U.S. Imperialism Keeps The Fire Burning

U.S. imperialism adds fuel to the fire, but from afar

Economic, commercial and financial sanctions, as a means to exert pressure on a country, do not solve the current crisis, but rather add fuel to the fire and aggravate the international economic situation

By Madeleine Sautié Rodríguez | informacion@granmai.cu

Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee First Secretary and President of the Republic cited three elements that are sustaining and aggravating the world’s current difficulties, during his closing remarks at the Ministry of Culture’s annual review for the year 2021, held at José Martí National Library.

The tightened United States’ economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba; the aggressiveness of the United States internationally; and the uncertainty created by covid-19 were the three issues impacting the current situation he emphasized.

With regard to the blockade, the President said that we are now experiencing a different moment, a particular feature of recent years, "Things began to get very complicated in the second half of 2019, when the Trump administration adopted more than 240 measures that cut off our sources of financing.  They placed us on their list of countries that allegedly support terrorism.  And all this has been maintained under Joe Biden's administration," he explained.

The blockade, he recalled, has caused shortages, financial persecution, persecution of fuel suppliers, in particular, and to this was added the even greater aggressiveness of the U.S. government against Cuba, with a broad media campaign demonizing our country, in an attempt to discredit all elements of the Cuban Revolution, seeking to construct the appearance of total failure, that everything is wrong and everything the country does to mitigate current conditions does nothing to solve the problems, he stated.

The President pointed out that this aggressiveness can be seen in the way the events of July 11 were addressed and the way a play was staged, announcing to the world that on November 15 the Cuban Revolution would collapse, and now they are attempting to distort Cuba's position with respect to the current events in Europe.  This imperialist hostility is not only directed toward Cuba; it is evident at a global level, he noted.

He called for reflection on the fact that we live in a world that needs peace more than ever, at a time when more than twenty countries have not yet been able to vaccinate even 10% of their populations and do not know when they will be able to do so, reminding those present that only 61% of the population worldwide has been fully vaccinated.  We know, he said, that until the planet’s population is immunized, the pandemic will continue.

It is never the time to be starting wars, the President said, adding, "They have mounted this aggressive media campaign, attempting to distort the essences.  I understand very well that our people are following the current military conflict in Europe and the regrettable loss of human lives, in addition to the material damage and the general threat to peace and regional and international security, but Cuba has expressed itself clearly, firmly and repeatedly, in strict adherence to our foreign policy that is based on the principles of the Revolution, with careful and rigorous analysis of the facts from all angles," he said.

And this is a serious matter, of extreme complexity, with historical roots, including those of recent history, which cannot be ignored, just as the conditions that have led to this situation cannot be ignored, he said.  "Cuba firmly and consistently defends international law, the United Nations Charter and the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace," he reaffirmed, assuring that, "We defend peace under all circumstances and unambiguously oppose the use of force against any state."

As a small country we understand this better than anyone, besieged for more than 60 years.  Under constant threat, we have suffered state terrorism, military aggression, biological warfare and a brutal blockade, and we are absolutely clear about the value of the principles of international law that serve as protection against unilateralism, imperialism, hegemonic policies and attempts to dominate developing countries.  These are principles and norms that we have defended firmly and consistently in all scenarios.  On this occasion, we have denounced political manipulation and double standards, and we have spoken the truth, he said.

An offensive military encirclement has been established around Russia, he said, condemning the fact that, for decades, the U.S. government has progressively expanded its hegemony and military presence in the region, with the continued expansion of NATO in Eastern European countries, ignoring commitments made by U.S., European and Soviet leaders in the 1990s, after the unification of Germany and the disintegration of the USSR, he recalled.

This conflict could have been avoided if the Russian Federation's well-founded demands for security guarantee had been seriously and respectfully addressed, he said.

Díaz-Canel noted, "To think that Russia should remain passive in the face of NATO's offensive military encirclement is irresponsible, to say the least.  They have taken that country to an extreme situation," he said, pointing out that the continued use of economic, commercial and financial sanctions as a means to exert pressure on a country, does not solve the current crisis, but rather adds fuel to the fire and aggravates the international economic situation, which has been severely affected by these two difficult years of pandemic, he added.

U.S. imperialism is adding fuel to the fire, he said, but from afar, using European countries as its backyard.  Cuba has made this point regularly in different international events, he stated, and recalled the speech delivered by Army General Raúl Castro, on February 22, 2014, in which he emphatically addressed this issue.

As we have reiterated, we will continue to advocate for a serious and constructive diplomatic solution to the current crisis in Europe, advocating peaceful means that guarantee the security and sovereignty of all, as well as regional and international peace, stability and security, he stated.  Cuba has been obliged to confront the pandemic under the brutal economic, commercial and financial U.S. blockade, which has been qualitatively escalated since 2019 to an even more damaging level, he noted.

We will have the opportunity to review these highly sensitive issues in greater depth and trust that the people will continue to keep an eye on these events and make the effort required to distinguish truth from manipulation, he stated.

Source

The assault of anti-Americanism in Latin America

By Rebecca Theodore


Amidst a surge of anti-American sentiment in Latin America, the US now begins to feel the billowing crest of the flood as it has reached a particularly high peak. Far from the backed up dams, tidal waves still break away in some kind of slaughter and just when it is thought that they have impounded it safe, let alone behind new barrier walls, China accompanies the EU in positioning itself to supply its ever growing oil thirst with Latin American oil at the expense of the United States. To state it simply, America has lost control of Latin America. The surge cannot be contained.

While French scholars imply that anti-Americanism is only fully justified if it implies systematic opposition, a sort of allergic reaction to America as a whole, US political scientists on the other hand view anti-Americanism as a term that cannot be isolated as a consistent phenomenon. Whatever the implication or the precise definition of what the sentiment entails, it is certain that Latin American states are presently demonstrating their inexorable critical impulses toward American social, economic, and political institutions, traditions, and values.

It is the contention of many that anti Americanism in Latin America stemmed from imperialism and globalization and from economic and social frustrations perpetrated by the US. However, it is not without its advantages as anti-Americanism serves the goals of opportunistic politicians and organizations as well.

While Americans remain focused on events in the Middle East, the EU has been working zealously to establish itself as the top trading partner and investor in Latin America, taking advantage of the region’s economic and political weakness. The role that the cessation of the Cold War played to rid the church in Latin America of the liberalism that had penetrated it under Communist influence is now uniting it in commerce and trade. Dominated by the single universal religion of Roman Catholicism, the EU and Latin America are more than just a trade duo. They are a religious, commercial and political partnership.

