gaddafi.
Rebels hold a young man at gunpoint between the towns of Brega and Ras Lanuf (Reuters/Goran Tomasevic)

While the airing of Gaddafi’s so called “black mercenaries” by Western media has ignited the issue, some say an xenophobic attitude towards these refugees and labourers has existed for years. They say the current attacks are racially motivated because the rebels have released many actual Libyan mercenaries and soldiers under a tribal agreement. They believe many Arabs felt their Libyan leader was abandoning them for black Africans ever since he became a “pan-Africanist”. Many immigrants were regularly victims of racism.
In many situations, Gaddafi and his inner circle preferred black Africans and Libyans from the south over Libyans from the east. Now the angry mobs using the revolutionary movement across Arabia and North Africa are hunting down black people.
Mohamed Abdillahi, Somaliland, 25, was sleeping at his home in Zouara, when the mobs arrived. “They knocked on the door around 1 o’clock in the morning. They said get out, we’ll kill you, you are blacks, foreigners, clear.”
The testimonials and are very similar among the thousands of Africans that saw the ugly side of Libya in the past weeks. “They have attacked us, they took everything from us,” said Ali Farah, Somali labourer 29 years.
“They wanted to kill civilians, they beat many of us. To me, they are animals,” says Jamal Hussein, 25 years Sudanese worker.
Many of the fleeing Africans are terrified to tell their stories. At the checkpoint, they do not mingle with others. When asked about their ordeal, they just freeze, “they stopped us many times and said not tell what has happened here, say there are no problems,” Elias Nour from Ethiopia said.
“For the past seven days, my whole family has been holed up at home without any food, running water or electricity, we appeal for urgent intervention,” Mohamed Abdi from Somaliland told local reporters by cellphone.
In the latest reports reaching Somalilandpress from Tripoli, forces loyal to Col. Muammar Gaddafi have reportedly began kidnapping African and Libyan youths from their homes and universities. They are said to be preparing them for a showdown against the rebels. The kidnapped youths include five teenagers from Somaliland.
Many Africans have virtually nothing after years in Libya, many have been looted, robbed, while others saw their living quarters and apartments go in flames. Now they are praying to God to send them home.
While the international leaders are busy drafting resolutions to dismantle Muammar Gaddafi, the African Union has not yet commented on the situation in Libya.
Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court is said to have started a formal inquiry into possible crimes against humanity in Libya that will investigate the Libyan regime.
Somalilandpress
4 March 2011

Former Georgia Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney blasted President Barack Obama on Saturday at an ANSWER coalition meeting in Washington, D.C. for engaging the United States in a war against Libya. After returning from Libya with a group of U.S. journalists, Ms. McKinney launched a U.S. speaking tour to talk about her trip.
"I took a rash step because I was so outraged that our president would launch yet another illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, war and so I also knew that my government was lying," she said to a group of 60 -70 anti-war Left attendees sitting in a Columbia Heights meeting room.
Ms. Mckinney told the gathering:
"Black America has been extremely supportive of our president, but not in this case. A line has been drawn in the sand with respect to our president bombing Africa and Libya in particular because of the history of support when the United States was supporting apartheid in the African continent, it was the people of Libya and the people of Muammar Qaddafi who were fighting to eradicate apartheid. And for those blacks and people of color inside this country who were fighting to eradicate American style apartheid, the people of libya and Muammar Qaddafi were supportive as well."
"Now I don’t know that history, but brother Akbar knows that history very well and that is part of the reason why black America has drawn this line in the sand because this is something that is a historical relationship that has context that brother Obama ...that President Obama...stepped across. He has crossed over the threshold."

The war in Libya continues to lose support and despite liberals on a site like The Dally Kos who tout reasons to support the war, leftists in the anti-war ANSWER coalition are dead set against it. Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Ohio Democrat, was part of a bi-partisan group of members on Capitol Hill who filed a lawsuit against the president two weeks ago for executing an illegal war.
Before the House voted to deny authorization to the Libyan war but fund the operation, Rep.Kucinich told reporters last week, "It’s a tradition that the president’s party on the congressional level tries to offer him support, but I think that we need to give better advice to the president that this mission is not possible. That it’s misguided. That he had advice from the Pentagon and from his Attorney General that would suggest."
Mr. Kucinich added, "He should not pursue this without going to Congress and that we serve the president best when we tell him what we really think not just to endorse the policies that he has indicated that he wants."
Rep. Kucinich later told me that we was asked to participate in an anti-war event in October, when I asked him why the anti-war groups like ANSWER have not been as visible on the streets now as they were during the Bush administration.
Ms. McKinney further attacked President Obama:
"I have been blessed to be able to travel all over the world. And as I have traveled, at one point I was extremely proud of the fact that black people in the United States and all over the world have a moral authority because everyone all over the world understands the plight that we have struggled against that we continue to have to struggle against, but unfortunately now, the policies of the Bush administration have been enunciated and implemented by black faces from Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice and now we have a continuation of those polices through the office of President Obama."
"So I’m directly impacted negatively by the actions of these black people who have decided that they would cast their lot with warmongers, war criminals, and people who peddle in death and destruction. So I decided as a responsible and conscious black person that I wanted my voice heard against what these other people were enunciating and at the same time I also am just sick and tired of war. I want better for my country."

Randy Short of Black Agenda Report was also on Saturday's ANSWER speakers' panel and went after President Obama for "funding" what Mr. Short called "n****r hunting" in Africa.
"There was the other thing I was to look at and that was how these terrorist people who are killing, support the troops over in Iraq from Derna, from Benghazi...these same al Qaeda people that we're being taxed to fight are the ones we're funding who are raping with Viagara black and brown women--cutting their breasts off and letting them bleed to death--taking their body parts and spelling the word 'whore.' That's a humanitarian intervention people? They are going on African hunts or we would say, 'n****r hunting.' Our president is funding this. I have friends who are Somali who fled Libya and are now in Italy give me stories about how they have been robbed, how the have been beaten, and how people are being killed."

