Food for thought!

You Lazy (Intellectual) African Scum!

Culled from Mind of Malaka (January 18, 2012) and written by Field Ruwe

They call the Third World the lazy man’s purview; the sluggishly slothful and languorous prefecture. In this realm people are sleepy, dreamy, torpid, lethargic, and therefore indigent—totally penniless, needy, destitute, poverty-stricken, disfavored, and impoverished. In this demesne, as they call it, there are hardly any discoveries, inventions, and innovations. Africa is the trailblazer. Some still call it “the dark continent” for the light that flickers under the tunnel is not that of hope, but an approaching train. And because countless keep waiting in the way of the train, millions die and many more remain decapitated by the day.

“It’s amazing how you all sit there and watch yourselves die,” the man next to me said. “Get up and do something about it.”

Brawny, fully bald-headed, with intense, steely eyes, he was as cold as they come. When I first discovered I was going to spend my New Year’s Eve next to him on a non-stop JetBlue flight from Los Angeles to Boston I was angst-ridden. I associate marble-shaven Caucasians with iconoclastic skin-heads, most of who are racist.

“My name is Walter,” he extended his hand as soon as I settled in my seat.

I told him mine with a precautious smile.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Zambia.”

“Zambia!” he exclaimed, “Kaunda’s country.”

“Yes,” I said, “Now Sata’s.”

“But of course,” he responded. “You just elected King Cobra as your president.”

My face lit up at the mention of Sata’s moniker. Walter smiled, and in those cold eyes I saw an amenable fellow, one of those American highbrows who shuttle between Africa and the U.S.

“I spent three years in Zambia in the 1980s,” he continued. “I wined and dined with Luke Mwananshiku, Willa Mungomba, Dr. Siteke Mwale, and many other highly intelligent Zambians.” He lowered his voice. “I was part of the IMF group that came to rip you guys off.” He smirked. “Your government put me in a million dollar mansion overlooking a shanty called Kalingalinga. From my patio I saw it all—the rich and the poor, the ailing, the dead, and the healthy.”

“Are you still with the IMF?” I asked.

“I have since moved to yet another group with similar intentions. In the next few months my colleagues and I will be in Lusaka to hypnotize the cobra. I work for the broker that has acquired a chunk of your debt. Your government owes not the World Bank, but us millions of dollars. We’ll be in Lusaka to offer your president a couple of millions and fly back with a check twenty times greater.”

“No, you won’t,” I said. “King Cobra is incorruptible. He is …”

He was laughing. “Says who? Give me an African president, just one, who has not fallen for the carrot and stick.”

Quett Masire’s name popped up.

“Oh, him, well, we never got to him because he turned down the IMF and the World Bank. It was perhaps the smartest thing for him to do.”

At midnight we were airborne. The captain wished us a happy 2012 and urged us to watch the fireworks across Los Angeles.

“Isn’t that beautiful,” Walter said looking down.

From my middle seat, I took a glance and nodded admirably.

“That’s white man’s country,” he said. “We came here on Mayflower and turned Indian land into a paradise and now the most powerful nation on earth. We discovered the bulb, and built this aircraft to fly us to pleasure resorts like Lake Zambia.”

I grinned. “There is no Lake Zambia.”

He curled his lips into a smug smile. “That’s what we call your country. You guys are as stagnant as the water in the lake. We come in with our large boats and fish your minerals and your wildlife and leave morsels—crumbs. That’s your staple food, crumbs. That corn-meal you eat, that’s crumbs, the small Tilapia fish you call Kapenta is crumbs. We the Bwanas (whites) take the cat fish. I am the Bwana and you are the Muntu. I get what I want and you get what you deserve, crumbs. That’s what lazy people get—Zambians, Africans, the entire Third World.”

The smile vanished from my face.

“I see you are getting pissed off,” Walter said and lowered his voice. “You are thinking this Bwana is a racist. That’s how most Zambians respond when I tell them the truth. They go ballistic. Okay. Let’s for a moment put our skin pigmentations, this black and white crap, aside. Tell me, my friend, what is the difference between you and me?”

“There’s no difference.”

“Absolutely none,” he exclaimed. “Scientists in the Human Genome Project have proved that. It took them thirteen years to determine the complete sequence of the three billion DNA subunits. After they were all done it was clear that 99.9% nucleotide bases were exactly the same in you and me. We are the same people. All white, Asian, Latino, and black people on this aircraft are the same.”

I gladly nodded.

“And yet I feel superior,” he smiled fatalistically. “Every white person on this plane feels superior to a black person. The white guy who picks up garbage, the homeless white trash on drugs, feels superior to you no matter his status or education. I can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets, clean him up, and take him to Lusaka and you all be crowding around him chanting muzungu, muzungu and yet he’s a riffraff. Tell me why my angry friend.”

For a moment I was wordless.

“Please don’t blame it on slavery like the African Americans do, or colonialism, or some psychological impact or some kind of stigmatization. And don’t give me the brainwash poppycock. Give me a better answer.”

I was thinking.

He continued. “Excuse what I am about to say. Please do not take offense.”

I felt a slap of blood rush to my head and prepared for the worst.

“You my friend flying with me and all your kind are lazy,” he said. “When you rest your head on the pillow you don’t dream big. You and other so-called African intellectuals are damn lazy, each one of you. It is you, and not those poor starving people, who is the reason Africa is in such a deplorable state.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say,” I protested.

He was implacable. “Oh yes it is and I will say it again, you are lazy. Poor and uneducated Africans are the most hardworking people on earth. I saw them in the Lusaka markets and on the street selling merchandise. I saw them in villages toiling away. I saw women on Kafue Road crushing stones for sell and I wept. I said to myself where are the Zambian intellectuals? Are the Zambian engineers so imperceptive they cannot invent a simple stone crusher, or a simple water filter to purify well water for those poor villagers? Are you telling me that after thirty-seven years of independence your university school of engineering has not produced a scientist or an engineer who can make simple small machines for mass use? What is the school there for?”

