“There are also a number of projects that as I said need
completion but this is also one of the reasons why in this budget we saw this
across the country.
“Every constituency for our deprived areas in every constituency
we are allocating this year the equivalent of 1million dollars, every
constituency in this country, all 275, so Cape Coast South, you should know and
this school should know that you have in this budget this constituency one
million dollars, so if you need a hundred thousand of it this year to complete
your project, please let the development Authority through your local assembly
know, we can work with you so that these monies could be used to deal with the
infrastructure in these particular areas. This is why we did it because if you
don’t have, the money will stay in Accra they will steal it and then you will
get nothing.”
Vice President Bawumia at the St Augustines Senior High
School
Editorial
THE CAT IS OUT OF
BAG
The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has let the huge
cat out of the bag and we will no longer have to make guesses.
Speaking at the Speech and Price Giving Day at Saint
Augustine College in Cape Coast, he revealed that money for the rehabilitation
of Senior High Schools (SHS) will come from the allocation of US$1million to
every constituency.
This should settle the issue that the US$ 1million per
constituency per year is not an additional resource which is being sent to
constituencies to generate development.
The US$ 1million per constituency per year is just an
exercise in rebranding old money.
It is also interesting that Dr Bawumia advises the
authorities of the school to hurry up with their request for the money to
prevent some people in Accra from stealing the money.
Who will steal the money in Accra under the
corruption-free administration of President Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo?
African women have
made significant gains-UN
By Leonida Odongo
To mark this year’s International Women’s Day, the
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published its first-ever
report on the human rights of African women. The report celebrates important
achievements such as provisions on sexual and gender based violence, economic,
social and cultural rights and the principle of non-discrimination in
constitutions, polices and in legislations across the continent.
The UN Women’s Rights in Africa Report was produced in
honour of the African Union 2016 theme “year of human rights”, thus celebrating
the gains made by women in the continent.
The gains made in sexual and reproductive health and
rights are acknowledged by the provision of regional instruments such as the
Maputo Protocol, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights.
According to the report, health gains have been achieved
in the continent through increase in domestic expenditure on health, reduction
in mortality rates, improved maternal healthcare and the achievement of the
Abuja Declaration target of allocating 15% of state budget to healthcare in
countries such as Madagascar, Malawi, Rwanda, Togo and Zambia.
Other gains include the advancement of the rights of
women and ensuring gender quality. Specific provisions highlighted in the
report include the adoption of binding agreements, generating recommendations
informed by various reports and instruments within the African continent mandated
with the promotion and protection of the rights of women.
The Women’s Rights in Africa report admits that despite
the gains achieved, gaps exist in the full realisation of enjoyment of rights
for women. The key gaps include the multiple forms of discrimination women go
through and the inherent intersectionality of this discrimination, the
continued violation of women’s rights in both the public and private spheres
and the inhibitions women face when effecting participation in these spheres.
The report recognises that rights are indivisible,
interrelated and interdependent, and observes that achievement of one right
contributes to the achievement of another right. The report further notes the
role of culture as a justification for violating women’s rights and voices
Maputo Protocol’s perspective that culture and tradition ought to evolve when
they contribute to violation of rights or discriminate women.
The Women’s Right in Africa Report notes key issues
within the Maputo Protocol in recognising that a vision for ‘The Africa We
Want’ is unachievable until and unless women are able to enjoy their rights.
These include access to safe abortion, recognition of the rights of women
living with HIV and creating an enabling environment for access to healthcare
services, ensuring protection against sexually transmitted diseases, the
protection of persons with albinism and specifically women.
Other key issues raised include sexual and gender based
violence, harmful practices such as child marriage, economic, social and
cultural rights including access to land, legislations that are discriminative
to women’s access to and control of land and the plight of women in prison.
On access to safe abortion, the report points out that
when women are denied access to essential health services with respect to
termination of pregnancy; the results are serious for both the life and health
of women. Articles of the Maputo Protocol on health that the report draws
reference to include Art 4(2) (c) which calls upon states to protect the reproductive
rights of women by allowing medical abortion in cases of rape, incest and where
the continued pregnancy is likely to harm the mental and physical health of the
mother.