It is unlikely ANSWER will get the huge numbers of anti-war participants it saw during the Bush years. Without a Republican in office, the left has little in common to unite and hate over. However, an anti-war march is planned in Washington on July 9, nonetheless.
It seems that the left-wing is currently divided among three factions. One side is protecting the president from negative fallout during a campaign year from his own foreign policy actions. Another more pure pacifist crowd wants to retreat immediately from all foreign intervention regardless of consequences.
The third albeit smaller camp senses impending election doom and is looking for a face-saving way out of the intra-party dispute in the hopes of salvaging some endangered seats in Congress. Is it no wonder President Obama called to draw down troops from Afghanistan so he could focus on domestic policy?

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
Frederick Douglass July 5, 1852.

The following is an excerpt from an oration delivered at the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass delivered a speech that took aim at the pieties of the nation — the cherished memories of its revolution, its principles of liberty, and its moral and religious foundation. The Fourth of July, a day celebrating freedom, was used by Douglass to remind his audience of liberty’s unfinished business.

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.”
But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!
”By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”
Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;” I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgement is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, their will I argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Americans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively, and positively, negatively, and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employments for my time and strength, than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Barack Obama's presidency is a sign of confused times for the Afrikan world and the Afrikan American in particular. Emotions were over-the-top when Obama was elected. Democrats and Independents were drunk on slogans of "Hope and Change." Black swore that Obama was "The One" or even the "Messiah". His campaign strategy even incorporated this media deception. Since being in office, he has been worse than Bush on foreign and domestic affairs, on unjust wars and the corporate theft of tax dollars. The Black Leadership, secular and religious, university and laymen, radical and moderate, drunk on media hype as well, they all failed to lead and critically analyze Obama for what he was and remains today, a black Manchurian face on the white corporate power structure of America.

I will be on Brother Charles Allen blogtalk radio program, Wednesday 20th from 9-11pm. The topic-Sisters Protect Yourselves. Tune in and listen http://tobtr.com/s/2110683 . Special guest Bro. Mukasa Afrika will be in the virtual studio to discuss Black female self defense, as well as physical, and weapons training. We will discuss his combat system called Ma’at-Sumu and the many elements that are a part of the system, including the mental, spiritual and physicals aspect of it. Our sisters need to protect themselves in a very wild world. And this show will promote that. Mukasa Afrika is the author, of The Redemption of Afrikan Spirituality, and he formulated the Miamba Tano or Five Pillars of Afrikan Spirituality.He is an true pan African Nationalist… an educator, author, and lecturer. Call-in Number: [B]1 (347) 994-2959[/B]

by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at
http://www.mukasa.info/
As I have stated elsewhere, this critique of religions is not directed at individuals who choose Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as faiths for personal reasons. Indeed, their religions may be very practical and enlightening for them. The Afrikan-Centered critique is concerned with the power structure of the religions, the power structure which shapes the worldview of the masses. Considering the present influence that Islam has on the Afrikan/Black world, and with many of our people believing that it is favorable to our plight, even the final solution to our problems, we must analyze some neglected history of this religion. Again, we see our people becoming passionate over a foreign set of beliefs that were created to suit foreigners. We have done so without becoming equally passionate over our own ancestral Afrikan Spirituality.

In his introduction to Alfred Butler’s book, The Arab Invasion of Egypt, John Henrik Clarke holds Arab nationalism, in Afrika, in suspicion when he states some basic facts: “At least 70 percent of all the Arabs in the world live in Africa.” Why do so many live in Afrika and not in or around the Arabian Peninsular? Dr. Clarke also notes:
There are more than 127 million Arabs in the world [at that time]. A statistic that few adherents of the faith have taken into consideration is that there are more Africans who are Moslems who are not Arab than there are Arabs in the world.
How and why did this set up occur? Afrika’s native population is somewhere close to a billion people (most estimates are lower). Afrika’s total Muslim population is estimated at over 200 million people, nearly all of whom belong to the Sunni branch of Islam. However, there are countless millions of Afrikans who claim to be Muslim, but are dual-religious in practice and still adhere strongly to forms of Afrikan Spirituality. Although Arabs are a minority in Islam, they comprise the power elite and control government, land, oil, and other resources in North Afrika. One historic resource of the Arab world, that we will discuss in detail, is the Afrikans who were enslaved. However, we must first overview the rise of Islam to fully understand the subject.

Before the birth of Mohammed and the rise of Islam, Arabs had contact with Afrika - Egypt and Ethiopia in particular. Arabs are shown in carvings as troublesome foreigners often chained or roped as prisoners. They were a nomadic people who came into ancient Egypt, some settling in the delta. There was a later contact between Afrikans and Arabs in which the Kushite-Afrikans extended their empire over a large part of Arabia.

A part of the ancient Afrikan and Arabian contact was the pre-Islamic slave trade in Afrikans. The city of Mecca, which became the Islamic holy city, was one of the centers for this trade. Slave trading has continued in Mecca to the present day. A Muslim who has traveled the world told me personally that he saw women being sold in the Islamic world and Black eunuchs in Mecca.

Ira Lapidus, in A History of Islamic Societies, has a chapter on “The Life of the Prophet.” Also, Islam’s Black Slaves by Ronald Segal discusses the life of Mohammed. The Prophet of Islam, Mohammed, was born around 570 ACE to the Quraysh people. His ancestors were once very prominent from their control of Mecca’s trade in the fifth century. His father died before his birth, and his mother died when he was about 6 years old, which resulted in him being raised by relatives. He was temporarily cared for by his paternal grandfather until he died. Mohammed would become a camel driver, and also a trader. It was through trade that he met his wife, Khadijah, a rich merchant who asked him to do some trade in Syria for her. At 25 years of age Mohammed married her, his first wife; she was 40 years of age and twice widowed.

This marriage brought Mohammed leisure time in which he used to think. He conceptualized the organized religion of Islam, and borrowed many concepts. Allah was the Moon-God whose symbol was the star and crescent, evidence of ancient nature worship. Mohammed obviously borrowed from Christians and Jews, who had earlier borrowed from Kemet. A comparison of the Pert-em-Heru and other Nile Valley text, the Bible, and the Koran would reveal the parallels. Lastly, Mohammed received advice and beliefs from a Hanif – which was believed to be an Arabian monotheist, a believer in one God though not a Jew or Christian. (Lapidus, 23)

The first of the “Revelations” that Muhammad received from Allah that would become the Koran was in 610 ACE. This may be considered the official beginning of Islam, though the Islamic calendar begins in 622 with the Hijra. In the first few years, only a few dozen people became Muslims. In 615 ACE, Mohammed gained more followers. However, because of their conflict with traditional Arab worship, he suggested that some of his followers go to live among the faultless Ethiopians for protection. They did. Ironically, in later centuries when Islam gained a stronghold in the world, Arab Muslims would trade in Ethiopian slaves and demoralize the Afrikans who had given them refuge from their own people (Lapidus, 533-534).

