Transcription of Chairman Omali Yeshitela’s World Summation

St. Petersburg, FL — February 27, 2003

On February 27, as it was becoming clearer that U.S. verbal bellicosity toward Iraq was close to expressing itself in a new invasion of that already impoverished and brutalized country, Chairman Omali Yeshitela called together the local Uhuru Movement for a meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida for a discussion about the world situation. This discussion was designed to help our movement understand the underlying bases for the pending invasion and occupation. The following is an edited transcript of the Chairman's presentation. While we recognize that there are many who will not take the time to read such a long presentation, we have, nevertheless, decided to publish it here. We publish this presentation with the understanding that those Party members, militants and other activists attempting to respond to the obvious acts of U.S. imperial aggression will be better served with this explanation of the real motive forces of the current U.S. war drive.

We’re living in a world where more than half the people on Earth live off less than two dollars a day. I’m convinced that it is not necessary to live in a world where the vast majority of the people don’t have access to clean drinking water or enough food and shelter and are confronted with all kinds of violence all the time.

I’m convinced it’s not necessary to live in a world where ignorance is imposed upon masses of people on the one hand, while their wealth and resources are stolen and information is concentrated in these imperialist centers on the other hand.

I’m a revolutionary. I’m not involved in a movement to try to make a better imperialism. My objective — as arrogant as it may seem — is to transform the world. Many people have problems with that because an assumption of our own insignificance has been imposed on us by the social system we live under.

But as arrogant as I am about being intent on changing the world, I’m not so arrogant as to insist that everybody who participates in this discussion has to agree with this serious need for world transformation as a condition for being in action.

I want to be clear that I work from a bias. Everybody does. I know what mine is. Many times people do not understand what their biases are.

Main contradiction in the world is between oppressed and oppressor nations
In the African People’s Socialist Party we have said that the fundamental contradiction in the world is one that exists between oppressed and oppressor nations. This is the most profound contradiction. It does not deny the existence of other contradictions, but we say this is the contradiction around which every other contradiction revolves.

We recognize that even as there are oppressed nations and oppressor nations, and that this relationship is the most dynamic relationship in the world, there are contradictions within the oppressed nations themselves.

There are contradictions between men and women. There are contradictions between workers and bosses. There are contradictions between heterosexuals and homosexuals. There are similar contradictions within the oppressor nations – between men and women, between workers and bosses, and between heterosexuals and homosexuals. There is a whole array of other contradictions that I have not touched upon.

I’m not suggesting that these other contradictions do not exist. My statement is that the most dynamic, fundamental contradiction, the one around which all the others revolve and the one which the others require for their existence is this contradiction between oppressor and oppressed nations.

Capitalism is a parasitic system that was founded on slavery
In fact, this is a contradiction that began with the rise of capitalism itself. Capitalism was born as a world system and it was born as part of a process. I’m not suggesting that there was never oppression or exploitation before capitalism. Of course there was. Slavery existed before capitalism.

I’m not talking about the generic slavery that people like to remind us about. I’m talking about the real kind. I’m talking about the kind that people talk about when they talk about the relationship between Africans and other peoples around the world. I’m not suggesting that contradictions did not precede the existence of capitalism.

Of course, there were contradictions. But the ones that we are fighting, the ones that we have to contend with, the ones that set the terms for the relationships that we have in the world, are those contradictions that were given birth by the rise of capitalism in the world.

A capitalist social system dominates the entire world. It’s not feudal. It’s not socialist. It’s capitalist. Whether we are talking about capitalism as it manifests itself in the United States or Belgium or whether we’re talking about capitalism as it manifests itself in Haiti, Burma or Congo, the same capitalism dominates the entire world.

Marxist theory, as developed particularly by V.I. Lenin, talked about imperialism as being capitalism developed to a certain stage. Lenin called imperialism "capitalism that had become rotten ripe." Lenin said that one of the manifestations of this development was that capitalism became parasitic.

I pose to you that capitalism was born parasitic. There was never a time that capitalism was not parasitic. It was born off the slave trade. Marx referred to "primitive accumulation" -- the accumulation that didn’t come as a consequence of capitalist production, but was its starting point. Capitalism was born off the slave trade.

The slave trade created the world economy that was a precondition for the rise of capitalism as a world system. Things like the 1841-42 war against China, called the "Opium War" — that turned China into a nation of junkies — gave rise to capitalism as a world system. The French turned Viet Nam into a drug colony.