The report recognises that on abortion, a lot of
resistance has been observed, with the laws going further to criminalise the
procedure. The relevance of access to contraceptive is also noted, with the
observation that denial of contraceptives has negative impacts on women’s
health, ranging from disability to death.
The Women’s Rights in Africa Report remarks that the
number of people living with HIV in Sub Saharan Africa is among the highest,
accounting for 71% of global total infections and that young women are at high
risk of contracting HIV. The report brings to attention rights violation among
people with HIV such as sterilization without full, free and informed consent.
As a protective mechanism for the rights of women living with HIV, the report
draws attention to Art.14 of the Maputo Protocol which guarantees women the right
to protection from sexually transmitted diseases including HIV. It also
commends the milestones achieved by countries towards lowering the number of
HIV infections amongst their citizenry.
For women with albinism, the report acknowledges the
stigma that is meted on the persons affected and the belief that body parts of
persons with albinism can bring wealth and good luck when used in witchcraft.
Violence against persons with albinism has increasingly been reported in the
African continent with women and children being the majority of victims. The
plight of women with albinism and persons with albinism in general is
documented by the report to be a result of the gaps in achievement of
disability rights in the continent.
Furthermore, the report indicates that the challenges
facing persons with albinism are a result of non-inclusion of albinism into
mainstream healthcare to ensure they get access to care such as for preventing
skin cancer of which persons with albinism are susceptible.
The role of key voices in the African human rights
system on condemning violence against persons with albinism has also been
highlighted, such as the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and
the African Committee of Experts on the Rights of the Child.
Sexual and gender based violence is noted to be a
phenomenon on the rise amongst women with the interplay of many socio economic
factors. The report notes categories of women who are more vulnerable to sexual
violence such as migrant women with non-binary gender identify (intersex),
women with disabilities and sexual minorities.
Harmful practices that impede the realization of women’s
rights have also been highlighted, including child marriage.
The report recognises women’s economic contribution,
mostly in agriculture and in employment and within households. An impediment to
rights on economic, social and cultural issues is noted to be limited access to
credit facilities and markets. The report also notes the challenges women face
in their bid to access and control land and calls upon states to embrace a
human rights-based approach when dealing with issues of land .The report
further observes that challenges still exist on access to land more so for
women in conflict and disasters. Countries that have amended their laws and repealed
sections that discriminate against women have been noted such as Sierra Leone.
The report notes that peace and security are an integral
part of achievement of rights of women and that conflict enhances vulnerability
to discrimination and risks of sexual, physical and psychological violence
against women. The report invokes specific provisions of Maputo Protocol on
women and peace, such as Art. 2 o non-discrimination, Art. 3 on the right to
dignity and Art. 4 on the right to life, integrity and security of the person.
According to the report, Africa has the lowest number of
imprisoned women but prisons in Africa are worse in comparison to other prisons
worldwide. The report recognises the fact that some women are imprisoned not
for criminal offences but due to discrimination, poverty, the absence of
economic social and cultural rights access .It also observes positive best
practices for women in prison such as remote parenting programme to mitigate
the impact of imprisonment on the family.
The report also acknowledges that prisons lack the
necessary gender sensitive infrastructure because they were designed with the
male gender in mind. Women ex-prisoners suffer from gender specific
discrimination such as the case of pregnant women, women living with HIV and
women with drug problems. The report emphasises the actualisation of the
provision of Maputo Protocol in relation special protection of women in
distress(Art.24) including women in detention.
* Leonida Odongo is Programme Officer, Adilisha: Education
for Social Justice, Fahamu Africa - Networks for Social Justice.
Source:
Pambazuka
Amy Ashwood Garvey:
A Forerunner in Pan-Africanist Feminism of the 20th Century
By Abayomi Azikiwe
Co-founder of the UNIA-ACL, the first wife of Marcus
Garvey worked tirelessly for women’s rights and inter-continental unity from
the Caribbean and Central America to the United States, Europe and Africa.
Alongside and in opposition to the rise of colonialism
across the African continent, a movement of resistance to European domination
surfaced during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
However, the advent of colonialism in South America,
Central America, the Caribbean and North America was well underway by the early
decades of the 16th century. The colonial occupation of the western
hemisphere was closely linked to the forced removal and extermination of the
indigenous peoples and the importation and exploitation of African labor.