After escaping from the Quraysh attempt to assassinate him in 622, Mohammed arrived in Medina. In Medina the Muslim community began to grow and became influential. Early on, Mohammed considered himself sent to Jews, Christians, and so-called non-believers alike. This only lasted until his forces grew. Then using the Koran to justify his actions, he exiled or executed all the Jews of Medina, took their property, and had little tolerance for non-Muslims. With brutal force and coercion, “By winning over the Medinan pagans and destroying his opponents, including the Jewish clans, Muhammed made all of Medina a Muslim community under his rule” (Lapidus, 28). The three major religions were based on war and conquest, and this is central to the reason why there is still senseless bloodshed and lose of innocent human life today. More people have died in the name of religion than any other cause in history. In the Koran, Surah 9:5 states:
But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans [non-believers] wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every strategy (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and pay Zakat then open the way for them...
First, Afrikan people must come home to Afrikan Spirituality. However, for non-Afrikans, my position is not that they should give up their religions. Of course, that is their choice. The races of the world should, however, admit the wrongs of the past and seek the higher good in their faiths and cultures to improve humanity. This higher attainment of humanity on Earth is why we must acknowledge the non-pious history of religions. The only option is continued war and the possible extermination of whole groups by warlords, oppressors, and tyrants. This is why the past must be exposed and corrected.

Lapidus explains:



In 628 Muhammad and a large group of followers [1,500 soldiers] made the pilgrimage to the Ka’ba [in Mecca], where they proposed to adopt the ceremonies of pilgrimage, in modified form, as part of Islam. They did this to show that Islam was an Arabian religion and would preserve the pilgrimage rites in which Mecca had so great a stake (32).



The pilgrimage to Mecca was an Arabian, pre-Islamic practice based on trade in various commodities, including Afrikan slaves. The pilgrimage was also a way to pay homage to Arab sacred land, Arab ancestry, and Arab culture. Moreover, Islam is based on ancient Arabian deities that were worshipped at the Kaba in Mecca. How ironic it is for Afrikans to journey pass thier own ancestral lands to those of other people..

According to the Koran, Mohammed is considered the last of the prophets in the line of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and all the other prophets of the Torah and Bible. In fact, the prophets of the Torah and Bible are all considered to be Muslims and followers of Allah in the Koran. The Koran is considered the last of the three revealed scriptures, and it borrowed heavily from the Torah and Bible. What is not as commonly known is the fact that all three of these religions had their fundamental origins in Kemetic scripture which predates all of them by thousands of years.

In 632 ACE, Mohammed made his last pilgrimage to the Kaba with 120,000 men and women. He died of fever that same year. His legacy is as misunderstood as he is; Mohammed was a man of war. The Arab imperialist who followed only continued the legacy of the founder of their religion. The Arab interaction with Afrika, like that of the Europeans, has been to spread Arab culture and religion at the expense of Afrikan traditions. John A. Azumah explains that because of Mohammed’s military victories, the Islamic “norm” in interaction with non-Muslims was one of attempted conquest and control (The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa, 206). I would add that because of the Roman Catholic wars, the Christian worldview, regardless of denomination, is also one of conquest and control. The world is dying because of lack of humanity. Afrikan people are outside of this world conflict, and I believe it is because we have a stubborn humanity. Afrikans did not fight wars and enslave people in the name of religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. When Afrikans have engaged in these wars, as there are always exceptions, it was because they were outside or dislocated from their traditional setting. The Afrikan worldview is based on harmony, not aggression and fear. Just as Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement gave some iota of more humanity to America, I believe that Afrikan Spirituality and Afrikan people will give more humanity to the world.



Arab Conquest of North Afrika

In the pivotal book African Glory, The Story of Vanished Negro Civilizations, the scholar J. C. de-Graft Johnson states:
In 623- that is a year after the Hegira: the flight from Mecca - Mohammed attracted attention by establishing himself at the Palm Oasis of Yathrib or Medina, not only as a leader of a raiding band of Arabs, but also as the leader of a new mystic religion (63).
Alfred Butler mentions that “By the death of Mohammed the cause of Islam was strengthened rather than weakened. For a moment it seemed to totter: but it was too firmly based to fall under any shock from within” (146). It is stated by Mohammed that “I, the last of the prophets, am sent with the sword. Let those who promulgate my faith enter into no argument or discussion, but slay all who refuse obedience to law. Whoever fights for the true faith, whether he fall or conquer, will assuredly receive a glorious reward” (Jackson, Introduction to African Civilization, 168). The Afterlife of Paradise is the ‘glorious reward’ mentioned here.

When Mohammed died, there occurred some internal turmoil in the religion, much of which was due to who had the right to be “Caliph” or “Successor.” Jackson explains:
This caused a split among the faithful, for there were many who thought that the office should have gone to Mohammed’s brother-in-law, Ali. The partisans of Abu Bekr justified their stand by claiming that the office should be filled by election; whereas the advocates of Ali argued that the succession was by rights of hereditary. The first group is known as the Sunnites, and is dominant in Arabia, Africa, Turkey, and Turkestan; the second sect, known as the Shiites, prevail in Persia and India. Despite their difference, the successors of Mohammed vigorously pursued a policy of conquest (168).
What is the introduction of Islam to Afrika? Egypt was invaded by an Arab army in 639-640, Tunisia was captured in 671, Tripolia was under Arabic-Islamic control by 643, Cartage was captured in 698, and Morocco was taken by 708. The conquest of North Afrika was sweeping, but it should not be taken for granted that Afrikans welcomed the Arabs with open arms. After 639 with the first invasion to 705 with the death of Kahina, this was a period of strong resistance to Islam. The only place the Arabs did not have to conquer was probably Egypt where the people saw them as friends who had come to save them from the European-Romans, but history proved they were wrong. The Arabs were just as oppressive as the Romans.