The tremendous amounts of loot and resources coming from places like this into Europe transformed the relationship for peoples who used to be free and independent. We had the ability to meet our own needs, but our resources were going to what had been an impoverished and disease-ridden Europe.

Europe was not only poverty and disease-ridden but it was absolutely un-free. In Europe, there was feudalism. There was no such thing as "home ownership" or the things that Europeans and North Americans like to brag about today. Those things all came as a consequence of the pillage that Europe initiated against the rest of the world.

The rise of capitalism as a social system was parasitic. It came at our expense and that of other peoples around the world.

Imperialism in crisis
We want to talk about the situation in the world. We want to struggle to understand what is going on. Some things are very glaring to us.

We see a Bush Administration up against the entire world in its absolute urgency to deepen the war that was initiated some 11 or 12 years ago against Iraq.

This is a glaring manifestation. We see millions of people in the streets protesting. We saw a few million here, within the United States. We’ve seen perhaps up to 18 million people throughout the world marching, demonstrating against this genocide that the United States is intent on waging against the people of Iraq.

Folks are searching for answers and we ought to be searching for some kind of answers in trying to understand what’s going on as well. What we concluded some time ago was that the whole empire, the imperialist system, is in a state of severe crisis. It almost sounds like a cliché, especially for anyone who has been involved in the struggle for social justice, as it is often characterized. You always hear the socialists talk about the crisis of imperialism.

The imperialists are experiencing a severe crisis. That’s not to say that they understand that it’s a crisis, even though some thinking leaders of the imperialists have expressed some recognition of crisis.

The crisis has its origin in a process that has been going on for a long time. It clearly began to manifest itself after the second imperialist war. That’s the war that the pundits like to refer to as the last honest war that America pursued. Of course, in reality, that’s just a bunch of garbage.

The second imperialist war, like the first one, like the Korean War and like virtually every war that’s existed for the last 400 or 500 years, was a war to re-divide the world. There were no good guys in that war. The heroes of that war – the guys that were fighting for "democracy" – were all countries and states that had colonies. As much as people like to talk about Hitler, the truth of the matter is that Churchill presided over what they like to refer to as "an empire upon which the sun never set." That seems to suggest to me that Hitler was a piker. He was a boy scout compared to Churchill. In that war, a group of cutthroats was fighting to re-divide the world.

Anti-colonial struggles emerge after second imperialist war
One of the things that was significant about that war is that it offered up a certain type of political space for oppressed peoples around the world. The empire was at war with itself. I was taught in school that Africans went off to Europe as soldiers and, for the first time, we saw freedom in places like France. That inspired us to come back to fight for freedom here in the United States.

Supposedly, we have to see freedom in that fashion before we have an inkling of what it is we should be struggling for. That’s nonsensical. The truth is, it was precisely because of the confrontation that the empire had within itself that the political space emerged and other people began to wage struggle for independence and freedom from colonialism. When you talk about imperialism, you’re talking about white power that created itself off the colonial domination of the rest of the world.

As a consequence of that war, in 1947 we saw the independence in India. In 1949, it was China. In the ‘50s, revolutionary struggles emerged all over Africa. The Mau Mau were fighting against the British in Kenya. Ghana achieved independence. Even Iraq, I think, became nominally independent from England in ‘58. Of course, in ’59 there was the magnificent Cuban revolution that contributed to revolutionary fervor, particularly throughout the Americas. Anybody who’s familiar with Che Guevara knows that he didn’t stop just in Latin America. He was also in Africa.

In the ‘60s, we saw the incredible and most magnificent struggle of the people in Viet Nam, who in the ‘50s had defeated the French before they saw colonialism propped up by the United States government. In the ‘50s, we also saw the people of Korea come close to total independence. Then the United States intervened in Korea to prevent the total liberation of Korea.

In fact, in many ways, the first humiliating defeat of the United States was Korea. China came across the Korean border because it was clear that part of the objective of the United States was also to attack China. The Chinese pushed the U.S. back across the 38th parallel. They ended the war by having an armistice there that resulted in the Korean people being divided even today.

We hear discussions about the North Koreans and the South Koreans as if they are two separate people. They’re one people. They are people who have been divided just as the people of Viet Nam were divided and just like various peoples around the world have been divided — by imperialism.

You saw the emergence of these kinds of struggles after the second imperialist war. They just took off. These struggles created serious crises. People talk about the "domino theory." They talk about how many troops went to Viet Nam, how many people were killed by those troops, and how many of those people coming from here died in Viet Nam to stop this domino thing.