During the course of the Atlantic Slave Trade, Africans
rose up in rebellion against European domination. These rebellions were often
sporadic however many were well-organized and resulted in the establishment of
African communities.
In Brazil, the Caribbean and in the U.S., these
self-governing communities known as Quilombos, Maroons, Black Seminoles, etc.
served as a testament in the affirmation of the human quest for
self-determination, national independence and Pan-Africanism. By 1804, the
African people of Haiti had led a successful revolution founding a republic
right out of the system of enslavement, the first of such accomplishments in
world history.
Africans from the U.S. and the Caribbean were
instrumental in the development of nationalist and Pan-Africanist movement
which would influence world history. From the initial Pan-African Congress in
Chicago in 1893 to the First Pan-African Conference of 1900 in London, people
from the Caribbean and the U.S. played a leading role.
Historical figures such as Henry Sylvester Williams of
Trinidad along with W.E.B. Du Bois and Anna J. Cooper of the U.S., articulated
positions that emphasized the necessity of independent thought and political
action. By 1914, a new organization would surface in Jamaica known as the
Universal Negro Improvement Association and the African Communities Imperial
League (UNIA-ACL). The group was founded by Marcus Garvey and Amy Ashwood during
the same year as the beginning of the First World War (1914-1918).
Amy Ashwood was born on January 18, 1897 in San Antonio,
Jamaica, one of three children born to Delbert Ashwood and Maudriana Thompson.
The Ashwood daughter spent considerable time in her earlier years in Panama
where her father operated a restaurant and printing business. She was later
sent back to Jamaica to attend high school where she met Marcus Garvey at a
public debate.
Garvey was ten years her senior being born on August 17,
1887. He had studied printing in Jamaica and under the Egyptian-Sudanese
anti-colonial Pan-Africanist Duse Mohamed Ali in London during 1912-13. Garvey
had also traveled in Central America where he witnessed the deplorable
conditions of Africans working in the construction projects surrounding the
Panama Canal as well as the cultivation of cash crops for the U.S. corporate
agricultural firms.
Amy Ashwood and the
Role of Women in the UNIA-ACL
Although Garveyite historian Tony Martin doubted the
claim by Amy Ashwood that she had co-founded the UNIA-ACL, documents indicate
that she had served as an organizational secretary and initiator of the Women’s
division. All chapters of the organization were required to have both a male
and female president. Between 1916 and 1918, Ashwood had returned to Jamaica
while Garvey relocated to the U.S. in Harlem.
They would reunite in 1918 and marry by late 1919 in an
elaborate ceremony at Liberty Hall in Harlem. Nonetheless, the marriage only
lasted for several months. Their break-up was abrupt and her departure from the
UNIA-ACL was not on favorable terms. By 1922, Garvey had remarried to Amy
Jacques, who became a well-known leader within the UNIA-ACL, authoring the book
“The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey” while he fought federal
prosecution and imprisonment on trump-up charges of mail fraud.
Despite Ashwood-Garvey’s rupture with the organization
she continued to play a pioneering role in the emerging struggles for national
liberation and Pan-Africanism. Her creative impulses led her into a career as a
public speaker, theatrical producer, writer and restaurant owner.
According to Rhone Fraser, “Around 1923, Ashwood met
legendary Calypsonian singer Sam Manning (from Trinidad) and begins a
professional and romantic relationship with him as a pioneering musical theatre
producer. She and Manning write and produce several plays described by both
Lionel Yard (a biographer of Ashwood-Garvey) and Martin. Sandra Pouchet
Paquet’s edited 2007 collection of essays on Calypso, called Music, Memory,
Resistance: Calypso and the Caribbean Literary Imagination, shows calypso as a
critique or mocking of the colonial order that Manning’s music provided in a
subtle way.” (Advocate, Oct. 18, 2016)
Ashwood-Garvey and Manning produced three musicals–Hey,
Hey!, Brown Sugar, and Black Magic. The productions ran at the Lafayette
Theatre in New York along with other locations in the U.S. and the Caribbean.
In 1924 she visited England and assisted in the founding
of the Nigerian Progress Union (NPU) with Ladipo Solanke. The NPU was closely
associated with the West African Student Union (WASU), an early regional
Pan-Africanist formation in London.