I held my breath.

“Do you know where I found your intellectuals? They were in bars quaffing. They were at the Lusaka Golf Club, Lusaka Central Club, Lusaka Playhouse, and Lusaka Flying Club. I saw with my own eyes a bunch of alcoholic graduates. Zambian intellectuals work from eight to five and spend the evening drinking. We don’t. We reserve the evening for brainstorming.”

He looked me in the eye.

“And you flying to Boston and all of you Zambians in the Diaspora are just as lazy and apathetic to your country. You don’t care about your country and yet your very own parents, brothers and sisters are in Mtendere, Chawama, and in villages, all of them living in squalor. Many have died or are dying of neglect by you. They are dying of AIDS because you cannot come up with your own cure. You are here calling yourselves graduates, researchers and scientists and are fast at articulating your credentials once asked—oh, I have a PhD in this and that—PhD my foot!”

I was deflated.

“Wake up you all!” he exclaimed, attracting the attention of nearby passengers. “You should be busy lifting ideas, formulae, recipes, and diagrams from American manufacturing factories and sending them to your own factories. All those research findings and dissertation papers you compile should be your country’s treasure. Why do you think the Asians are a force to reckon with? They stole our ideas and turned them into their own. Look at Japan, China, India, just look at them.”

He paused. “The Bwana has spoken,” he said and grinned. “As long as you are dependent on my plane, I shall feel superior and you my friend shall remain inferior, how about that? The Chinese, Japanese, Indians, even Latinos are a notch better. You Africans are at the bottom of the totem pole.”

He tempered his voice. “Get over this white skin syndrome and begin to feel confident. Become innovative and make your own stuff for god’s sake.”

At 8 a.m. the plane touched down at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Walter reached for my hand.

“I know I was too strong, but I don’t give it a damn. I have been to Zambia and have seen too much poverty.” He pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled something. “Here, read this. It was written by a friend.”

He had written only the title: “Lords of Poverty.”

Thunderstruck, I had a sinking feeling. I watched Walter walk through the airport doors to a waiting car. He had left a huge dust devil twirling in my mind, stirring up sad memories of home. I could see Zambia’s literati—the cognoscente, intelligentsia, academics, highbrows, and scholars in the places he had mentioned guzzling and talking irrelevancies. I remembered some who have since passed—how they got the highest grades in mathematics and the sciences and attained the highest education on the planet. They had been to Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), only to leave us with not a single invention or discovery. I knew some by name and drunk with them at the Lusaka Playhouse and Central Sports.

Walter is right. It is true that since independence we have failed to nurture creativity and collective orientations. We as a nation lack a workhorse mentality and behave like 13 million civil servants dependent on a government pay cheque. We believe that development is generated 8-to-5 behind a desk wearing a tie with our degrees hanging on the wall. Such a working environment does not offer the opportunity for fellowship, the excitement of competition, and the spectacle of innovative rituals.

But the intelligentsia is not solely, or even mainly, to blame. The larger failure is due to political circumstances over which they have had little control. The past governments failed to create an environment of possibility that fosters camaraderie, rewards innovative ideas and encourages resilience. KK, Chiluba, Mwanawasa, and Banda embraced orthodox ideas and therefore failed to offer many opportunities for drawing outside the line.

I believe King Cobra’s reset has been cast in the same faculties as those of his predecessors. If today I told him that we can build our own car, he would throw me out.

“Naupena? Fuma apa.” (Are you mad? Get out of here)

Knowing well that King Cobra will not embody innovation at Walter’s level let’s begin to look for a technologically active-positive leader who can succeed him after a term or two. That way we can make our own stone crushers, water filters, water pumps, razor blades, and harvesters. Let’s dream big and make tractors, cars, and planes, or, like Walter said, forever remain inferior.

A fundamental transformation of our country from what is essentially non-innovative to a strategic superior African country requires a bold risk-taking educated leader with a triumphalist attitude and we have one in YOU. Don’t be highly strung and feel insulted by Walter. Take a moment and think about our country. Our journey from 1964 has been marked by tears. It has been an emotionally overwhelming experience. Each one of us has lost a loved one to poverty, hunger, and disease. The number of graves is catching up with the population. It’s time to change our political culture. It’s time for Zambian intellectuals to cultivate an active-positive progressive movement that will change our lives forever. Don’t be afraid or dispirited, rise to the challenge and salvage the remaining few of your beloved ones.

***Field Ruwe is a US-based Zambian media practitioner and author. He is a PhD candidate with a B.A. in Mass Communication and Journalism, and an M.A. in History.


Comments:

Foxcatcher
Re: You Lazy (Intellectual) African Scum!

Devastatingly true. Applies to just about any African country south of the Sahara.

Even South Africa, minus Bwana's input/influence.

Igwe
Re: You Lazy (Intellectual) African Scum!

"NO ONE CAN MAKE YOU FEEL INFERIOR WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION" Said Roosevelt!

Some people may feel 'superior' all they want, but that doesn't mean others are feeling inferior. I certainly am not!

Does 'superiority' really consist in giving a few millions and then stealing twenty times that amount?

"We’ll be in Lusaka to offer your president a couple of millions and fly back with a check twenty times greater."

This is stealing, it has nothing to do with superiority, whether couched in skin color or not. Let's call a spade by its proper name!
And what happens to the leaders who say no to IMF and WB? What happened to the Nigerian leaders who said NO to IMF & WB? Who killed Patrice Lumumba? Who killed Thomas Sankara? Who just killed Gaddafi? Who overthrew President Laurent Gbagbo in Côte d'Ivoire? Who's supporting the present Nigerian govt that's faithfully following their (IMF & WB) dictates?

Walter is being clever by half:

QUOTE:“Are you still with the IMF?” I asked.

“I have since moved to yet another group with similar intentions. In the next few months my colleagues and I will be in Lusaka to hypnotize the cobra. I work for the broker that has acquired a chunk of your debt. Your government owes not the World Bank, but us millions of dollars. We’ll be in Lusaka to offer your president a couple of millions and fly back with a check twenty times greater.”

