GHANA TAKES FIRST STEP: In Hosting The Pan African Congress.

President John Dramani Mahama

By Ekow Mensah.

The Government of Ghana has taken the first concrete step towards hosting the 8th Pan African Congress in Accra in September this year.

A letter from the Executive Secretary to the President addressed to the Local Organizing Committee said Ghana is committed to host the event in Accra.

Ghana`s decision follows discussions between Major-General Kahinde Otafiire, Ugandan Minister of Justice and Vice President Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur.

Major-General Otafiire, doubles as the Chairman of the Pan African Movement and was the special Guest at the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Lectures held in Accra last September.

The event is to be funded largely by the African Union with significant contributions from Member States.

The 7th Pan African Congress was held in Kampala, Uganda under the patronage of President Yoweri Museveni.

Libya under President Gadafi offered to host the 8th Congress but events in that country have made it imperative to shift the venue.

The 5th Pan African Congress which was held in Manchester, U.K, is credited with the acceleration of the decolonization process in Africa.

It was attended by such Pan African greats as Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Dr Namdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, George Padmore and W.E.B. Dubois.

The 8th Pan African Congress will focus attention on the political, social and economic integration of Africa.

It is expected to be attended by atleast 2000 delegates from all over the world including African Heads of State.

The Nation of Islam based in the United States of America has already confirmed its full participation in the event.

Editorial

Stop This Now!

The decision by authorities of the University of Ghana to impose tolls on those who use roads on the campus is illegal and must be stopped without further delay.

Under the laws of Ghana, only Parliament has the power to impose such levies and the University authorities need to be told in plain language that Ghana cannot tolerate any form of lawlessness.

Even more shocking is the endorsement if this illegality by the Minister for Roads and Highways.

The Minister goes a step further by claiming that gated communities can impose their own levies.

When Ministers displays this absolute lack of Knowledge about laws governing the running of their Ministries, they frighten the rest of us.

Is the Minister saying that he is unaware of the provisions in the 1992 constitution which insist that only Parliament can impose such levies ?

The University of Ghana must be stopped now.

Why Ivorians demand the release of Laurent Gbagbo?

President Laurent Gbagbo

Many Ivorians are convinced that Laurent Gbagbo’s arrest, transfer and detention at the International Criminal Court is a political decision that perpetuates France’s maneuvers to keep the Ivory Coast under her sphere of influence. The restoration of Ivory Coast is impossible without Gbagbo.

This paper was first presented at the Open Forum of the National Congress of Resistance and Democracy (CNRD), held on Saturday, October 26, 2013 in Abidjan, the Ivory Coast. It exposes the thoughts of a great majority of Ivorians and Africans and friends of Africa and the Ivory Coast on the peace and reconciliation process in Ivory Coast. It also demonstrates that the debate on Laurent Gbagbo is not obsolete but constitutes the first step toward a renewed and appeased political climate.

INTRODUCTION: THE RELEVANCE OF THE TOPIC
The debate about the crisis in the Ivory Coast took a new dimension on April 11, 2011, when French and UN forces, backing the troops of the Armed Forces of the New Forces of Mr. Alassane Ouattara, bombed the presidential palace and arrested Laurent Gbagbo, who the Constitutional Council declared winner of the 2010 presidential election. He was sworn into office on the Ivorian Constitution on December 4, 2010 in the palace of the presidency of the Republic. First detained in Korhogo (north of the Ivory Coast) in degrading conditions [1], Laurent Gbagbo was then transferred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, on November 30, 2011. Since that date, his freedom or detention, depending on whether one is a supporter of Laurent Gbagbo or a supporter of Alassane Ouattara, has been a recurrent question in the Ivorian political discourse and, above all, in the quest for reconciliation and durable peace.

Indeed, since November 30, 2011, the name of Laurent Gbagbo has been mentioned daily either to underline the injustice he is undergoing, or to claim that he deserves to be kept away from the Ivory Coast; or to argue that the process of national reconciliation cannot succeed without him, or to stress that he is the symbol of the struggle for sovereignty in the Ivory Coast and Africa.

It is almost impossible to count how many times the name of Laurent Gbagbo, his photographs, and his speeches, etc. are used in news websites or in social media such as Facebook. How many Ivorians and Africans do use Laurent Gbagbo’s photographs for their Facebook profiles? How many are they that have formed online communities [2] to pay tribute to Laurent Gbagbo and demand his freedom? Who does not remember how social and professional activities were frozen, first on December 5, 2011, when Laurent Gbagbo was arraigned before Judge Sylvia de Gurmendi, and second in February 2013, during his preliminary trial at The Hague? The particularity of this trial is that those who demand the release of Laurent Gbagbo have developed a rhetoric that is contrary to what the ICC and the detractors of Laurent Gbagbo say. In fact, while the ones speak of a ‘trial of confirmation of charges’, the others, who are abusively called pro-Gbagbos, prefer the expression: ‘trial of confirmation or trial of reversal of charges.’ This counter-expression illustrates the determination of the Ivorians, Africans, and those who want total freedom for ‘Seplou’ [3].

In North America, many followed the February 2013 trial on the internet and by telephones, missing no opportunities to comment on the performance of Laurent Gbagbo’s counsels. The content of these comments must be analyzed for future reference, if it has not yet been done already. But the first observation is that the comments express, in a certain way, the hopes to see Laurent Gbagbo walk out of the Scheveningen prison. What about the recurring rallies of the Diaspora in North America? The White House, the US Congress, the headquarters of the UN in New York, the Constitutional Center in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, just to mention a few places, were the venues of multiple rallies to denounce the abuses, the illegitimacy, and the hypocrisy of the regime of Alassane Ouattara and to demand, with explanations, the liberation of more than 700 [4] political prisoners including Laurent Gbagbo. Also, during their meetings with world ambassadors to the United States [5], US lawmakers, representatives of human rights organizations (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch), or during TV and radio interviews, at conferences, or while participating to debates on the Ivory Coast, the Diaspora made the freedom of President Laurent Gbagbo the focal point of their demands.

Therefore, it is with energies renewed almost daily, with a faith and with a firm conviction that the patriots, sovereigns, and panafricanists [6] have demanded the release of Laurent Gbagbo. Individually or collectively through their organizations, they have successfully kept the case of Laurent Gbagbo in the Ivorian and the world’s collective memory and continued to demand the latter’s freedom. It is important to note that the circle of those who demand freedom for Laurent Gbagbo has enlarged to even include some supporters of Mr. Alassane Ouattara, who are lately disappointed with his policies. The latter have used venues, for instance the ‘JacquesRogerShow’, a highly appraised podcast radio show in the West African French-speaking Diaspora, to air their discontent.

Why should Laurent Gbagbo be freed? The Committee of Actions for the Ivory Coast in the USA (C.A.C.I-USA) offers valid answers to this question. The first part of this text consists of a description of the committee. The second part discusses the methodology of the text. The third part exposes in detail and with examples the reasons why Ivorians and Africans are convinced that Laurent Gbagbo must be freed.

C.A.C.I-USA: A coalition of forces and movements of the Diaspora in the USA for social justice.