Pan-Africanism and
Anti-Imperialism
After a series of artistic endeavors by 1936,
Ashwood-Garvey returned to England where she opened the Florence Mills Social
Parlor, a nightclub and gathering venue in London’s West End. The club was a
meeting place for African and African-Caribbean liberation movement organizers
and intellectuals. Some of the well-known personalities who frequented the club
included the Guyanese Pan-Africanist Ras T. Makonnen, George Padmore and C. L.
R. James, leading Pan-Africanist and socialist activists, who were also from
Trinidad.
Ashwood-Garvey was a friend and collaborator with other
notables such as Kenyan leader Jomo Kenyatta, and the Ghanaian scholar J. B.
Danquah. After the Italian fascist invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, Ashwood-Garvey
assisted in the initiation of the International African Friends of Abyssinia
(IAFA), which was later renamed the International African Service Bureau
(IASB). She served as treasurer of the IAFA and IASB vice president. The
organizations vigorously opposed the Italian invasion and occupation of
Ethiopia. They appealed to other imperialist states to impose economic
sanctions against Italy while setting up an Ethiopian self-defense fund.
Ashwood-Garvey rekindled her links with Solanke and the WASU along with sharing
speaker platforms with Padmore across England.
During World War II Ashwood-Garvey’s organizational work
expanded to encompass efforts to promote educational opportunities for women.
In addition she advocated for decent wages for African-Caribbean working women.
She returned to Jamaica during the War where she administered a school of
domestic science.
Towards the end of WWII in 1944, she returned to New
York and became involved in campaigning for Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. when he
was elected to Congress as the first African American Congressman from New York
City. When the WWII concluded the following year, the struggle for national
independence and Pan-Africanism accelerated.
The National Biography Online states that: “She
participated in the 1944 ‘Africa-New Perspectives’ conference of the Council on
African Affairs (CAA) with the actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson and
the future Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah, and in April 1945 attended the
Colonial Conference convened by the historian W. E. B. Du Bois. She spoke for
women’s rights in meetings of the West Indies National Council and at CAA rallies,
and she founded the nonprofit Afro-Women’s International Alliance to provide
day care, adult education, and aid to mothers living in poverty. She helped
organize the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England, which she
addressed in October 1945 on the issue of black workingwomen and fair wages.” (http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-01356.html)
Ashwood-Garvey traveled widely and lived for extended
periods in the West African states of Liberia and the-then Gold Coast. She
maintained her connections with developments in Britain working with
African-Caribbean Communist journalist and organizer Claudia Jones who had been
imprisoned and deported from the U.S. during the McCarthy era of the mid-1950s.
Jones became a leading figure in the African community in Britain founding the
West Indian Gazette newspaper and the annual Carnival which focused on
Caribbean cultural expressions.
By the 1960s, the African American movement for Civil
Rights and Black Power had gained international attention. There was increased
interest in issues involving nationalism, feminism and Pan-Africanism.
Ashwood-Garvey toured as a lecturer in the U.S. from 1967-1969, after which she
returned to Britain. She passed away from natural causes on May 3, 1969 in
Jamaica.
The contributions of Amy Ashwood-Garvey are quite
instructive for developments in the 21st century with the rethinking of
African, African Caribbean and African American political historical processes.
Her indefatigable efforts provide inspiration to successive generations of
activists throughout the African world.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Abayomi Azikiwe
Copyright © Abayomi Azikiwe
Martin Luther King’s
Legacy: The Movement against National Oppression and Economic Injustice
 |
| Martin Luther King Jr |
By Abayomi Azikiwe
During 1967-8 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. sought to articulate
a deeper program for the movement against national oppression and economic
injustice.
Just three weeks prior to the assassination of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., on March 14, 1968, the co-founder and President of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) honored an invitation from the
Grosse Pointe Human Relations Council to speak on the topic of “The Other
America.” He was to examine the-then debate over “open housing” for African
Americans amid an unprecedented wave of urban rebellions across the United
States.
