January 21, 2003 - March 18, 2003
We totally oppose this war
Posted: Tuesday, March 18, 2003
From: Ayinde and Trinicenter Staff
As the United States of America embarks on another unjust invasion, let us all remember that civilians will loose their lives in the name of greed. It is the underlying racism in most people that allows them to tolerate these wars. It is always about killing people whom they believe are less human than them.
This war is about demonstrating 'White Power', which started a long time ago with its scourge on indigenous Indians and Africans. Today many know that 'White Power' is based on greed fueled by the belief that White Males are superior to all other people. These ideas were ingrained in both whites and non-whites alike through reinforcing fear together with Judeo-Christian symbolisms. Although many Whites are rejecting this today as they realize it never really benefited them, like most other people, they are still locked into the capitalist system that is governed by these false values. This drive is usually about a few already materially wealthy white males and their desire for more money and 'power'/influence. These excesses can only be sustained through lies and brute force.
No one is safe from these lying, brutal colonial misleaders.
It is sobering to know that many around the world do not support this invasion not because they support Saddam but because they know that the U.S.' motives are disingenuous. They are now witnessing what many Africans have been speaking about for generations.
Lies are the beginning of all wars and because of Bush's 'war and terror' more people today are aware of the manipulations of the U.S. government and the weakness of governments in their own countries. Many are also aware of the dangers of mass media concentrated in the hands of a few who are tied to the politics of the dominant.
Many people will have to take responsibility for this dangerous situation for placing weak, immoral people in leadership roles. They will have to re-evaluate the criterion used for selecting representatives. This lack of responsible leadership allows some 'mis-leaders' to align themselves with Bush and his war party although the majority of people in their countries do not support this war. This certainly is not what democracy is supposed to be about. As a matter of fact, we never had government by the people and for the people during Western 'development'. There is no real democracy anywhere.
The build-up to this war should remind all about the fragility of laws developed during conquest and colonial domination. They were developed to suppress the masses while protecting the affluent (or should I say effluent). The laws that they imposed on the majority were not for they themselves to abide by.
When they loose while playing their own game they rush to change the game and the rules. Conquest and domination are all they understand. This is the reason so much taxed resources go towards producing weapons. Their ever-consuming greed cannot be sustained through legitimate means. Lies and Wars sustain the economic imbalances.
The attempted overthrow of the democratically elected president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez, clearly demonstrated this again.
People have to become conscious of their spending power and continually find ways to stop racist, corrupt misleaders from getting access to more money. These misleaders would like us to believe that Slavery is freedom, their wars bring peace, and democracy exists.
They carry on this charade through their control of the mainstream media.
More people are becoming aware of the need for ordinary people to develop and control media outlets that allows them to put their own agendas on the table. It is important that ordinary people control the mediums for their expressions and continually work to ensure that it has global reaches. It is through this exercise views that are usually neglected get considered. It is through developing these alternative avenues we may one day have democracy.
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Whites Swim In Racial Preference
Posted: Wednesday, February 26, 2003
by Tim Wise
Ask a fish what water is and you'll get no answer. Even if fish were capable of speech, they would likely have no explanation for the element they swim in every minute of every day of their lives. Water simply is.
Fish take it for granted.
So too with this thing we hear so much about, "racial preference."
While many whites seem to think the notion originated with affirmative action programs, intended to expand opportunities for historically marginalized people of color, racial preference has actually had a long and very white history.
Affirmative action for whites was embodied in the abolition of European indentured servitude, which left black (and occasionally indigenous) slaves as the only unfree labor in the colonies that would become the U.S.
Affirmative action for whites was the essence of the 1790 Naturalization Act, which allowed virtually any European immigrant to become a full citizen, even while blacks, Asians and American Indians could not.
Affirmative action for whites was the guiding principle of segregation, Asian exclusion laws, and the theft of half of Mexico for the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny.
In recent history, affirmative action for whites motivated racially restrictive housing policies that helped 15 million white families procure homes with FHA loans from the 1930s to the '60s, while people of color were mostly excluded from the same programs.
In other words, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that white America is the biggest collective recipient of racial preference in the history of the cosmos. It has skewed our laws, shaped our public policy and helped create the glaring inequalities with which we still live.
White families, on average, have a net worth that is 11 times the net worth of black families, according to a recent study; and this gap remains substantial even when only comparing families of like size, composition, education and income status.
A full-time black male worker in 2003 makes less in real dollar terms than similar white men were earning in 1967. Such realities are not merely indicative of the disadvantages faced by blacks, but indeed are evidence of the preferences afforded whites - a demarcation of privilege that is the necessary flipside of discrimination.
Indeed, the value of preferences to whites over the years is so enormous that the current baby-boomer generation of whites is currently in the process of inheriting between $7-10 trillion in assets from their parents and grandparents - property handed down by those who were able to accumulate assets at a time when people of color by and large could not.
To place this in the proper perspective, we should note that this amount of money is more than all the outstanding mortgage debt, all the credit card debt, all the savings account assets, all the money in IRAs and 401k retirement plans, all the annual profits for U.S. manufacturers, and our entire merchandise trade deficit combined.
Yet few whites have ever thought of our position as resulting from racial preferences. Indeed, we pride ourselves on our hard work and ambition, as if somehow we invented the concepts.
As if we have worked harder than the folks who were forced to pick cotton and build levies for free; harder than the Latino immigrants who spend 10 hours a day in fields picking strawberries or tomatoes; harder than the (mostly) women of color who clean hotel rooms or change bedpans in hospitals, or the (mostly) men of color who collect our garbage.
We strike the pose of self-sufficiency while ignoring the advantages we have been afforded in every realm of activity: housing, education, employment, criminal justice, politics, banking and business. We ignore the fact that at almost every turn, our hard work has been met with access to an opportunity structure denied to millions of others. Privilege, to us, is like water to the fish: invisible precisely because we cannot imagine life without it.
It is that context that best explains the duplicity of the President's recent criticisms of affirmative action at the University of Michigan.
President Bush, himself a lifelong recipient of affirmative action - the kind set aside for the mediocre rich - recently proclaimed that the school's policies were examples of unfair racial preference. Yet in doing so he not only showed a profound ignorance of the Michigan policy, but made clear the inability of yet another white person to grasp the magnitude of white privilege still in operation.
The President attacked Michigan's policy of awarding 20 points (on a 150-point evaluation scale) to undergraduate applicants who are members of underrepresented minorities (which at U of M means blacks, Latinos and American Indians). To many whites such a "preference" is blatantly discriminatory.
Bush failed to mention that greater numbers of points are awarded for other things that amount to preferences for whites to the exclusion of people of color.
For example, Michigan awards 20 points to any student from a low-income background, regardless of race. Since these points cannot be combined with those for minority status (in other words poor blacks don't get 40 points), in effect this is a preference for poor whites.
Then Michigan awards 16 points to students who hail from the Upper Peninsula of the state: a rural, largely isolated, and almost completely white area.
Of course both preferences are fair, based as they are on the recognition that economic status and even geography (as with race) can have a profound effect on the quality of K-12 schooling that one receives, and that no one should be punished for things that are beyond their control. But note that such preferences - though disproportionately awarded to whites - remain uncriticized, while preferences for people of color become the target for reactionary anger. Once again, white preference remains hidden because it is more subtle, more ingrained, and isn't called white preference, even if that's the effect.