The backdrop to all of this of course was the communist "boogie man." The communist boogieman was represented mostly by the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent China because China was poor. Even though China gave significant political support, and sometimes more than political support, to struggles for national liberation, when they talked about the communist boogieman it was really the Soviet Union. I would remind you, however, that there was never an incident of real confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
The thing that made the Soviet Union such a bad entity in the world was not some direct contest between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It was the fact that the Soviet Union, when it was in the interest of the Soviet State, would support struggles for national liberation at various places around the world.

They had to fight against encirclement by the United States and by the other imperial powers. They would support struggles for national liberation around the world. This was the contest. You saw these proxy struggles happening all over the world. My point is that all along, the real contest has been the contest for national liberation.

The Soviet Union was hated and dreaded because it would give a gun to somebody in Nicaragua or Cuba. It would give a gun to somebody in some place in the world who would really change the fundamental relationships that existed between the oppressed nations and the oppressor nations of the world.

Now, subsequent to the second imperialist war, we saw this escalation of struggles by people to win their freedom. In the process, they were depriving capitalism of those resources that keeps it strong. I’m not here to try to spout off some type of doctrine to you.

What I’m saying is relatively obvious. Even now, as they try to explain the gouging that’s being done at the gas stations, they talk about the impending war with Iraq. They talk about the troubles in Venezuela. I was in a meeting the other day when someone asked how American oil got under Iraqi sand. You might also ask how American oil got under Venezuelan sand.

How do you explain this contradiction? How do you explain the fact that fundamental economic crisis can happen in America, England and other places as a consequence of what some poor, starving country is doing? The oil workers go on strike in Nigeria and the gasoline prices go up in St. Petersburg, Florida. It’s because of this parasitic relationship.

U.S. administrations attempt to deal with crisis of anti-colonial struggle
For a long period, we’ve had this on-going struggle. I can’t say when it reached a critical level, but I do know that it has contributed to the political crisis in this country and in other places. I believe that this struggle contributed to the crisis that led to the death of John F. Kennedy. I cannot say exactly how. I believe it was tied up with Viet Nam and other questions like that. I believe those questions are so deeply significant to the existence of imperialism itself that the weapons of criticism became the criticism by weapons in the instance of John F. Kennedy.

I believe that subsequent to that there has been a crisis in the executive branch of the United States government. It has been rather obvious. Kennedy was assassinated — I would say that’s a crisis of sorts. Subsequent to that, you had Johnson who could only stay one term as president because of Viet Nam. Then following Johnson you had the guy who was a crook. His vice president was kicked out. He — Nixon — was kicked out.

Then you had Ford, who could only be there one term because of the deal that he did with the crook. Following Ford, the Georgia plantation owner came forward. This was the system’s attempt to resolve this crisis so they could get to these other kinds of crises that were out there in the world. There was also crisis inside of America itself that was caused by the Black Liberation Movement. It was making a fundamental ideological assault, among other things, upon the basic assumptions of Americanism and white supremacy, which in the final analysis is the ideological underpinning of America and imperialism in general.

Carter administration foreign policy based on "human rights"
So you have this crisis. Then James Earl Carter’s theme for his presidency was a statement, a response to the crisis in the executive branch and the crisis that existed between the government and the people — all the people — in this country. Carter said, "Trust me, I will never tell a lie." Do you remember Carter saying this? That was his whole theme. His foreign policy was based on human rights. Carter was first trying to resolve this contradiction in this country among the people who have come to be so suspicious. They were doing regular polls at the time that showed that the sanitation workers and people like that were more trustworthy and popular than the president of the United States was. That makes sense to me.

Then of course the peoples around the world hated the United States for how it was treating them. After what they’d done with Viet Nam, after what they’d done to Cuba, after what they’d done to Guatemala, Iran and all those other places, here’s Carter with a human rights foreign policy. Not only did he have a human rights foreign policy, but who was his UN ambassador? Who did he put out to front this foreign policy? Andrew Young. He put a Negro out to front this foreign policy for him. So, it’s not white power or white nationalism that’s out there. It’s a Negro forwarding this policy.

This is Carter’s response. Even as he was talking "human rights" and saying, "trust me," Carter also put Brzezinski in motion. Brzezinski was the National Security Advisor under the Carter Administration. You should read his books. He wrote one book called Out of Control and another called The Grand Chessboard. These books decry the fact that, from their view, the world is spinning into chaos and anarchy because of all these struggles of oppressed peoples around the world.