Oqbar-ben-Nafi founded the third holy city of the Arab world in 671, after the conquest of Tunisia. The city was Kairowan. Oqbar-ben-Nafi spread Islamic control to the Atlantic Ocean. Johnson notes that Oqbar-ben-Nafi was governor of the area where Tunis is today. Briefly, he was replaced while he continued the invasion, and when he got back, his second term was cut short. The Afrikans:
of North Africa, finding the rapacity and greed of the Arabs equal to those of the Romans, Greeks and Vandals, decided to rise up against Arab rule. The North Africans rallied under the banner of one Kuseila and defeated and killed Oqbar-ben-Nafi in 682. Kuseila ruled as King of Mauritania for five years, but in 688 he was defeated and killed by fresh Arab forces (Johnson, 66).
A relative of Kuseila was Dahia-al-Kahina who took the lead of stopping the Arab invasion. She was a very effective Afrikan warrior-queen who often drove the Arab-Islamic forces back. Her defenses stood between the Arab conquest. She was murdered in 705, and after her death the Arab control of North Afrika was all but finalized.


The Moors

Although the subject here is of the Arabic-Islamic invasion of Afrika some mention should be given to the Moors because of the significance of this era in Afrikan history and civilization. In 710, an Afrikan named Tarif led 500 men on a raiding expedition on the Andalusian coast. Jackson says, “The army landed at a place later renamed Tarifa in honor of Tarif. (It was at the port of Tarifa that the Moors later levied a certain tax, which taking its name from the town, became known as the tariff).” After the success of the raiding expedition, a year later, General Tarik (or Tarikh) led 12,000 Afrikans into Europe, this time as conquerors. Tarik’s forces landed at a place called Mons Calpe. It was “renamed Gebel Tarik-The Hill of Tarik,” also known as the Mountain or Rock of Gibraltar, or just Gibraltar. It is a symbol and a phrase of strength and durability to this day (170-171).

Mark Hyman states, “Under Tarik-bin-Zaid, they [the Afrikan Moors] rolled into Spain. The German Visigoths fell before them. Moving northward into France, the Christians were soundly defeated at the city of Tours. At the same time in eastern Europe, the African-Arab combine was overrunning Sicily and sacking the Vatican in Rome” (130). We cannot overemphasize that Afrikans conquered Spain and parts of Europe. The Arab allies came only after the initial conquests were complete. The Afrikan Moors of this period were conquerors who, instead of destroying civilizations, gave civilization to the Europeans who were in the Dark Ages at the time. They also brought academics and architecture with them that stands today.

In an excellent chapter on the subject Jackson has entitled “Africa and the Civilizing of Europe,” we will cite a few details. When the Afrikan Moors conquered Spain, they began to build a great civilization, greater than any at that time in Europe. Advances were made in textiles, agriculture, architecture, science, math, and other fields.
At night, one could walk for ten miles by the light of lamps [this was in Cordova, one of the cities of the Moors], flanked by an uninterrupted extent of buildings; and this was hundreds of years before there was a paved street in Paris or a street lamp in London (176).
Education was universal among the Moors while 99 percent of Europeans were illiterate, even the royalty. While the Moorish royalty lived in “sumptuous palaces,” adds Jackson, “monarchs of Germany, France, and England dwelt in big barns, with no windows and no chimneys, and with only a hole in the roof for the exit of smoke” (176). Three centuries after the Afrikan conquest, Europe had only one public library and two universities. The Moors, on the other hand, had 70 public libraries and 17 universities (182). The belief that Europeans are the owners of civilization is just a belief, not a fact. This is even more obvious when one considers that Europeans were first civilized by the people of Kemet when the Greeks went to the Nile to learn from the Afrikan priest.

The Afrikan Moors, and to a lesser extent the Arabs, played a major role in history in civilizing Europe, but their achievements should be put into focus. For instance, Muslims translated astronomical and scientific work into Arabic from the knowledge they had access to back in Egypt. The Moors and Arabs copied and often plagiarized knowledge, and Ptolemy, who the Moors copied, for this matter got his information from the deep fountains of knowledge of Nile Valley civilization.
Quite often, Coptic monasteries were raided for the valuable books kept in their libraries, and the famed Caliph, Harun Al-Rashid regularly paid scribes their weight in gold for each manuscript they translated (Browder, 174 - 175).
However, General ‘Amr who led in the capture of Alexandria, Egypt did not value knowledge as did the others, for he is historically quoted as saying, “If the library contains what is not in the Koran, it is false. If it contains what is already in the Koran, then it is superfluous. Burn it” (Browder, 174). The Arabs destroyed statues, temples and pyramids and used the stones and limestones to build mosques and palaces.

The Arab invasion of North Afrika caused the extermination, enslavement, amalgamation, and forced migrations of North Afrikans to where today there are very few of them in their native land. We should also keep in mind that Islamic-Arabs not only have forced many Afrikans into slavery and servitude, but they have done the same to their own Arab women. Although Arabic-Islamic slavery has been fully denied for different reasons, religious or political, the evidence is altogether to the contrary.

Arab Slave Trade by Mukasa Afrika Ma'at

European-Christian slavery is often written about, and often misunderstood. Arab-Islamic slavery is not even misunderstood, it is often simply denied. Arab Muslims have not only been aggressive in war and colonizing Afrikan land, they also have a long history of forcing Afrikans into slavery. The Arab is Afrika’s forgotten enslaver and colonizer. This is a very neglected part of history that must be exposed, if not for any other reason, because this plague still haunts Afrika today.


While there are many who say, “Afrikans enslaved each other,” a line must be drawn between cultural servitude and slavery. Slavery was based on dehumanizing people for capital gain, and was not absent of torture, and many other inhumane crimes. Afrikans did not commit atrocities of that kind against each other until they had contact with foreigners. If one studies the Dark Ages in Europe, that period is filled with inhumane atrocities, one after the other. Afrikans, however, held other Afrikans in cultural servitude because they were prisoners of war, owed unpaid debts, or committed crimes. These people in servitude had a level of humanity that was not common with the enslaved Afrikan in America. The servants could own land and even marry into the family of their owner. However, the slavery that exists in Afrika today is a result of foreign influence.