But that's not all. Ten points are awarded to students who attended top-notch high schools, and another eight points are given to students who took an especially demanding AP and honors curriculum.
As with points for those from the Upper Peninsula, these preferences may be race-neutral in theory, but in practice they are anything but. Because of intense racial isolation (and Michigan's schools are the most segregated in America for blacks, according to research by the Harvard Civil Rights Project), students of color will rarely attend the "best" schools, and on average, schools serving mostly black and Latino students offer only a third as many AP and honors courses as schools serving mostly whites.
So even truly talented students of color will be unable to access those extra points simply because of where they live, their economic status and ultimately their race, which is intertwined with both.
Four more points are awarded to students who have a parent who attended the U of M: a kind of affirmative action with which the President is intimately familiar, and which almost exclusively goes to whites.
Ironically, while alumni preference could work toward the interest of diversity if combined with aggressive race-based affirmative action (by creating a larger number of black and brown alums), the rollback of the latter, combined with the almost guaranteed retention of the former, will only further perpetuate white preference.
So the U of M offers 20 "extra" points to the typical black, Latino or indigenous applicant, while offering various combinations worth up to 58 extra points for students who will almost all be white. But while the first of these are seen as examples of racial preferences, the second are not, hidden as they are behind the structure of social inequities that limit where people live, where they go to school, and the kinds of opportunities they have been afforded. White preferences, the result of the normal workings of a racist society, can remain out of sight and out of mind, while the power of the state is turned against the paltry preferences meant to offset them.
Very telling is the oft-heard comment by whites, "If I had only been black I would have gotten into my first-choice college."
Such a statement not only ignores the fact that whites are more likely than members of any other group - even with affirmative action in place - to get into their first-choice school, but it also presumes, as anti-racist activist Paul Marcus explains, "that if these whites were black, everything else about their life would have remained the same."
In other words, that it would have made no negative difference as to where they went to school, what their family income was, or anything else.
The ability to believe that being black would have made no difference (other than a beneficial one when it came time for college), and that being white has made no positive difference, is rooted in privilege itself: the privilege that allows one to not have to think about race on a daily basis; to not have one's intelligence questioned by best- selling books; to not have to worry about being viewed as a "out of place" when driving, shopping, buying a home, or for that matter, attending the University of Michigan.
So long as those privileges remain firmly in place and the preferential treatment that flows from those privileges continues to work to the benefit of whites, all talk of ending affirmative action is not only premature but a slap in the face to those who have fought, and died, for equal opportunity.
[Tim Wise is an antiracist activist, essayist and lecturer. Send email to timjwise@m.]
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Bolivia In Historical Context
Posted: Thursday, February 13, 2003
by Forrest Hylton
The Weight Of Forgetting
Though they are usually the first to speak in the name of tradition, Conservatives tend to ignore history when evaluating the present, and if anything has been missing in current debates about violence, democracy, human rights, and authoritarianism in Bolivia, it is historical perspective. The hysterical reaction of the media-coupled the near-silence of progressive intellectuals-makes change on this front unlikely, although occasionally cracks in the crumbling edifice show through. In an interview on January 23, the day he joined the Joint Chiefs of the People, Felipe Quispe, leader of the Aymara peasant trade union confederation, CSUTCB, and political party, MIP, said that he represents the people to whom the territory known as Bolivia or Qollasuyu belongs, the people who make it produce, whereas President Sánchez de Lozada represents the people who loot it, sell it, mortgage it, run it and ruin it. The simplicity of this truth does not blunt the force its impact.
The notion that the community Indians are rightful owners of the land, who, as such, should make all political decisions that concern them, points to the Tupak Katari insurgency in 1781, the rebellion of Zárate Willka, Lorenzo Ramírez, and Juan Lero in 1899, and the Chayanta uprising of 1927, led by Manuel Michel. If tropes of "savagery" and "barbarism" are evoked by the names of the abovementioned Indian caciques, it is because official history has buried the record of long, arduous legal struggles that preceded each and every Indian insurrection.
Evo Morales, head of the coca growers' trade union federations and political party, MAS, and Felipe Quispe, the two principal leaders of the Joint chiefs of Staff of the People, inherit a tradition that counterinsurgent discourse has described as "race" (nineteenth) or "caste" war (eighteenth century), but which in fact has consistently explored available legal options while demanding self-government in a more inclusive and democratic polity. Democratic not in the liberal sense of delegated representation, but in the directly participatory sense in which it is being discussed at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. In this respect, Bolivian coca growers and community Indians are politically ahead of their time, not behind it.
The insurgent tradition of direct democracy on the land, which is structured by politico-military-religious hierarchies and enacted in community assemblies, was rendered invisible in both the national and international revolutionary traditions that dominated Bolivian politics after the 1930s. It only reappeared publicly again in the late-1970s. During the forty-year period of eclipse, new forms of struggle, based upon the political party-trade union dyad, emerged with varying class compositions and a common commitment to mestizaje-race mixture of the whitening, "civilizing" variety; a process at once desirable and inevitable. Recent historical scholarship has demonstrated that in Cochabamba, heartland of the ruling MNR (National Revolutionary Movement), mestizaje was a strategy that smallholding Indian peasants created from below, seeking to escape exploitation and the marks of racial inferiority. But there can be little doubt that after 1953, the national revolutionary state made use of it from above. So did the revolutionary internationalists who challenged the MNR from the left via the miners' movement.
To grasp the scope of the influence of mestizaje as a political horizon, one only has to look at the composition and proposals of the National Assembly (1969-71) under radical nationalist General Juan José Torres, who personified upward mobility for middling sectors with popular origins. The proletarian parties and especially the miners' union set the agenda for the National Assembly with the idea of making a transition to socialism. But in those years, as reaction noisily gathered, a new generation of Aymara peasant leaders emerged within the MNR machine and began to bore away at its foundations. The project to break with the racist, teleological paternalism that lay at the core of official rural trade unionism counted on the support of the first generation of semi-urban Aymara intellectuals, plus progressive segments of the Catholic Church. This support was crucial in achieving national projection.
As the Banzer dictatorship took shape in the years after 1971, the figure of Tupac Katari re-emerged in the discourse of radical opposition, and by the time of Banzer's overthrow in 1978 the tradition of Aymara insurgency had, in modified form, begun to take its place alongside proletarian-led, Left party-driven trade unionism. Indians, as their leaders and spokespeople began to call them, even fielded parties once the political arena was opened to electoral competition, but none of them were anything less than total failures, except MRTK, which briefly became part of the panopoly of neoliberal parties in the 1990s.
During Banzer's reign, even as the Aymara movement of the altiplano regenerated, Santa Cruz and the tropical part of Cochabamba became the economic heart of Bolivia, because Bánzer subsidized agro-industry with profits from mining exports. After the crisis in the price of primary products hit the eastern tropics in the mid-1970s, the cocaine business soon became a convenient way out for an important part of the agro-exporting bourgeoisie. Further, under Banzer the state encouraged colonization of the tropics because of it could not manage the crisis its policies had created in the western highlands and southern valleys. If we are serious about dealing with the problem of coca production and commercialization, we must recognize the role the Bolivian state and reactionary fractions of capital played in fomenting the transformation of coca into cocaine.