It cannot be disputed that the EU and China are creating a dominant cross-Atlantic power bloc in Latin America linked by trade, mutual economic interest, and social, political and religious affinity. With plans of building an oil refinery in Venezuela and implementation of ways to secure a way to economically ship Venezuelan oil across the Pacific to its own shores, China’s dream of building a 138-mile-long railway across Colombia from the Gulf of Uraba on the Atlantic coast to the port of Cupica on the Pacific coast will see large shipments of Venezuelan crude and Colombian coal to China.

This is the new technology that all eyes in America and the world should be focused on. The completion of this railroad already being hailed as a land-based Panama Canal could transform the oil politics of Latin America overnight, making China a prime recipient of this oil. Hence, America walks blindly into a situation where 10 percent of its oil imports are being redirected to Asia due to a lack of influence over the Panama Canal and Colombian railways.

Moreover, with silver from Mexico and Peru, tin from Bolivia and iron ore from Venezuela and Brazil, steady supplies of raw materials which Latin America readily provides in abundance, South and Latin America is an eye-catching mélange for resource-hungry Europeans and Chinese. Unfortunately, President Obama’s visit comes a little too late, for the waters keep rising and the rains continue in unrelenting fury.

According to recent published reports, European Union trade with Latin America is at an all -time high. With the Wiki Leaks disclosure that the United States now considers the Latin American Mercosur trade bloc an anti-American organization, Mercosur gradually transforms from an imperfect customs union to a more obstructive and anti-American organization. The EU is currently Mercosur’s main trading partner.

With German corporate giants such as Krupp, Siemens, Bayer, Volkswagen, I.G. Farben and Deutsche Bank steadily becoming household names across the Central American isthmus using the cheap labour force to create competition for the US, and with an established office in Cuba, right on the back doorstep of the US, the EU armed in its Machiavellian ambition phases its infiltration of Latin America as an economically unified, politically stable Latino bloc necessary to ensure constant delivery of goods and services.

It is clear that the United States is left out in the chilling cold waters of this torrential flood as Latin America merges with Europe and China and begins calling the shots in world commerce.

March 23, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

What does the emergence of a unified, anti-American, Europe-oriented trade bloc mean?

By Rebecca Theodore


If argument persists that a state cannot be fully understood if it is isolated from its historical development, then the transition from democracy to authoritarianism for Latin American countries implies that there must be a constant rewriting of the social contract based on new social and economic relations that are continually emerging in Latin America. Paradoxically, the return of democracy from authoritarianism not only demonstrates that ‘a government is legitimate if and only if no better feasible policy exists’ but also exhibits the fact that it is possible for democracies to be authoritarian as well.

Opponents have argued that Latin American state formation is more closely aligned with European state patterns due to colonial influences from the fifteenth century and it is to Western Europe that one needs to turn in order to uncover the roots of the embryonic parallel. However, it must be remembered that the US has also been deeply ingrained in Latin American affairs since 1823, when President James Monroe created the Monroe Doctrine to keep European powers out of the New World. In light of this, America’s reputation as the great superpower of the Andes and the savior of protectionism and liberalism is now viewed in Latin America as a policy of imperialism and a sign of utter weakness.

While China’s ideological connection of communism and socialism weakens US power in Latin America, it is evident that the European trade bloc is now Latin America’s primary trade partner. Latin American trade group Mercosur is the only multinational continent in the world to be united by a common linguistic background, a common culture, and a common religion factor making South America’s path to assimilation a lot smoother into the congregation of the European States of Europe. The legal structure of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) not only unites South America’s two major trade blocs -- Mercosur and the Andean Community -- but has now launched a South American Defense Council, unlike a NATO alliance to mediate regional conflicts and defense from foreign intervention and excludes the US from military planning in the region.

Moreover, Latin America is far more important to Europe as an industrial base than as a simple trade partner. The giant storehouse of timber, natural gas, crude oil, minerals, precious metals, and iron in the region from the Rio Grande to Terra del Fuego are resources that Europe needs in its ascension to world supremacy. The completion of the largest steel-producing complex in Brazil by ThyssenKrupp means steel products will be actively churned out to be sold to Germany and South American countries, with Venezuela as the principal buyer. This also means that the US-backed Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas (FTAA) is dead. Estados de América Latina ha creado su propio barrio, y los Estados Unidos de América no es parte de ella. (Latin American states have created their own neighborhood and the US is not a part of it.)

It is clear that anti-Americanism is now the common premise across every political party in Latin and South America. While Evo Morales is rapidly following Chavez’s lead by nationalizing Bolivia’s oil and gas in a move that reverberates that of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe’s land for grab deals, the newly elected president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff is just a hand-chosen puppet of wildly popular President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s policies. With huge oil reserves recently discovered off Brazil’s coast, and with a rare earth debate gaining momentum between China and Germany that excludes American interest, Rousseff inherits an economy that is among the world's hottest emerging markets and this means that it will need more than a party shift in the US House of Representatives to advance bilateral relationship.

Hugo Chávez on the other hand has, without doubt, polarized Venezuela’s society and intellectual debate by undermining civil liberties, threatening the continuity of democratic governance, hence his accompaniment of a repulsive episode of an ALBA alliance that provided Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and Ecuadoran Rafael Correa with a foretaste of how to rewrite the constitution and establish authoritarian rule in Honduras, leaving a Honduran legislature buried in turmoil and controversy over US intelligence officials bribing Ecuadoran police, and recruiting informants among them. Argentina, Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, and Chile are all offering radical transformation and presenting different alternatives to deal with the consequences of economic reforms.

Now that the US has lost Latin America to Europe and China as primary trade partners also means that the Republicans’ tsunami win in the House of Representatives will prove that Barack Obama is not suffering the blunders of a political double standard on the economy as has been so widely anticipated. As Republicans embrace their ambitious legislative agenda they will in time notice that the U.S. economy is starving to death and reducing the deficit or the current unemployment rate of 9.6% and fighting the Great Recession is no magic but a sign of the times.

Trade with Latin America, coupled with other economic factors, has already started reading the eulogy of the US dollar, thereby exposing the grave danger of the economic reverberations that are just now beginning to shake the nucleus of the world’s financial systems. Regardless of what anyone says, this is not an Obama problem, it is a global problem -- “blame it on the economy stupid”. The only self-sustaining economic bloc is the establishment of an EU-style government and for this reason EU status must be fortified in the UN because Latin and South American states, Caribbean states and even Africa have no option other than complete reliance on the economic ties of a German-led EU, or cling to the apron strings of a Russo-China alliance in their quest for economic reforms.

Whether it means that economic reformers in the US need to employ authoritarian tactics to defend democratic processes or risk total failure or that democratic governments in Latin America are not authoritarian enough to defend positive economic reforms; it is clear that the new trend in Latin America is… Buenos dias Europe, Adios America, pero quando o povo esta morrendo de fome, a democracia e’ so uma palavra.” Good morning Europe, Goodbye America, because when the people are starving democracy is just a word.