John Blassingame’s The Slave Community is one of the rare books which explores some aspects of Arab-Islamic slavery. Slavery in the Arab-Islamic world has not been very different from slavery in the Americas. Ironically, Blassingame notes, many Muslim captives were Europeans who were thoroughly acculturated into the Islamic worldview (49-50). These white slaves were treated with all the brutality that Afrikans suffered in the New World under slavery. Muslims enslaved upwards of a million Europeans in North and West Afrika, and many were traded throughout the Arab world. They were tortured, beaten, and starved to the point of fighting dogs and camels for food; eventually, many turned to cannibalism. Men were used for heavy labor and other work, and women were generally concubines. Blassingame outlines the very significant, but often ignored, history about Islamic slavery (49-65). Blassingame notes that there were battles with Muslims and Christians, after the Moorish occupation of Spain, which resulted in an extensive network of exchange in enslavement and ransoming between the Muslims and Europeans (49-50). This was an early stimulus to what spilled over in the New World as the Transatlantic slave trade. The history of slavery is often corrupted. European slavery is sugarcoated, Arab slavery is denied, and Afrikan servitude (which was not slavery at all) is falsified.

Interestingly, Ronald Segal, a white Jew, has done significant research in his book Islam’s Black Slaves. He provides an overview of the historical role of the Arab slave trade in Afrikan people. Beginning with the rise of Islam in the seventh century to the present, Arabs and their Black collaborators have been engaged in enslaving Afrikans over a period of 1,400 years. The Arab slave trade has been just as extensive, or more so, when compared to the European slave trade in both numbers and sheer brutality. From Egypt, the Red Sea, and east Afrika, countless millions were sold and dispersed throughout the Islamic world. Afrikans going faithfully on the pilgrimage to Mecca were sometimes tricked or outright captured and sold into slavery. Arab slavery was both systematic and cruel. Segal explains that Afrikans were used as concubines (sex slaves), eunuchs (castrated guards or soldiers), domestic workers, civil servants, and in other areas of forced labor. The Arab onslaught against Afrika was long and continuous.

Another eye-opening book on the subject, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa, is by John Alembillah Azumah, an Afrikan Ghanaian. Azumah, while covering much of the same history that Segal does, focuses his research on Islam in West Afrika, Nigeria in particular. Azumah does a very impressive job at researching the racist and/or culturally bigoted philosophical arguments of Muslims against the humanity of Afrikans. The geographer Ibn Hawqal of the tenth century, Ibn Khaldun the historian of the 14th century, the Iranian philosopher Nasir Tusi of the 13th century, Ahmad Baba the famous Afrikan Muslim scholar of Timbuktu, are some of the Arabs and/or Muslims that Azumah quoted to prove that overtly racist and anti-Afrikan thought was/is common in Islam, contrary to popular belief. Azumah gives historical background to the jihad movements (or Holy Wars) in West Afrika in the eighteenth and nineteenth century that decimated Afrikan people and cultures. Some of the jihadist who declared wars on Afrikan Spirituality and culture were Imam Nasir al-Din, Uthman Dan Fodio, al-Hajj Umar Tal, and others. Equally, Azumah discusses the devastating results on Afrikans by the Islamic slave trade and the Shari’a which is the law of imposition of Arab and Islamic supremacy over non-Muslims. He does a great job at exposing the history of Islam in relation to Afrika which has been denied for so long by Muslims and Muslim apologists.

I do have one disagreement with Azumah. He is a cultural pluralist and believes that an inter-religious dialogue is key to the future cooperation of people in the various religions of the world, in particular in Afrika. He may not be totally wrong, but I believe that we Afrikan people must propagate and redeem our Spirituality, secure our lands and resources from foreign theft, and unite Afrikan nation with each Afrikan nation before we can engage in true inter-religious dialog with Muslims, Christians, or Jews. In other words, before we can have inter-religious dialogue, Afrikan people must redeem their Spirituality and worldview. Otherwise, Afrikan people will sit at the table of humanity and defend the worldviews of foreigners who invaded Afrika, enslaved the people, and imposed their worldviews.

John Henrik Clarke explained the following in Critical Lessons in Slavery and the Slave Trade:



The Arab slave trade in North and in East Africa had been a well-established institution long before the Arabs accepted Islam. With the rise of Islam in the seventh century, they used this new religion as further justification for their involvement in the slave trade. Islam, like Christianity, declared war on all forms of African religion and culture and later denied that Africans had anything worthy of being called a religion or a culture (2).



In the Arab World by William R. Polk we learn that Sudan



...was particularly important for the [Arab Muslim] Egyptians as a hunting ground for slaves and, of course, as the conduit or source - no one knew which - of the Nile floods upon which the life of Egypt was wholly dependent (151).



Also, Polk states:



In the early years of the nineteenth century, the Swiss traveler John Lewis Burckhardt estimated that Egypt [Arabs in Egypt] had approximately 40,000 slaves. ‘I have reason to believe, however’, he wrote, ‘ that the number exported from Soudan to Egypt and Arabia, bears only a small proportion of those kept by the Mussalmans of the southern countries themselves, or in other words to the whole number yearly derived by purchase, or by force, from the nations of the interior of Africa… (152)



Mohammed Ali controlled western Arabia and both Mecca and Medina from Egypt. He sent a military expedition on a slave hunt into the Sudan in 1820 to acquire a cheap source of slaves and gold for his empire. Ali was not the first to do so and would not be last. He was continuing an old Arab tradition of banditry, kidnapping, enslavement, and murder.



Sudan

A country to be discussed is Sudan. It is geographically the largest country in Afrika, nearly, 100,000 square miles, with a sizeable population almost equal to the entire number of Afrikan Americans. The Afrikans such as the Dinka, Nuer, Nuba, and other ethnic groups make up the majority. The country is split in half: the predominantly Arab north, and the free Afrikans in the south. The capital is Khartoum, which is the seat of the Islamic-Arab government, and one of many places of slave trading in the country. The Khartoum government is supported by various Arab governments, among those are Iran, Libya, and Saudi Arabia. In Khartoum, a human being may be sold for a few dollars. The Islamic government has been very direct in its policy of jihad (or holy war) against non-believers. Still today, the religion has been a justification, a means for the purpose of Arab supremacy and control over the lands of the south and into the rest of Afrika. Sheik Hassan El Turabi, once co-dictator of Sudan, was called “the real power and architect of Islamic Fundamentalism or Revivalism in North Sudan.” Journalist Samuel Cotton quotes him as saying:



Black Africa is Virgin land… fertile, ripe for the Islamic seed. In Africa, Islam’s roots will go deep and become sturdy quickly. There is much to tap and little to compete with. What is there in Africa but tribalism? We want to plant civilization in southern Sudan and beyond. They need one (Daily Challenge, “Blood, Shackles and the Koran,” 1995).