Ivory Coast Presidential Claimant Alhassan Quattara

The Committee of Actions for the Ivory Coast (C.A.C.I – USA) is a registered coalition of individuals, movements, and organizations of the Diaspora in North America. It comprises Ivoirians, Africans, Caribbeans, African Americans, and Whites, who mobilized since the aftermath of the 2010 presidential election, when the international community refused to acknowledge Laurent Gbagbo’s victory as declared by the Ivorian Constitutional Council. According to their visions for the Ivory Coast, for Africa, and for the world, the members of the C.A.C.I-USA identify as patriots, or sovereigns, or panafricans.

The patriots are the Ivorians and the friends of the Ivory Coast who identify with ‘La Majorité Présidentielle’ [7] and the groups, which have mobilized for the country since the rebellion broke out in 2002 [8]. The patriots are opposed to the erosion of Ivorian particularities, to the liquidation of lands and citizenship to foreign nationals. They reject the decade-old argument that Ivorians are xenophobic. The sovereigns believe in the freedom of nations to choose their own institutions and their leaders. They believe in the respect of the territorial integrity and the sovereignty of the member states, as stipulated in the charters of the UN, the African Union and other international organizations. They defend Africa’s independence. The panafricans emphasize the cultural and the political unity of all Black people in the world. They believe that this unity is primordial for Africa’s freedom. They are convinced that the crisis of the Ivory Coast is a crisis of pan-Africanism. They believe in the philosophies and actions of George Padmore, Nkrumah, W.E.B Dubois and leaders including Robert Mugabe, Julius Nyerere, Amilcar Cabral, Samora Machel, Nelson Mandela and Thomas Sankara. The pan-Africans believe that Laurent Gbagbo has demonstrated the characteristics of a Pan-African, who sees a slap given to any African as a blow given to all the descendants of Africa in Africa, in America, in the Caribbeans, and in Europe.

The CACI-USA was founded on May 13, 2012 in Silver Springs, MD, from the willingness of political actors and human rights activists, to 1) denounce the unconstitutional character of Mr. Alassane Ouattara’s regime, 2) fustigate the tragic role that the international community played in the Ivorian crisis, 3) keep the US administration, human rights organizations, organizations for the defense of democracy, and foreign diplomats informed of the situation in the Ivory Coast, and 4) provide humanitarian relief to Ivorian IDPs and refugees and asylum seekers in Ghana and Togo.

Since its inception, the CACI-USA is advised by Ambassador Kokora Pascal [9], former ambassador of the Ivory Coast to the US. Ambassador Kokora is well known in the Ivory Coast for his pioneering role in the struggle for multipartyism, social justice and human rights. In 1986, during the peak of the one-party system and the one-person dictatorial rule of Houphouet-Boigny, he gathered some faculty members of the University of Abidjan and proposed the foundation of a league for the defense of human rights. In 1987, the idea became a reality. The Ivorian League for Human Rights (LIDHO) was established with Law Professor René Degni Segui as its first Secretary General [10].

The CACI-USA works with the forces of democracy of which the FPI and the CNRD are the spears. The CACI-USA believes that the hope of a reconciled Ivory Coast, prosperous, and freed from the yoke of ‘Françafrique’ (the name of the paternalistic and unbecoming relations between France and its former African colonies) rests on these two organizations. The CACI-USA declares that the release of President Laurent Gbagbo and the denouncement of the illegitimate regime of Mr. Alassane Ouattara is the must-go-through door to establish a republican dialogue and a new beginning for the Ivory Coast. The CACI-USA partners with ANSWER Coalition and the December 12 Movement, two US-registered organizations which fight against US imperialism.

II. OUR METHODOLOGY
Kwame Nkrumah wrote: ‘Action without thought is empty. Thought without action is blind.’ In the light of this statement, we think that demanding the liberation of Laurent Gbagbo and the multiple rallies in the Diaspora illustrate a thought, an ideology, a state of mind, a conviction, and a vision.

The conclusions presented in this position paper combine the analyses of Ivorian and African scholars in the United State, the actions of the Diaspora, the messages and slogans that they use during rallies. It is certain that these conclusions can be similar to the reasons that other actors and organizations advance. For us, such similarities confirm the unanimity that surrounds Laurent Gbagbo and the fact that the many who demand his liberation are convinced of the worth of his fight for true democracy in the Ivory Coast and in Africa.

III. WHY DOES THE DIASPORA IN NORTH AMERICA DEMAND THE RELEASE OF LAURENT GBAGBO?

According to the CACI-USA, the reasons why Laurent Gbagbo should be freed are multiple, complementary, and equivalent. There is not a single reason that is stronger or weaker than another. All the reasons boost the energies of the patriots, sovereigns, and the Pan-Africans.

a) To make the Constitution matter in the political debate.

In March 2009 in Ghana, Mr. Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, whose election in November 2008 was qualified by Laurent Gbagbo as a victory of the democratic ideal [11], said: ‘Africa needs strong institutions but not strong leaders’ [12]. As a true American citizen, President Obama made his prescription on the US political system in which the Constitution is a respected compass. But before President Obama made his speech, Laurent Gbagbo already understood, theorized, and implemented the truth that social justice (democracy) goes along with the respect of the Constitution.

During his tenure, the Ivory Coast had a true constitutional awakening, some measurable dimensions of which are: the refusal to oversee the Council of magistrates although the constitution allowed him to, the allocation of public funds to major and significant political parties to ensure their independence from the governing powers, the ban of any laws against journalists, effective decentralization, the existence of an independent election commission to organize free and fair elections, the establishment of a constitutional Council to make sure that all laws and treaties agree with the constitution, the constant reference to the constitution to guide political debates, etc. In fact, it is under Laurent Gbagbo that the people of the Ivory Coast felt the gains of the 1980s and 1990s movements for democratization.

The Constitutional Council’s ruling on December 2, 2010, which declared Laurent Gbagbo the winner of the presidential election of November 2010, is a strong aspect of this constitutional awakening, inasmuch as the ruling was similar to the US Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in the electoral dispute between Mr. George Bush and Mr. Al Gore. If we agree with President Obama’s prescription, the respect of the ruling of the Constitutional Council would have strengthened the Ivorian institutions because the strength of an institution is predicated on the legality of its decisions and on the citizens’ respect thereof. As long as the legal ruling of the Constitutional Council was slashed down by some Ivorian political actors (the RDR, the PDCI, the UDPCI, and the rebel forces) and by the NATO forces backed by the UN, as long as it was decided to bomb the presidential palace and to arrest Laurent Gbagbo, the Ivory Coast fell back into the constitutional lethargy in which it was engulfed for four decades from 1960 to 2000. The arrest of Laurent Gbagbo took the Ivory Coast out of its constitutional order. It also suppressed the Constitution from the Ivorian political debate.