“No, you won’t,” I said. “King Cobra is incorruptible. He is …”

He was laughing. “Says who? Give me an African president, just one, who has not fallen for the carrot and stick.”

Quett Masire’s name popped up.

“Oh, him, well, we never got to him because he turned down the IMF and the World Bank. It was perhaps the smartest thing for him to do.”

So, why doesn't Walter point to Masire as a good example for others to follow and stop, in his own words, 'hypnotizing' other African rulers into taking their poison pills? How are the intellectuals in Botswana different from those of Zambia and other African countries? There are many countries in Europe that don't produce a pin!!!
And does Ken Saro-Wiwa fit into one of those 'lazy intellectuals'? But look at what happened to him!

What Walter is saying in effect is this: We need your resources and we need to keep you guys down. And we blame you for it, even though you are the victims of our greed. We blame you because we have a different skin color. And woe betide any one who plays 'smart' and doesn't want us to 'get to him.' We don't allow that!

All these considered, I'm highly disappointed that an African is blaming himself based on Walter's racial braggadocio. After his 'lecture', Walter jets off to Zambia to continue the oppression!!!

There sure are problems in Africa, a lot of them caused by Africans, but laziness is not the reason why we are having the problems we are having now. Even the so called Walter acknowledged that Africans are hard working. But he still has to find someone to blame. People who studied hard to earn degrees and who take a few moments off each day to relax, a practice that is prevalent in his own 'blessed' part of the world, come in handy: they are lazy!!! They are the reason Africa is backwards!!! What a thrash!!!!!!

We cannot solve our problems unless we fully understand those problems. Swallowing this kind of racially charged insults would produce the exact opposite effect. Listen carefully to Walter and you'd see that their so-called policies, which by the way are not good enough for they themselves, are part of the problems of Africa:

QUOTE: We’ll be in Lusaka to offer your president a couple of millions and fly back with a check twenty times greater.

When I was growing up, industries were springing up in my village in Anambra state, producing all kinds of things. Then the IMF policies weakened the naira, making importation very expensive and exportation unprofitable for many manufacturers. Many of them decided to import cheap goods instead of producing at high costs. That's very common in many parts of Nig and Africa. The present Zambian president, Michael Sata, wasn't the one who negotiated the fraudulent 'debt cancellation', a cancellation that, ironically, makes those whose debts are 'cancelled' even more indebted. But Sata must now honor that agreement or else he'd be in the black books of the West, with all we know as implications. The so-called fuel subsidy removal we're currently fighting in Nigeria is part of the so-called debt cancellation. Why not instead a demand to make the refineries functional and to build new ones as a way of dealing with the 'subsidy'? But no, such policies will not make them give a few millions and "fly back with a check twenty times greater"!

Instead of condemning this stealing with the contempt and disdain it deserves, many 'Africans' here are saying the guy is right. May be Walter is right, after all, that he "can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets, clean him up, and take him to Lusaka and you all be crowding around him chanting muzungu, muzungu and yet he’s a riffraff."

A whiteman makes racially charged revelations of how they steal from Africans and the Africans on this forum are clapping for him. Shame on you all!!!!

Walter, for congratulating yourself for the way in which you STEAL FROM AFRICANS,shame on you. And you, Field Ruwe, for aping Walter by calling yourself a 'scum,' you are a disgrace to Africa!

Ka Chineke mezie okwu!

For those who have ears ...

From Global Research

For the fifth consecutive day, the Nigerian people have staged national strikes throughout their country in protest of the recent removal of fuel subsidies, which more than doubled the prices of transportation and commodities. In the northern city of Kano, protestors have demanded the immediate dismissal of their Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former Vice President of the World Bank. A worldwide spike in the price of oil could very well be prompted by an impending production halt as the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria and the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers threaten to suspend their operations if a comprise is not met.

As turmoil ensues and Nigerian law enforcement officers begin to join the IMF-induced demonstrations, President Goodluck Jonathan’s recent declaration of the dire threat posed by Islamist group Boko Haram appears to be setting the stage for a coming initiative. A recent video posted online by alleged Boko Haram leader, Imam Abubakar Shekau successfully channels the theatrics of Bin-Ladenesque villainy, as he exclaims, “First we do not believe in the Nigerian constitution and secondly we do not believe in democracy but only in the laws of Allah.” Shekau familiarly goes onto pledge his groups’ commitment to wage jihad and bring death to America.

“Boko Haram” in the Hausa language translates into “Western education is sacrilege”, the group has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks across the country, most notably for the August 2011 suicide bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. Mohammed Yusuf, a Muslim cleric who was allegedly the victim of an extrajudicial execution at the hands of Nigerian security forces, formed the group in 2002. Under the command of Imam Abubakar Shekau, The group has shown to be violently opposed to secular leadership and Nigeria’s own Muslim elites, while striving to implement Sharia Law and the eventual establishment of an Islamic State in Northern Nigeria.

Amidst the current economic unrest in the nation, sectarian violence has continued provoking retaliatory attacks between religious groups along the sensitive Niger Delta region, a prominent source of oil largely designated for export to the United States and others. Imam Abubakar Shekau's recent video transmission espouses fanaticism that may form the beginnings of a sectarian civil war, stating “Christians cheated and killed us to the extent of eating our flesh like cannibals; you did all you wanted to us. We are trying to coerce you to embrace Islam, because that is what God instructed us to do.”

Regardless of this group’s legitimacy, remarkable unoriginality and possible foreign nurturing, the case for marketing foreign military intervention to Western audiences is steadily increasing. As an OPEC member, an unstable political climate leading to inaccessibility of its enormous domestic oil reserves would have dramatic ramifications for global oil markets. As the fourth largest supplier of oil to the United States, it is clear that the American Government would behave forcefully to preserve its stake in the region. A recently released subcommittee report issued by the United States Department of Homeland Security entitled “Boko Haram: Emerging Threat to the US Homeland” is a further testament towards the shape of things to come.