November 15, 2010

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

The odious tyranny imposed on the world

Reflections of Fidel

OUR era is characterized by an unprecedented fact: the threat to human survival imposed on the world by imperialism.

The painful reality should not come as a surprise to anybody. We have seen it coming at an accelerated pace in recent decades, at a rate difficult to imagine.

Does this mean that Obama is responsible for or the promoter of that threat? No! It simply demonstrates that he is ignoring reality and neither wants to or would to able to overcome it. Or rather, he is dreaming of the unreal in an unreal world. "Ideas without words, words without meaning," as a brilliant poet once stated.

Although the U.S. writer Gay Talese, considered to be one of the principal representatives of the new journalism, affirmed on May 5 – according to a European news agency – that Barack Obama embodies the finest history of the United States in the last century, an opinion that could be shared in certain aspects, in no way does that alter the objective reality of the human destiny.

Events are happening, like the ecological disaster that has just occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, which demonstrate how little governments can do against those who control capital; those who, in both the United States and Europe, via the economy of our globalized planet, are the ones who decide the destiny of the peoples. We could take as one example measures coming from the U.S. Congress itself, published in the most influential media of that country and Europe, just as they have been circulated on Internet, without altering one word.

"Radio and TV Martí blatantly lie while broadcasting unfounded information, states a report by the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which recommends that both stations be permanently moved from Miami and relocated in Washington and be ‘fully’ integrated into the propaganda framework of Voice of America (VOA).

"Besides deceiving the public… both broadcasting stations use ‘offensive and incendiary language,’ which discredits them.

"After 18 years, Radio and TV Martí have failed to ‘make any discernable inroads into Cuban society or to influence the Cuban government…’

"The report, which was circulated this Monday [May 3], recommends that the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) become part of VOA, the official propaganda radio of the U.S. government.

"’Problems with adherence to traditional journalistic standards, miniscule audience size, Cuban government jamming, and allegations of cronyism have dogged the program since its creation,’" recognized the committee, headed by Democrat John Kerry."

"The committee recommends urgently removing both stations from Miami, highlighting the need to hire personnel in a more balanced way to produce a ‘depoliticized and professional product.’

"In the report, Kerry makes reference to Alberto Mascaró, the nephew of Pedro Roig’s wife—Roig is the general director of Radio and TV Marti—who was hired as the director of VOA Latin America thanks to his relative.

"The document reports in detail how, in February 2007, the former director of the TV Marti programs, "along with a relative of a member of Congress" (who was not named), pleaded guilty in the Federal Court to receiving $112,000 in illegal kickbacks from an OCB contractor. "The former OCB employee was sentenced to 27 months in jail and fined $5,000 after being found guilty for taking as much as 50% of all monies paid by TV Martí for the production of television programming by vendor Perfect Image."

Up to here, the Jean Guy Allard article that appeared on the Telesur website.

Another article, by U.S. professors Paul Drain and Michele Barry, from Stanford University (California), translated on the Rebelión website, states:

"The US blockade on Cuba proclaimed after Fidel Castro’s revolution ousted Batista’s regime is 50 years old this 2010. Its stated objective has been to help the Cuban people to attain democracy but a U.S. Senate report from 2009 concluded that ‘the unilateral blockade on Cuba has failed.’

"…despite the blockade, Cuba has achieved better healthcare results than most Latin American countries and comparable with those of most of the developed nations. Cuba’s average life expectancy is the highest (78.6 years) and it also has the highest density of medical doctors per capita – 59 doctors to 10,000 people – and the lowest mortality rate for children under one year of age (5.0 per 1,000 life births) and infant mortality (7.0 per 1,000 live births) among the 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

"In 2006, the Cuban government allocated about $355 per capita for healthcare" … "The annual healthcare cost assigned to an American citizen that same year was $6,714… Cuba also assigned less funds to healthcare than most of the European countries. But, the low costs of healthcare do not explain Cuba’s successes, which could be attributed to a greater emphasis on prevention and primary care that the island has been cultivating during the American commercial blockade.

"Cuba has one of the most advanced primary care systems of the world. The education of its population in disease prevention and healthcare promotion has made the Cubans less dependent on medical products to keep the population healthy. The opposite happens in the United States, which is highly dependent on medical provisions and technologies to keep its population healthy, but at a very high economic cost.
"Cuba has the highest rates of vaccination in the world as well as the highest number of births assisted by expert healthcare workers. The clinical care provided in doctors’ offices, policlinics and the largest regional and national hospitals are free of charge for patients…

"On March 2010, the U.S. Congress introduced a bill to strengthen healthcare systems and increase the number of healthcare experts sent to developing countries… "Cuba continues sending doctors to work in some of the poorest nations on the planet, something it started doing in 1961.

"Given the recent support for healthcare reform in the United States, the possibility exists of learning some good lessons from Cuba on how to develop a really universal healthcare system with an emphasis on primary care. The adoption of some of Cuba’s most successful healthcare policies could be a first step toward the normalization of relations. The U.S. Congress could instruct the Medicine Institute to study the successes of Cuba’s healthcare system and how to start a new era of cooperation between American and Cuban scientists."

For its part, the Tribuna Latina news website recently published an article on the new Immigration Law in Arizona:

"According to a survey published by the CBS network and The New York Times, 51% consider that the law is an appropriate focus in relation to immigration, while 9% consider that it should go even further on this matter. Opposing them, 36% think that Arizona has gone ‘too far.’"

"…two out of every three Republicans are backing the measure"… "while just 38% of Democrats say that they are in favor of the law…"

"On the other hand, one out of every two recognizes that, as a consequence of this regulation, it is ‘highly probable that persons from certain racial or ethnic groups will be detained more frequently than others,’ and 78% recognize that it will pose more burdens for the police.

"At the same time, 70% consider it probable, as a consequence of this measure, that the number of illegal residents and the arrival of new immigrants in the country will be reduced…’"

On Tuesday, May 6, 2010, under the headline "Arizona: a pretentious death from hunger," an article by journalist Vicky Peláez was published in Argenpress, which begins by recalling a phrase by Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Remember, always remember, that we are all descendants of immigrants and revolutionaries."

It is such a well-argued document that I do not wish to conclude this Reflection without including it.

"The huge marches of this May Day condemning the pernicious anti-immigration law passed in Arizona, have shaken all of the United States. At the same time, thousands of Americans, politicians, jurists, artists, organizations, civil organizations demanded that the federal government declare unconstitutional Law SB170, which resembles laws passed in Nazi Germany or South Africa in the apartheid period.

