Africa for the Africans

By Glen Ford
June 02, 2011 - BlackAgendaReport.com.

As far as the United States and Europe are concerned, Africans have nothing to say about what happens in Africa. South African President Jacob Zuma made a second trip to Libya this week, on behalf of the African Uni0n, seeking a diplomatic end to NATO’s war against Mouammar Gaddafi’s government. Just as with a previous African Uni0n peace keeping mission, back in early April, Col. Gaddafi agreed to the peace plan. And just as before, the so-called rebels and their American and European bosses refused even to consider a cease fire. As has been obvious from the beginning of this “humanitarian” farce, the Great White Fathers of Europe and the “Wall Street mascot” from the United States, as Obama has been called, will be satisfied with nothing less than regime change in Libya – and to Hell with what Africans think!

The Euro-Americans will soon prove just as contemptuous of their erstwhile North African Arab allies, based in Benghazi, who claim to be leading a “revolution” against Gaddafi. But these rebels lost their legitimacy the second they decided to become the ground troops for a neocolonial invasion of North Africa. Revolutionaries fight the Power. The gang from Benghazi are mere pawns of imperialism and have no credibility whatsoever as revolutionaries. This is an imperialist war, fought for imperial objectives. The rebels have chosen to become imperialism’s mascots, waiting like pitiful little Gunga Dins for the British and French to arrive with attack helicopters to burn and kill their countrymen.

NATO orders their Libyan minions around like children. NATO recently “issued instructions” that the rebels not move beyond certain points in the desert, so as not to enter the killing fields that the rich white fathers – plus Obama – are preparing to incinerate Libyan government soldiers. Naturally, the rebels will do exactly as they are told, since this is not their revolution. Rather, Libya is the front line of the European and American counter-revolution. The chain of command reaches to Paris, London and Washington. Benghazi has reverted to the colonial outpost that it was when the Italians ruled – only now, in the 21st century, all of the Europeans plus the Americans get to lord over the Libyans, who grin and skin while thanking the colonizers for coming back to save Africa from the Africans.

And so it makes perfect sense that a peace proposal from the president of South Africa, Black Africa's most powerful and wealthy country, acting on behalf of the organization that includes every nation on the continent, counts for less than nothing in the imperial scheme of things. The West encourages South African President Jacob Zuma to help bring chaotic Black countries into line, but Zuma and the African Uni0n are not authorized to interfere with imperial wars on the continent. That's “white folks business.”

When the Western attack helicopters arrive, the Benghazi-based rebels will cheer, as if they won something. The Gunga Dins should carefully study those helicopters and their awesome firepower, because those guns will one day likely be turned against them. The U.S. and Europe have no intention of allowing Libyans to rule Libya. And after all, why should the imperialists hand over all that oil to a bunch of local flunkies who couldn't even fight their own war.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.


Comment by Marvin X

It is indeed sad to see Africans disrespected in this era, but Nkruma told us neo-colonialism is colonialism playing possum. To transcend neo-colonalism one must smash imperialism hook, line and sinker. And we must see Obama without rose colored glasses, as Glen Ford suggests, the Wall Street mascot, a little puppy dog, i.e., running dog, who tries to run free but the leash yanks him back under the full control of his master (s).

Only a total break from the West by the non-white world will suffice, and even then we must be vigilant of the Afro-Asian-Indigenous world because we all have our national agendas, some open, some hidden. We all move first and last in our interests. Elijah said trust no one, but even his best student, Malcolm X, missed the lesson, alas, he trusted Elijah and was totally demoralized at Elijah's supposed lack of morals.

One thing the lowest Crack head learns is that he cannot trust his own mind, for he realizes most profoundly even his own mind is capable of playing tricks on him. He hears knocks on the door when no one is there. He hears the leaves on the tree and believes he hears people in conversation about him. He hears his friends in another room talking and is convinced they are plotting to kill him. Trust no one, not even your own self! The Bible tells us to win a war one needs many advisors.