Here we need only look at García Meza's "cocaine coup" of 1980, which made explicit the connection between extreme right-wing politics and narcotics trafficking that Miami Cubans forged in the 1960s and shared with the Brazilian, Argentine, Chilean, and Venezuelan military and police with whom they worked in the 1970s. Though the Reagan administration repudiated García Meza, it supported the Brazilian generals who backed García Meza, not to mention the Argentine colonels who were soon to train Nicaraguan mercenaries in the arts of narcotics-financed counter-insurgency in Honduras. To anyone familiar with the history of U.S. covert operations in Burma in the 1950s, Laos in the 1960s and 70s, Afghanistan and Nicaragua in the 1980s, this should come as no surprise. More recently, here in Bolivia the entrepreneurial sector from Santa Cruz and Beni-organically linked to cocaine exports-has cried for a state of siege, which, when coupled with their vigilante actions, demonstrates that its traditions are alive and well. It is worth asking what role this sector will play in newly arrived Ambassador Greenlee's strategy to pacify the Bolvian tropics.
To place the blame for cocaine exports on coca growers and the Left is the cruelest of historical ironies: cocaleros choose to grow and sell coca because it provides them with a monetary income 3-5 times greater than what they could earn on the altiplano or the valleys, where more than 9 out of 10 people live in poverty. With their proposal to export the leaf to Argentina, the cocaleros are, at least in this respect, true believers in free trade and market rationality. Nearly alone after the destruction of the miners' union (FSTMB) in 1986, they formed a social movement that challenged the destruction of the working class and "drug war" imperialism. Many criticisms of neoliberalism that have become common currency in Bolivia since 2000 were, as recently as 1998, almost exclusively the property of cocaleros and their sympathizers.
To insist that Evo Morales should stick to coca and forget about the FTAA, privatization, or the export of Bolivian gas to the U.S. via Chile is to forget that when the failed national revolution plunged into the neoliberal abyss, the coca growers, more than any other movement, spoke to the interests of the nation composed of the excluded, working majority. Hopes that they could speak effectively to majority interests through Congress, raised in the elections of 2002, have been dashed, and not because of the eloquence or competence of the governing coalition.
How are we to situate the cocaleros against the background of a long history of Aymara insurgency and a short history of Quechua-mestizo industrial and agrarian trade unionism? Clearly the cocaleros are a hybrid of both traditions, and arose as a group of petty producers because of the dual crisis in highland industry and agriculture into which Banzer plunged all Bolivian workers-women and children as well as men, waged and unwaged, rural and urban. The role of the miners in the formation of the coca growers' federations is legendary, but we should not overlook the contribution of the traditions of collective labor and struggle that the highland Aymara and, above all, Quechuas from the valleys brought with them when they migrated to the tropics. As Robert Smale's forthcoming research on the formation of the miners' movement reveals, earlier generations of Quechua petty producers from the valleys and Aymara communities from the highlands decisively shaped political culture in the trade unions between 1900-30.
In terms of identity, the cocaleros are mestizo in the sense that they are not highland community members and own property individually rather than collectively, but not in the national or international revolutionary sense that dominated through the 1980s. Cocaleros do not repudiate Indian cultural traditions or collectivism; in Evo Morales' recent article in Pulso as well as his election campaign, key aspects of the discourse of Indian liberation featured prominently. While they may own property as individuals, coca growers' daily lives and their mode of struggle are collective and communal. Following the re-emergence of the long Aymara tradition of insurgency to the center of the historical stage in 2000-2, the tendency to affirm Indian identity has been reinforced to the point where, at least within the political opposition, parliamentary as well as extra-parliamentary, the whitening, homogenizing discourses on which Bolivian national identity was based for fifty years have died-and good riddance. The question of what Bolvia is, what it has been, and what it might become can now be more freely debated.
Historically, it is beyond question that insurgent Indian movements from below in Bolivia have always championed legalism and worked within the formal political system, and one could argue that they have prioritized legalist tactics even when their rulers relied on violence and disobeyed the law. But they have never been willing to confine their horizons of thought and action to a political system designed to exclude them, either. Insofar as Bolivia has become a more inclusive polity in the past 177 years, it is because pressure from below, applied with various tactics, has forced the hand of power, and not because the dominated have obeyed the changing rules of a political game the dominant have made in order to continue dominating with a minimum of resistance.
Forrest Hylton is conducting doctoral research in history in Bolivia
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Race, Sex and Work
Posted: Wednesday, February 12, 2003
By Tim Wise
Examining White Lies About Black Americans
"You wanna know what the real problem with black people is?"
So read the opening line of the first e-mail message of my day. Not a good start.
Whenever these words or their functional equivalent greet you before you've had the chance to rub the sleep from your eyes, let alone consume that first sip of coffee, you know you're in for a long and troubling morning.
Sure enough, I wasn't to be disappointed or proved wrong.
"The problem,' explained my Monday morning instigator ‘is that they can't stop having illegitimate children (especially the teenagers), and they'd rather lay around on welfare all day than work for a living."
Jesus. And to think, I could have opted to sit down with my daughter and watch Sesame Street like a responsible father; but no, I had to check my e-mail first.
Now it wasn't as if this shit was new. I've been hearing this from white folks ever since I was a child. And although I was getting it this time from someone who was well aware of my views on race, I often am regaled with such splendid intellectual mediocrity by total strangers who I meet during the course of my travels: in airplanes, restaurants, hotel bars, taxicabs, or wherever else people interact.
"White bonding," I began calling it some twelve years ago: a phenomenon that causes many if not most whites to apparently believe that every white person they meet must be just as racist as they are and will find their joke funny, their comment acceptable, and their slur pithy. The things white folks say about people of color when they aren't around give the lie to all the nonsense we pump about color-blindness, not having a racist bone in our bodies, never noticing race, having all those black friends, and so on and so forth.
But the things we say when people of color aren't in the room actually do more than expose the festering sickness of white racism; they expose the profundity of our ignorance and demonstrate just how divorced from reality so many of us are. For not only are the racist beliefs expressed above (and according to opinion polls, accepted by half or better of the white population) exaggerated stereotypes, they are in fact flatly contradicted by hard evidence.
Take the popular image of black women, particularly teens, popping out babies as fast as they can make them. This rendering of black females as the oversexed, irresponsible incubators of demographic decay has been at the heart of attacks on social welfare programs and is as commonly heard as the daily weather report: shame it's even less accurate.
In truth, the fertility rate for black women is hardly different than for white women. For every 1000 white women 15-44 there are 66.5 live births, while for every 1000 black women that age there are 71.7.
Indeed, the fertility rate for black women has fallen by more than half in the last forty years, such that the gap between black and white fertility has been slashed by nearly 80%, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The birthrate for unmarried black women--especially vilified by racist rhetoric--is at a forty-year low and the rate of babies born to black teens hasn't gone up one iota since 1920.
