Sharp Stated Parallels:

The first leader of independent Ghana, Kwame Nkruma once stated: “Capitalism is a gentlemen’s method of slavery”. The American activist Mother Jones, also stated, before Nkruma was even born, that “One does not have to vote to raise hell.” Mother Jones did not want women or men to go from one form of slavery into merely another form of slavery. At this time in history, the public is disillusioned with politics and most know that the election system in the US is an illusion of democracy.  One can bet that the turnout in the upcoming election will be significantly less than the previous election. I for one have been considering the George Carlin approach (fuck politics).  The Corporate state has brainwashed the masses for way too long, and one needs to make more noise than just vote.

Once in awhile I stumble on a discarded library book that seems no longer of interest to a library due to its publication date but supplies significant information and insight. Last week I picked up a copy of John Gunther’s 1955 text “Inside Africa” for fifty-cents. The author traveled and reported on nearly every nation in Africa at the time, and this was prior to the colonial move to grant countries in Africa independence. From Slave Trade to capitalist plundering of the richest continent, Africa has been and continues to be plundered by powerful interests.

Before 2011’s NATO intervention in Libya, and before Gaddafi’s 1969 revolution, John Gunther provides information of US interest in Libya. Just after World War II and afterwards the US had a military base in Libya near Tripoli known as Wheelus Field. The US also had a military base in Asmara, Eritrea and another in Morocco. Throughout the reign of apartheid South Africa the number one buyer of Uranium mined by South Africa in their borders and South-West Africa (now known as Namibia) was the United States. Uranium is the military industrial complex’s favorite natural resource to build bombs.

Before Mugabe’s 1979’s victory over apartheid Rhodesia, where for a moment in time, like Gaddafi, he had emerged as a revolutionary hero, the copper trade between Rhodesia and the US was significantly high in the 1950’s. Both Libya’s and Zimbabwe’s dictators helped stand up to imperial domination. But the nature of power corrupted them. However, their teachers on how to behave in the capitalist world did root with colonial capitalism.

John Gunther reflected: “No Industry can operate forever on the basis of discrimination against the huge majority…”(Gunther). He was referring the British, French, Belgian, and Portuguese business practices in Africa during the 1950’s and prior. But the same holds true to the US business practices globally and nationally. The double standard of the Truman Doctrine after World War II to assist in democracy building worldwide was rhetorical. Though Gunther, who was not an activist, and who favored western democratic principles, did not go out of his way to point out the misconception, but his words hold information that reflects what followed over the next fifty years.

When Tunisia sought US assistance to get the French out of their nation, the US under Woodrow Wilson and then Truman did not get involved, noted Gunther. Wilson and yet again Truman also did not get involved in the early 1950’s when Ho Chi Minh sought assistance from the US to get the French out and build a democratic system. When Ho Chi Minh was blatantly ignored and disregarded twice by the double standard, he then sought communist interest for his people.

In Nadine Gordimer's novel 'A Sport of Nature', written before the official end of apartheid in South Africa, the author's narrator notes that when countries in Africa such as Angola, South Africa, and Namibia finally gain independence depending on the treatment the US has supported over the time of previous dictators will determine how their future relations with new governments will be (244). She notes that those who have actively ignored the double-standard will not be respected. 

Kwame Nkruma did not want to embrace the western corporate style economic policies that did not respect younger nations hopes for genuine development nor did he want to embrace communism; but because he chose an independent root, he was taken out of office in 1972. In Gunther’s book, he notes Kwame's reasonable approach to moving towards independence could be short lived. It was. After independence came, his astute leadership was not worthy enough for obedience to British or US interests. Instead the West favored loyal dictators without certainty of how they may evolve, such as Mobuto in Congo, the Shah in Iran, Saddam in Iraq, and King Farouk of Egypt (et al).

Even Dick Cheney and George H W Bush continually in their different roles in varying administrations in the 1970’s and 1980’s supported apartheid South Africa and considered Nelson Mandela a terrorist; only until after he was released did they embrace him as a freedom fighter. But throughout most decades both voices from multiple US administrations as far back as the Nixon administration, were heavily connected to industries that profited from natural resources that sought material to build up the war-industrial complex. They cared little about the human treatment of those they did business with.  

The American citizen whether accepting or refuting cannot avoid factual history. Interpretations of facts can be twisted, but the facts do exist. There is evidence. Most of my fellow Americans, just as with Brits and the French (etc) towards the previous colonial era either don't know history or do not care enough to bother. In Nadine Gordimer's 'Sport of Nature', her character reflects that "assumptions of understanding that understand nothing." She goes on to reflect on the character's little daughter who asks her mother where babies come from? She tells her that they grow in her tummy, and as far as the girl is concerned it is an acceptable answer. Anything more is 'unthinkable for her to grasp' at her level of understanding. "She doesn't know enough to want to ask" to know more. "The questions aren't even ever the right questions ... In each society there's a different way of putting things, a different way of interpreting what happens and what has been said (Gordimer). By not going beyond what is acceptable disinterest, one could say that interpretations of 9-11-2001 attacks required more questions than mere retaliation. 