Elijah told us the white man is the devil, but we're so smart to think it's only a certain class of them. Christ Rock said he's a rich nigguh but the lowest white man don't wanna be Christ Rock! Europe and Euro-Americans suffer a sickness so pervasive it is constitutional, and even the Big Book in recovery says those in this condition are unable to recover, even after detoxification and a long term program. Thus, the more white people change, the more they stay the same.

You may say we're the same, we're so addicted to white supremacy type II (Dr. Nathan Hare) that we refuse to believe our neighbor next door is harboring a kidnapped child and fathering children by her. We are astounded to believe such.
And yet, another neighbor has a group home that is similar, and he's African, but has a baby farm. Such was discovered in Nigeria recently.

Only a tsunami, an earthquake off the Richter scale will suffice to alter the world's spiritual paradigm of nothingness and dread, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. We must transcend the Sisyphean myth-ritual of eternal damnation, mentally unable to reach the mountain top that Martin Luther King, Jr. claimed he achieved. If he made it, why not every man?

No matter the behavior of Europeans and Euro-Americans, the universe is clearly moving in the direction to make matters right. The spirit of justice and righteousness is in the air, the water, the land, the trees. Man shall either get in harmony or suffer the consequences. We see the mighty Mississippi River rising to consume all in her path. We see the devastating power of tornadoes in the midwest. Shall we all go down because of arrogance, greed, niggardliness, slothful thinking, evil intentions, or simply claiming ignorance that shall be unacceptable and inexcusible in the just universe that is at our door step.
--Marvin X
6/5/11

Goodbye, Gil Scott at Harlem's Riverside Church

Anna Webber/GettyScott-

Heron performs during the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2010.

Corey Sipkin/News

Abiodun Oyewole of The Last Poets leaves Gil Scott-Heron's memorial at Riverside Church Thursday.

Family, celebrities pay tribute to Gil Scott-Heron at music legend's memorial; Kanye West performs

BY Michael J. Feeney
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, June 2nd 2011, 8:51 PM


Corey Sipkin/News

Kanye West leaves the service from a side door after his surprise performance.

Gil Scott-Heron's daughter proclaimed the revolution will be televised during a moving memorial service Thursday for her musical father that included a surprise performance by rapper Kanye West.

Scott-Heron, a celebrated poet and musician, was remembered by about 300 close friends and family scattered throughout Harlem's historic Riverside Church Thursday. He was 62 when he died last Friday.

"It was honoring and celebrating him," said his daughter, Gia, 31, after the service. "When we came in, what we wanted to do was honor daddy."

And she certainly did.

She performed an original poem, called "Time" and sang Bette Midler's "The Rose."

"But because he was before his time, and because time is unfair...We weren't even aware, that his time was up!" she said in her poem. "But time can never diminish the bonds of unconditional love! So though your demise is publicized, this new revolution will be televised."

Her father leaves behind a 40-year musical legacy that included such songs as "We Almost Lost Detroit" and "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," which was recorded at a club on W. 125th St. and Lenox Ave.

The world-renowned spoken word artist is also credited with inspiring a slew of hip-hop artists, such as West, and some have dubbed him the "Godfather of Rap."

West, wearing all black and sporting a pair of dark sunglasses, closed out the tribute by performing his song "Lost in the World" - which features a portion of Scott-Heron's "Comment # 1.

Also in attendance was Abiodun Oyewole of The Last Poets, the 1970s Harlem group that inspired Scott-Heron and also helped set the stage for hip-hop.

Speakers included his first wife, Brenda Sykes, who reminisced about NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar introducing her to Scott-Heron, the birth of their daughter and Scott-Heron's close relationship with Stevie Wonder.

Wonder, she said, always wanted to dance on stage, but never trusted anyone to keep him from bumping into something. But Wonder trusted Scott-Heron, said his wife of 10 years.