The Constitution is the foundation of a free, transparent and peaceful political system. To free Laurent Gbagbo would return the nation to constitutional legality, to the rule of the law, and to the constitutionality of the Ivorian institutions.

b) TO RESOLVE THE DISPUTE OVER THE RESULTS OF THE 2010 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Who is the true winner of the presidential election of 2010? This question often recurs when Laurent Gbagbo speaks. But he is not the only one to raise it. The patriots, the sovereigns, and the panafricans ask the same question because they have the right to know what the ballot boxes said in the evening of November 28, 2010. Our conviction is that the detailed results that Mr. N’dré Yao Paul [13] read and the ruling of the Ivorian Constitutional Council are correct. Therefore, we demand that Laurent Gbagbo be freed. 

However, because the France-UN-New forces coalition waged a war, it is good to recount the ballot and to ask why Mr. Youssouf Bakayoko (the President of the Independent Election Commission) said what he said at the ‘Hôtel du Golf’ on December 2, 2010. It is also good to ask about the results that Mr. Choi, the Special representative of the UN Secretary General, used to certify that the declarations of Mr. Youssouf Bakayoko were correct. It is mandatory for the Ivorians, voters or non-voters, to know the results of this election 90% of the budget of which they contributed. An electoral victory is established by numbers of votes and not by the power of the gun. Until now, no website including the website of the Independent Electoral Commission, no documentation offers the details of the results of the run-off of the 2010 Ivorian presidential election. The unavailability of such results infringes upon the freedom of information, the principle of legitimacy, and the right of the people of the Ivory Coast to choose their own leaders. It also impedes academic research on voting patterns and voting behaviors in the Ivory Coast.

Yet, the answer to the question: ‘Who won the presidential election?’ requires the presence of all the political actors, hence the obligation to free Laurent Gbagbo, the candidate that the ‘Majorité Présidentielle’ endorsed.

c) TO CLAIM THE COUNTRY’S SOVEREIGNTY

One of the stakes of the 2010 presidential election was the sovereignty of the Ivory Coast. Of the 14 contestants in the first round and of the two in the run-off, Laurent Gbagbo was the only candidate whose plan of actions [14] underlined the autonomy of the country, its sovereignty, its desire to break away from the colonizing structures of the Françafrique and to diversify its economic partners. He was the only candidate who demanded the end of the cooperation and defense agreements that the Ivory Coast signed with France in April 1961. As a matter of fact, under his tenure, the relationship between the Ivory Coast and France was more of equality than it was of domination. The Diaspora endorsed Laurent Gbagbo for President in 2010 because they agreed with his vision of independence.

Therefore, by casting their votes for him, the Ivorians of the Diaspora unambiguously reasserted their adherence to sovereignty. They reasserted this option again on March 30, 2011 in front of the UN headquarters, when the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1975 and when, with the support of the French and UN troops, the Pro-Ouattara forces attacked the regular army of the Ivory Coast, the troops committed to defend the Republic and the institutions of a sovereign state. Today, an icon of this sovereignty is imprisoned at The Hague where Laurent Gbagbo is detained. The enormous difficulty that the regime of Mr. Alassane Ouattara is experiencing in its search for acceptance by the Ivorians and the obvious failure of the national reconciliation process are, in part, caused by the imprisonment of the sovereignty of the Ivory Coast. What is more, reconciliation is taboo because the regime in power is not only illegitimate, but also, it is headed by a political actor who has no legal and legitimate right to contest an election in the Ivory Coast.

Therefore, there is an overdose of humiliation in the incarceration of Laurent Gbagbo. The circumstances of his arrest, the images broadcast in the world showing him and his spouse, Simone Gbagbo [15] ridiculous and exhibited as trophies of war, increased the pain of the patriots, sovereigns, and the Pan-Africans. A humiliated and degraded nation has no other choice than to fight. To demand the liberation of Laurent Gbagbo is rhetoric of anti-colonialism and autonomy. His liberation would be a psychological victory and a boost for the forces of democracy.

d) TO SERVE THE CAUSE OF JUSTICE

For whoever has followed the evolution of Ivorian politics since at least the 1980s, it is inacceptable that Laurent Gbagbo is at The Hague for unproved crimes against humanity at the end of a ten-year crisis instigated by the same person who sent him to jail in February 1992. For anyone who followed how pro-Ouattara warlords started the rebellion in September 2002, for anyone who followed the abuses, mutilations, deaths, the burning down of entire villages in the western part of the Ivory Coast (Guitrozon, Doké, Petit Duékoué, etc.), for whoever heard of the summary executions of gendarmes made prisoners of war, for whoever read or heard about how the rebel forces broke into the safes of the Central Bank of West African States and how they established a parallel fiscal and custom administration in the areas under their control since 2002, for whoever knows who started the war after the 2010 election, it is unthinkable and unfair that Laurent Gbagbo is at The Hague. His release would repair this injustice.

Is it acceptable that those who maimed the country, but who the nation forgave for the sake of reconciliation, turn around to jail the same people who forgave their sins? Can the patriots and the sovereigns, who were very disgruntled when Laurent Gbagbo granted the rebels their demands, for instance the use of Article 48 of the Constitution to allow Mr. Alassane Ouattara to contest the presidential election, the appointment of Soro Guillaume, rebel leader first as Minister of State and then as Prime Minister, the appointment of rebels who could barely read as ministers, accept to see him in jail? In which society is unrighteousness condoned over righteousness?

It is because the patriots, the sovereigns and the Pan-Africans cannot reconcile these questions that they coined the expression: ‘NO GBAGBO, NO PEACE’, which concentrates aspects of the problem and the solution of the Ivorian crisis. The Diaspora wants justice to be served to honor the victims and the families of the victims of the crisis. The Diaspora wants the truth to come out to ensure durable peace in the Ivory Coast.

e) TO RESOLVE THE CRISIS

Is it possible one day to end the crisis of the Ivory Coast? We believe it is possible although the social fracture is very deep. The resolution of the crisis is a challenge that the sons and daughters of the Ivory Coast are capable to hold up to. But this resolution has some requirements. In fact, the interest of the nation, which all the national and international political actors refer to, requires the active participation of Laurent Gbagbo in the Ivorian political debate. The rationale is simple: having made the Ivorians swallow ‘sour pills’, the rebels and their sponsors in power should swallow the ‘sweet pill that the return of Laurent Gbagbo to the Ivorian political scene represents.’ This return is another dimension of justice and reparation of the wrongs that the pro-Ouattara rebels have caused the country. Since 2002, the rebels have done nothing to make peace and reconciliation possible. Only Laurent Gbagbo, as Mr. Thabo Mbeki, former head of state of South Africa and former mediator of the crisis admitted, implemented his share of the resolutions and peace agreements.

Laurent Gbagbo’s strong inclination to peace even at the costly price of humiliation, his charisma, his adulation by the majority of the patriots, sovereigns, and Pan-Africans, and the hopes that the latter see in him are great assets for the Ivory Coast. Laurent Gbagbo is the key to the resolution of the crisis. The work of reconciliation is the onus of he/she who is wronged. In other words, the oppressed, more than the oppressor, can eliminate injustice according to Paolo Freire, Martin Luther King, and Albert Memmi [16]. The Ivorian patriots and sovereigns are the victims of the crisis [17]. They are the ones who France attacked in September 2002, November 2004, and March-April 2011. They are the oppressed and the core of the solutions they propose to end the crisis is the release of Laurent Gbagbo. The CACI-USA supports this position vehemently.