And speaking of teens, only six-tenths of one percent of black babies are born to women under the age of fifteen, and the birthrate for black teens 15-19 has dropped by a third since 1991. Overall, more than eight in ten black babies are born to mothers in their twenties or older, and the teen birthrate has fallen faster among black youth than any other racial group over the last decade.
The parallel belief that black women have too many children--at whatever age--and therefore can't properly care for them is equally mythical. The average number of minor children in white households and black households is identical, and for female-headed black and white households the difference is statistically insignificant. Contrary to the widespread notion that black women typically have four or five children (if not more), only one in twenty black female headed families have four or more kids.
Even for families receiving public assistance--and even before welfare "reform" bumped tens of thousands off the rolls and restricted eligibility for benefits--the typical "welfare family" of whatever race included only a mother and two children and was actually slightly smaller than the typical non-welfare family.
Of course I can hear the voices of racial apoplexy now. "What about the skyrocketing rate of out-of-wedlock births in the black community?" Doesn't that indicate the sexual irresponsibility of black females and their male compradors, one might ask?
Well no. In fact, not even close.
The reason for the increase in the share of black children born out-of-wedlock in recent decades is that two-parent black couples are having fewer children than ever, meaning that a growing share of the children who are born in the black community will be out-of-wedlock, even though sexual behavior hasn't changed, and fertility rates among single black women have been falling.
Indeed, eighty percent of the increase in out-of-wedlock childbirths in the black community is because of the falloff in children born to intact black families: a falloff that has been even steeper than the decline among single moms.
Additionally, the apparent "increase" in out-of-wedlock children in single mother homes within the black community, and generally, is the result of the Census Bureau changing the methods used for counting such families in the first place.
Whereas single moms with kids who lived in extended family settings (such as living with their own parents) were historically not counted as separate family units, since the early 1980's they have been. So even though such families may have existed for many years prior to the accounting switch, they would not have appeared in statistical data until more recently.
Putting aside the issue of just how "harmful" single-parent homes are (and evidence indicates that with the exception of the smaller income base there isn't much difference between such homes and "intact" families, and indeed children in intact families are often less confident and well-adjusted), clearly the problems for black folks in this country are not the result of childbirth patterns.
A 1997 report found that the median income of young two-parent black families had fallen by nearly half since 1973. What's more, even black women who "played by the rules," and had no kids out-of-wedlock, saw their incomes fall 32% from 1972-1989, and have been unable to regain the lost ground since.
Which brings us then to the issue of work; or rather the claim that blacks are allergic to the concept, preferring instead the "generous" benefits of the welfare state for their sustenance.
That anyone could possibly believe such a thing has always struck me as humorous to say the least. After all, African Americans have been doing work that white folks thought "beneath" us for roughly four hundred years. Were it not for their labor, in fact, the American Revolution could never have been won, since its financing came from the tobacco and cotton industries--both of which were built by the work of slaves.
Yet despite the historical record the belief persists, often put forth by people whose own forefathers tried desperately never to break a sweat doing actual work themselves.
And as with the arguments about black women as baby factories, the ruse about blacks as lazy welfare-sapping parasites is patently absurd, not to mention ironic. After all, welfare programs in this country were originally created so as to allow white widows and abandoned mothers to care for their children without having to enter the paid workforce.
Creating "dependence" was not seen as problematic, at least for white women whose "womanhood" had long been viewed as dependent on the presence of a white male husband. It was only when women of color gained access to such programs in the late 1950's and afterward that suddenly "dependence" became the great scourge to be avoided.
Yet the truth is that welfare dependence is hardly the norm--for black women or anyone else receiving public assistance. Even before the passage of punitive welfare reform, six in ten welfare families were leaving the rolls within two years, debunking the notion of long-term dependency as the norm for welfare recipients.
Indeed, two-thirds of women who receive welfare as children will never receive aid as adults and 81% whose mothers received AFDC for long periods never receive aid as adults. In other words, the notion of intergenerational welfare dependence so commonly accepted is a false one.
Instead of welfare, the poor prefer work, yet often there are not enough jobs to go around that pay wages at or above the poverty line. In Central Harlem, one study found that there were fourteen applicants for every job opening in the area.
Nationally, in times of recession, there may be as many as seven to ten people out of work for every job opening above the poverty line. And since the Federal Reserve's policy is to raise interest rates whenever unemployment drops below four percent--thereby freezing new hires--millions will be jobless, poor, and need welfare no matter their work ethic, solely because of this one monetary policy intended to keep wages and prices low.
Indeed, experience from around the country demonstrates that low-income people of color have work ethics that are no different from whites and those above the poverty line. In the early 1990's, when a handful of longshore jobs opened up in Los Angeles, 50,000 blacks and Latinos--mostly low income--showed up to apply.
In Cleveland, 15,000 unemployed welfare mothers and teenagers of color stood in the rain for four hours to get one of the minimum-wage temporary jobs cleaning up public parks.
In Chicago, 15,000 mostly low-income applicants of color applied for less than 4,000 temporary jobs.
In Baltimore, 75 openings at the Social Security Administration were met with 26,000 applications, mostly from blacks, and heavily from low-income citizens.
Far from relying on taxpayers for their livelihood, only one in ten blacks receive any form of cash welfare, and only about one in six receives food stamps. In fact, blacks who are eligible for the Food Stamp program are actually less likely than similar whites to apply for and receive such assistance.
As for black single moms, although they are twice as likely as white single moms to be in poverty, they are no more likely than white single moms to receive public assistance. What's more, three out of four single black moms have jobs, further dispelling the notion that single mothers in the black community mostly choose to "live off welfare."
Yet despite all of these simple truths, I didn't send any of them to the individual who had chosen to start off my week with such a mindless stream of e-nonsense. I knew it wouldn't matter much to him, and if anything would only detract from the time I could spend on Sesame Street, which as it turns out is a much friendlier place to be.
But I did write him back. First to thank him for serving as my muse for what would become this article; and secondly to remark upon the last paragraph of his message to me: the part that blamed black folks for "taking all the jobs" from white guys like himself.
My statement on this score was really fairly simple. In the interest of consistency, I suggested that he choose which racist drivel he would prefer to promote: either the kind that says blacks are lazy or the kind that says they are taking all the jobs. After all, both cannot be true at the same time. If one is taking all the jobs, then by definition one hardly qualifies as lazy, and if one is indeed lazy, one is not likely to take any job, let alone all of them.
And if there's anything worse than a racist, it has to be a racist who can't make up his mind.
Tim Wise is an antiracist essayist, activist and lecturer. He can be reached at (and footnotes procured from) timjwise@msn.com
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Commonwealth 'to re-admit' Zimbabwe
Posted: Monday, February 10, 2003
(BBC) Australia, Nigeria and South Africa are the three countries in the "troika" named by the Commonwealth to oversee its response to the situation in Zimbabwe, and which pressed for its suspension from the organisation last year.
They were due to meet next month to review Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth committees.
But the decision by Nigeria and South Africa to cancel the meeting would effectively see Zimbabwe readmitted to the 54-nation grouping of mainly former British colonies, Mr Howard admitted.