"Gil led Stevie in a conga line," said Sykes, adding that the pair toured together and joined forces to help create the federal holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The program for the memorial listed Wonder as an honorary pallbearer, but the superstar musician was not in attendance.

Scott-Heron will be buried at Kensico Cemetery in Westchester County.

His book publisher and longtime friend Jamie Byng called the service "beautiful.

"Gil would have really loved it," he said. "I thought it was a really beautiful service. It was a celebration and also a tribute - and a mourning. I enjoyed it...We all wanted to hear his voice."

Black Panther Geronimo Pratt Transitions to Ancestors

Black Panther Leader Geronimo Pratt Dies In Tanzania

Associated Press on June 3, 2011


LOS ANGELES — Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, a former Black Panther Party leader who spent 27 years in prison on a murder conviction that was later overturned, has died. He was 63.

Pratt died at his home in a small village in Tanzania, where he had lived for at least half a decade, lawyer Stuart Hanlon, who helped Pratt win his freedom, told The Associated Press from San Francisco on Thursday.

Pratt was a former high ranking member of the Black Panther Party. He was targeted by the FBI program COINTELPRO, which aimed to “neutralize Pratt as an effective BPP functionary.”

In 1970 Pratt was arrested and charged with murder and kidnapping. Pratt’s conviction was vacated on June 10, 1997, on the grounds that the prosecution had concealed evidence that might have exonerated the defendant. Pratt continued to work on behalf of men and women believed to be wrongfully incarcerated until his death, including participation in rallies in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal, whom he had met when both were active as Black Panthers. Geronimo was living in Tanzania at the time of his death.

Hanlon said he learned of Pratt’s death through the former activist’s family members. He did not know what caused Pratt’s death, but said he had suffered from high blood pressure.

Hanlon said Pratt refused to carry any resentment about his treatment by the legal system.

“He had no anger, he had no bitterness, he had no desire for revenge. He wanted to resume his life and have children,” he said. “He would never look back.”

The Los Angeles Times, which first reported Pratt’s death, quoted a family member as saying he died Thursday.

Pratt was convicted in 1972 of being one of two men who robbed and fatally shot schoolteacher Caroline Olsen on a Santa Monica tennis court in December 1968. No one else was arrested.

Pratt claimed he was in Oakland for Black Panther meetings the day of the murder, and that FBI agents and police hid and possibly destroyed wiretap evidence that would prove it.

His lawyers, who included high-profile defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, blamed his arrest on a politically charged campaign by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI against the Black Panthers and other perceived enemies of the U.S. government.

Pratt’s belated reversal of fortune came with the disclosure that a key prosecution witness hid the fact he was an ex-felon and a police informant.

Superior Court Judge Everett Dickey granted him a new trial in June 1997, saying the credibility of prosecution witness Julius Butler — who testified that Pratt had confessed to him — could have been undermined if the jury had known of his relationship with law enforcement. He was freed later that month.

Cochran, best known representing such clients as O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson, called the day Pratt’s freedom was secured “the happiest day of my life practicing law.”

Prosecutors announced two years after the conviction was overturned that they would abandon efforts to retry him.

“I feel relieved that the L.A. DA’s office has finally come to their senses in this respect,” Pratt said at the time. “But, I am not relieved in that they did not come clean all the way in exposing their complicity with this frame-up, this 27-year trauma.”

He settled a false imprisonment and civil rights lawsuit against the FBI and city of Los Angeles for $4.5 million in 2000.

Comment by Marvin X

We mourn the transition of Geronimo Pratt. He was a warrior of the highest degree for Black Liberation. He was a longtime associate of Eldridge Cleaver who communicated with him during his 27 years of confinement. Geronimo has a child by Cleaver's daughter, Joju. Perhaps the last time he was in the Bay Area he spoke of his high blood pressure, saying he was guilty of not dealing with it. I'm taking my pills as I write.