"However, despite fierce pressure against the pernicious law, neither their government nor 70% of the inhabitants of that state wish to accept the gravity of the situation that they have created in order to blame undocumented immigrants for the severe economic crisis that they are experiencing. Meanwhile, they are asking Barack Obama for money to pay 15,000 police; they are radicalizing their racist policies. Governor Jan Brewer stated that ‘illegal immigration implies rising crime and the emergence of terrorism in the state.’

"Placing undocumented immigrants on the same plane as terrorists authorizes the police to fire on people simply on the basis of the color of their skin, their clothing, what they are carrying in their hands or even their way of walking. Without any doubt, this will also affect the 280,000 Native Americans who live marginalized and in extreme poverty, as well as other minorities in addition to Hispanics, who have found refuge and work in this arid zone of the United States.

"Following the line of Republican Pat Buchanan, who says, ‘The United States must make a stronger crusade for America’s liberation from the barbarian hordes of hungry foreigners carrying exotic diseases,’ after hitting out at undocumented day laborers, construction workers, domestic employees, gardeners and cleaners, Governor Brewer has now directed her campaign against teachers of Hispanic origin.

"According to her new decree, teachers with a marked accent will not be able to teach in schools. But her crusade does not end there because, in all historical periods, ‘ethnic cleansing’ has always been accompanied by ideology. From now on, ‘ethnic studies and projects’ are abolished in schools. They are also banning the teaching of subjects that could promote resentment of a certain race or social class. This implies politicizing knowledge, converting myths created by the U.S. system into a reality. It also signifies exhuming the most respected thinkers in the United States such as Alexis de Tocqueville who, in 1835, said that ‘the place where an Anglo-American sets his boot is forever his. The province of Texas still belongs to Mexicans but soon there will not be one Mexican there. And that will happen anywhere.

"The sole consciousness of racists is hatred and the only weapon that can overcome it is the solidarity of human beings. This state was already defeated when it refused to make Martin Luther King Day a public holiday; the boycott was solid and overwhelming…"



Fidel Castro Ruz
May 7, 2010
6:15 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

granma.cu

Bahamas Blog International

The pain of enlightenment: Discarding the colonial mask

By NOELLE NICOLLS
Tribune Staff Reporter
nnicolls@tribunemedia.net:


MANY times in life we are confronted with the truth that ignorance is bliss..

But less we become too blind to our own self-destructive ways, let us not forget that "when you're dumb, you're dangerous".

A truth all too uncomfortable to accept is the fact that neither the abolition of slavery, majority rule, independence, civil rights, nor Christianization, restored the humanity, identity, position of power or culture of African people, now dispersed around the globe.

In the Bahamas, immigration officers regularly conduct raids on the Haitian community at job sites in the early morning, or bus stops in the mid afternoon. When a Haitian child returns home from school to a vandalized and empty house, what sort of humanity is there to speak of for that child? This is the unspoken reality of disempowered African people, in this instance Haitians in the Bahamas. Parents deported to Haiti with no consideration for their children. Children abandoned by the State, many times left to wonder the streets until a relative or community member absorbs them into the family.

African people, a classification for all people of African descent, have been so far removed from themselves they have virtually lost the ability to progress, to unify, to function at an optimum level, to move forward as a people. Almost every day this is played out, not in history class, but in headline news.

Atlanta, Georgia billboard: "Black children are an endangered species".

Voice of America: "UN Calls for Action to Prevent Spread of HIV/AIDS in Haiti". Jamaica Observer: "Jamaican government failing crime fight".

National Press Review:" Genital herpes hits black women hardest".

Seven-Sided Cube: "Deadly massacre in Nigeria didn't even spare infants".

Seattle Local: "Rate of black men's imprisonment rising".

Freeport News: "Chilling crime statistics".

Far from progress, the African community is on the path to self destruction..

This is no secret, examples abound, and this is no coincidence, but who really wants to look at the real reasons why. Reasons exist - rap music, no respect for elders, violent video games, drugs, homosexuality, the devil - but most are little more than symptoms, fantasies, illusions or white lies.

What of the deep wounds, festering below the surface, starving the African of vitality, depriving the African of self-knowledge, making the African prone to participate in his own demise?

Having been emasculated by the dehumanising experience of the Maafa, or centuries of suffering through slavery, imperialism, colonialisation, post-colonialism, and Willie Lynch inspired behaviour, most Africans are zombies to their own condition.

Many people tire to hear African people speak about slavery and its associated conditions because they lack an appreciation for the fact that colonial narratives persist today to the great detriment of African people.

Many people encourage the African community to forgive and forget, to move on, and to see modern society as a post-racial society, only because they lack an understanding of the lies, damned lies and the lying liars that perpetuate the myths.

I recall an elder advising me on dealing with someone who had done me wrong, forgive, but don't forget. I recall an African American civil rights activist saying, what we seek is not post-racial; because the racial identify of the African community is important culturally and spiritually.

The movement is for integration not assimilation, and in some instances, the desire is for separate but equal institutions.

The highest order of resistance is needed in the African community to push back, to challenge the thinking that slavery does not matter. Slavery is not just about physical barriers, many of which have been removed, or mental chains, many of which have been theorised, slavery is a symbol for the real and tangible loss of identity, loss of power and loss of culture, continually corroding the foundations on which African communities try to build.

The perpetuation of slavery-derived colonial narratives occur to the detriment of African people, most powerfully because it deprives African people of self-knowledge. These narratives will never be challenged or changed by the ruling minority class, the dominant culture, deniers of their existence, by assimilationists, or other races for which they have no negative impact. The African community will only be restored when it restores its own sense of "Nyon Nyor Nyan", which means "Who are we?" in the Grand Dakar Wolof language of West Africa.

Anyone educated in the formal education system, under established institutional structures, will be hard pressed to understand these perspectives. Anyone engaged in self-discovery - tantamount to awakening one's African consciousness at some level - might share a glimmer of understanding. Sadly, many who participate in this journey reach only as far as intellectual engagement, stopping just short of applying their knowledge to restore their way of life, stopping just short of where their real power lies.

My family is a living testament of this. Most Bahamian families do not contemplate the question: should we send the children to church? That is a given. To be a good Christian in a Christian nation, children must go to church. So I was surprised to hear my father recount the story about his argument with my mother over whether or not my brother and I should be sent to church.

My father was never sold on the idea of Church, thinking Sunday was the day for the family to spend together on the beach, and share Sunday dinner. Beyond that, he had fundamental problems with religion. Although he grew up grounded in a Church going family, Western religion never satisfied his spiritual needs. In the end, he gave in to my mother's wishes, for the sake of peace making. In the case of my mother, she knew of no alternative to satisfy the family's spiritual needs, so church was it.

Why all the scepticism of that which is so called holy? I completely understand my father's sentiments today, because African people have suffered greatly from the destructive colonial narratives about African history, culture and identity; from lies, dammed lies, and lying liars, the biggest of which have been perpetuated by Christians.