The document insinuates the growing threat of Boko Haram by associating it with other terrorist groups in the region such as Al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Somalian militant group Al-Shabaab; the authors themselves reiterate on the sensitivity of the resources within the Niger Delta region:

Page 18

In May 2007, protestors from the Ogoni tribe in the Niger Delta overran an oil pipeline, cutting Nigerian oil production by 30 percent. That same month, militants from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), bombed three pipelines, decreasing oil production by 100,000 barrels a day for the Italian oil company Eni. This disruption caused oil prices to rise by 71 cents a barrel in New York. A well-co-ordinated attack by Boko Haram could result in far worse damage, completely cutting off Nigerian oil production in a worst-case scenario. If that occurred, eight percent of U.S. oil imports would be cut off, which could result in a spike in oil prices worldwide and soaring domestic gas prices.Furthermore, in an effort to combat the emerging instability being seen throughout Nigeria, the authors of this document suggest implementing a military cooperation policy similar to that administered in Yemen, which ostensibly includes extrajudicial assassination and the use of unmanned aerial drone bombardments.

Page 24
It is critical that the U.S. work more closely with Nigerian security forces to develop greater domestic intelligence collection and sharing with the U.S. Intelligence Community. Military cooperation is vital to a successful counterterrorism strategy. A possible model includes Yemen, with whom U.S. built an effective intelligence sharing partnership following the Christmas Day 2009 attempted attack to hunt suspected militants. While this relationship continues to pose challenges, it has had notable success, highlighted by the killing of Anwar al Awlaki.Just as the Franco-Anglo-American triumvirate orchestrated the recent snatch-and-grab regime change in Libya, the same military-industrial players are offering their services in an effort to secure their share of domestic resources within Nigeria.  

Page 25
In a recent display of growing international concern surrounding the rise of Boko Haram,  France has offered military support to Nigeria. Meeting in Abuja with his Nigerian counterpart, Olugbenga Ashira. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe stated: "We shall fight against this phenomenon. We are ready to share any information. We are ready to coordinate our intelligence services. We are ready also to give our help in training cooperation. France is directly concerned with the question of terrorism.” Lieutenant General Azubuike Ihejirika, the Nigerian Army Chief of Staff, said that in addition to the United States and France, Pakistan and Britain have also offered to assist with counterterrorism training.

Although the document admits that Boko Haram poses a low threat to the US homeland, it cites the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attempted to detonate a bomb in his underwear during a Christmas day flight on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as an instance where seemingly obscure terrorist organizations thought to lack capability to deploy militants to the United States were nearly successful, thus requiring increasing vigilance to combat an ever increasing threat. It certainly makes one reexamine the supposed threat posed by foreign terrorist groups when examining the mainstream media reportage of the Abdulmutallab incident, which famously omitted critical eyewitness testimony that exposed the involvement of various elements of the US Intelligence community.

If Nigeria continues to face severe instability, the actions foreign powers will take to preserve their economic and geopolitical interests is quite clear. At this stage, it remains uncertain whether Boko Haram is a legitimate indigenous extremist movement or a nurtured product of Intelligence communities working to benefit from destabilizing Africa’s most populous nation. The tired theatrics and recycled rhetoric of Boko Haram’s leadership certainly lends credence to the latter. As The United States African Command (AFRICOM) continues to expand its influence throughout the continent, the entity has long anticipated Nigerian instability; its 2008 war-game scenario envisioned 20,000 U.S. troops maintaining security of the Niger Delta oil fields within a dissolved anarchic Nigeria.

According to a Washington, D.C. based journalist, Scott Morgan, Nigerian military sources have confirmed that U.S. troops are scheduled to be deployed within Nigeria to help local forces do battle with Boko Haram. U.S. officials have not confirmed the deployment, however the increased presence in the region would be consistent with the cumulative expansion of an aggressive Pan-African foreign policy, spearheaded by America’s first President of African descent.

The fix is in!

From Global Research.ca

Lagos Dissents Under IMF Hegemony

Nigeria: The Next Front for AFRICOM

On a recent trip to West Africa, the newly appointed managing director of the International Monetary Fund,Christine Lagarde ordered the governments of Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon, Ghana and Chad to relinquish vital fuel subsidies. Much to the dismay of the population of these nations, the prices of fuel and transport have near tripled over night without notice, causing widespread violence on the streets of the Nigerian capital of Abuja and its economic center, Lagos. Much like the IMF induced riots in Indonesia during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, public discontent in Nigeria is channelled towards an incompetent and self-serving domestic elite, compliant to the interests of fraudulent foreign institutions. 

Although Nigeria holds the most proven oil reserves in Africa behind Libya, it’s people are now expected to pay a fee closer to what the average American pays for the cost of fuel, an exorbitant sum in contrast to its regional neighbours. Alternatively, other oil producing nations such as Venezuela, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia offer their populations fuel for as little as $0.12 USD per gallon. While Lagos has one of Africa’s highest concentration of billionaires, the vast majority of the population struggle daily on less than $2.00 USD. Amid a staggering 47% youth unemployment rate and thousands of annual deaths related to preventable diseases, the IMF has pulled the rug out from under a nation where safe drinking water is a luxury to around 80% of it’s populace. 

Although Nigeria produces 2.4 million barrels of crude oil a day intended for export use, the country struggles with generating sufficient electrical power and maintaining its infrastructure. Ironically enough, less than 6% of bank depositors own 88% of all bank deposits in Nigeria. Goldman Sachs employees line its domestic government, in addition to the former Vice President of the World Bank, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is widely considered by many to be the de facto Prime Minister. Even after decades of producing lucrative oil exports, Nigeria has failed to maintain it’s own refineries, forcing it to illogically purchase oil imports from other nations. Society at large has not benefited from Nigeria’s natural riches, so it comes as no surprise that a severe level of distrust is held towards the government, who claims the fuel subsidy needs to be lifted in order to divert funds towards improving the quality of life within the country.