On July 23, 1967, seven months prior to Dr. King’s visit
to Grosse Pointe High School, an affluent suburb on the border with Detroit–
the city had exploded in a five day rebellion led by the African American
community which resulted in 43 deaths, hundreds of injuries, 7,200 arrests,
with estimates of property damage ranging into the tens and even hundreds of
millions of dollars. The issues which sparked the social unrest were related to
the abysmal conditions fostered by police brutality, labor discrimination,
overcrowded housing districts contained through de facto segregationist
policies, and inadequate schools with bulging classroom sizes and declining
infrastructure.
Dr. King had been developing his views on the concept of
the “Other America” for at least one year when he addressed the same subject in
a major speech at Stanford University in California on April 14, 1967. After
the enormous gains of the Civil Rights Movement between 1955 and 1965, the
focus of SCLC and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) shifted
substantially to the municipalities in the Northern and Western states where
huge swaths of depressed neighborhoods housed millions of African Americans,
Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Native Americans and poor whites.
The White Backlash
and Opposition to the Vietnam War
Not only had SCLC moved into the city of Chicago during
1966 in an effort to test its evolving program centered around jobs, housing
and income, the organization in early 1967 had come out solidly in opposition
to the U.S. bombing and occupation of Vietnam. Dr. King saw the war as an enemy
of the African American people as well as the poor people in general.
In Chicago, white working and middle class people
resisted the demands of the Freedom Movement. They were supported and
encouraged by the-then administration of Mayor Richard Daley, who rejected the
call for drastic action to eliminate slums, housing discrimination and poverty
in the nation’s second largest city.
The eruption of a rebellion on July 12 which lasted four
days was blamed on the work of SCLC even though the organization maintained its
ideological commitment to a nonviolent methodology of struggle. Although the
outcome of the Chicago Freedom Movement won limited results for the people of
the city, it portended much for the developments over the next three years.
At Grosse Pointe High School Dr. King was met by 2,700
people who crowded the gymnasium where he was to deliver his talk. Nonetheless,
there was a completely hostile response to his presence in the suburb as well.
Members of the ultra-conservative racist organization called Breakthrough along
with the Grosse Pointe Property Owners Association argued that his presence
could prompt violence and consequently should be banned. A vote by the Grosse
Pointe School Board in favor of allowing the meeting by a 5-2 margin was
accompanied by the requirement of taking out a one million dollar insurance
policy in the event that people were injured or killed. (Grosse Pointe News,
Jan. 5, 2017)
Breakthrough, which was headed by a City of Detroit
Recreation Department employee Donald Lobsinger, led a picket line outside of
the school. Approximately 200 Breakthrough members and supporters chanted
against Dr. King’s appearance denouncing him as a “traitor” and “communist” for
his stance in opposition to the Vietnam War among other issues.
Later members of the neo-fascist group infiltrated the
audience at Grosse Pointe High School and repeatedly interrupted the speech.
Dr. King said that they would never discourage him from doing the important
work of linking the Civil Rights and Peace movements together. He clearly
identified the African American struggle as having a decisively class character
due to the economic exploitation of the people.
One of the most important sections of the address came
when Dr. King observed: “Now let me get back to the point that I was trying to
bring out about the economic problem. And that is one of the most critical
problems that we face in America today. We find in the other America
unemployment constantly rising to astronomical proportions and Black people
generally find themselves living in a literal depression. All too often when
there is mass unemployment in the Black community, it’s referred to as a social
problem and when there is mass unemployment in the white community, it’s
referred to as a depression. But there is no basic difference. The fact is that
the Negro (word used to describe people of African descent in the U.S. at the
time) faces a literal depression all over the U.S.
The unemployment rate on the basis of statistics from
the labor department is about 8.8 per cent in the Black community. But these
statistics only take under consideration individuals who were once in the labor
market, or individuals who go to employment offices to seek employment. But
they do not take under consideration the thousands of people who have given up,
who have lost motivation, the thousands of people who have had so many doors
closed in their faces that they feel defeated and they no longer go out and
look for jobs, the thousands who’ve come to feel that life is a long and
desolate corridor with no exit signs. These people are considered the
discouraged and when you add the discouraged to the individuals who can’t be
calculated through statistics in the unemployment category, the unemployment
rate in the Negro community probably goes to 16 or 17 percent. And among
Black youth, it is in some communities as high as 40 and 45 percent.