Christians, particularly Christian missionaries, are responsible for some of the greatest atrocities to the African race and they continue to wield their power to the death of the African spirit. It would serve African people well never to forget this fact, particularly as they seek to restore some semblance of order to their communities.

Unfortunately, there is little spiritual or intellectual freedom in the Bahamas to critically examine the Christianization of African people, without being oppressed, ostracized, or damned to hell. This process is important not to bash Christianity, or instruct Christians on how to be Christians, but for African people to take back rights to their own spirituality.

The Haitian case study is a clear example of how colonial narratives work their magic, a type of magic far worse than the 'black magic' of Hollywood's invention, Vodou portrayed in images of sorcery, zombies, bad spells and evil spirits. The seeds of intolerance, self-hate and division planted to turn Vodou into Satan and all things evil are the same seeds sewn to blind African people of their traditional African cultural practices. Many of these practices are retained in the West today, and they have the potential to be sources of great pride and vehicles for strengthening the African community.

Last month news emerged out of Haiti of Christian Evangelicals violently disrupting a Vodou ceremony being conducted for deceased earthquake victims..

According to Haitian police, protesters were responding to calls from their pastor, who urged his followers to attack the ceremony. The evangelicals threw rocks at practitioners, urinated on their Vévé, or sacred religious symbols, and vandalised their altars that contained offerings of food and rum for the ancestors.

Around the same time news emerged that Christian missionary groups were discriminating against Vodou practitioners in the distribution of relief supplies, using the aid as bargaining chips for buying souls. Some Vodou practitioners reportedly converted to Christianity out of fear they might lose the opportunity to receive badly needed supplies.

Since the January 12 earthquake, Catholics, Baptists, Scientologists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and other missionaries flocked to Haiti. The presence of Christian missionaries in Haiti is nothing new. Over the years, the army of Christian aid organisations have grown so large they virtually run Haiti's social services.

The relationship is not strictly benevolent, because for hundreds of years Christian missionaries have tried to entrench the colonial narrative equating Vodou with devil worship. Their efforts suffered a major blow in 2003, when Haiti's Catholic President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide declared Vodou an official religion of Haiti, setting out regulations for Vodou ceremonies, such as marriage, to have equal status to Christian ones.

It was no surprise then to hear Christian evangelical Pat Robertson speak of Haiti's pact with the devil. This is how the lie goes. A black witch doctor slave named Boukman and a Vodou priestess Cecile Fatiman presided over a pagan ritual on 14 August 1791 in which participants sacrificed a pig and drank its blood in order to form a pack with the devil in exchange for freedom from the French. On August 22, 1791, the Africans entered into a rebellion that persisted - not without setbacks - until Haiti declared itself free: the first free African republic.

As convenient a lie the 'pact with the devil' story may be, this colonial narrative, invented originally by Christian missionaries to demonize African liberationists and Vodou practitioners, is a corruption of actual historic events that should be a source of pride and strength for the African community. Instead, it is a source of shame and scandal; a mechanism to deny African people knowledge of one of the most important meetings and ceremonies perhaps to the entire emancipation and independence movement.

The story of the meeting at Bwa Kayiman in the northern mountains of Haiti some say is an amalgamation of two historical meetings: one a planning meeting, the other a Vodou ceremony. Whether it was one or two, the basis of the meeting was to unify the various African groups originating from different places in Africa, speaking different languages, and living on different plantations in Haiti. The Africans summoned the sacred energies of the universe and the power of the ancestors to support them on their mission to launch the liberation war. There was likely the ritual sacrificing of an animal and spilling of blood which is not only common in African tradition, but in secular and sacred rituals across the globe.

As a child, you learn one of the most sacred pacts two friends and make is to prick the hand of the other and exchange a handshake of blood. Christians ritually use blood in the Holy Communion. The ritual use of blood is not unique to traditional African culture.

There is a famous prayer, widely believed in Haiti to have been delivered by Boukman at the ceremony: "The god who created the earth; who created the sun that gives us light. The god who holds up the ocean; who makes the thunder roar. Our God who has ears to hear. You who are hidden in the clouds; who watch us from where you are. You see all that the white has made us suffer.

The white man's god asks him to commit crimes. But the god within us wants to do good. Our god, who is so good, so just, He orders us to revenge our wrongs. It's He who will direct our arms and bring us the victory. It's He who will assist us. We all should throw away the image of the white men's god who is so pitiless. Listen to the voice for liberty that speaks in all our hearts."

This information is the basis on which Christian missionaries and colonizers believed Haiti made a pact with the devil. This is the basis on which the myth continues to be perpetuated. This is just one example of the countless lies, dammed lies and lying liars.

Clearly, there was no pact with the devil; this was a highly spiritual initiation ceremony calling on the spirit of God to prepare the African warriors for the ensuing battle. If Christians believe this to be a "pact with the devil" then sobeit; this simply reveals their lack of knowledge and perspective, and their linear way of thinking.

If in order to elevate African people out of poverty; liberate African people from mental slavery; and restore the functioning of the traditional African community, the cost were a so called "pack with the devil", that deal would be signed, sealed and delivered. I certainly would book myself on a one-way ticket to the eternal inferno.

The Christianisation project has rendered African people an impotent lot, with most African people living in hell on earth already, consoled only by a great faith in eternal life after death. With this thought I am always reminded of the 'great prophet' Jimmy Cliff, who said: "Well, they tell me of a pie up in the sky, waiting for me when I die, but between the day you're born and when you die, they never seem to hear even your cry. So as sure as the sun will shine, I'm gonna get my share now, what's mine."

The impact of colonial narratives is not just born out in the lies themselves, but also in the lies of omission implicit in the telling of these stories. This became apparent to me when I realized that although I rejected the colonial image of Vodou, I had no understanding of what the real Vodou was.

Recently, my level of understanding evolved. Where I would have once spoken about Voodoo, I now speak about Vodou, because Vodou, spelt as such, is considered the most correct phonetic English translation from the Fon language word "Vodun", which means sacred energies, and Voodoo too readily conjures up the invented Hollywood image.

"Haitian deities are living entities, living energies in nature. The energies in Vodun are not perfect like the Catholic Saints. No. They mirror the imperfect world and are found always in the universe and may be elevated or not. In Vodun, there are no middlemen between you and what is good, sacred and divine. Your highest self is in you, or you may allow the mass consciousness to take you over," writes Marguerite Laurent, an award winning playwright, performance poet, political and social commentator, author and human rights attorney, in her essay on counter-colonial narratives on Vodun.

Vodun, as you will find is consistent with many traditional spiritual practices, is very unlike modern religions, in that it has no prescribed doctrine. There is a priestly order, but these community leaders are often keepers of the secrets of the community, keepers of the community's oral history, and vehicles for the community to govern itself and elevate its sacred values.