With the Arab conquest of Egypt, the campaign spread into Sudan, the country directly below and bordering Egypt. This began the systematic movement of these people from their homeland. Those not exiled were enslaved, the men were castrated or killed. The women were captured and divided among the Arab men. We must understand the role race plays here. Many of these so-called Arabs are a product of this forced mixed breeding, but they are in denial about their Afrikan ancestry and hostile towards the Afrikan people. Islam, like Christianity and Judaism (in Israel and Palestine), is misused as a tool of war, enslavement, and oppression.

Samuel Cotton’s book, Silent Terror, is a must read on the subject of Afrikan enslavement in the Arab world. In 1995, the journalist Samuel Cotton wrote a series of articles that ran in the Daily Challenge entitled “Blood, Shackles and the Koran: Slavery in Sudan Today.” A 1995 February issue of The City Sun in New York featured Cotton’s research on the front page with the title “Arab Masters, Black Slaves.” The City Sun ran several articles by Cotton on Afrikan enslavement in Mauritania. Cotton eyewitnessed this slavery in humans in the Sudan and Mauritania. Young girls were taken as sex slaves for “indolent rulers and rich men in North Africa, the Near East and Sudan.” The young boys were prized as castrated slaves (eunuchs) who would protect the houses where the female sex slaves were kept known as harems. Arabs and Europeans had historically enslaved their women. What would they care about Afrikan women?

Cotton describes the Sahara crossing like the Middle Passage. Millions died crossing the sands on the way to be sold as slaves in the Muslim world. It was a long journey of exhaustion, thirst, hunger, beatings, and torture. Due to high mortality rates, castrations, the large number of women enslaved in harems in North Afrika and the Middle East, there are fewer Afrikan descendants than in the western hemisphere where men were mostly enslaved.

“Thus, despite the fact that even more vast millions of slaves were taken from Africa to the Islamic Countries… over the centuries…” says Cotton, “there is no such Black population surviving in these Islamic nations today,” as in the Americas where slave breeding was a systematic program. A grim testament to the Arab slave trade in Afrikans was noted by a 1950s traveler who said if a stranger did not know his route out of the desert, all he had to do was follow the endless stream of the remains of human skeletons of those who died en route to become slaves.

Commenting on the tradition of draining Afrika of people to enslave, Samuel Cotton mentions:



Large harems were maintained at the court in Persia during the reign of the Safavids in the 17th century and Khadjars in the 19th century. Europeans who traveled to Persia in the 17th century noted there were as many as 3,000 eunuchs in the service of the court, an indication of how great were the harems. The Caliph al-Amin …it is said, collected them in large numbers…

An Arabic description of the court of the caliph in Baghdad at the beginning of the 10th century speaks of 7,000 [Afrikan eunuchs]… This required an unending stream of desexed boys who walked or transported by boat or caravan from Africa.

With the increase in the number of harems the need for eunuchs grew. In Egypt, where eunuchs were kept by the ruling family of Mohammed Ali [of whom it is said he had 500 concubines] and rich Turks, they [the eunuchs] brought a great price in slave markets of Cairo and Alexandria. Eunuchs could be sold anywhere from twice to ten times the price of ordinary Black boys.



Another reason “an unending stream” of kidnapped and castrated boys were required to feed the demand was because the survival rate after castration was about 10%. This rate does not count suicide, murder, and those who went insane, as many did.

A point should be made about slavery today in Sudan. As with slavery anywhere, there is strong resistance to it. In particular, the Sudanese People Liberation Movement Army (SPLM/A), mostly of the Dinka people, but also other Afrikans in Sudan have led the resistance. The SPLM/A have fought Sudan’s National Islamic Front (NIF) who gets support from various Arab-Islamic governments. It is the NIF who wages war and makes raids on the lands of the people. The war in Sudan has cost the lives of several million Afrikans in recent decades, and if the SPLM/A was not in existence many more Afrikans of Southern Sudan would likely have been killed off or enslaved. The war is over resources, power, and religion. The Arab government wants shari’a to be instituted and the thorough Arabization or enslavement of the country, and the exploitation of all valuable resources, primarily oil in Southern Sudan. This is the motive behind the murder of John Garang de Mabior. This is the reason behind the assault on Darfur’s Afrikan population. The Afrikans of Sudan are resilient and steadfast in the fight to protect and preserve what is left of their land and culture. They are among the most courageous people in the world today. Southern Sudan, where they live, is predominately Afrikan Spiritual. There is a small percentage of Christians, but even many of them are dual religious. They are like many Afrikans in Afrika who practice and live Afrikan Spirituality and a blend of another religion. At the core they are Afrikan Spiritual, but such syncretism in Afrika or the Americas threatens the Afrikan worldview. The battle has many fronts.



Islam and Arabization in West Afrika

Again, I refer the reader to the works of Azumah and Segal. Although Islam appeared in western Afrika very early, it was not until the nineteenth century that the religion experienced a great expansion in the region. It was in this area of Afrika that for a long time the initial Islamic-Arab waves of conquest had only a mild effect. There were many traditional worshipers who incorporated some Islamic-Arab traditions into their cultural ways of life. Islam was spread by traders and was, therefore, originally a type of cultural-economic movement. For centuries the masses were not worshippers of Islam; the rulers of the empires and kingdoms were Muslims, or at least Muslims in name only.

Sunni Ali Ber, the founding emperor of Songhay, is a great example. He had an Islamic name, was superficially a Muslim, and openly ridiculed Islam. Sunni Ali was an Afrikan nationalist and warrior-king who built an empire. He believed in the Afrikan Spirituality of his mother and his ancestors. His death was a lost to Afrikan civilization building.