The SCLC then went on to say: “the problem of
unemployment is not the only problem. There is the problem of under-employment,
and there are thousands and thousands, I would say millions of people in the
Negro community who are poverty stricken – not because they are not working but
because they receive wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the
main stream of the economic life of our nation. Most of the poverty stricken
people of America are persons who are working every day and they end up getting
part-time wages for full-time work. So the vast majority of Negroes in America
find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast
ocean of material prosperity. This has caused a great deal of bitterness. It
has caused a great deal of agony. It has caused ache and anguish. It has caused
great despair, and we have seen the angered expressions of this despair and
this bitterness in the violent rebellions that have taken place in cities all
over our country. Now I think my views on non-violence are pretty generally
known. I still believe that non-violence is the most potent weapon available to
the Negro in his struggle for justice and freedom in the U.S.”
Towards a Principled United Front in Opposition to
Racism and Fascism
During Labor Day weekend in the previous year 1967, Dr.
King was a featured speaker at the National Conference for New Politics (NCNP)
held in Chicago. Thousands attended the event which sought to draft
anti-nuclear weapons activist and Vietnam War opponent, Dr. Benjamin Spock, the
renowned pediatrician and writer, as a presidential candidate for 1968, with
Dr. King as his running mate.
The concept of the NCNP was to build a broad-based
alliance purportedly independent of the Democratic Party which took a position
against the Vietnam War. Nonetheless, there were other issues that hampered the
smooth operation of such a united front strategy.
Paralleling the NCNP was the Black Congress, also held
in Chicago, which demanded that the question of African American liberation be
not only placed on the NCNP agenda but also the granting of the nationally
oppressed delegates to the conference veto power over all resolutions and
platforms. Elements of the Black Congress program were manifested in the NCNP
Black Caucus demands. These issues related to taking a principled stand against
Zionism, support for armed struggle in the liberation of Southern Africa,
recognition of African Americans as the vanguard of the people’s movement in
the U.S., and other questions.
In addition, there were grave concerns that the appeals
to adopt this agenda supporting African American liberation, the question of
Palestine self-determination, opposition to Israeli aggression against Egypt,
Jordan and Syria and a halt to support for the State of Israel by Washington,
were conveniently left off of the NCNP agenda. James Forman, who was serving at
the time as the SNCC International Affairs Director, addressed the NCNP Black
Caucus raising the demands for veto power and solidarity with the struggle of
the oppressed.
Forman emphasized in his address to the NCNP Black
Caucus that: “I hardly need to talk about the exploited labor of all us who are
Black and who tilled the fields without pay while the white man reinvested the
capital from our labor. Therefore, even today, here in the United States we are
the lowest class on the economic ladder.” (Sept. 2, 1967)
The SNCC leader went on to note: “There can be no new
concept of politics, no new coalitions unless those of us who are the most
disposed assume leadership and give direction to that new form of politics. If
this does not happen we are going to see the same old liberal-labor treachery
of very rich white folks and Democratic Party oriented whites and Negroes
trying to determine what they can do for us.”
These words are quite useful to the current developing
struggle in 2017 in the aftermath of the assumption of power by President
Donald Trump. Millions have taken to the streets in support of women’s and
immigrant rights, the question of self-determination for the indigenous people
at Standing Rock, against police brutality, the suppression of the African
American vote, etc.
However, unless the alliances that are forming are based
upon principled political positions, these efforts will inevitably lead right
back into the Democratic Party with its betrayal of the working class, poor and
nationally oppressed. A revolutionary leadership must emerge to provide a
programmatic thrust aimed at exposing and defeating the exploitative and
dictatorial system of capitalism and imperialism.
Note: The author covered the 49th anniversary
commemoration of Dr. King’s speech at Grosse Pointe High School South (as it is
now known) on January 14, 2017. An audio file of the actual address was played
to the audience before a discussion on the historic event. This program was
sponsored by the newly-formed Grosse Pointe Chapter of the NAACP.
America Created
Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group
Terror attacks or mass shootings allegedly perpetrated
by the ISIS, the question that should be asked: who are the State sponsors of
Al Qaeda and the ISIS? (M.Ch. GR Editor).