"It's an African tradition, a way of life, a psychology, philosophy, art, mythology for taping into and understanding and controlling human nature; it's the use of herbs, prescient dreams, a healing way of being, of excavating the unconscious and bringing forth the sacred energies that we all are essentially a part of," writes Ms Laurent.

The Hollywood version of 'Voodoo' is far removed from the real practice of Vodou, just as the truth of 'Haiti's pack with the devil' is far removed from the truth of the events giving birth to Haiti's 13-year liberation war.

Narrative

Although I always suspected and at some point knew the colonial narrative of Vodou was false, I had no idea what the truth was, or where the source of unfiltered truth resided. The only frame of reference I had to approach Vodou was still the negative perspective shaped by the colonial view I rejected. I realized the same was true with my understanding of traditional African culture.

The colonial narrative instructs me that Africans had no history, Africans had no inventors, Africans had no advanced medical technologies, Africans had no religion or valid world views, Africans worshiped many gods, Africans were primitive in this that and the next. I knew the colonial narratives were false, but I had no concept of what the unfiltered truth was. I suspect that was the same problem my father faced when he had to contemplate the question: should the children go to church.

I came to learn that in the area of religion and spirituality, there is a rich African culture that is perhaps becoming increasingly more relevant in modern times. The Bahamas has its very own African religious retention, Obeah, but this practice is merely written off as devil worship or black magic. Very little work has been done in the study of Obeah towards its recognition as a valid, albeit endangered, African retention in the Bahamas.

The Bahamas is even lagging in the Caribbean, where places like Jamaica, have elevated religious retentions like Revivalism and Kumina, even if only at a ceremonial level.

Although Obeah, in its present day form, does not retain the type of structure, with collective rituals found in Haitian Vodou or Afro-Cuban Lucumi tradition, or Trinidadian Shouter Baptists, it is still has a valid story to tell of "Nyon Nyor Nyan".

The knowledge that other living African traditions have to share with us is vast. In contrast to the colonial narrative about life and death, heaven and hell, which is based on a linear model, the Bantu-Kongo cosmology of the Kikongo people teach us about the coil of life on which past, present and future exist on an unbroken continuum. Life has no beginning or end; it merely constitutes a cycle of unending change. This gives birth to the central importance of ancestors, because the energy of a person never truly dies. Below the invisible wall between the physical and spiritual world lies the ancestral realm. The physical world is capable of interacting with the spiritual world, because the continuum is fluid.

The primacy of the ancestors is consistent in all traditional African religions, and based on this world view the failure of African people to cultivate a relationship with their ancestors could be a source of their demise. Dr Fu-Kiau Bunseki, a traditional Bantu healer, suggests that each living human being is a seed of a seed of a seed of a seed of a seed of a seed of a seed of a seed. There is a perpetual transfer of form and energy from one seed or generation or ancestor to another.

Ancestor

The inclination to remember and the desire to reconnect is deeply rooted in African tradition. In African culture the genesis of each individual flows from the original ancestor who was given life from the hands of the Creator, not the parents from which one was born. The honouring of one's ancestors is a recognition of that continuation, a recognition of the shoulders upon which each person stands.

The Dagara people of present day Burkina Faso teach us about the relationship between the ancestors and community. "For the Dagara people, death results in simply a different form of belonging to the community. It is a lesson from nature that change is the norm, that the world is defined by eternal cycles of decline and regeneration. Death is not a separation but a different form of communion, a higher form of connectedness with the community," writes Malidoma Some in "The Healing Wisdom of Africa".

African cultures have a systems approach to living, unlike the compartmentalized worldview typically found in the West. In African culture, the individual is an integral part of the community, just as each part of the body is essential to the functioning of the whole. This notion of the part to the whole is related to the concept of destiny.

Yoruba culture has something important to teach us about destiny. In the order for the community or the whole to function properly, each part has to be aligned with its purpose. A person's individual destiny is discovered in Yoruba culture through divination. Divination is based on binary code, which is the basic language the modern computer operates on. This ancient African technology is used to intuit the patterns of creation which contain the physical and spiritual DNA of a person. These dimensions are inseparable, as the physical aspect of a person is simply the manifestation of the spirit.

A visit to the career counselor is insufficient to determine one's true destiny.

The condition of the West is chaotic in the Yoruba world view, because individuals primarily determine their roles in society based on the pursuit of a personal passions or consumerist wants. Destiny helps to bring the individual into alignment with the community, with nature, with the universe and with themselves.

The Rastafari community provides an interesting case study for the impact embracing African culture can have on African men, who bear the brunt of the criticism for societal ills.

While the Rastafari community is not a homogenous group, consisting of various liturgical and non-liturgical orders, there are various elements that unify the way of life of the Rasta man, which are all deeply rooted in African tradition.

The fact that Rastafari is a relatively modern practice does not take away from its grounding. Rastafari men are respectful, enterprising, self-sufficient, family-oriented, and highly spiritual.

This is the model of the man for which the wider society elusively seeks. Perhaps we have much to learn from them.

This discussion of African spiritual traditions is in no way exhaustive.

Rather, it serves to shed a ray of light on an entire system of knowledge that most African people are not exposed to because of the omissions symptomatic of colonial narratives.

The limited exposure that is gained is so heavily influenced by these colonial narratives that their point of view is invariably distorted. African spiritual traditions are not evil, devilish, pagan, or polytheistic.

On the contrary, they are an essential part of who we are and keys to restoring the African community.

This acknowledgement can only come with the discarding of the colonial mask.

If African people would give up the pleasure of basking in the bliss of ignorance, and suffer through the pain of their own enlightenment, they might just discover the reality of "Nyon Nyor Nyan".

March 15, 2010

tribune242

Bahamas Blog International

The ALBA and Copenhagen

Reflections of Fidel

(Taken from CubaDebate)

THE festivities at the 7th ALBA Summit, held in the historic Bolivian region of Cochabamba, demonstrated the rich culture of the Latin American peoples and the joy elicited in children, young people and adults of all ages through the singing, dancing, costumes and expressive faces of the individuals representing all ethnic groups, colors and shades: indigenous, black, white and mixed race people. Thousands of years of human history and treasured culture were on display there, which explains the decision of the leaders of several Caribbean, Central and South America peoples to convene that summit.

The meeting was a great success. It was held in Bolivia. A few days ago, I wrote about the excellent prospects of that country, the heir to the Aymara-Quechua culture. A small group of peoples from that area are striving to show that a better world is possible. The ALBA – created by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Cuba, inspired by the ideas of Bolívar and Martí, as an unprecedented example of revolutionary solidarity – has demonstrated what can be done in just five years of peaceful cooperation. This began shortly after the political and democratic triumph of Hugo Chávez. Imperialism underestimated him; it blatantly attempted to oust him and eliminate him. The fact that for a good part of the 20th century Venezuela had been the world’s largest oil-producer, practically owned by the yanki multinationals, meant that the course they embarked on was particularly difficult.