Nowadays, Laurent Gbagbo is for the Ivory Coast what Hugo Chavez was for a large majority of Venezuelans, what General Giap was for Vietnam, what George Washington, John Kennedy, or Ronald Reagan were for the Americans. In the course of its history, a nation develops some institutions and has leaders who strengthen these institutions by the bond between them and the people. Laurent Gbagbo is one of those leaders because he laid down his life as the grain of wheat, which should die for the petals of happiness to blossom for the multitude. Like Asar, the main character in Osiris Rising of Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah, Laurent Gbagbo did not flee the country when he was attacked. As a commander-in-chief, he preserved the existence of the state. He gave hope to the poor, to the deprived, and to the afflicted during the horror of the rebellion.The sovereigns see him as the new symbol of Africa’s independence. The panafricans say he is the new icon of Black people’s world liberation movement. For all that he represents, the CACI-USA demands his freedom.

f) TO PROTEST AGAINST THE ICC

The CACI-USA is convinced that Laurent Gbagbo’s arrest and transfer to the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a political decision that perpetuates France’s maneuvers to keep the Ivory Coast in her sphere of influence. The truth is that Laurent Gbagbo’s philosophy and actions seriously threatened France’s geo-strategic interests and hegemony in Africa. It is because of these interests that NATO supported France-initiated UN Resolution 1975, the ultimate goal of which was to defeat and kill Laurent Gbagbo.

President Obama’s YouTube address of April 5, 2011, Hillary Clinton’s letter to Laurent Gbagbo, and finally President Nicholas Sarkozy’s injunction to Laurent Gbagbo to leave power within 48 hours, did not stop the latter from claiming that Mr. Alassane Ouattara did not win the presidential election. For the powers of the West, Laurent Gbagbo’s attitude was the utmost insult. For instance, Lanny Davis, the US lawyer that the government of Laurent Gbagbo hired, abandoned the case because Laurent Gbagbo had refused to speak to President Obama on the phone. Laurent Gbagbo’s attitude was ‘inacceptable’. That is why France and its allies used extreme violence against him.

Laurent Gbagbo resisted. The NATO failed to eliminate him physically. They ordered him to the ICC to keep him away from the Ivory Coast and to show other African leaders what could befall them if they oppose the geo-strategic interests of the powers of neoliberalism. After two years in detention, it is clear that the charges levied against Laurent Gbagbo are weak. The pre-Trial chamber has not confirmed them. It is also evident that African leaders speak out against the ICC’s Africa-oriented racism and unfairness [18]. The release of Laurent Gbagbo would end the substantiated accusations that the ICC is the new instrument of Western domination. Ending his trial at The Hague would dignify Africa. It will be a victory of sovereignty, a victory of justice over injustice, a victory of democracy over oligarchy and parallel channels.

CONCLUSION

This paper has exposed the reasons of the Diaspora’s inflexible demand for the release of Laurent Gbagbo from the ICC. We started with the Ivorian Constitution because the rule of law is indispensable and because Laurent Gbagbo’s greatest contribution to Ivorian politics was the respect of the Ivorian Constitution. During his tenure from 2000 to 2010, the Ivory Coast started the construction of a modern state, which gives men, women and children equal access to education, health, and economic opportunities. The April 11, 2011 arrest of Laurent Gbagbo interrupted this project. Only his release would restart the construction of this independent, equitable, and hospitable piece of land known as the Ivory Coast, our only and beloved country.

END NOTES

1. Laurent Gbagbo described the conditions in which he was detained on December 5, 2010, when he was arraigned before judges of the pre-trial Chamber I of the ICC. See archived videos on www.youtube.com
2. These groups continue to grow. « Un mot d’amour Gbagbo, » is one of these pages and online communities.
3. Seplou is one of the nicknames of Laurent Gbagbo. It is not new in the Ivorian political landscape to see political leaders or heads of states with nicknames borrowed from their traditions to illustrate their personality traits.
4. In a very recent interview, the President of the Ivory Coast chapter of Amnesty International, Ms. Nathalie Kouadio Yao, indicated that from April 2011 to October 24, 2013, the day of her interview with l’Inter, an Ivorian daily newspaper, there were 742 detainees including 41 youths all of them detained without due process for 2 years and six months.
5. In the USA, the CACI-USA met with African, European, and South-American chancelleries to expose on the origins of the Ivorian crisis and the injustice that the detention of Laurent Gbagbo represents.
6. These three terms give us an idea of the different categories of Ivorians, Africans, and African-Americans who got involved to demand the release of Laurent Gbagbo.
7. “La Majorité Présidentielle” is the coalition of more than ten political parties and civil society organizations, which endorsed the candidacy of Laurent Gbagbo for the 2010 elections.
8. The first rallies of the Ivorians in the USA started two weeks after the rebellion broke out in 2002. The UN headquarters, the embassy of France, for instance, were the sites of these rallies.
9. In 1987, Ambassador Kokora was sacked from the University of Abidjan and expelled from the Ivory Coast. He sought asylum in the United States and served at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
10. The Ivorian League of Human Rights (LIDHO) was created on March 21, 1987 according to Law 60-375 of September 21, 1960 at the moment when the PDCI-RDA of Houphouet-Boigny was the only party allowed to operate.
11. « Barack Obama ou la force de l’idéal démocratique » is the title of the text that Laurent Gbagbo contributed to the African political discourse on the relevance of Obama’s election. The text was distributed in January 2009.
12. See the speech President Obama made on the floor the Ghanaian parliament during this historical visit in March 2009. This speech of the first bi-racial president of the United States triggered hopes that the US African agenda would change for an increase and much better relationships between the US and Africa.
13. At the time of the election, Mr. Yao N’dré Paul was the Chairman of the Ivorian Constitutional Council.
14. See Laurent Gbagbo, Côte d’Ivoire : Bâtir la Paix sur la démocratie et la prospérité, Abidjan : NEI, 2009.
15. Simone Gbagbo is still under custody in the northern part of the Ivory Coast. The conditions of her detention are unknown. The regime of Alassane Ouattara has objected to the ICC’s request of her transfer to The Hague.
16. Paolo Freire, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, USA: Continuum, 1992; Albert Memmi, The colonizer and the colonized, Boston, Beacon Press, 1965.
17. This thought does not obliterate the responsibilities that the patriots share in the crisis. However, there is an aggressor and a victim who reacts to the aggression he undergoes. The new forces and Ouattara who are now in power are the aggressors and the Ivorians are the victims.
18. The debate took its full course during the celebration of the AU’s 50th anniversary in Addis-Ababa in May 2013.

Country broke… ino broke oooh, the fault is in Ghanaians

By Dr. Michael J.K. Bokor

Folks, many issues cropping up confound me. I will lay some bare now for us to discuss.

There is much concern all over the place that the Mahama-led administration is not performing well. Those complaining are NDC supporters as well as political opponents, especially those in the NPP.