Like so many other nations, Nigerian people have suffered from a systematically reduced living standard after being subjected to the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP). Before a loan can be taken from the World Bank or IMF, a country must first follow strict economic policies, which include currency devaluation, lifting of trade tariffs, the removal of subsidies and detrimental budget cuts to critical public sector health and education services.

SAPs encourage borrower countries to focus on the production and export of domestic commodities and resources to increase foreign exchange, which can often be subject to dramatic fluctuations in value. Without the protection of price controls and an authentic currency rate, extreme inflation and poverty subsist to the point of civil unrest, as seen in a wide array of countries around the world (usually in former colonial protectorates). The people of Nigeria have been one of the world’s most vocal against IMF-induced austerity measures, student protests have been met with heavy handed repression since 1986 and several times since then, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. As a testament to the success of the loan, the average laborer in Nigeria earned 35% more in the 1970’s than he would of in 2012.

Working through the direct representation of Western Financial Institutions and the IMF in Nigeria’s Government, a new IMF conditionality calls for the creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund. Olusegun Aganga, the former Nigerian Minister of Finance commented on how the SWF was hastily pushed through and enacted prior to the countries national elections. If huge savings are amassed from oil exports and austerity measures, one cannot realistically expect that these funds will be invested towards infrastructure development based on the current track record of the Nigerian Government. Further more, it is increasingly more likely that any proceeds from a SWF would be beneficial to Western institutions and markets which initially demanded its creation. Nigerian philanthropist Bukar Usman prophetically writes “I have genuine fears that the SWF would serve us no better than other foreign-recommended "remedies" which we had implemented to our own detriment in the past or are being pushed to implement today.”

The abrupt simultaneous removal of fuel subsidies in several West African nations is a clear indication of who is really in charge of things in post-colonial Africa. The timing of its cushion-less implementation could not be any worse, Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan recently declared a state of emergency after forty people were killed in a church bombing on Christmas day, an act allegedly committed by the Islamist separatist group, Boko Haram.The group advocates dividing the predominately Muslim northern states from the Christian southern states, a similar predicament to the recent division of Sudan. 

As the United States African Command (AFRICOM) begins to gain a foothold into the continent with its troops officially present in Eritrea and Uganda in an effort to maintain security and remove other theocratic religious groups such as the Lord’s Resistance Army, the sectarian violence in Nigeria provides a convenient pretext for military intervention in the continuing resource war. For further insight into this theory, it is interesting to note that United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania conducted a series of African war game scenarios in preparation for the Pentagon’s expansion of AFRICOM under the Obama Administration.

In the presence of US State Department Officials, employees from The Rand Corporation and Israeli military personnel, a military exercise was undertaken which tested how AFRICOM would respond to a disintegrating Nigeria on the verge of collapse amidst civil war. The scenario envisioned rebel factions vying for control of the Niger Delta oil fields (the source of one of America’s top oil imports), which would potentially be secured by some 20,000 U.S. troops if a US-friendly coup failed to take place At a press conference at the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2008, AFRICOM Commander, General William Ward then went on to brazenly state the priority issue of America’s growing dependence on African oil would be furthered by AFRICOM operating under the principle theatre-goal of “combating terrorism”.

At an AFRICOM Conference held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008, Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller openly declared the guiding principle of AFRICOM was to protect “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market”, before citing China’s increasing presence in the region as challenging to American interests. After the unwarranted snatch-and-grab regime change conducted in Libya, nurturing economic destabilization, civil unrest and sectarian conflict in Nigeria is an ultimately tangible effort to secure Africa’s second largest oil reserves. During the pillage of Libya, its SFW accounts worth over 1.2 billion USD were frozen and essentially absorbed by Franco-Anglo-American powers; it would realistic to assume that much the same would occur if Nigeria failed to comply with Western interests. While agents of foreign capital have already infiltrated its government, there is little doubt that Nigeria will become a new front in the War on Terror.

... from Sirte, with love.

Recollections of My Life: Col. Mu'ummar Qaddafi 

I did all I could to help people understand the concept of real democracy, where people's committees ran our country. But that was never enough, as some told me, even people who had 10 room homes, new suits and furniture, were never satisfied, as selfish as they were they wanted more. They told Americans and other visitors, that they needed "democracy" and "freedom" never realizing it was a cut throat system, where the biggest dog eats the rest, but they were enchanted with those words, never realizing that in America, there was no free medicine, no free hospitals, no free housing, no free education and no free food, except when people had to beg or go to long lines to get soup.

 No, no matter what I did, it was never enough for some, but for others, they knew I was the son of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the only true Arab and Muslim leader we've had since Salah-al-Deen, when he claimed the Suez Canal for his people, as I claimed Libya, for my people, it was his footsteps I tried to follow, to keep my people free from colonial domination - from thieves who would steal from us.

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism," but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer. So, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following His path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us, in the Libyan Jamahiriya.

I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it.

Let this testament be my voice to the world, that I stood up to crusader attacks of NATO, stood up to cruelty, stood up to betrayal, stood up to the West and its colonialist ambitions, and that I stood with my African brothers, my true Arab and Muslim brothers, as a beacon of light. When others were building castles, I lived in a modest house, and in a tent. I never forgot my youth in Sirte, I did not spend our national treasury foolishly, and like Salah-al-Deen, our great Muslim leader, who rescued Jerusalem for Islam, I took little for myself...

In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy", but they know the truth yet continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip, that my vision, my path, is, and has been clear and for my people and that I will fight to my last breath to keep us free, may Allah almighty help us to remain faithful and free. 

Muammar Gaddafi: Anti-Imperialist, Philosopher, Revolutionary and Freedom Fighter.

"This is my will. I, Muammar bin Mohammad bin Abdussalam bi Humayd bin Abu Manyar bin Humayd bin Nayil al Fuhsi Gaddafi, do swear that there is no other God but Allah and that Mohammad is God's Prophet, peace be upon him. I pledge that I will die as Muslim.