The powerful adversary had neoliberalism and the FTAA, two instruments of domination with which it crushed any form of resistance in the hemisphere after the triumph of the Revolution in Cuba.

It is outrageous to think of the shameless and disrespectful way in which the US administration imposed the government of millionaire Pedro Carmona and tried to have the elected President Hugo Chavez removed, at a time when the USSR had disappeared and the People’s Republic of China was a few years away from becoming the economic and commercial power it is today, after two decades of growth over 10%. The Venezuelan people, like that of Cuba, resisted the brutal onslaught. The Sandinistas recovered, and the struggle for sovereignty, independence and socialism gained ground in Bolivia and Ecuador. Honduras, which had joined the ALBA, was the victim of a brutal coup d’état inspired by the yanki ambassador and boosted by the US military base in Palmerola.

Today, there are four Latin American countries that have completely eradicated illiteracy: Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. The fifth country, Ecuador, is rapidly advancing towards that goal. Comprehensive healthcare programs are underway in the five countries at an unprecedented pace for the peoples of the Third World. Economic development plans combined with social justice have become real programs in the five different states, which already enjoy great prestige throughout the world for their courageous position in the face of the economic, military and media power of the empire. Three English-speaking Caribbean countries have also joined the ALBA, in a determined fight for their development.

This alone would be a great political merit if, in today’s world, that were the only major problem in the history of humankind.

The economic and political system that in a short historical period has led to the existence of more than one billion hungry people, and many more hundreds of millions whose lives are barely longer than half the average of those in the wealthy and privileged countries, was until now the main problem for humanity.

But, a new and extremely serious problem was extensively discussed at the ALBA Summit: climate change. At no other point in history, has a danger of such magnitude arisen.

As Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega bade farewell to the people in the streets of Cochabamba yesterday, Sunday, that same day, according to a report by BBC World, Gordon Brown was chairing a session of the Major Economies Forum in London, mostly made up of the most-developed capitalist countries, the main culprits for carbon dioxide emissions, that is, the gas causing the greenhouse effect.

The significance of Brown’s words is that they were not uttered by a representative of the ALBA or one of the 150 emerging or underdeveloped countries on the planet, but Britain, the country where industrial development began and one of those that has released the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The British prime minister warned that if an agreement is not reached at the UN Summit in Copenhagen, the consequences will be "disastrous".

Floods, droughts, and killer heat waves are just some of the "catastrophic" consequences, according to the World Wildlife Fund ecological group, referring to Brown’s statement. "Climate change will spiral out of control over the next five to ten years if CO2 emissions are not drastically cut. There will be no Plan B if Copenhagen fails."

The same news source claims that: "BBC expert James Landale has explained that not everything is turning out as expected."

Newsweek reported that every day it seems more unlikely that states will commit to something in Copenhagen.

According to reports from a major American news outlet, the chairman of the session, Gordon Brown, said that ""If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement, in some future period, can undo that choice. He continued by listing conflicts such as "climate-induced migration" and "an extra 1.8 billion people living and dying without enough water."

In reality, as the Cuban delegation in Bangkok reported, the United States led the industrialized nations most opposed to the necessary reduction in emissions.

At the Cochabamba meeting, a new ALBA Summit was convened. The timetable will be: December 6, elections in Bolivia; December 13, ALBA summit in Havana; December 16, participation in the UN Copenhagen Summit. The small group of ALBA nations will be there. The issue is no longer "Homeland or Death"; it is truly and without exaggeration a matter of "Life or Death" for the human race.

The capitalist system is not only oppressing and pillaging our nations. The wealthiest industrialized countries wish to impose on the rest of the world the major responsibility in the fight against climate change. Who are they trying to fool? In Copenhagen, the ALBA and the countries of the Third World will be fighting for the survival of the species.


Fidel Castro Ruz
October 19, 2009
6:05 PM

granma.cu

Bahamas Blog Bahamas

Ronald Reagan Legacy In The Caribbean

Ronald Reagan’s crowning glory of his legacy in the Caribbean was the U.S. invasion of Grenada

Progressive Bahamians and Caribbean people deplored in the strongest terms, the act of naked aggression and imperialism that was carried out in October 1981, when the United States of America (USA), the world’s richest and one of its largest states, invaded tiny Grenada (pop. 110,000)

Reagan’s Legacy In The Caribbean

By Charles Fawkes

Nassau, The Bahamas

25/06/2004

HOUSE OF LABOUR: In Friday June 15th edition of the Bahama Journal, Godfrey Eneas of the Eneas File fame touched on the legacy of Ronald Reagan and Black Americans.  I was particularly interested in his approach to the subject and he did say some things that needed to be said.  I was, however, disappointed that Eneas sought to examine Reagan’s legacy for black Americans, but neglected to mention Reagan’s legacy in the Caribbean; particularly, in reference to progressive individuals and movements in the Caribbean.

Indeed, President Reagan the 40th President of the United States was a polarizing figure - not only for Black Americans but all third world peoples particularly, in the Caribbean and Latin America.

During Reagan’s presidency, reaction to the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) had been much like the FTAA is seen today, as mostly benefiting Americans not the Caribbean.  More importantly, for Inside Labour is the fact that Reagan fired 13,000 U.S. air traffic controllers in 1981 after they staged a work stoppage.  He used the U.S. National Labour Relations Board to crack down on trade unions.  In line with this we saw many of our Caribbean leaders attempt similar “union busting” tactics that lingered on and ended with the busting of our own air traffic controllers union being put under “heavy manners” by the FNM government of Hubert Ingraham.

Reagan’s crowning glory of his legacy in the Caribbean was the U.S. invasion of Grenada.  An examination of this opprobrious event and its impact may prove useful in putting his legacy in the Caribbean in proper perspective.  Reagan’s 1983 invasion of Grenada was not universally applauded and indeed the full week coverage by CNN, NBC, FOX NEWS, ABC, CBS that attempted to deify this man, who demonized progressives the world over and setback the progressive forces of the world fifty years.

At that time progressive Bahamians and Caribbean people deplored in the strongest terms, the act of naked aggression and imperialism that was carried out in October 1981, when the United States of America (USA), the world’s richest and one of its largest states, invaded tiny Grenada (pop. 110,000).

The people of the Caribbean and all over the third world have suffered for centuries the racism, economic deprivation and political inequality of British and other colonialisms.  We also know that thousands of our exploited brothers and sisters have endured the harshest punishments in the attempt to escape from this status by becoming independent nations with the right to plot their own destinies.