The critics are quick to cite the prevailing economic situation, high prices of goods and services, low productivity and the fluctuating Cedi-Dollar rate to support their criticisms. In effect, the cost of living is worsening.

Others are on roof-tops complaining about corruption and blaming President Mahama for presiding over "a create-loot-and-share" administration. Many others have simply written off the government as a total flop.

The NPP is out today, doing its own assessment of President Mahama's performance in one year. The verdict? To them, he is a failure. They claim that 2016 is not dawning fast enough for them to kick out the NDC from office. Really?

Specific mention has been made of appointees of the government whose performance has been described as appalling. I saw a list of names posted on Myjoyonline's Facebook page by a group based in the Volta Region that contained names of appointees to be dismissed by President Mahama.

One particular Minister who is on people's lips is Mr. Seth Terkper, Finance Minister. Even before we are told the outcome of the appraisal being done by President Mahama, some people have shortlisted Mr. Terkper to be kicked out.

Now, President John Mahama himself has spilt the beans (so to speak), saying that "there is pressure mounting on him from within his own government to sack his finance Minister".

“I mean several times they’ve interceded with me to sack Seth because he’s hurting the politics. He doesn’t understand the politics. ‘If there’s no money he should go and borrow’, as if it were that easy”, the President said, in jest, when he met the new managing director of Barclays Bank Ghana, Patience Akyianu, at the Flagstaff House Wednesday.

(see: http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=297913)

(Take note, folks, the President said pressure is mounting on him from within his own government)!!

Why the pressure? Because Mr. Terkper is spearheading certain reforms  to tweak the economy to not only break the cycle of ills inherent within it, but also fix certain fiscal weaknesses through some reforms, have got tongues wagging in the government, thus the pressure for his dismissal.

According to President Mahama, “… It’s a vicious cycle we need to break and that is why a lot of the reforms that Seth is carrying out in the Finance Ministry with regards to the Ghana Integrated Management Information System (GIFMIS) and making sure we budget properly and MDAs follow budget discipline and all that are issues that we’re trying to introduce”.

It involves the use of a number of integrated electronic financial modules in the management of public funds, thereby reducing the human element as a means of reducing corruption.

President Mahama said the reforms are meeting some internal opposition within certain circles in government because they appear to be politically imprudent.

“…People have been used to the bad old ways for so long that it’s very difficult to change the attitude to see what is happening”, he bewailed.

Just a few days ago, it was reported that the Minister of Local Government, Akwasi Oppong-Fosu was facing similar problems for insisting that the right thing be done and payments for services to the Ministry properly scrutinized to weed out malfeasance.

MY COMMENTS

Folks, here we are. President Mahama's revelation is disheartening in essence and import, apparently because Ghana's economy needs reforms, which includes plugging all the loopholes that facilitate corruption—which is what the Finance Minister and Oppong-Fosu have begun doing only to become the bull's eye for opponents within the government itself.

How paradoxical? Do those opponents see the NDC's manifesto for national development as different from measures being taken to improve the economy?

Or is the government itself doing things to reach this point of cross-purposes?

Of course, reforms are not necessarily meant to be "enjoyable"; but if what the President has revealed is anything to go by, then, there is no hope that anything good can be achieved in this atmosphere.

Seth Terkper to go just because he has begun doing the right thing for the good of the country's economy?

It is beyond being pathetic that the opponents from within will simply base their reasons on what they claim is hurting the NDC's politics. In fact, it is totally despicable for these opponents to even go that way as if what is good for the NDC's politics is necessarily good for Ghana and Ghanaians.

No sane person will equate a political party to a country and claim that what is good for the party (to remain in power for its own sake?) is in the interest of the country and its people.

In our Ghanaian situation where voters vote on the basis of superficial issues regarding common ethnic backgrounds, physical features, and how much material benefits they have had from candidates, it is dangerous to claim that the NDC's politics should supersede what the government does.

Those waspish elements in the government and the NDC putting pressure on President Mahama to relieve Mr. Terkper and others of their posts just because what they are doing is not favourable for the NDC's politics must be identified and kicked out themselves.

Truly, there is every reason to suspect that those people don't wish Ghana well. If they do, they won't kick against reforms geared toward improving the national economy for Ghanaians to live in decency.

I trust that President Mahama will put the national interest above narrow and selfish considerations to ensure that his government solves national problems and not the NDC's problems alone.

Those in the NDC who cannot wear their thinking caps at the right angle and poise should be disregarded. It is their responsibility to build the party, based on good thinking and performance to enlarge membership.

They have to separate their party from the government and not deceive themselves that the government is at their beck-and-call.

Of course, the government and the party need to know how to implement the party's manifesto to achieve lasting results. Unless the government's own agenda for "Better Ghana" conflicts with the NDC's manifesto!!

If the government's reforms at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning are well-intentioned, why should those in the government put pressure on President Mahama to get rid of Mr. Terkper?

Something is really not adding up properly.

I shall return…

E-mail: mjbokor@yahoo.com

Join me on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/mjkbokor to continue the conversation.

Prosecuting Black victims

By Margaret Kimberley

Prosecutors go to bizarre lengths to put Black victims of police gunfire in prison. A young man blinded by a cop’s bullet may spend 35 years in prison. A unarmed, mentally ill man who was shot at by police faces 25 years behind bars because the cops wounded two bystanders. Who cares? “The black misleadership class are unconcerned with the plight of the people who are targeted by the system.

The United States is a country which openly and unashamedly targets black people for police surveillance, prosecution, incarceration and death. Racism is the fuel which feeds the monster of criminal injustice, making a mockery of any claims of democracy and equal treatment under the law.

Those words are backed up by cold, hard facts. The United States has the dubious distinction of putting both a greater percentage of its population and the largest number of people overall in jails and prison than any other country in the world. The country with 5 percent of the world’s population has 25 percent of all prisoners. Black Americans, who make up roughly 13 percent of the population are 38 percent of all those behind bars.

The situation has always been an ugly one for black people when faced with the wickedness of the law enforcement system. Many people have been brutalized by police only to have insult added to injury and been charged with resisting arrest or assaulting an officer. While the tactic isn’t new, the punishments are becoming more cruel and indefensible.

On September 14, 2013 in New York City, a mentally ill man, Glenn Broadnax, walked into vehicular traffic in Times Square. There are laws against this behavior and rightly so. Unfortunately officers of the New York City police department, trained to be trigger happy, fired at Broadnax, claiming that they thought he had a gun. Broadnax was brought down with a police taser but New York’s so-called finest also shot and injured two innocent bystanders in their efforts to subdue him.

Now Manhattan’s district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., has chosen to prosecute Broadnax for assaulting the two victims who were in fact shot by the police. Broadnax has a history of mental illness and put himself in danger more than he did anyone else. He was originally charged with menacing, drug possession and resisting arrest. Prosecuting him lets the police off the hook and aids the city of New York in defense against law suits, but a man guilty of not taking his prescribed medication is facing the possibility of up to 25 years in prison because of an act carried out by other people.