More from BBC's Tainted Coverage
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Obey ICC: Mandela
Posted: Thursday, February 6, 2003
By Robert Craddock, Fox News
FORMER South Africa president Nelson Mandela has weighed into the World Cup cricket crisis by declaring Australia must play its match in Zimbabwe.
As the Zimbabwe Cricket Union announced it would refuse to play any of its matches if they were switched to South Africa, Mandela urged Australia and England to go ahead with their games in crisis-torn Zimbabwe.
"They (Australia and England) must respect the International Cricket Council," Mandela said.
"If we refuse to follow the ICC we will introduce chaos to cricket. They have examined the matter and concluded it is safe. They know what is dangerous for cricketers. If they say cricketers should go to Zimbabwe, that is what they must do."
Though Mandela has no official role in the decision-making process, his iconic word as the first president of united South Africa still shapes the thinking of South African society.
The ICC has consistently maintained its security reports have provided no reason for the teams to cancel their matches in Zimbabwe. MORE
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African diplomats lambast US
Posted: Saturday, February 1, 2003
Herald Reporter
AFRICAN ambassadors and High Commissioners accredited to Zimba-bwe have lambasted the United States government's call for its citizens not to visit Zimbabwe saying the move was a deliberate ploy to derail the hosting of World Cup Cricket matches to be played in the country this month.
The diplomats said the travel warning by the US government was misleading because the current situation in the country did not pose any security threat to anyone who wished to visit Zimbabwe.
In a statement, the African Group of Ambassadors and High Commission-ers said they were deeply concerned about the US warning, as it did not give a true picture of the real situation prevailing in the country.
"In fact, Zimbabwe as a destination is far safer than the security situation obtained in some capitals of those countries that are on the forefront of isolating Zimbabwe," read part of the statement issued by the Dean of the African Heads of Missions, Mr Ndali-Che Kamatai.
Mr Kamatai is Namibia's High Commissioner to Zimbabwe.
The US government recently issued a directive to its nationals not to travel to Zimbabwe and advised those in the country to leave, citing security concerns.
It alleged that there was total breakdown of rule of law in the country and that the US government would not be held accountable for the safety of those ignoring the call to leave the country.
However, the African diplomats said the US warning was political and directly connected to the deliberate efforts geared towards derailing the hosting of the Cricket World Cup matches, which are scheduled to take place in Zimbabwe this month.
They said they were satisfied with the level of preparations and security arrangements undertaken by the Government of Zimbabwe in hosting the cricket matches.
"In this connection, we concur with the recent International Cricket Council delegation's conclusion that Zimbabwe has put in place requisite measures.
"We believe that this is not the time to isolate Zimbabwe, but rather engage the Zimbabwe Government with the view to finding solutions to the challenges currently facing the country."
The ambassadors called upon all the people intending to visit the country to proceed with their arrangements as their security was assured.
They urged the English and Australian cricket teams not to be influenced by political considerations of their governments.
http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=18028&pubdate=2003-02-01
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Africa should unite to eliminate imperialism
Posted: Tuesday, January 28, 2003
www.herald.co.zw
This is the last part of Chinondidyachii Mararike's article which focuses on how the imperialist West is fighting an economic and propaganda war against the innocent people of Zimbabwe, their Government, their President and their ruling party.
The same courage, determination and unity of purpose that won us Phase 1 will win us Phases II and III, because President Mugabe’s revolution is a Zanu-PF revolution.
A Zanu-PF revolution is a Zimbabwe-led revolution for the total liberation of Southern Africa and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.
Zimbabwe should export this revolution to its neighbours, where the remnants of the racist white farmers went to settle.
Once successfully exported, the revolution’s momen- tum will deny the beleaguered imperialists any room to manoeuvre, and will force them to either retreat or engage us on our terms - ostensibly because the resources they are stealing from our neighbours will not be available to them.
And with our hero, President Mugabe (the one who brought down ‘whites’) continually assaulting imperialism and vowing to fight on, Africans will not turn the other cheek in compromise.
Africa has the highest number of imperialist victims divested from their land. They dwell in deplorable shanties and refugee camps, and remain insulated from their history and decent existence.
The imperialist, bereft of any ounce of conscience, inflicts untold suffering to their victims. It is these victims that Tony Blair and George W. Bush think they can root out with Nepad. It is these that in the so-called Third World the West thinks it can root out with IMF and World Bank structural schemes.
For the imperialist victims, the effects are disastrous. This is what Europe desires - to have Africans overlook the fact that it is they, the Europeans, that are plundering the continent’s abundant natural and human resources. Consequently the new post-colonial state in Africa is contenting with rampant capitalism and relentless exploitation.
"In the Southern African context in particular," writes the Sunday Mirror’s Scrutator, "the socio-political and economic dynamics attendant to the liberatory and transformative process" continue to be "threatened by the combined forces of globalisation" and an increasingly Western-induced hostile environment in which reactionary MDC-style opposition parties "are forging closer ties with former colonisers and agents of globalisation".
Zimbabwe’s task is, therefore clear: to export the revolution to countries in Africa whose current institutional arrangements and societal perceptions are still based on or stem from imperial structures dominated by foreign private sector interests and therefore, perpetuating inequitable entitlements and access to African resources.
When Zimbabwe’s liberationist volcano explodes, its lava will scorch and smoother the resisting settlers on the continent. Mugabe’s Revolution has to move forward and through phases - Phase II makes Africans the primary beneficiaries of Africa’s abundant mineral and other natural resources. Phase III sees the complete Africanisation of our commercial and industrial sectors.
In tandem with both phases should be the development of Afro-centric epistemologies, representations, discourses, and narratives in which the central tenets of African culture and religion as in Mwari-via-Vadzimu neMasvikiro, languages, architecture, dressing, food, music, jokes and general way of life, occupy the middle ground of the values that inform our activities.
Sure we can not afford to throw a protective blanket over this revolution, for to do so would be to throw away what we have achieved for Zimbabwe and Africa and in the process squander this most rare opportunity when we can successfully export this revolution to others whose land remains in the talons of imperialists.
The fact that Mugabe’s Revolution is already spread- ing fast into Namibia and South Africa, and has found resonance throughout the world makes our task less cheerless indeed.
That, indeed, is why we hear all these people chanting: Pamberi neZanu-PF, Swapo neANC! - (Pamberi!)
Chinondidyachii Mararike is a Zimbabwean lawyer, writer, political analyst, and secretary-general of Davira Mhere.
RaceandHistory Zimbabwe Watch
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Whose Black? Brazil's Amazing Skin-Shedding Trick
Posted: Tuesday, January 28, 2003
By Zarina Geloo
January 27, 2003 www.ipsnews.net
Being white means not being black right? Not in Brazil. Here you can be white if you are rich, like soccer icon Pele. You can be black if you are white and poor. To be more precise, you can also call yourself a"little bit black or a little bit white", depending on how deep your skin is hued.
The situation has anthropologists frustrated. How can racism in its most virulent form be dealt with if it is hidden behind the semantics of colour, asks anthropologist Valeria Aydos from Sao Paulo.
"We do not talk about racism, but it is a big problem. Officially, we call ourselves of mixed race because historically we have integrated with the indigenous Indian the immigrant white and the black slaves," she told a meeting on racism chaired by the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA).