FYI, the FBI continued spying on Geronimo during his confinement, using a Black Panther visitor as an informant. The person confessed to him upon his release and he forgave the person as he did those involved in the assassination of Black Panther leaders Alprentis Bunchy Carter and John Huggins, including US leader,Maulana Karenga. His spirit of reconciliation must be emulated by those in the Black Liberation Movement today.

G, we love you and shall miss you, but we know your position with the ancestors is secure. As-Salaam-Alaikum.
6/3/11

$50 Million Suit Over Malcolm X Bio

$50M SUIT OVER MALCOLM X BIO

NEWARK, NJ - On what would have been the 86th birthday of Malcolm X, criminal defense attorney and former Plainfield, NJ Mayor Mark Fury filed a $50 Million lawsuit against Columbia University, Viking Press and the estate of Manning Marable regarding Marable’s posthumously published biography, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.”

Fury is representing former Nation of Islam Minister Linward X Cathcart in the lawsuit filed in Newark federal court.

In his book, Marable suggests Cathcart “may have been involved in the murder” or worse, physically supervised the assassination of Malcolm X on the night of February 21, 1965 in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City.

The author also wrote that “Malcolm appears to have begun an illicit sexual affair with an eighteen year-old” secretary, and that both Mr. Cathcart and Malcolm X were involved with that same woman, right up to the night of Malcolm’s assassination. Mr. Cathcart vehemently denies these allegations.

Mr. Cathcart was seated in the auditorium the night Malcolm X was killed. “Mr. Cathcart was the only person searched at the door of the Audubon that night. He was permitted a seat down front because of his close relationship with Malcolm. He came, as did several hundred others, to hear what Malcolm had to say about his separation from the Nation of Islam and his plans for the Organization of African American Unity (OAAU).

“Within 24 hours of the shooting, Mr. Cathcart was among the first to be interviewed by the FBI. They found no evidence of his involvement. From that time to the present, no one has offered any basis for the scurrilous claims in Manning Marable’s book,” attorney Mark Fury said.

According to the 500-plus page volume, (which sat on Marable’s shelf for 30 years before being rushed to press after the author was diagnosed with a terminal lung disease in 2010) Mr. Cathcart and Malcolm X shared the previously mentioned girlfriend that Mr. Cathcart actually did not formally meet until after the death of Malcolm X.

Manning Marable suggests that Malcolm X was both a homosexual and a whore-monger; that his wife Betty Shabazz slept with other men during their marriage with the knowledge and consent of Malcolm X, and that his alleged mistress “may have” spent the night with him in a hotel on the night before his death.

“This egregious twisting of facts, the licentious use of innuendo and the proliferation of outright lies is beneath the dignity of the late professor and the institution that helped him research and finance this project for more than 30 years”, said Fury. “There is no basis for any of these statements or conclusions. This book is a libelous, slanderous attack on several of the most important figures in American history (the writer also raises serious questions about the motives and credibility of the co-author of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” Alex Haley). Everyone should feel cheated and attacked, not just Malcolm enthusiasts or even just African Americans. This is an attack on all of us,” Fury said.

Hamza Khatib, the Middle East's Emmett Till

Hamza Khatib was used as target practice. The bullets were not used to kill Hamza but to torture him. Imagine anyone being shot repeatedly in the arms and legs just because someone felt like it – now imagine that “anyone” be a frightened thirteen year old whose only fault was expressing, in the only way that he knows, his opinion in a country where that luxury is not given.

Hamza Khatib was castrated and his hands, feet, and abdomen were severely beaten. Overall, men in power who don’t care about him being so young and innocent subjected this teenager, for a period of well over a month, to most signs of abuse and torture imaginable.

Hamza Khatib and Emmett Til, two teenagers worlds apart, yet both suffered crucifixion at the hands of a society afraid of its shadow, let alone its children. The majority in the Middle East are children, thus the nature of his brutal murder reveals how dictatorial regimes fear the generation bound to replace them, unless these children are turned around, i.e., aborted, reactified, incarcerated or assassinated. Hamza and Emmett were not wanted simply because they were free beings, exercising the freedom of youth.