The Broadnax story isn’t even the worst case of police abuse turned against a victim. On January 10, 2010 18 year-old Kwadir Felton was shot in the head by a Jersey City, New Jersey police man and blinded as a result. He was recently tried and convicted of assaulting the officer and faces a possible penalty of 35 years in prison.

The case against Felton is an outrage and should be well known around the country. It ought to be a rallying cry for anyone who wants justice and equal treatment for all citizens. Instead his story is just a blurb on the police blotter in the local paper. .
The district attorney of New York County is an elected official and the Hudson County, New Jersey, prosecutor is appointed by the governor. As such they ought to be accountable to the people on whose behalf they file charges. Unfortunately there is no organized citizen constituency that keeps them from committing prosecutorial abuse. There should be groups of black elected officials, attorneys, and activist citizens prepared to voice disapproval when prosecutors run amok in their quest to find more black lives to destroy. If this were so, these egregious cases would not see the light of day.

Prosecutors are rewarded for misconduct and over reach in part because the black misleadership class are unconcerned with the plight of the people who are targeted by the system. Mentally ill men and teenagers shot by the police don’t rank on their list of priorities. If district attorneys knew that they would face opposition at the ballot box or an outcry from the public and prominent people, Felton and Broadnax would not be facing jail time now.

The state of New Jersey has a NAACP and black office holders and groups of attorneys but none of these organizations or individuals took action to make Kwadir Felton’s name a household word and his cause a rallying cry. Protest and publicity could not only have stopped this gruesome punishment from being carried out but might also have forced the police officer who blinded Felton to face justice himself.

As for the Manhattan district attorney, he should have feared that prosecuting Broadnax would endanger his chances of successfully running for re-election later this year. The harsh prosecution facing Mr. Broadnax should have been unthinkable, but there is no one to speak up for him. New York City is full of the high and mighty and famous but if they don’t raise their voices to speak up for those on the lowest rungs of society, their prominence is worthless.

How many more Feltons are serving hard time because they were victimized? The American gulag has a voracious appetite indeed. If all the victims of brutality were to be heard, the protest would be endless.

Kwadir Felton was scheduled to be sentenced on January 14, 2014. It is late in the process to stage protest or advocate for lenience but it would be even worse if he were imprisoned amidst silence. Endless protest should be the order of the day.

* Margaret Kimberley is editor and senior columnist

Amiri Baraka has died: Long live Amiri Baraka!

Amiri Bakari

By Anthony Monteiro

To truly honour Amiri Baraka, one must examine his travels, the political journeys he undertook in search of paths to self-determination for his people and all humanity. He sought a liberatory synthesis of culture and politics. ‘We need a Cultural Revolution in the US and internationally, to reorient the world and ultimately transform it where we and everybody else is self-determining.’

Amiri Baraka is gone. Where shall we go? What is to be done? Let us remember Baraka was a revolutionary, communist, anti-imperialist and internationalist who deployed art and language in the cause of Black liberation, working class freedom and human emancipation. His extraordinary intellect combined with an extraordinary will and unshakeable principles and morality. In spite of his glorious mind he never privileged himself. He often seemed embarrassed when people made a fuss over him.

Never has poetry, music, drama, literature, eulogy, music commentary and criticism been so effectively deployed in the cause of freedom. It was obvious that for him art and revolution were two sides of an inseparable dialectic; in other words, if you didn’t want revolution you didn’t want art, at least art committed to the people. Far more than the usually construed academic option where art and reality are like form and content, in his praxis it was the unity of the historically inevitable, collective consciousness and the existential that produced people’s art.

Amiri’s was a long journey, that mirrored the complexities and contradictions of the time he lived, and his ambition to use his indomitable will, passion and drive to right the wrongs of history, especially the crimes committed upon his beloved Afro-American people. His life did not proceed linearly. Like all things in history and nature it advanced in and through contradictions. Yet, at the end of the day he was a genius seeking to do all he could to free his people. In the course of his life he became a part of us and we of him.

Through our grief and tears we must prepare for the ideological onslaught of the buzzards of the ruling elites (the New York Times threw the first blow) and its black and white academic deconstructors who will now seek to invent and reinvent Amiri. The defense of Amiri is the defense of our national liberation and working class emancipatory aspirations.

Like Du Bois and James Baldwin, Baraka was a social force. His power arose from the connection of his genius to the black masses. This relationship deepened over his life, giving a power to his intellect which I’m sure amazed him as it did us. To those who will invent a Baraka that fits their ambitions and class interest, we remind them as he did when speaking of James Baldwin: “’reality’ exists independent of any of the multivisioned subjectivism that nevertheless distort and actually peril all life here. For me, one clear example of the dichotomy between what actually is and what might be reflected in some smeared mirror of private need, is the public characterization of the mighty being for whom we are gathered here to bid our tearful farewells!”

Amiri discovered his poetic voice in the middle 1950’s as a part of the beat poets. Yet while finding his own voice he shaped the voice of American poetry. In those years he was an organizer of journals, poetry slams and protest. His radical vision challenged the political and cultural frameworks of an America preparing the century for American empire and war. His poetry was democratic and radically anti-establishment, albeit, as he admitted, petit bourgeois. He invents new meter, rhythms, punctuation and spelling creating a type of Baraka-speak. He attacked the dullness of academic poetry. For him, like his friend Alan Ginsburg, poetry was from the people and should reflect their lives. All the time he desired to go beyond the isolation of poetry, beohemianism and hip beatnikism. He says, “The abject racism and economic super exploitation, denial of rights and national oppression and the imperialist overbeing was pressed upon me even in the eastern city of LaLa Land, ‘The Village.’ It grew, this sense of it, as I grew, intellectually, experientially, ideologically…whatever. I had seen a pattern, social, aesthetic, and ideological, that had worked on me…”

The assassination of Malcolm X in 1965 forced Amiri to rethink not only where he should locate his efforts, but also who he must become. He relocates to Harlem, later moving to Newark, New Jersey, his hometown. In Harlem he leads the Black Arts Movement and for the first time sees Black Art as a democratic and potentially revolutionary force. In a certain sense he was putting to practice the thesis in his landmark Blues People (1964). However his Black Arts praxis morphed into cultural nationalism and his becoming a follower of Kawaida philosophy and Maulana Karenga. The democratic and revolutionary possibilities of Black art were trumped by the sexism, and homophobia of cultural nationalism. In Newark, in search of black authenticity he becomes for a time a Muslim, changes his name to Ameer Barakat and later Swahilized to Amiri Baraka. He founds Spirit House and participates in the 1967 Black Power Conference and during the Newark uprising is beaten to within inches of his life by Newark police. However, he does something previously not attempted by Black nationalists, he attempts to join cultural nationalism to electoral politics. Who could remember a poet – more, AfroAmerica’s leading poet and playwrite – involved in the nitty gritty of electoral politics? His efforts help to elect Newark’s first Black mayor Ken Gibson and in 1970 he forms the Congress of African Peoples (CAP).