As a result, Aydos says, there is no policy to tackle the racism that exists in the country.
Afro Brazilians"suffer in silence because we have not admitted that we have a racial problem. It is easier for America or other countries to adress racial tensions because they admit it is there. We have not even began to tackle the issue."
She says Afro Brazilian society itself has only recently began to talk about racism, but it is hard going. There is documented evidence that black people are excluded and discriminated against, have less access to top education and medical facilities and are more likely to be charged with crimes. Racism, she added, is engrained in the psyche of people who have been socialised to think that lighter skin colour is superior.
"The only way black people are going to be respected ... is when they become superstars or have a lot of money."
Gary Leech for NACLA said while the Colombian government had approved one of the most progressive constitutions every written in Latin America which recognises the rights of all its citizens and places premuim on the cultural heritage of those of African descent, the reality is different. He said Afro Colombians suffered economic, political and social marginalisation and victimisation under a political system in which they are excluded. Their life expectancy had dropped to 54 years (the national average is 74). As if that were not enough, Afro Colombians were being forcibly displaced with no compensation, (in the La Guajira area) by US energy giant ExxonMobil, which has bought El Cerrejon the world's largest open-pit coal mine.
"The Colombian government and the multinational mining companies need to be exposed to force them to live up to the contents of the constitution and treat people with dignity and respect."
Reproduced from:
http://www.ipsnews.net/fsm2003/27.01.2003/nota8.shtml
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Male stance/Female narcissism
Posted: Sunday, January 26, 2003
by Bukka Rennie, January 25, 2003
Important issues have been raised by two very keen readers of this column. Both good friends of mine. One male and at present living and working in T&T, the other female, at present living and studying in Ottawa.
In response to my contention that generally in relation to the Graeco-Roman, Western, white-controlled, global military-industrial complex, the black male has a "natural stance" of subversion and revolution, this is what he said, inter alia:
"...I was particularly struck by what you said about the 'natural stance' of the black male. I am not sure what you mean by 'natural' in that sense. If natural is normative, then most males are in fact either unnatural or some might claim to be supernatural. The stance you describe demands engagement and few black males are really 'engaged' with our reality, in my opinion..."
The point is that black or African people were the only human element that found themselves forced into a relationship with the Western world and its military-industrial complex in which they were made to be "property" and "socialised labour" on a hemispheric scale.
It stands to reason therefore that every form of their resistance, passive or active, conscious or subconscious, was meant to transform that relationship and in the process attack and destroy this white-controlled global superstructure.
All the historians that have examined the Caribbean experience, for example, will tell you that the struggles of the Afro-Caribbean people have always been geared to destroy the property and property relations engendered by the system of plantation slavery and to make themselves the "new masters of the islands".
Non-white colonised people around the world have the same experience to one degree or another and in all their struggles of decolonisation, we see similar responses from below.
Embodied in the very being of their "blackness", this, their "natural stance", became over time the very antithesis of the global white status-quo and establishment. With the objective being unconditional "freedom", they could only be about subversion, ie on an individual level, and revolution which is on a collectivised or social level.
There are of course various levels of engagement by black people, both male and female, in this regard. These levels are determined by the levels of self-consciousness and social consciousness that may become generalised from time to time. I chose to describe them as levels of combativity that have their moments of highs and lows.
In modern times it is the black male who in all ways, in demeanour, and almost out of habit, who bears the brunt of this "natural stance" to the hilt.
To the white social leaderships the "black dude" is always a "trouble-maker" or a potential trouble-maker. It is why prison in this Western Hemisphere is comprised consistently of a 75 per cent black male population. To the white leaderships that is where black males are supposed to be and black males do not disappoint them.
The statistics on a hemispheric basis have not been compiled but it is obvious from mere observation. Black males, both politically and culturally, hold pride of place on the front lines as all males per se are nurtured to be.
So today when you have a human complex that is both black or non-white and Muslim, given the 1,000 years of battle between Muslims and the Western Christian world, you in fact have a "double-whammy" as was said before.
That's why we agreed with the contention of WEB Dubois that the problem of the 20th century, and beyond, we may add, is the problem of the colour line. If the Western world does not come to terms with this by reformation, it will eventually be destroyed by implosive force.
My female reader friend from Ottawa took issue with my criticism of what women have brought to the Carnival agenda as a social force. This is what in part she said:
"I have to pick a little bone with you on this article... I agree in principle with your points, but really – feminine = narcissistic? Apart from the etymological twist (narcissus being that exceptionally vain man) I really can't agree with that concept. Of course, it may be that my female role models, friends and relatives are exceptional, but that's for another time...
"The banality of commercialism dictates to the lowest common denominator — this is pretty obvious. But I think that the role of exhibitionism is more to do with economics than otherwise. Having convinced generations of people that looks matter most, then rewarding exhibitionism by having the least-clad females 'selected' over the others, the inevitable progression then becomes the need to exhibit more in order to maintain the status quo.
"You had pointed out in an earlier column that the violence done in society was in part due to competition for sex...
"This is also why (to my way of thinking, anyhow) the proliferation of the 'party tune' has escalated. It's not that it's superior, but it gets the attention quickly, and is rewarded... money talks, ent? So the grousing about the banal, offensive, boring exhibitionism will continue as long as there is money flowing towards it..."
I agree but there is still to be addressed that element of females themselves being overwhelmed by the tremendous power of their own sexuality and the need to utilise this very power to make a positive statement in and through Carnival since women are now the greatest social force in Carnival outside of capital (ie accumulated wealth still controlled by male investors).
The extracts from the poem "Red Hawk" were meant to indicate what black males at the bottom of society did with Carnival when they were the greatest social force in Carnival... they transformed themselves into "Geronimoes". Again, the natural stance, ent?
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Mbeki broadsides Bush with tough anti-war vow
Posted: Friday, January 24, 2003
By John Battersby, www.iol.co.za
President Thabo Mbeki has called on all South Africans to join the world campaign against a United States-led war against Iraq.
His call on Friday came as the transatlantic rift widened over whether to disarm Iraq by force.
Mbeki also sent a clear message to US President George Bush: there are no grounds for war.
"Nothing credible has been said that any such breach has occurred to justify a resort to war," Mbeki said, articulating a view which has a groundswell of support among the industrialised nations and the backing of the entire developing world.
And in a broadside against Washington, Mbeki lambasted those who threatened Iraq with war but did nothing about Israel's nuclear weapons.
"They say nothing whatsoever against Israel's weapons of mass destruction.
"Of course, from their point of view, the matter has nothing to do with principle.
"It turns solely on the question of power... We disagree."
Mbeki's intervention comes on the eve of a critical session of the United Nations security council which will hear the first report of the UN weapons inspectors on their findings after several weeks of inspection in Iraq.
Bush's insistence that the US has sufficient grounds to wage war without a security council vote has pitted Russia, Germany, France, China and Canada against his country and Britain.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair - looking increasingly isolated in supporting the United States-led rhetoric for military action to disarm Saddam Hussein - is expected to face probing questions from Mbeki on his attitude to the UN and the consequences of a war with Iraq when they meet for a one-on-one summit next Saturday.