The power of youth cannot be eternally suppressed, maybe for a time the will participate in reactionary behavior, but once they see the light, we know the result, we see it in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria. Syria has long been a police state, a brutal regime that tolerated no opposition whatsoever.

My son Darrel/Abdul (RIP), won a Fulbright Fellowship to the University of Damascus. He told me what he endured as a young student, how the secret police interrogated him almost daily. Why was he going to the American Embassy to swim? Why was he hanging around those filthy Palestinians? He said there were Africans in Syria who are virtual slaves since their passports were taken, thus they cannot leave. Of course my dear friend Dr. Mohja Kahf has informed us of the terror in Syria. She recently sent out a passionate video reading her poem My People Are Rising!

Dr. Mohja Kahf,

Syrian-American

poet/novelist/professor

We salute the people of Syria, now led with inspiration from the child martyr of their revolution, Hamza Khatib. The murder of Emmett Till advaced Black liberation, let Hamza advance the liberation of Syria and the Middle East. "A child shall lead them."
--Marvin X

1/2/11

Happy Birthday and Happy Father's Day

Children and Grandchildren of
Marvin X












I thank my father for not disappearing, but forever remaining present in my life. I was exposed to healthy eating, good restaurants and my favorite Indian food from my father. I fell in love with the absorption of news, lectures and the pursuit of intellectual knowledge from my father. I gained my boldness that is sometimes offensive to the timid of heart from my father.

He didn’t provide financial support to his children, but I do not hold any grudges against him for what he did not do. I embrace all that he did do for my siblings and me. I cannot change the past, but I am thankful for what was invested into my life through him. I was able to experience his life which provided a strong foundation for me to embrace my rich cultural heritage.

I challenge people to learn how to embrace the essence of the beauty that we each have to offer. There will not be one person on this earth that you love everything that the individual has to offer. By loving my father, I have learned to embrace that which is beautiful about him, and that which I disagree with, is not a hindrance to our continued love. I see so much dissension in our world because individuals don’t share a person’s political, religious or other ideological perspective and as a result the entire person is vilified. Human beings are complex, especially the mature, the learned and those who are seeking to grow. Just as there are many pieces of me to love, there are just as many pieces of me to loathe. My father has helped me to understand how a person pushes his essence forward and exists as he is, and you can either chose to love or depart. I have chosen to love him for being bold enough to be who he is, as complicated as this can be. This is the essence of love. It is easy to love the loveable, but we begin to reflect the beauty of God’s light and love when we can love that which is unloveable in others.

My father has challenged me to be free to be me, to seek truth, to seek knowledge, and to do my “thang” following the bliss that God and I have outlined, not according to anyone else’s standard, and for that I love you.

Nefertitti Jackmon is a writer, nonprofit consultant/organizer and educator who resides in Houston, Texas. She is also the oldest of Marvin X's three daughters, along with Muhammida and Amira. He also has a son, Marvin K. Another son, Darrel/Abdul, made his transition in 2002 at 38 years old.

America, A Nation of Profiteers and Blood Suckers of the Poor

Bernie Madoff, the Grand Wizard of Profiteering











America, A nation of profiteers


The economic foundation of America began with the profit motive above all others. Even freedom morphed into the free market economy, thus everything in America can be sold for a proper price. The supreme commodity was, of course, human beings or the African chattel slaves, personal property slaves or more properly, those human beings caught up into the slave system. There availability as human beings for personal property of the slave owning class, including those wonderful, freedom loving founding fathers, Washington, Jefferson, et al., contradicts all verbiage and declarations to the contrary concerning freedom, justice, liberty and equality.