Should I be killed, I would like to be buried, according to Muslim rituals, in the clothes I was wearing at the time of my death and my body unwashed, in the cemetery of Sirte, next to my family and relatives.

I would like that my family, especially women and children, be treated well after my death. The Libyan people should protect its identity, achievements, history and the honorable image of its ancestors and heroes. The Libyan people should not relinquish the sacrifices of the free and best people.

I call on my supporters to continue the resistance, and fight any foreign aggressor against Libya, today, tomorrow and always.

Let the free people of the world know that we could have bargained over and sold out our cause in return for a personal secure and stable life. We received many offers to this effect but we chose to be at the vanguard of the confrontation as a badge of duty and honor.

Even if we do not win immediately, we will give a lesson to future generations that choosing to protect the nation is an honor and selling it out is the greatest betrayal that history will remember forever despite the attempts of the others to tell you otherwise."

Notes "The Libyans," said his second-in-command, Major Abdessalam Jalloud, "are as nothing without Gaddafi … he is neither his own, the Libyans', nor even the Arabs' property, but the  property of free men everywhere, from the Philippines to Ireland [the IRA in the 1970s and 80s], Africa to Latin America and Europe." "Libya is an African country. May Allah help the Arabs and keep them away from us.  We don't want anything to do with them. They did not fight with us against the Italians, and they did not fight with us against the Americans. They did not lift the sanctions and siege from us. On the contrary, they gloated at us, and benefited from our hardship…" — Muammar Gadaffi in an interview with Al Jazeera, March 27, 2007 "There is a conspiracy to control Libyan oil and to control Libyan land, to colonise Libya  once again.  This is impossible, impossible. We will fight until the last man and last woman to defend Libya from east to west, north to south." — Muammar Gaddafi, audio message broadcast on Al-Ouroba TV, a Syria-based satellite station, on August 25, as oppostion forces began as assault on Tripoli. Muammar Gaddafi's speech at the UN, 2009 (http://metaexistence.org/gaddafispeech.htm) The Green Book (http://www.mathaba.net/gci/theory/gb.htm) Nigeria and South Africa at the UN Security Council re Resolutions 1970 and 1973. Betrayal by the Africans, by the blacks. Betrayal by the Chinese and the Russians. Betrayal by the Arab League, the betrayal of the Arabs. France and the Meditteranean Union Western Oil Companies Russia and Gazprom China 6.6 billion in bilateral trade and 30, 000 Chinese in Libya Benghazi The murder and torture of dark-skinned Libyans and Africans by Nato's rats. Libya stands as a warning to the world. Any regime that gets in the way of US interests, runs afoul of the major corporations or fails to do the bidding of the NATO powers can be overthrown by military force, with its leaders murdered. Dark days are ahead. More and more African societies are deeply divided internally. Africans  need to reflect on the fall of Gaddafi and, before him, that of Gbagbo in Cote d'Ivoire. Will these events usher in an era of external interventions, each welcomed internally as a mechanism to ensure a change of political leadership in one country after another? Humanitarian intervention by the West is nothing but imperialism, disguised as altruism. Gaddafi's death has not been well received in every corner of the world. The former Libyan leader remains a hero in the eyes of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party. “This is a sad day for the people of Africa. This is the beginning of a new recolonization of Africa,” said retired Major Cairo Mhandu a Zanu-PF member of parliament. “Through the forces of NATO and the West, we have lost one of our brothers,” he told GlobalPost. “Muammar Gaddafi won elections and was a true leader. It is foreigners who toppled him, not Libyans. Gaddafi died fighting. He is a true African hero.” “Muammar al Gaddafi is not occupying a position to resign from the same way other presidents did. Gaddafi is not a president. He is a leader of a revolution. History! Resistance! Liberation! Glory! Revolution!" —Muammar Gadaffi on Feb 21, 2011 during a 22 second speech, his first TV appearance since  the protest movement erupted in Green Square. Libya, under the regime of Muammar Gadaffi provided strong support for the ANC during apartheid. Gaddafi built and funded ANC training bases in Libya in the 70's and 80's. Gaddafi himself asked on October 6: 'The NTC, who gave them legitimacy? How did they obtain legitimacy? Did the Libyan people elect them? Did the Libyan people appoint them? And if only the power of NATO bombs and fleets grants legitimacy, then let all rulers in the Third World beware, for the same fate awaits you. To those who recognize this council as legitimate, beware. There will be transitional councils created everywhere and imposed upon you and one by one you shall fall'. This is a war aimed at turning the clock back to the days of colonialism. It has been achieved  by means of a NATO bombing campaign that has reduced much of the country’s infrastructure to rubble and left thousands of Libyan men, women and children dead and wounded. Its final chapter, the barbaric siege of the coastal city of Sirte and the murder of Gaddafi, his son and other former members of his regime, only underscores the criminality of the entire venture. These crimes provide the ultimate exposure of the pretense that the war in  Libya was waged for “humanitarian” aims, to protect Libyan civilians from the Gaddafi regime. In Sirte, NATO provided air cover for a “rebel” army carrying out precisely the kind of bloody assault on a civilian population center that the US-NATO intervention was purportedly designed to prevent.

Nigeria on my mind.

First, Nigeria ...

No matter how you look at it, from any angle or direction, Nigeria is important, very important  ... a very important prison, of our hopes and dreams ... a very important garrison, of our dignity and freedom.

Nigeria matters - Nigeria matters because Nigeria is a reality no black man can escape or hide from.

No matter how you try, no matter how fast you are - you cant run away from the truth.

Verily, verily, I say unto thee.

London's Burning—the revolt of the youth

We received the following report from A World To Win News Service, and are posting it here because we thought it would be of interest to our readers.

Courtesy of revcom:  http://revcom.us/index.html

"Mindless violence"—"pure criminality"—"monsters taking over our streets"—the British politicians and media, from the Tories and Murdoch's rabid tabloids to Labour and the liberal BBC, have closed ranks to denounce the tide of unrest sweeping the country's cities. But what is taking place on Britain's streets is a revolt against an oppressive state apparatus that is enforcing an unjust society, an apparatus that has lost much of its legitimacy in the eyes of millions. It is a revolt against state-backed racism and the colonial mentality of the British ruling class towards Black people. It is a refusal by hundreds of thousands of youth to accept a world where they are destitute, with no jobs and no future.