Mbeki, joining the growing international outrage at the prospect of war said in his weekly letter on the African National Congress's Today website:
"The situation demands that once more the masses of our people must act together as a powerful force for peace in the world.
"They have an obligation to stand up and join the struggle for peace," he said.
It is understood that mass action was discussed at the ANC's three-day workshop last weekend and that peace marches, led by the ruling party and supported by trade unions and civil society, are in the planning stage.
In his strongest call yet for Bush to heed the mounting global anti-war protest, Mbeki said that a war against Iraq would threaten international peace and security.
It would also spark a deep economic crisis in Africa as the price of oil soared and poverty deepened, and further delay a resolution of the Middle East conflict.
Mbeki said that Iraq had agreed to comply with the UN security council resolution and had allowed the weapons inspectors to return to pursue their mandate unhindered.
"We have committed ourselves to do everything in our power, limited as this power might be, to persuade Iraq to give herself and the United Nations the necessary space to resolve the matter at issue, peacefully and expeditiously."
He said the effort to disarm Iraq should not be used to justify a declaration of war.
"We are not aware of any information that would suggest that Iraq has been in serious material breach of the security council resolution."
Mbeki said South Africa was committed to the resolution of all disputes by peaceful means and was the "first and only" country in the world to voluntarily implement a comprehensive programme of disarmament and the destruction of its weapons of mass destruction.
And, in a statement after a three-day cabinet workshop, chief government spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe said the cabinet had reiterated South Africa's request to the UN that the arms inspectors' report should be considered in an open session in the presence of United Nations members who were not on the security council.
"South Africa supports the efforts of the international community to deal with this matter strictly in accordance with the resolutions of the UN security council," the cabinet statement said.
"It also welcomes the growing peace movement, in particular its objective of ensuring that actions pursued in the Gulf region are determined the interest of humanity as a whole."
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=13&art_id=ct20030124214059225P430688&set_id=1
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Tsvangirai addresses diplomats, threatens bloodbath
Posted: Thursday, January 23, 2003
Herald Reporter
STUNG by the failure of Wednesday’s stayaway, visits by Nigerian and South African foreign ministers as well as the softening of attitudes by some European countries towards the Zimbabwean Government, MDC leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai has threatened a bloodbath in the country.
Addressing diplomats, mostly from European countries at a hastily arranged meeting in Harare yesterday, Mr Tsvangirai said: "I want to say once again, that we have reached a stage whereby we can no longer counsel patience on such a dangerously restive population.
"There is clearly a red light flashing for the Mugabe regime to stop. There is a gathering storm of the people’s anger. We have no power to stop it and we refuse to take responsibility for whatever transpires," he said.
Mr Tsvangirai’s comments were also prompted by a scathing attack by some white members of his party who reportedly felt that he was not doing enough to bring about a change of government. MORE
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Britain and South Africa in Mugabe retirement plot
Posted: Wednesday, January 22, 2003
By Chris Talbot, 22 January 2003
An article in a Zimbabwe newspaper reveals a move amongst top leaders to remove President Robert Mugabe in exchange for obtaining economic support from the West.
According to the Zimbabwe Sunday Mirror, a paper that supports the ruling Zanu-PF party, a plan is under discussion in which Mugabe is made to retire and replaced by the current Speaker of Parliament Emmerson Mnangagwa, who would hold power for a two-year "transition" period, after which elections would be held. During the two-years, an interim government would be installed with constitutional changes "that would allow Mugabe a dignified exit and would not force elections during the transitional period," the Mirror reports.
The newspaper also states that Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has accepted the proposal. The British government is also said to be backing the plan, with South Africa acting as intermediary. Britain would pay out £500 million to help "jump start" the collapsed economy, and financial support from the West would be restored.
Both Zanu-PF and South Africa have denied the plan exists, but in an interview with the BBC Tsvangirai admitted that he had been approached in December by a representative of Mnangagwa and the commander of the Zimbabwe armed forces, General Vitalis Zvinavashe. Tsvangirai says he was willing to consider immunity from prosecution for Mugabe in exchange for a return to "normal political activity" that would later lead to "free and fair" elections. According to the Mirror however, Tsvangirai only initially agreed to the plan but later backtracked after "a tiny, aggressive white minority" in the MDC objected to immunity for Mugabe. Factions within Zanu-PF are also said to be opposed to the plan partly because Mnangagwa, a ruthless functionary who is said to be Mugabe's chosen successor, is widely disliked.
Reports in Africa Confidential, a magazine close to British intelligence and African business interests, verify the Mirror's accounts. Even before the latter had published its account, which was then taken up by the British press, Africa Confidential had already commented on a new South African initiative on Zimbabwe. Explaining that Mnangagwa and his business allies attended the recent conference of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa and were warmly greeted by President Mbeki, it commented "the bargain would be that President Mugabe agrees to retire within the year, in exchange for Britain lifting sanctions, compensating displaced white farmers and financing agricultural development."
Whether the plan fails or—more likely—goes ahead in some modified form, the Mirror's revelations expose something of the machinations of the British government in relation to Zimbabwe. Ever since Britain and the West's preferred option of Tsvangirai winning the presidential elections failed last March, Britain has been attempting to get Mugabe removed. One approach has been through South Africa and other African countries, with US pressure.
At first South Africa and Nigeria arranged for talks between the Zanu-PF regime and the MDC to discuss some form of power sharing, but the government's intensified persecution of MDC members led to Tsvangirai pulling out. Later last year, according to the Mirror, South Africa's President Mbeki had discussions with Simba Makoni on forming a Zanu-PF alternative to Mugabe. Makoni, a pro-free market economist, was removed from his post as Finance Minister by Mugabe last summer.
The possibility of a more direct intervention, possibly using "covert operations," cannot be ruled out, although Zimbabwe has a British-trained army and a small airforce that so far have remained loyal to Mugabe. Last November, Mark Bellamy, deputy assistant of state for African affairs, was reported as saying, "We may have to be prepared to take some very intrusive, interventionist measures to ensure aid delivery to Zimbabwe."
Now it seems that the intense economic pressure on Zimbabwe, led by Britain, and allowing much of the population to face famine and starvation, has paid off, forcing the top Zanu-PF old guard to consider another South African-brokered deal.
The choice of Mnangagwa in the latest plot to remove Mugabe is not accidental. For all the sermonising about Mugabe's suppression of the MDC opposition, Britain is clearly prepared to accept transitional rule by a man who as a former Minister of Security is particularly associated with massacres carried out by the notorious Fifth Brigade in Matebeland in the 1980s. There is no doubt that he would be even more brutal than Mugabe in suppressing opposition amongst workers and peasants. The Mirror quotes a source close to the Zanu-PF tops defending Mnangagwa as a replacement for Mugabe as "a strong ruthless person who is not easily manipulated," who is "going to be unpopular because he has to put right a lot of wrong things."
Both Mnangagwa and Zvinavashe have extensive business interests and have been at the centre of the looting of timber, diamonds and other minerals from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. In exchange for their military support of the Kinshasa government in the Congo war, Zimbabwe made arrangements for their military top brass to set up a range of lucrative operations.