James Baldwin told me in a 1968 interview at his New York apartment, "We're the only thing that happened here, nothing else happened here but us. And it's a wonder we all haven't gone stark raving mad." This was an awful indictment of the American slave system. For sure, in a slave society, the slave is the reason for the season. Even the master is ultimately subservient to the slave, although he imagines otherwise. He may initially profit from the slave, but in the end the "hunter is captured by the game." There is no slave in his right mind who does not envision overthrowing his master.

And yet at the present moment, the North American African is the vital commodity, worth between $50,000 to $200,000 (juveniles) per inmate per year to be locked down for criminal behavior under the US Constitution, in which indentured servitude is legal. Imagine, the 2.4 milion incarcerated never thought they were going into slavery upon doing "time." The youth were so ignut and arrogant they declared, "Aw, nigguh, I can do this time standing up," yeah, twenty-five to life standing up!

In the game they say how you start out is how you end up. Thus, America is simply ending up as she started, a slave society. Today her desire is for wage slaves who will work with few benefits, and no job guarantees. Ideally, contract workers are desired who can be retired at the drop of a hat. They have no job security or social security. They have nothing. They are slaves or persons caught up in the American slave system. But they are hopeless and hapless persons, unable to envision and future for themselves in spite of seeing before them nothingness and dread.

America has no desire to entertain the notion of a just or fair market economy, for this would wreak the very notion of the free market ideal of blood sucking the poor across the planet, of seizing their natural resources at the point of a gun, for this nation's history is repleat with land grabbing and people grabbing, with no regard for the humanity of the people or the divinity of the land and resources.

What does America care about Gross National Happiness, no, her concern is soley with profits, quarterly profit, no matter that the profit motive is killing the American people and the global villagers who are forced to encounter the American slave system of free market economics. Free to do what? Free to charge for any and everything. Free markets to kill, to steal, to rob and destroy the people, the land, the air, the water. What freedom is this except the freedom of madness, the freedom of the greedy, the blood suckers of the poor.

America is going broke because her health system is up to the highest bidder, i.e., insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry that is in league with the petrochemical industry from which oil feeds the wheels of America's addiction to White Supremacy or conspicuous consumption, the raw materialism that allows women and men to have closets full of shoes and clothes not needed or wanted, but purchased in their sick addiction to the world of make believe or naked materialism.

Without things, Americans have no reason for being, for it is the grand narrative, the supreme conversation, what do you have and where are you at? Janet Jackson asked, "What have you done for me lately?" The real question is what have you done for yourself and then what have you done for somebody else, especially since we were taught the Christian dictum, "It is better to give than receive."

The profit is driving America to hell. We need only stand aside and watch her fall into the bottomless pit. No matter whether the issue is health care, education, incarceration, politics or economics, the show is over. This revolution will be televised, with all praise due to Gil Scott.

You watched Egypt fall before your eyes, Tunisia, Yemen is but a minute away, and Syria, soon to come. And then the Grand Master Flash of them all, Saudi Arabia shall fall into the dustbin of history, along with her Sunni sycophants around the world.

Where will America be without the House of Saud? America will be standing with her dick in her hand and her heart racing! But she will not be able to save the House of Saud, for it must fall into the dustbin of history and reactionary theology and cave minded pseudo morality that has no place in the modernity of the new millennium.

The concept of kings, presidents for life, gunboat democracy, Christian imperialism, Western globalism or neo-colonialism, must join relics of the past era. Let the people stand and shout to high heaven that the king is dead, the president for life is no more, the prime minister and his children have been run out of town. Yes, let the people shout to high heaven that the show is over. The long history of eternal servitude has ended.

Now it is indeed about Gross National Happiness. What shall we do to make everyone happy?
How shall we provide for communal happiness, not individual but communal. And so it is ultimately not about a profit motive but the human motive, the people motive, the ancestor motive, the Divine motive. And we know God hears those who praise Him. Our Lord, to Thee is due all praise!
--Marvin X
6/1/11