In this swelter of cultural and political activity profound ideological contradictions arose between the democratic essence of Black culture and the anti-democratic character of cultural nationalism, especially its sexism. His wife Amina Baraka (formerly Sylvia Robinson) challenged the misogyny of the Kawaida doctrine. She points out the inconsistency of fighting for Black liberation while upholding women’s subordination and oppression. Baraka was also aware of the left and revolutionary trend within the liberation movements in southern Africa. The Marxism of Amilcar Cabral and the socialism of Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere particularly influence him. Amina Baraka insists that they make a complete break with Karenga’s doctrine. At the Sixth Pan African Congress in Dar Es Salam Tanzania in 1974 Baraka delivers a speech entitled “Revolutionary Culture and the Future of Pan African Culture” where he stated that if African American nationalism did not advocate for socialism it would become reactionary. Throughout 1974 he used CAP position papers to signal his increasing move away from cultural nationalism, defining it as narrow and reactionary nationalism and linked his thinking to Marx, Lenin, Mao and African and Third World Marxists. He recognizes that neither Kawaida nor Black electoral politics could produce the type of revolutionary ideology he aspired to.

Amina Baraka insists upon a complete break with cultural nationalism and a “Bolshevik,” i.e. Leninist, reconstruction of CAP. CAP is renamed, the Revolutionary Communist League. Cultural nationalism had lost perhaps its best-known and most effective organizer. The Afro-American radical tradition acquired a most formidable intellect and voice.

In a 1976 interview he defines culture in class terms, rejects the racial strategy of cultural nationalism and rejects his previous stance against unity with white folk. He says, “I think the purpose of real art today is to show people how to make revolution in this society.” Concerning Black struggle he proclaims, “we’ve got to fight for revolution, because racism and oppression will never be eliminated until the system of monopoly capitalism is eliminated. Racism, after all is built upon the economic foundations of capitalism, and it won’t collapse until its material base us destroyed.” While positioning his thinking within what he called the “revisionist communist movement” and “Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought” his views are also close to those articulated in 1973 by Henry Winston, Chairman of the Communist Party USA, that culture separated from a class consciousness could never be a weapon of liberation.

Baraka’s early Marxism is dogmatic, highly rhetorical, sectarian and infantile. However, coming from within cultural nationalism it was seen as a repudiation of Karenga and his Kawaida principles. His enormous stature as a result of his literary achievements, his role in Black electoral politics and the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, in 1972, made his drastic ideological shift a highly significant political event.

His changes reflected other changes among young African American radicals, including the Marxist forces within the Black Panther Party, the leftist move of Stokely Carmichael’s (Kwame Ture) All African Peoples Revolutionary Party and the formation of Black revolutionary formations, known as the Revolutionary Union Movement, within the United Automobile Union. The left and Marxist trends within the African Liberation Struggles and the consolidation of the Cuban Revolution and Cuba’s selfless support for African independence were strategic influences.

Once making the initial break, the issue for Amiri and Amina was how to develop their new ideological stance, and how to address the burning questions of the Black movement, especially sexism and increasingly homophobia. What form would revolutionary culture, music, art and literature take in an advanced democratic and revolutionary struggle? What internationalist stance should be adopted and what side of the Soviet Union-Chinese ideological split should be taken. What was the relationship of the Afro-American struggle to the armed struggles in southern Africa. And what would be the relationship of the struggle for Black Self Determination to African Liberation and the movement towards world revolution, i.e. the world revolutionary process.

To break from the traps of dogmatism and left sectarian politics Baraka is forced to rethink and resituate himself in the African American radical traditions. W.E.B Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction in America and James Baldwin are irreplaceable in his understanding the advanced democratic character of the Black struggle, and its working class foundations. By the mid 1980’s Amiri and Amina had, along with others, worked out the principle groundings of their Marxism, which understood the centrality of democracy and Black liberation to the class struggle and socialism. However, he needed a better grasp of black resistance.

His return to Baldwin (the non Marxist and non Black Nationalist) presents him with the intellectual groundings of a real Black Marxism in a nation whose ruling class was forever flirting with right wing authoritarianism and fascism. In his eulogy at Baldwin’s funeral he passionately and emotionally insists, “He was spirit because he was living. And even past this tragic hour when we weep he has gone away, and why, and why we keep asking. There’s mountains of evil creatures who we would willingly bid farewell to—Jimmy could have given you some of their names on demand—We curse our luck, our oppressors—our age, our weakness. Why &Why again? And why can drive you mad, or said enough times might even make you wise!” He continued, “His spirit is part of our own, it is our feelings’ completion. Our perceptions’ extension, the edge of our rationale, the paradigm for our best use of this world.” Amiri proclaims, Jimmy “was like us so much, constantly growing, constantly measuring himself against himself, and thus against the world.” And than he shows how Baldwin will help shape the intellectual architecture of the rest of his life.

“At the hot peak of the movement Jimmy was one of its truest voices. His stance, that is our judgement of the world, the majority of us who still struggle to survive the bestiality of so called civilization, (the slaves) that is true and not that of our torturers, was a dangerous profundity and, as such, fuel for our getaway and liberation!

“He was our consummate &complete man of letters, not as an unloving artifact, but as a black man we could touch and relate to even there in that space filled with black fire at the base and circumference of our souls. And what was supremely ironic is that for all his aestheticism and ultra-sophistication, there he was now demanding that we get in the world completely, that we comprehend the ultimate intelligence of our enforced commitment to finally bring humanity to the world!

“Jimmy’s voice, as much as Dr. King’s or Malcolm X’s, helped sheppard and guide us toward black liberation.

“And for this, of course, the intellectual gunmen of the animal king tried to vanquish him. For ultimately, even the rare lyricism of his song, the weeping aesthetic obsession with feeling, could not cover the social heaviness of his communication!
“The celebrated James Baldwin of earlier times could not be used to cover the undaunted freedom chants of the Jimmy who walked with King and SNCC or the evil little nigger who wrote Blues For Mr. Charlie!”

Along with this there was always the music; the blues, R&B, gospel, bebop, hardbop, free jazz and avant-garde jazz. He returns again to music. (See the collection Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music). He analyzes, but searches for the progressive and revolutionary kernel of all Black music. The blues of Bessie Smith and Diana Washington and the advanced re-articulation of the blues in Billie Holliday; he embraced the avant-garde like the later Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Grachan Moncur III, Nina Simone, Fred Hopkins, Craig Harris and David Murray. In the music he saw a pure form of the democratic and social transformative aspirations of Black folk. He said, “The music is created by people in struggle. For whom struggle is one constant tone of life’s registration. It shapes every aspect of Black life.” Ultimately, though, “We need a Cultural Revolution in the US and internationally, to reorient the world and ultimately transform it where we and everybody else is self-determining. Our music, naturally, will be a big part of that because that is how we communicate with ourselves, each other, and the world.”