A transitional regime under Mnangagwa will have to clamp down on the Zanu-PF members and supporters who thought they could benefit from Mugabe's land seizure programme. It is now widely known that far from representing a new agricultural revival heralded by Mugabe, as much as 90 percent of the land taken from the wealthy white farmers is lying fallow. Because of the drastic decline in Zimbabwe's economy the inputs and infrastructure needed by the new small farmers has not been forthcoming. The Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) representing the small farmers predicts a yield this season that will only be 30 percent of the previous season, itself depressed by the effects of drought and the farm invasions.
Repressive measures will also have to be stepped up to police the urban population. To begin implementing the kind of economic policies necessary for Zimbabwe to mend its relations with the International Monetary Fund and secure Western finance and aid, tens of thousands of public sector jobs will have to be slashed. With unemployment already very high, this would produce widespread opposition. Britain is clearly prepared for Mnangagwa to continue strong arm measures as long as it is behind a veneer of democracy and the MDC leaders are incorporated into the transitional regime.
Zimbabwe's economy, once relatively affluent compared to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, is falling apart, with GDP contracting by 25 percent over the last three years, inflation at 175 percent, and fuel supplies running out. Even General Zvinavashe, whilst denying the reports that Mugabe was to be retired, was forced to accept in a recent interview that "we must admit there is a crisis." Such a statement by a Zanu-PF leader would previously have been regarded as impermissible.
At present half the population, 6.7 million people, are facing food shortages due to famine. Zanu-PF officials have no doubt attempted to divert food aid to their own members, but the food shortages and the effects of inflation are widespread and are causing discontent among ZANU-PF supporters.
The Mirror article admits that the crisis in Zanu-PF ranks and the willingness to mend fences with Britain and the West arise from a fear of mass opposition: "the economic hardships ravaging the weary population threaten to spill over to the political level, thus spelling grim consequences for the government and the country as a whole." On top of this, "Zimbabwe's political elite, who fly to Europe literally on a daily basis in pursuance of their vast business interests, have been terribly hurt by the travel sanctions imposed by Britain."
Beyond brief reports that a deal to remove Mugabe has been discussed, the British government has managed to keep out of the media the details of the bribe it is prepared to pay out for Mugabe to go quietly, as well as the track record of his possible replacement.
All attention for the last month has been focused on the Blair government's pressure on the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to pull out of the Cricket World Cup that is to be held in Zimbabwe.
It has been known for four years that World Cup fixtures were to be played in Zimbabwe and the English cricket team played a full tour in Zimbabwe in 2001. The British government raised no objections. Last July the ECB asked for a meeting with the British Foreign Office over playing cricket in Zimbabwe and were told there was no problem.
Within the last weeks, however, the Blair government suddenly began actively intervening in cricket affairs. It whipped up a campaign to demand the England team do not play in Zimbabwe, with ministers vying with one another to attack the ECB for its "immorality" in choosing to go ahead with the game. A clearly nervous ECB has argued that it has no choice but to play because pulling out at such a late stage would cost it millions of pounds. Labour's new-found concern for cricketing morals can only be explained as a cynical diversion from its own rapprochement with the Zanu-PF elite.
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'Oldest star chart' found
Posted: Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Tuesday, 21 January, 2003, By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2679675.stm
The oldest image of a star pattern, that of the famous constellation of Orion, has been recognised on an ivory tablet some 32,500 years old.
The tiny sliver of mammoth tusk contains a carving of a man-like figure with arms and legs outstretched in the same pose as the stars of Orion.
The claim is made by Dr Michael Rappenglueck, formerly of the University of Munich, who is already renowned for his pioneering work locating star charts painted on the walls of prehistoric caves.
The tablet also contains mysterious notches, carved on its sides and on its back. These could be a primitive "pregnancy calendar", designed to estimate when a pregnant woman will give birth.
Man-like figure
It was found in 1979 in a cave in the Ach Valley in the Alb-Danube region of Germany. Carbon dating of bone ash deposits found next to the tablet suggest it is between 32,500 and 38,000 years old, making it one of the oldest representations of a man ever found.
It was left behind by the mysterious Aurignacian people about whom we know next to nothing save that they moved into Europe from the east supplanting the indigenous Neanderthals.
The ivory tablet is small, measuring only 38 x 14 x 4 millimetres, but from the notches carved into its edges archaeologists believe that it was made that size and is not a fragment of something bigger.
On one side of the tablet is the man-like being with his legs apart and arms raised. Between his legs hangs what could be a sword and his waist is narrow. His left leg is shorter than his right one.
From what is speculated about the myths of these ancient peoples before the dawn of history, archaeologists have suggested that the man-like figure could be praying or dancing, or be a half-man, half-cat, or a divine being.
But Michael Rappenglueck thinks it is a drawing of the constellation of Orion that is nowadays, and was perhaps also 32,000 years ago, called the hunter.
The proportions of the man correspond to the pattern of stars that comprise Orion, especially its slim waist - which corresponds to its famous belt of three stars and the left "leg" of the constellation being shorter.
The "sword" on the ivory tablet also corresponds to a famous and well-know feature that can be seen in Orion.
There are also other indications that Dr Rappenglueck may be correct.
The stars were in slightly different positions 32,000 years ago because they are moving across the sky at different speeds and in different directions, a phenomenon called "proper motion".
Dr Rappenglueck allowed for this effect by using a computer program to wind back the sky and found evidence for a particular star in Orion that was in a different place all those years ago.
Human gestation period
The tablet may also be a pregnancy calendar.
There are 86 notches on the tablet, a number that has two special meanings.
First, it is the number of days that must be subtracted from a year to equal the average number of days of a human gestation. This is no coincidence, says Dr Rappenglueck.
It is also the number of days that one of Orion's two prominent stars, Betelguese, is visible. To ancient man, this might have linked human fertility with the gods in the sky.
Orion is one of the most striking constellations. The Ancient Egyptians identified it with their god Osiris and it has a special significance for many cultures throughout history throughout the world.
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Pharaonic statues found in north Sudan
Posted: Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Published 2003-01-21 Middle East Online
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=4068
Artefacts represent kings Taharqa, Tanutamon, last of black pharaohs as well as two monarchs who all lived about 600 years BC.
KHARTOUM - Granite statues and stelas of pharaohs who ruled from northern Sudan some 2,600 years ago, including the last "black pharaohs," have been found by a team of French and Swiss archeologists, a statement said Sunday.
The artefacts represented kings Taharqa and Tanutamon, the last of the "black pharaohs," as well as monarchs Senkamanisken and Aspelta, who all lived about 600 years BC, the French embassy here said in the statement.
These discoveries "represent a significant contribution to the history of ancient Sudan and without a doubt count among the masterpieces of sculpture worldwide," the team said in the statement.
The artefacts were found in a grave in Kerma, south of the Third Cataract of the Nile, by a team from the University of Geneva headed by Charles Bonnet, and including French archeologist Dominique Valbelle.
Like the Egyptian kings, the kings of Kush were also buried in pyramids.
Taharqa (690-664 BC) inherited a dynasty that ruled Egypt until the Assyrian conquest began and his reign was pushed back to between the third and fourth cataracts.
Lies From The Western Media re: African Ourstory
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