Much like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIS) is
made-in-the-USA, an instrument of terror designed to divide and conquer the
oil-rich Middle East and to counter Iran’s growing influence in the region.
The fact that the United States has a long and torrid
history of backing terrorist groups will surprise only those who watch the news
and ignore history.
The CIA first aligned itself with extremist Islam during
the Cold War era. Back then, America saw the world in rather simple terms: on
one side, the Soviet Union and Third World nationalism, which America regarded
as a Soviet tool; on the other side, Western nations and militant political
Islam, which America considered an ally in the struggle against the Soviet
Union.
The director of the National Security Agency under
Ronald Reagan, General William Odom recently remarked, “by any measure the U.S.
has long used terrorism. In 1978-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against
international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the
U.S. would be in violation.”
During the 1970′s the CIA used the Muslim Brotherhood in
Egypt as a barrier, both to thwart Soviet expansion and prevent the spread of
Marxist ideology among the Arab masses. The United States also openly supported
Sarekat Islam against Sukarno in Indonesia, and supported the Jamaat-e-Islami
terror group against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in Pakistan. Last but certainly not
least, there is Al Qaeda.
 |
| Osama Bin Laden |
Lest we forget, the CIA gave birth to Osama Bin Laden
and breastfed his organization during the 1980′s. Former British Foreign
Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was
unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Cook explained
that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in
Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist
extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to
defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.
America’s relationship with Al Qaeda has always been a
love-hate affair. Depending on whether a particular Al Qaeda terrorist group in
a given region furthers American interests or not, the U.S. State Department
either funds or aggressively targets that terrorist group. Even as American
foreign policy makers claim to oppose Muslim extremism, they knowingly foment
it as a weapon of foreign policy.
The Islamic State is its latest weapon that, much like
Al Qaeda, is certainly backfiring. ISIS recently rose to international
prominence after its thugs began beheading American journalists. Now the
terrorist group controls an area the size of the United Kingdom.
In order to understand why the Islamic State has grown
and flourished so quickly, one has to take a look at the organization’s
American-backed roots. The 2003 American invasion and occupation of Iraq
created the pre-conditions for radical Sunni groups, like ISIS, to take root.
America, rather unwisely, destroyed Saddam Hussein’s secular state machinery
and replaced it with a predominantly Shiite administration. The U.S. occupation
caused vast unemployment in Sunni areas, by rejecting socialism and closing
down factories in the naive hope that the magical hand of the free market would
create jobs. Under the new U.S.-backed Shiite regime, working class Sunni’s
lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Unlike the white Afrikaners in South
Africa, who were allowed to keep their wealth after regime change, upper class
Sunni’s were systematically dispossessed of their assets and lost their
political influence. Rather than promoting religious integration and unity,
American policy in Iraq exacerbated sectarian divisions and created a fertile
breading ground for Sunni discontent, from which Al Qaeda in Iraq took root.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) used to have
a different name: Al Qaeda in Iraq. After 2010 the group rebranded and
refocused its efforts on Syria.
There are essentially three wars being waged in Syria:
one between the government and the rebels, another between Iran and Saudi
Arabia, and yet another between America and Russia. It is this third, neo-Cold
War battle that made U.S. foreign policy makers decide to take the risk of
arming Islamist rebels in Syria, because Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, is
a key Russian ally. Rather embarrassingly, many of these Syrian rebels have now
turned out to be ISIS thugs, who are openly brandishing American-made M16
Assault rifles.
America’s Middle East policy revolves around oil and
Israel. The invasion of Iraq has partially satisfied Washington’s thirst for
oil, but ongoing air strikes in Syria and economic sanctions on Iran have
everything to do with Israel. The goal is to deprive Israel’s neighboring
enemies, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestine’s Hamas, of crucial Syrian and
Iranian support.
ISIS is not merely an instrument of terror used by
America to topple the Syrian government; it is also used to put pressure on
Iran.
The last time Iran invaded another nation was in 1738.
Since independence in 1776, the U.S. has been engaged in over 53 military
invasions and expeditions. Despite what the Western media’s war cries would
have you believe, Iran is clearly not the threat to regional security,
Washington is. An Intelligence Report published in 2012, endorsed by all
sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies, confirms that Iran ended its nuclear
weapons program in 2003. Truth is, any Iranian nuclear ambition, real or
imagined, is as a result of American hostility towards Iran, and not the other
way around.