Brzezinski is the one who created the modern day "Jihad." When you talk about Osama bin Laden, thank the wonderful James Earl Carter. He’s the one who goes about seeing if people have honest elections. He says he’s the most honest ex-president.

Carter’s Administration, through Brzezinski, created Osama bin Laden and the modern Jihad. There was no such thing as Jihad in modern history. They resurrected it to destroy the Soviet Union. They succeeded in doing that in Afghanistan. They organized Muslims from throughout the world to go into Afghanistan. They sucked the Soviet Union in and then wiped it out. The U.S. could not afford the deadly battle that the Soviet Union was engaged in.

The situation with Osama bin Laden is what the CIA calls "blowback." It’s when you put some program in motion and then it comes back and hits you in the face. That’s what 9/11 effectively was — "blow back."

People have illusions about the good guy — the moderate imperialist versus the other imperialist. Carter still goes to Venezuela and other places as the "nice imperialist."
However, Carter had a problem. In 1979, Carter was in Iran. They had a huge banquet for Carter in Iran. Carter praised the Shah of Iran, who had been put in power by the CIA in 1954 after they overthrew Muhammad Mossadegh. The Shah was a dirty criminal tyrant who brutalized the people of Iran in ways that people in this country cannot imagine.

Carter went there with his human rights policy and he praised the Shah of Iran. He said the Shah of Iran was the island of stability in the Persian Gulf. Then he caught an airplane back to Washington D.C. and the Shah almost beat him here because the people overthrew him. His island of stability was overthrown and the mullahs took power in Iran.

The mullahs took power in Iran, because the Shah was under U.S. tutelage. The Shah was the policeman of the United States in the Persian Gulf. He was so brutal, and the dictatorship was so severe, that the masses of people did not have the political space to organize. Therefore, the mullahs were the only ones who could organize. The churches became the centers of organization. That’s how they were able to take power.

If there’s not a secular or some other kind of progressive government in Iran, it’s because of the U.S. policies that supported the Shah by overthrowing Mossadegh. They put the Shah in place to repress the Iranian people. There was no political space available for any genuine progressive force to rise up there.

Carter and Brzezinski played a role in creating even Khomeini with this modern day Jihad and the Muslims took power in Iran.

Then, in 1979 the Iranians captured that nest of spies in the embassy in Tehran. A crisis emerged then that was similar to what we saw happen after 9/11. This was a new experience for white people in this country.

Here you have the "rag heads" —and all the other terrible things that the people who wear turbans in that part of the world are characterized as — taking the U.S. embassy. Not only had they taken the U.S. embassy, but also this notion of the old flag never touching the ground was thrown in the wind because they were publicly taking out the garbage using the American flag. They were taking out the garbage for TV cameras and things like that.
They went into the embassy. As you know, the U.S. had shredded all the documents in the embassy. The Iranians got all the shredded documents and pasted them together. They were selling them in the streets in Iran. These documents showed all the terrible stuff that the CIA and the United States government had been doing to the people there.

It was considered a real catastrophe. In that same year, 1979, the Sandinistas marched into Managua and overthrew Somoza, who had been put in power by the U.S. government. The U.S. government trained Somoza’s National Guard. Crisis abounded.

Reagan administration calls national liberation movements "terrorists"
Then you had Ronald Reagan, this white guy on his white horse, attacking both the contradictions inside this country by attacking the black movement and the African community in general, and raising the most reactionary, racially-charged characterizations. He used terms like "welfare queens." He did this because there was a serious economic crisis that emerged in this country in part because of the success of peoples’ struggles.

So, the African community was taking all the shots. Internationally, Carter was talking about how our friend the Shah got overthrown and how there was struggle in Panama.

Somehow, the Panama Canal is "our" canal. There didn’t even used to be a thing called Panama. What they now call Panama was a part of Colombia. The United States government wanted to draw out the canal there. They needed to allow shipping between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans that would save them a lot of money. So, they created a false revolutionary movement in what is now called Panama. They went in there to help their friends become independent. After their friends became independent, their friends gave them permission to build the canal.

So, here was Reagan rescuing America from all of these things outside the U.S. White people in this country were not accustomed to being afraid. That’s bad, because fear is a normal emotion. Most people experience it as a regular condition of existence. That isn’t true for white people as a rule. That’s why they have to make up games like bungee jumping — to experience fear. Most of us know fear readily. It’s such a new phenomenon to white people, who are easily frightened. If anything happens they call 911, you know. There’s always that ability.

So now, the world was closing down on America. The Iranians took "our" embassy. They were treating "our" guys so bad and "our" guys couldn’t come home. The Iranians wouldn’t let them come home.