Islam, in the history of West Afrika, experienced two very important events: the Almoravid movements and the destruction of Songhay. The Arabized Berber ‘Abd Allah b. Yasin, noticed the Afrikan Muslims were not adhering to all the tenets of Islam. That is, they were still basically Afrikan Spiritual with a few Muslim religious traits and not thoroughly Arabized Afrikan Muslims. Also, Yasin noticed a land full of Afrikan Spiritual people, the ancient empire of Ghana. He began the Murabitun, or Almoravid movement, which waged jihad (or holy war) on parts of western Afrika (Azumah, 25). The Muslims, the Almohads following the Almoravids, then took control of the Afrikan gold trade and engaged in the slave trade connected to the Arab world (Segal, 85-86).

Beginning with the Almoravid movement and subsequent wars, Islam would gain a stronghold on West Afrika that peaked in the 19th century. The Islamic slave traders raced to capture more slaves as the European colonizers began to exercise control over the continent. They figured that once the whites were in control of Afrika, the supply of slaves would be cut off. They were not totally correct. The attitude of jihad against Afrikans and the European expansion into Afrika was the perpetual drive behind a renewal of Islamic interest to take land, trade routes, and the enslavement of humans. It was not until the nineteenth century that Islam spread into West Afrika with any significance, and it is absolutely certain that nearly all the Afrikans who were forced on slave ships and taken to the New World were not Muslims as some would wrongfully have us believe. The great majority of Afrikans who came to the New World were traditional worshippers of ancient Afrikan Spirituality.

In 1492, the last of the Afrikan Moors were expelled from Spain. They settled in North and West Afrika, but were a very small fraction of the general population. Askia Mohammed, a devout Muslim and emperor of Songhay, died in 1538, and the empire began to fall apart. The empire of Songhay was so enormous that much of Europe could have fit in it. A Moorish army led by Judar Pasha in 1591 captured two principle cities of Songhay, which were Gao and Timbuktu. This ended the possibility of Afrikan people regaining such broad stability in West Afrika. ‘From that moment on… everything changed. Danger took the place of security; poverty of wealth. Peace gave way to distress, disasters and violence’ (Jackson, 218).

Commenting on the erosion of Afrikan culture by Islam, Chinweizu says:



Arabisation caused the adoption or imposition of Arab dress, of the Arab language, of Arab names, of Arab administrative structures and titles, of Arab social norms, of the Arab religion of Islam. It imposed on princes and prominent families an obligation to construct fake genealogies claiming Arab ancestry for jet-black Africans. This long and slow cultural colonisation was primarily effected by Arabising African merchants, nomads, missionaries, soldiers and kings who saw it all as a purely religious matter of Islamisation (Decolonising The African Mind, 117).



Chinweizu’s words are true of many regions of the continent of Afrika. Arabization and Islam had wrecked Afrika and Afrikan culture, and now European missionaries and colonizers were on their way. Islam was used for cultural conquest in Afrika, like Christianity. In fact, when the Europeans began to colonize Afrika, they had to compete and/or cooperate with the Arab slave trade in many regions. Both religions were used as tools of Afrikan oppression and genocide.

A Broader Understanding of Maafa

The Swahili word “Maafa,” as it is usually defined by the Afrikan-Centered movement, is the enslavement and destruction of Afrikan people that has occurred during the European slave trade of over 400 years, beginning in 1441 with the Portuguese, and followed by all the other nations of Europe who participated. “Maafa” is preferable to the phrase “Black Holocaust,” taken from the Holocaust experienced by the Jews in Germany where they lost 6 million people. My position is that our concept of the Maafa must include the broader genocide suffered by Afrikans for at least the last 3,500 years. The destruction of Kemet, Carthage, Kush, Black India, and genocide of Afrikans of the Pacific Islands were all part of the Maafa. Also, the Maafa should include the general destruction of Afrikan culture by Arabization and Islam, the victims of which amounts to 100 million over a period of almost 1,400 years. The victims of the Arab slave trade equals the estimated number of victims in the European slave trade.

How can we discuss the Maafa and not consider the brutal oppression and extermination of Afrikans in Australia and Tasmania where whole populations were destroyed. As the world-traveled scholar Runoko Rashidi emphasizes, the one constant that he finds from all the countries he has visited is the need for Afrikan global liberation. Before striving for Afrikan global liberation, we must first have an Afrikan global identity.

The reader should be knowledgeable of the fact that Eurocentric scholars, whites and Blacks, grossly underestimate the number of Afrikans who where victims in the Maafa under the European slave trade. Countless millions died before they even got on the slave ships - which is where the Eurocentric scholars begin counting (mis-counting). Afrikans died inland from widespread wars fueled by European guns and rum, on the long and enduring walks to the coast, and in the dungeons on the coast. Many others, by the millions, would later die on the slave ships and in slavery.

The Maafa must also include the millions who died after slavery. Under colonialism and neo-colonialism millions of Afrikans died. Take for instance the Congo, at the end of the 19th century ten million Afrikans died under colonialism. Under the recent neo-colonial war in the Congo which began in 1998 several million have died. The neo-colonial wars over “blood diamonds,” other resources, and fomented conflict due to lack of Afrikan unity have cost the lives of many millions in very recent years. The resources that many of these wars produce are sold on the European world market. This is part of the Maafa. These neo-colonial wars, which occurred in recent years, were in the Congo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Liberia, Ethiopia, and other countries.

Thousand of Black males (Afrikan males) are warring in the streets of America and dying over guns they do not manufacture. They are also dying over drugs they do not grow and ship into the country. AIDS is no longer a homosexual disease. The majority of people who have the disease in the world are people of Afrikan descent in Afrika, America, and other places. It becomes a challenge to see how AIDS is not a conspiracy of genocide when in many Afrikan countries a horrifying percentage of the people have AIDS. Few people have heard of the sterilization program in Brazil which has devastated millions and millions of Afrikan women. The Maafa of Afrikan people, which began 3,500 years ago, is still occurring today! It is the greatest genocide in human history, yet we Afrikans are still here. Before we stop the Maafa, Afrikan people must do three things:



1. Identification: We must realize that we are Afrikans. We cannot develop appropriate solutions to any of our problems unless we first know who “we” are.