America is using ISIS in three ways: to attack its
enemies in the Middle East, to serve as a pretext for U.S. military
intervention abroad, and at home to foment a manufactured domestic threat, used
to justify the unprecedented expansion of invasive domestic surveillance.
By rapidly increasing both government secrecy and
surveillance, Mr. Obama’s government is increasing its power to watch its
citizens, while diminishing its citizens’ power to watch their government.
Terrorism is an excuse to justify mass surveillance, in preparation for mass
revolt.
The so-called “War on Terror” should be seen for what it
really is: a pretext for maintaining a dangerously oversized U.S. military. The
two most powerful groups in the U.S. foreign policy establishment are the
Israel lobby, which directs U.S. Middle East policy, and the Military-Industrial-Complex,
which profits from the former group’s actions. Since George W. Bush declared
the “War on Terror” in October 2001, it has cost the American taxpayer
approximately 6.6 trillion dollars and thousands of fallen sons and daughters;
but, the wars have also raked in billions of dollars for Washington’s military
elite.
In fact, more than seventy American companies and
individuals have won up to $27 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq
and Afghanistan over the last three years, according to a recent study by the
Center for Public Integrity. According to the study, nearly 75 per cent of
these private companies had employees or board members, who either served in,
or had close ties to, the executive branch of the Republican and Democratic
administrations, members of Congress, or the highest levels of the military.
In 1997, a U.S. Department of Defense report stated,
“the data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement abroad and an
increase in terrorist attacks against the U.S.” Truth is, the only way America
can win the “War On Terror” is if it stops giving terrorists the motivation and
the resources to attack America. Terrorism is the symptom; American imperialism
in the Middle East is the cancer. Put simply, the War on Terror is terrorism;
only, it is conducted on a much larger scale by people with jets and missiles.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Modernizing surgery
By Lisandra Fariñas
Acosta | lisandra@granma.cu
With the prestige gained over years of individual and
collective experience in the treatment of illnesses through minimal access
surgery, Cuban experts are aware of the necessary challenge of continually
modernizing and mastering knowledge related to the development of new
technologies, such as robotics, in the field of surgery.
Thus the importance of an event, which will begin this
Friday, February 3, in Havana's Hotel Nacional, devoted to updating and sharing
scientific knowledge related to robotic and laparoscopic surgery, in the fields
of Urology, General Surgery and Gynecology; three of the leading areas related
to these processes, with a special emphasis on the use of robotics, according
to Dr. Julián Ruiz Torres, director of Cuba's National Center for Minimal
Access Surgery
(CNCMA) and Dr. Tania González León, head of the
institution's Urology department, speaking to Granma International.
Attending the encounter, organized by the CNCMA, and the
Cuban Endoscope Surgery and Urology societies, are numerous specialists from
some of the country's top healthcare institutions, such as the Medical-Surgical
Research Center (Cimeq), Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital, Nephrology Institute and
CNCMA itself.
Also scheduled to participate in the scientific event will be prestigious U.S. professors, including Dr. Vipul Patel, medical director of the Global Robotics Institute affiliated with the Florida-based Celebration Hospital; and professor of Urology at the University of Central Florida; who is also considered to be the leading expert on robotic surgery in the world.
Meanwhile, conferences will be given by Dr. Gaetano
Ciancio, chief of medicine at the Miami Jackson Memorial Transplant Institute,
in Florida; and Dr. Eduardo Parra-Davila, clinical assistant professor at
Florida State University.
"This will be an important opportunity to strengthen ties of academic exchange between these institutions and the National Center for Minimal Access Surgery, in order to raise the quality of medical care in country, specifically in the field of minimally invasive surgery. However, it also represents a bridge to the path that will allow us, in the future, to master technologies to perform robot assisted surgeries," explained Dr. González León.
Two days of debates including, among other topics,
innovations in the field of general surgery and the advantages of the use of
robotics in this sphere, will contribute to the development of Cuban
professionals in their effort to master more sophisticated procedures, such as
non-scarring surgery: no longer a future, but a present objective.
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