In an interview with the BBC Tuesday morning, Home Minister Theresa May set the official tone by ruling out of order any discussion whatsoever that the urban rebellions might be due to anything other than just "thieving and looting." But what was the spark that set off this firestorm of rage? It was the killing of 29-year-old father of four Mark Duggan by the Metropolitan Police in the North London borough of Tottenham. Duggan was a resident of the Broadwater Farm Estate, a large social housing complex that was the setting for a powerful rebellion 26 years ago, when a police raid killed Cynthia Jarrett, the mother of a local community activist. Mark Duggan was widely known in the local community, who have been shocked and angered as details of the killing have emerged. He was killed by the police after an armed unit stopped the mini-cab he was travelling in.

According to the Evening Standard, the main London evening paper ("Father Dies and Policeman Hurt in 'Terrifying' shoot-out," August 5, 2011), a 20-year-old eyewitness saw Mark Duggan killed while he was lying on the ground. The witness is quoted as saying: "About three or four police officers had both men pinned on the ground at gunpoint. They were really big guns and then I heard four long shots. The police shot him [Duggan] on the floor."

The police initially claimed that Mark Duggan fired a bullet at a police officer which lodged in the officer’s radio, "luckily" saving his life. It has since been reported that the bullet was in fact fired by a police weapon. Now the cop who shot Mark Duggan says he never claimed Duggan had fired at all. The whole story that Duggan fired first and the police acted in self-defence is now in shreds.

But here's the important part: most people were pretty sure there was a police cover-up even before the facts came out. Over and over again people have seen the police cloak their bloody repression in lies. When the young Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes was shot six times in the head in 2005 following the bombings on London's transport system, the police said he was behaving like a "terrorist," only for it to be shown later he was doing nothing out of the ordinary. When Ian Tomlinson, the newspaper vendor, was clubbed by a police sergeant during the April 2008 G8 protest and died, the police first denied they'd struck him at all and instead blamed the protesters. The Innocent Project documented how over a period of years nearly 200 people died while in police custody—but not a single cop ever went to prison for any of these deaths—as if every single death were somehow natural or brought on by the dead man himself.

And all this is part of a bigger web of lies and deceit, where the politicians and media tout their wars as being waged for "democracy" and "freedom," when they are nothing but vicious wars for empire, and they call this capitalist dog-eat-dog hellhole of inequality and oppression the best system on earth.

The so-called Independent Police Complaints Commission says there is no truth in the allegations that Mark Duggan was killed in cold-blood by the police. And the politicians from the entire spectrum are saying, calm down, wait for its verdict. But what sort of credibility can this body have? The Director of the IPCC is Moira Stewart, a former Police Commander who was criticized for failing to pass on vital information to her superior, Ian Blair, then Police Commissioner, about the case of de Menezes. The IPCC is meant to investigate all killings by the police. Putting Moira Stewart in charge of investigations for the IPCC makes the organization into a travesty.

Here we see the theory of checks and balances in capitalist democracy in action! The police investigated by the police and then declaring themselves completely innocent. Is it any wonder the oppressed peoples in areas like Tottenham have no faith in this system?

On top of this, police credibility has been seriously undermined when the Met's top two officers recently had to resign after it came out that they had taken gifts worth thousands from cronies of the Murdoch media empire and that Murdoch's agents had paid cops hundreds of thousands in bribes for personal phone numbers of crime victims, royals, and celebrities.

Labour Party politicians initially made some noise about how the revolts are being fueled by cutbacks by the Conservative-Liberal Democratic Party coalition. And the current government austerity program, and the larger financial crisis it is part of, is indeed hitting people hard. Unemployment nationwide has almost doubled in three years, and it is especially high in places like Tottenham—for every job in the borough there are 54 young people there who need work, and the unemployment rate for Black youth is over 50%. One study reported that Tottenham is actually one of the areas of Britain that will be least affected by the government cutbacks—because there was almost nothing to be cut back to start with!

Tottenham and most of the other areas that have seen the most intense fighting—Peckham, Lewisham, Hackney, in London, Liverpool's Merseyside, and similar districts in Manchester, Birmingham and Nottingham—all sit towards the bottom of the food chain inside imperialist Britain. And for 13 years, the very Party that working people, women, minorities and the poor generally were told was theirs—Labour—presided over an intensification of social and economic inequalities. As Tony Blair's top adviser Peter Mandelson infamously said of Labour, we are intensely at ease with people getting seriously rich. They have also turned out to be intensely at ease with people sinking into grinding poverty.

But as the rebellions continued, Labour has ditched its talk about the social causes of the rebellion and jumped into line with the entire British ruling establishment and begun to call for more repression—on BBC, former London Mayor "Red" Ken Livingstone is trying to prove himself "electable" in the upcoming Mayoral elections, by hailing the police, and calling for beefing up their ranks. Black Labour Party MPs or ex-MPs like Dennis Lammy have joined in, as has Dianne Abbott who said, "Cuts don't turn you into a thief." Labour will undoubtedly renew their talk of how these events show the need to fight the "Tory cutbacks"—but only once they are sure that the rebellion has been crushed by brute force.

Deep down everyone knows why the police shot Mark Duggan. Black people in Britain have suffered the worst of all from imperialism. First black people were enslaved in the African Holocaust, then the lands were colonised in the nineteenth century "Scramble for Africa." How does a nation that has committed such genocide justify its actions to itself? By telling itself that black people are "violent" and "savage" and deserve to be exploited and oppressed by "superior" white people. It was these self-serving stereotypes that are the background for the mentality of the police officers that opened fire and killed Mark Duggan. The people who have protested and revolted will sense this, even if these views never appear in the mainstream media.