2. Unification: We must unify and cooperate with each other based on our common global identity. Regardless of our differences, as long as they are not destructive to the cause, we must unify or at least have a woking unity as Afrikans for Afrikan survival.

3. Application: We must develop and apply educational, economic, and political solutions that are appropriate to the needs, culture, and reality of our people. The solutions and theories we develop must be applied through institutions to our existence if change is to occur.



Conclusion

We are at a critical point in time today with so many Afrikan people in the United States, Afrika, and elsewhere becoming Muslims due to dissatisfaction with Christianity and the European world. It should be understood that the Arab world has been just as oppressive, if not more so, as the European world. The power elite in European Christian nations (in cooperation with the Jews) and the Arab Islamic nations have agendas for world domination which only include Afrikans to advance their cause.

Many Afrikan leaders are open to Islamic support without accepting the fact that Arab leaders, with few or no exceptions, are Arab nationalists who will sacrifice Afrikan unity to benefit the Arab world. No nation has united itself depending on outsiders for direction and support. Afrika will not be united with Arabs in positions of leadership in the Afrikan Union. Neither did this happen with the Organization of Afrikan Unity. If Gadhafi, the President of Libya, or any other Arabs direct the future of Afrika, then Afrika will be under the control of the Arab world at worse or under indirect manipulation at best. Neither is acceptable to a people serious about liberation. Arab loyalty has never been undividedly given to Afrika, but has always been given to the Arab world. European loyalty has never been undividedly given to Afrika, but always to the European world. When liberation is achieved and maintained, the seat of leadership will come from the Afrikan world.

The power elite of various nations are leading the world to the next world war, which seems to have religion and raw control at the core of conflict. All wars of this nature are fought for land, resources, and power. Religions are only the justification for the power elite. Individuals may belong to religions for practical and righteous reasons. However, the economic and political power elite manipulate the masses to propagate their dominance in world structures. This was occurring many hundreds of years ago, and it is the essential reason for conflict with the European Christian and Jewish world against the Arab Muslim world. In the middle of the conflict is the suffering and dying of millions of innocent people. The role of Afrikan people in this global conflict must be a moral voice. There is no reason for Afrikans to take sides with either worldview since both Christians and Muslims have damaged and attempted to destroy the Afrikan worldview. Afrikan people should take the moral ground and be a moral voice in today’s world conflict. If there is any hope of humanity in the world, it will come from Afrikan people.

“Misgivings:” An Afrikan-centered, Indigenous-centered View
By Mama Marimba
A group of European scavengers, many of whom had been imprisoned or homeless in England, arrived in New England in 1620. They first lived on Turtle Island. Half of them died within the first few months. Squanto, of the Pequot people, who had been enslaved by the Europeans and taken to England, spoke English and formed a “close” relationship with these “pitiful” migrants. He taught them how to grow corn and to fish, how to prepare certain foods, and other survival skills. The white people “saw Squanto as an instrument of their god to help his chosen people.” In other words, they used him. To them, he and his people were “heathens” and “savages”. The world view of the indigenous peoples, much like the Afrikan world view, taught them “to give freely to those who had nothing.” Squanto is said to have negotiated a false “treaty” between the nearby Wampanoag and the “pilgrims”. The leader of the Wampanoag Nation, Massasoit, donated food stores to the struggling colony of Europeans. In 1621, having survived a hard winter, due to the help of the Wampanoag, the Europeans celebrated, as was their custom to have “thanksgivings” to their god. No Wampanoag or members of any other indigenous nations were invited. And yet, they came and supplied most of the food. In return for helping them to survive, the “pilgrims” decimated the Wampanoag through disease, treachery and slaughter, in the years which followed. By 1637, as the Europeans were feeling successful, more powerful and in control of their newly conquered territory, an expedition was sent to Connecticut, near Groton. Over 700 Indigenous peoples (Pequot) were celebrating their yearly harvest (Annual Green Corn Festival), when they were taken by surprise by the white invaders. Their men were shot and clubbed to death, while their women and children were burned alive. Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, proclaimed a “day of thanksgiving,” saying that they should thank god for destroying the savages to make way for “a better growth.” (quoted in the work of Cotton Mather) What followed constitutes one of the most vicious records of continuing massacres of the indigenous people of this land now known as “america.” It became the custom of the whites to follow each massacre with a “thanksgiving.” Rewards would be given to those who returned with the skulls of indigenous peoples to encourage their slaughter. In 1863, it was decided to “celebrate” only one day of “thanksgiving,” proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln. At a later period, the 4th Thursday of November was chosen by the capitalists, to maximize the shopping days until christmas.
In 1970, at the 350th anniversary of the landing of the pilgrims, a leader of Indigenous peoples prepared a speech in which he told the true history of Plymouth, and berated the white people for robbing the graves of the Wampanoag. The officials of Massachusetts did not allow him to make the speech. Every year since then, Indigenous people of this land have looked upon the 4th Thursday of November as a day of mourning. (See Russell Means, Susan Bates, and Jaqueline Keeler, for more information.)
We, Afrikan people in America, are victims of the same process that resulted in the murder of millions of Indigenous people and the decimation of their Nations.

“america was built by stolen labor on stolen land!”
That is the legacy of Europeans in this country.
Taking without thanks
Change is not easy. We are use to celebrating with our families on this day. It is always so good to come together and to share a meal with each other. But we do have alternatives. And we always need to be in the process of growth. Growth makes change necessary. We can change a little at a time, remembering that our goal is Sovereignty.
1. When you are with your family on Thursday, November 24, take a moment to remember and talk about the true meaning of this “holy day”
2. We don’t have to contribute to the profit-making mania organized by the large conglomerates, encouraging us to spend money that we don’t have during the weekend following that day. Don’t shop!
3. Make the sacrifice of fasting on that day. Yes, it will be a challenge, but you can still enjoy your family and at the same time identify with those who were exploited, murdered, and raped of their resources, as we have been. (This is not a cause for celebration.)
4. Let us choose a day on which the Pan-Afrikan World Nation gives thanks together for the gift of Afrikan Ancestry, and the sacrifices that have been made for us by our Ancestors! We can start small, with the Afrikans that we know.
It is a process. Let’s begin it now!
In Afrikan Victory and Sovereignty,

Mama Marimba Ani

The Baltimore Debate