As the American ruling class after Reagan moved to consolidate the American Empire and situate it as the single superpower and “indispensible nation,” Baraka realized the threat of constant wars abroad threatened bourgeois democracy and made fascism at home inevitable. After the 2001 attack upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon he proclaims in the poem “Who Blew Up America” that it was a dangerous alliance of domestic and international forces seeking a rationale for war and repression that were behind it. He conceived of an anti-fascist strategyand a united front that translated in electoral politics to siding with the “lesser of two evils” between the Democrats and Republicans. This strategy reversed his almost 25 year rejection of the two party fraud. By 2007 he is in the embrace of Barack Obama. At the end, however, he saw that rather than a lesser evil Obama was but a new articulation of the same old evil with but a different symbology. His anti-fascist strategy did not and could not work. It failed! Which leaves us to find the foundations of new democratic and revolutionary possibilities in the second decade of the 21st century.

In the end Amiri returned to Baldwin and Du Bois. In a 2007 essay on Baldwin he proclaims:

“In these days of American Weimar, with a counterfeit president for a fake democracy, it is a deeply inspiring and absolutely necessary weapon and shield of true self-consciousness against an oppressor nation, its lieutenants, deranged pets, hired killers, artists, academic courtesans, and the dangerously uninformed, to reflect on the obvious grandeur, wisdom, and strength of that tradition of the Afro-American intellectual, artist, teacher—and know that it is revolutionary and democratic. Jimmy B. is high up in that tradition.”

Amiri’s was a complex life, which reflected the complexities of the Black liberation struggle. He leaves this earth standing upon the ideological and political ground that defined Du Bois as he left this plane: capitalism is an unsustainable system, it brings fascism and war and therefore for the sake of humanity it must be replaced with socialism.

*Anthony Monteiro is a professor of African American Studies at Temple University. He can be contacted at tmon(at)comcast.net.

Travesty of Saudi dirty tricks against Iran 

By Finian Cunningham

Saudi claims of “busting a spy ring” involving Iranian and Lebanese nationals this week smell of yet more dirty tricks by the creaky House of Saud.

But the repeated formula for attempting to smear Iran used by the Saudis and their Western and Israeli partners is in danger of becoming a parody.

Saudi authorities detained 18 individuals across the kingdom this week, who, it is claimed, were working for a “foreign state” in a plot to target vital installations.

"Sixteen Saudis, an Iranian and a Lebanese were arrested in coordinated and simultaneous operations in four regions of the kingdom," including the capital Riyadh and the holy city of Mecca, the Saudi interior ministry said in a statement.

Wow. Do you feel the bombast in those words “coordinated and simultaneous operations”?

The suspects “gathered information on vital installations which they provided to the country” they had been working for, added the Saudi intelligence experts.

Iran was not mentioned specifically, but the inclusion of an as-yet unnamed Iranian national is something of a finger of accusation that tries to be subtle, but is in fact a clumsy attempt to fabricate. The Lebanon connection can also be seen as a Saudi bid to implicate Hezbollah. That combination is a gauche effort to appear neat, from the Saudi point of view, to resonate with the hoary Western stereotype of Iran and its alleged sponsorship of international terrorism.

The purported busting of an alleged Iranian-led spy ring in Saudi Arabia makes for good headlines in the supine Western media. But between the headlines is the unmistakable stench of another dirty tricks operation, aimed at smearing Iran and covering up the reality of Saudi repression and state-sponsored terrorism across the Middle East.

Scarcely mentioned in the Western media coverage is that the arrests also involved Saudi nationals from among its Shia population in the country’s Eastern Province. This hard-pressed minority within Saudi Arabia has been holding peaceful protests for political freedoms for the best part of two years, closely aligned with their confessional brothers and sisters in nearby Bahrain. In both Bahrain and Saudi’s oil-rich Eastern Province, the House of Saud has sent its shock troops in to try to crush the movement for democracy with brutal, unremitting repression.

Since Saudi forces entered Bahrain in March 2011, up to 100 unarmed civilians have been killed and thousands more mutilated or imprisoned for daring to demand the right to democratic government. Likewise in Saudi Arabia, hundreds have been arrested and thrown into unknown dungeons by the same system of monarchial tyranny that the Western governments have backed to the hilt.

What better way to distract from this reality of crushing democracy than to cook up a tall story about a foreign spy ring - and an Iranian spy ring at that.

That relocates the problem from one of long-overdue political rights among the population of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to one of foreign subversion. Irony upon irony, it also diverts from the fact that Saudi Arabia has over the same period been backing terrorists in Syria causing murder and mayhem for the criminal Western objective of regime change.

The latest claims by the Saudi authorities bear the usual hallmarks of a psyops smear. Details are all-too vacant and the allegations rely on innuendo and sensationalism. Observers familiar with Bahrain will recognize the tired old pattern of “foreign subversion”. Arrests, accusations, momentary headlines, bombastic claims of probes to “reveal the foreign plotters”… followed, always, by scant substance of anything. Political theatrics that have become ridiculous parody.

Recall the “sensational plot” that the Saudis and the Americans made media song and dance of when they accused Iran of trying to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington at the end of 2011.

Whatever happened to the follow-up substance to that risible ruse? Or the two hapless Iranians who allegedly were planning an all-out bombing blitz on Israeli properties in Kenya in May 2012?

Then there were similar claims by Israeli intelligence of Iranian international terror plots in Georgia, Thailand, India, Azerbaijan and Bulgaria, also last year.

Despite copious coverage in the Western media of these threadbare tales, none of these “sensational plots” have amounted to follow-up prosecutions, let alone proof of official Iranian involvement.

All these fabricated accounts are evidently nothing more than tall stories with no legs; fables involving dogs that don’t bark and the fishiest of tales.

The only tangible pattern that is evident is the collusion of Saudi spooks with Western and Israeli black ops, aided and abetted by Western so-called news media.

The latest Iranian spy ring story in Saudi is yet another black episode.

But the sorcerers behind these tall stories have used this formula way beyond its sell-by date for anyone to give it the slightest credibility.

Cocaine

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Cocaine can change the structure of learning and memory spots in brain only within few hours of taking the drug, according to a new study conducted by American researchers.

The study unveils how the drug experience is associated with rapid growth of structures linking memory and consequently the changes in behaviour.

Analysis of mice brain indicated that only within two hours of being injected with cocaine, the fast growth occurred in the frontal cortex which is responsible for controlling higher functions such as planning and decision-making, according to the report published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

A team of researchers from University of California, Berkeley and UC San Francisco monitored the brain cells during the study to seek tiny protrusions called dendritic spines which are known as implicated organs in memory formation.

They applied a hi-tech laser scanning microscope to look inside the brains of living mice to hunt for the dendritic spines.

The mice were given the choice of two very different chambers, each with a different smell and surface texture.

According to the observation, mice switched preferences to the one where they had received the cocaine shot.

"This gives us a possible mechanism for how drug use fuels further drug-seeking behaviour," said the research leader Dr Linda Wilbrecht of the University of California at San Francisco.

"It is been observed that long-term drug users show decreased function in the frontal cortex in connection with mundane cues or tasks, and increased function in response to drug-related activity or information," she said.

"Their change in preference for the cocaine side correlated with gains in new persistent spines that appeared on the day they experienced cocaine," Wilbrecht concluded.

The experts claim that the recent study makes clear how addiction occurs and how it is learned by the brain.