One of the main themes being put out by the media, including the BBC, is that the police have been going "too easy" on the youth rebelling in the streets. This has unleashed a frenzy of activity from the English Defence League, the British National Party and other racist thugs on social media networks. On so-called respectable blogging sites like Yahoo UK, there have been countless open calls not only to expel the immigrants but to outright "exterminate" them.  But there is not a word of protest at this from any establishment figure.

And what about the endless stream of charges that, as Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, put it, "Let's be clear, the violence we saw last night had nothing to do with the death of Mr. Duggan. It was needless opportunist theft and violence—nothing more, nothing less." Several things need to be said about this. First, consider the hypocrisy of the political and media spokesmen of this system flying into a frenzy of outrage at inner city youth stealing trainers, mobile phones or other petty items. This ruling class built their system on the slave trade, they enforced a colonial empire at the cost of tens of millions of lives, and today they make hundreds of billions from an empire that stretches around the globe and is enforced at gunpoint in Afghanistan and Iraq. These world-class imperialist hypocrites have no right to condemn anyone for "looting and thieving."

But let's take a closer look at the actual way the "thieving and looting" has gone down. In fact, it is very clear that, as the Guardian headlined their coverage on August 9, "There was no doubting their aim: they wanted to fight the police." Much of the youths' tactics, lighting fires in side street dustbins and the like, have been aimed at drawing the police into fighting them on terrain where they have at least half a chance to get in some blows. The police, in turn, try to avoid that and instead have their own priorities—mainly defending prestigious corporate and government buildings, while conceding to the youth more space to go into areas without such targets.

So when the politicians and media point to the few flats or family shops that were burnt on the first night in Tottenham, it is important to be clear that it is the police themselves who are a major factor in determining what gets protected, and what doesn't. Furthermore, the revolts started in a spontaneous, angry outburst by teenagers who were necessarily inexperienced in struggle. Errors get made in the course of any struggle. There have been two more nights of revolts following the initial revolt in Tottenham, and it seems that despite the rapid spread of unrest, no or at least fewer homes have been destroyed by fire.

The masses taking part in this revolt or out on its fringes are full of the contradictions that come from being part of capitalist society, but being in its most oppressed sections. In one housing estate in the center of the fighting in Hackney, one Afro-Caribbean mother lamented that the youth were getting away from the original cause of justice for Mark Duggan, and was especially upset at the looting of local shops, but when her son and his mates showed up with a bag of new clothes for her, she was delighted: I'm on benefits, we've got nothing, she explained. Mothers struggled with their young sons and daughters not to go out, but shouted with glee when they saw projectiles strike home on a police van. A middle aged Iraqi political refugee clutched to his chest his valuable personal documents that he’d salvaged, and worried that the car burning in the street might ignite his flat just above, but was torn by sympathy for the youth, who were up against the very same forces who'd turned his own country into a killing ground. An Afro-Caribbean woman and her daughters gathered around a burning dumpster singing Bob Marley's song "Burning and Looting."

It is true that numerous family shops and corner stores have been looted, and this is a source of mounting tension—shopkeepers, often from a single nationality, are forming teams in different areas to defend their shops, which offers the police real opportunities to fan the flames of infighting among the oppressed.

But at the heart of this welter of contradictions, the force driving these rebellions is a sense on the part of the youth that it's a chance to strike back at the larger forces dominating their lives and oppressing them, and they're running to seize that chance. A group of four British-born youth of Somali origin heading for the fighting in Hackney Monday night talked of how they felt that they had no one that they could count on but themselves and their mates, that they might have to drop out of college due to the recent massive hike in education fees, and that they considered themselves "revolutionaries." One question in the air: how much were the youth influenced by the rebellions in the Middle East and North Africa?

It is also worth pointing out that despite the howls of outrage by the establishment about the "violence ruling England's streets," there have been no reports of anyone but the police being specifically targeted by the youth. And despite the conflicts that have erupted from time to time on the streets between white, Asian and Afro-Caribbean youth, during these rebellions all comers of whatever race are still being greeted in a spirit of unity and solidarity—a theme that is spelled out repeatedly in the Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry messages that are flying over the airwaves.

Observers have also been struck by the patchwork of rebellion that has swept through the capital and now the country. Previous rebellions—Brixton and Tottenham in the 1980s in particular—were confined to a single area of the capital, in response to a particular outrage by the police. But as in the outbreaks of revolt in France a few years ago, fighting with the police has now erupted in at least 20 or more different districts in the capital plus several in cities in the Midlands, with the youth proving far more fluid and fast-moving than even the mobile police forces. It is no exaggeration to say that this has caused shock among establishment "talking heads," who have struggled to explain this. They recoil at the idea that there are broad ranks of youth, numbering in the millions, who feel themselves to be excluded from society and to have no allegiance to its norms and rules and who long for the chance they are getting today.

This rebellion is fueled by anger at cutbacks, poverty, racism and the police. There is real fury right now at the brutality and oppression of a state apparatus that can just gun down a Black man in cold blood then try and cover its tracks with lies and misinformation. But while this was the spark, the fact that this spark has caught fire and spread so far and so fast reflects much more than any one particular abuse. The police are the front-line enforcers of an entire capitalist system that is built on exploitation and inequality. In the eyes of the system, police violence is by default "legitimate"—because they are the armed defenders of property relations that lead to a handful accumulating fabulous wealth, while millions live with nothing, and no hope of ever having anything more. It is not chance that sees the cops stop young Black men on the street thousands of times a month, with almost no arrests—this is just the sharpest edge of an entire system, and efforts to reduce what is going on to one or another particular abuse will lead to trying to put plasters on the sores when what's needed is to get to the root cause and overthrow the system that is the source of all these abuses through revolution.

As night three of the rebellions winds down, the question on everyone's lips is, what next? Cries are going up for broad curfews or for the army to intervene, ideas that are being evoked even by liberal news presenters like the BBC's John Humphrys. One thing is sure: the justice and respect the masses crave and deserve will not be granted to them by this system.