When the U.S. imperialists under Reagan armed with phrases like “restoring democracy,” “eradicating Marxism,” “eliminating a source of subversion,” “preventing terrorism,” etc. destroy a sovereign nation like Grenada, it brought back to all of us the bitter memories of colonialism.  We were reminded that they were offering then a better life by enslaving us in the same ways the Japanese and German imperialists of World War II tried to convince the world that their systems of domination were “co-prosperity spheres”.

It should be noted that the vast majority of the world’s nations condemned the American action, including Britain, Canada and France, the then USSR and our own government of The Bahamas.  Such condemnation was proof enough of the unpopularity of this policy, and Reagan realized that his imperialism fooled no one.  The vote in the United Nations General Assembly on November 3 1981 (108-9 with abstentions), which demanded that the USA withdraw from Grenada, was further proof of the world’s opprobrium for that nation’s Caribbean adventure.  In many respects, this was the beginning in modern times of the United States becoming an international outlaw.

The major reasons given by the USA under Reagan for the intervention in Grenada were as follows: First the death of Maurice Bishop, ex- Prime Minister of Grenada, created much instability in that society, which instability threatened the safety of 1,000 Americans who were there.  The numbers included hundreds of students at St. George’s Medical School, a U.S. owned medical facility on the island.  Secondly, Grenada was exporting revolutions to other parts of the Caribbean. Thirdly, Grenada was a Cuba- Soviet military base in the U.S.A's “backyard” or in its “sphere of influence.”

All progressive people in the Caribbean and elsewhere deplored the senseless arguments among the then Grenadian leadership that resulted in the death of Prime Minister Bishop and some of his ministers.  However, if assassination of leaders was a valid reason for intervening in a country, the United States should have been invaded a long time ago.  For example in the last century America’s greatest President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.  In 1963 President John F. Kennedy was killed, and President Reagan in his time was shot.  We also recall that distinguished Americans like Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were killed.  It is common knowledge that when Dr. King died riots took place in large numbers of America’s cities.  Yet in spite of the instability, no nation “intervened” in the USA.

In Grenada after Bishop’s death there were no uprisings, the Americans on the island insisted that they were safe.  A US and Canadian diplomat visited the country a couple of days before the invasion and found their people safe, and General Hudson Austin had agreed to open the airport to allow foreign nationals to leave.  In this same context, President Fidel Castro of Cuba, a close friend of Grenada, who had nearly 800 of his nationals working on projects in the island like the then new airport, volunteered to act as a go-between to insure the safety of the Americans.  Clearly there was little “instability” in Grenada, and there was no threat to American lives at any time before the invasion.

Anthony Lewis in the New York Times October 3, 1983, in an article entitled: “What was Reagan hiding?” - questioned the Reagan Administration’s tale that the Americans were in danger and that the Grenadian government was attempting to hold them there.  Lewis wrote: “Now we know that Grenada and Cuba both sent messages to the United States saying that our citizens, in particular the large numbers of medical students were safe.  We know that the airport was open and Americans flew out the day before the invasion, encountering no problems at the airport and seeing not even an armed guard.”  Lewis went on to conclude: “The Reagan Administration was in fact not interested in exploring peaceful evacuation of Americans who wanted to leave.  It did not look into chartering ships or planes.  It did not respond to the Grenadian or Cuban messages until after the invasion was underway.  It was determined to make a show of force.”  In retrospect Inside Labour is convinced also; that Reagan was not interested in peace.

At the time The Reagan Administration and the right –wing in America and the Caribbean, constantly stated that Grenada and Cuba were bases for “exporting revolution”.  An argument that made no sense.  If a different worldview, for example, has no relevance to the lives of a people in a particular society, then the masses will reject it.  If capitalism is irrelevant to the needs and aspirations of a society, they will reject it also.  Ideologies- in other words are world outlooks that are either accepted or rejected by the masses; they cannot be exported.

On the other hand, if what Reagan and the right –wing meant by “exporting revolution,” the subversion of a country by the illegal use of force and violence, Grenada could not in any way be accused of this.  Indeed, none of the Caribbean countries involved in the invasion produced a scintilla of evidence to prove that the then Grenadian Government illegally conspired to overthrow them.

Philosophers warn us that it is a mistake to confuse analogies with identities, for while an analogy is a call to clarify the specific; it is not the specific itself.  The United States frequently depicts the Caribbean as being in its “backyard” - and as a mental construct to illustrate its proximity to the region; such a depiction is permissible.  However, America seems to see its “Caribbean backyard” not in terms of a close neighbor, but in terms of a region of the earth that they have manifest destiny to own, control and push around.  Such confusion turns an analogy into a principle of ownership.

Progressives the world over insists that the Caribbean consists of sovereign nations which have a right to plot their own destiny.  Much like in the recent case of Haiti.  The Caribbean nations are not parts of the USA like Hawaii; we are in nobody’s backyard.  Grenada in 1981 posed no military threat or “subversive threat” to any nation in this hemisphere, so Reagan had no right to obliterate that nation’s sovereignty, just like President Bush had no right to obliterate the sovereignty of Iraq.  In the meantime what is fearful is that the United States feels that is has natural rights to make every nation in the world her puppet.

Reagan’s legacy in the Caribbean proved that the United States violated all the rules in international law in its invasion of Grenada, and of making a mockery of the concept of national sovereignty.  It broke the elementary rules of international law regarding the recognition of states; it broke the U.N. charter of the Organization of American States (OAS), of which it is one of the founding members. The Charters of the OAS states explicitly: “The territory of a state is inviolable, it may not be the object, even temporarily of military occupation or other measures of force taken by another state, directly or indirectly, on any grounds whatever.”  Some international lawyers argued that even when the U.S unjustly invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965, it at least procured “legal cover.”  At that time it claimed that it was called by the military government of the Dominican Republic to “restore order”.  A claim, which it rammed through the OAS after the fact. In Grenada, on the other hand, the United States destroyed the legitimate government.

Finally, the Reagan administration in trying to secure some legal legacy for its actions argued that the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) provided a legal basis for the invasion.  But as Time Magazine stated: “Grenada is one of the seven members of the OECS, the charter of which says that any decision to take military action must be unanimous.  Grenada certainly did not agree to invade itself.  Nor was it clear that the OECS formed in 1981, had any provision, or any right to authorize military intervention in one of its member states!”  Without a doubt Reagan’s legacy in the Caribbean was cemented by this lawless adventure based on the principle that might is right!  When the definitive chapter on this event is written Reagan will be seen for what he was “a little man” not the colossus that the spin-doctors of Washington would have us believe.

 

 

 

 

Charles Fawkes is President of the National Consumer Association, Consumer columnist for the Nassau Guardian and organizer for the Commonwealth Group of Unions, Editor of the Headline News, The Consumer guard and The Worker’s Vanguard.