Along the lines of Gordimer's character development, Yuri Smertin in his analysis of Kwame Nkrumah draws in Herbert Marcuse's assertion "that in the developed capitalist countries, characterized by an increased rate of scientific and technological progress and a relatively high standard of living, the working class was integrated into the 'Consumer Society', lost its revolutionary potential and was changed from the antagonist into the defender of the bourgeois system" (Marcuse). For example, in the US women during the civil rights and women's rights movements fought for equality and the ability to reach a higher standard of identity. This was true during Mother Jones' era and during Gloria Steinem's era. However, the majority of unconscious women in the US society today still give their daughter's Barbie dolls. Barbie has historically exploited young girls in the US to look a certain way, dress a certain way, focus on physical appearance more so than intellect; while at the same time, young women in factories in China are forced to accept child and slave-labor conditions to make the dolls that they cannot even afford. Barbie not only manipulates women in the US but women in China and other nations where the dolls are manufactured.      

No election is going to change the system with shallow political voices spitting out campaign speeches. It is inevitable regardless of the US election that the 21st Century will not belong to the US. While the imperial British and French dominated the 19th Century and the US dominated the 20th Century, the 21st Century will belong to Asia, Africa, and South America. The majority of the population in the US has changed face and the diverse minorities are in deed combining to be the majority.  Eventually the disenfranchised in the world will overcome as any other oppressive force. Slavery in any form if it involves continual exploitation will always be malignant. As Gunther noted, no industry can operate forever on the basis of discrimination against the huge majority.     

Same Old, Same Old

I haven’t been active enough with my writing this summer. I seem at a loss for words that I have already said before. However, my summer reading list has been quite active.  As for current affairs, my disappointment with the predictable is repetitive: from General Electrics monopoly over the Olympics with NBC to Olympic sponsors of Dow Chemical and British Petroleum, who lack social accountability. I am concerned that the progressive voice is hitting deaf ears.

My summer reading list has included: Huda Shaarawi’s Harem Years, the challenges of an Egyptian activist in the early years of the 20^th Century; Nawal El Saadawi’s Walking Through Fire, a current activist exiled from Egypt, who lived through the British colonial exploits through the mixed messages of the Nasser regime towards women’s rights, through the Sadat and Mubarak schemes, and today; Leymah Gbowee’s Mighty Be Our Powers, her memoir reflecting on her life organizing women in Liberia to overcome violence during the 1990’s conflicts up until her activities today; Assia Djebar’s The Tongue’s Blood Does Not Run Dry, a collection of vivid stories reflecting on the multiple challenges women in Algeria face; Ken Saro-Wiwa’s A Month and A Day, his detention diary reflecting on his battle against the Nigerian government to protect the rights of the Ogoni people, and ever since the British Empire passed through Nigeria, greed and corruption has fused violence in the land, and will continue as long as oil is in the delta; and finally, Ngugi wa Thiongo’s Dreams in a Time of War, the Kenyan novelist’s reflection of his youth in Kenya just before independence from the British.

Knowledge is Power! These books reflect the ripples of aftershocks from not just the British colonial period, but also the French, the US, and the corporate dominance for natural resources, land, and power over other people. 

Last year at this time, the infamous London Riots shook the British streets. Now at this time, the 2012 Olympics have turned England into a police state until the international games are complete. Corporate dominance of the games has made athletes less about physical triumph and more about advertisement and sponsorship. In Bhopal India, hundreds of survivors of the 1984 chemical explosion and next generations, still exposed to birth defects from remnants still surrounding the city from the abandoned factory, have conducted a protest and Special Olympics to show outrage that Dow Chemical should be sponsoring the official Olympics, regardless of their humanitarian track record.

As well, with BP Oil sponsoring the Olympics after the Gulf of Mexico fiasco and environmental carelessness, one would expect more from leaders of the Olympic committee; but in truth, this double-tongue, Janus-faced event has continually ignored human accountability. In Buzz Bissinger’s essay Faster, Higher, Stronger, No Longer; the author lists controversies from nearly every Olympics since 1968 when ten days before the Summer Olympics in Mexico the government massacred thousands of protesting students, to the 2008 games when China hosted the Olympics while cracking down on protestors in the western Xinjiang region.      

I brought the Buzz Bissinger essay into my summer school class last week, my students yawned. Regardless of the commercials, they just haven’t been watching. So perhaps this summer is a blah slide from activism. I still have my reading list to inspire me. I am half way through the stack mentioned earlier. What can I learn from my heroes? That life is a challenge and will always be a challenge. Like all those voices of resistance, the need to make noise is an endless road but an important one to trek.