Whoever heard of a situation where white guys can’t go where they want to go when they want to go? Then, of course, there was the so-called rescue attempt. A grain of sand got into the helicopters and that was a failure. It was just a mess out there.

There was revolution in Nicaragua. Revolution seemed to be threatening El Salvador. So, white people were afraid. They were also losing their money. That was the emergence of the angry white man. You saw the whole struggle against big government. Of course, big government was government that was paying welfare and food stamps.

Reagan took that on seriously and he won the election. He won incredible support from the white population to take things back to the way they used to be. Under the Reagan Administration, you began to see a pattern emerge. His Secretary of State was Alexander Haig. He was not a diplomat but a damn general. That was a suggestion about what they had in mind. It indicated how their foreign policy was going to be conducted.

I was in Nicaragua when Reagan took office, during the inauguration. I’ll never forget Alexander Haig, who declared himself the vicar of foreign policy. He was one for strange elocutions. He said that those groups that had been called "national liberation" organizations would henceforth be known as "terrorists." That came from the Reagan Administration.

Reagan also had a moderate imperialist as his vice president. That was George Herbert Walker Bush. He was a moderate. Do you remember that?

Everybody was apologizing all the time for this ex-CIA agent. I don’t know if you’re ever an ex-CIA agent. I think it’s like the Mafia. Once you’re in, it’s for life, you know. George Bush was the head of it. Like the Mafia, I don’t think they can let you go. You know too much.
Anyway, George Herbert Walker Bush was the moderate imperialist. Somebody in this room is old enough to remember some of this.

They created this thing they called the "arc of crisis." They characterized Iran, much of the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and certain other areas in parts of Asia as the "arc of crisis." They said they had to deal with it. They recognized this crisis even back at that time.

We’ve been looking at this attempt all along to try to put the brakes on this process of people winning their freedom, winning their national liberation. All these struggles for national liberation always seem to contradict the national interest of the United States government. "Our" national interest is to have all the oil in the Middle East. It’s "our" national interest to do this kind of stuff. This was the serious manifestation of crisis.

George W. Bush steals presidential election: denies Africans right to vote
They have been trying to resolve this crisis all along. I believe that the situation is becoming crystallized.

The crisis is so profound that you saw most recently the theft of an election. I mean the public theft of an election. That’s not something that democracies like to do. Democracies always talk about capitalism. Democratic capitalism is a hidden dictatorship.

The dictatorship rose up and bared its fangs for everyone to see. They actually stole the election in broad daylight. People saw them steal the election: "Stop the count, stop the count, stop the count." It was televised. They didn’t just steal an election. They stole an election through the public policy of disregarding the votes of the African population.

In my view, the political crisis is so severe that the Democratic party, certainly Al Gore and those who he represents, could not even win the election.

When I say couldn’t win the election, I mean that they had the ability to win the election but they wouldn’t do what was necessary to win the election. To win the election, they had to call into question the Civil Rights Act of 1965. That Act was put into place exactly so the kind of thing that happened to the black community could not happen anymore.

Africans were denied the vote in Mississippi and Alabama. That’s why the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1965. That’s why people like Martin Luther King were out there dying. That’s why people like Julian Bond marched. That’s why they wanted to lynch my ass in Madison, Florida, when we tried to get the right just to vote.

In 1965, the U.S. passed the Voting Rights Act. Not one time did Al Gore raise that question, nor did he ever raise the question of the black community being disenfranchised. He would rather lose an election than raise up this contradiction that would mobilize African people against the system that had denied us the right to vote.

So, of course he’s not in power. I should say he was not elected.

I think that is a reflection of the crystallization of the crisis that’s emerging in this country. They stole an election. Then, having stolen an election, right away you began to see an attempt to take on the crises that exist in the world.

Bush creates war cabinet
Again, we see a General as a Secretary of State. This is the third time that I’m aware of that this has happened. The first time, of course, was Marshall who was a general. This was after the second imperialist war when he became Secretary of State, and the so-called Marshall Plan was initiated that white people in this country like to talk about. They say how we helped poor friends and poor Germany. In reality, financial deals almost rendered Europe into a colony of the United States. It was no giveaway. The U.S. was raking in the loot and the resources. Now we saw Bush make General Colin Powell Secretary of State.

Some people consider him the moderate imperialist. That’s because they don’t know Colin Powell. Colin Powell was a cover artist for the Mai Lai massacre in Viet Nam. He tried to cover that up. In 1992, Colin Powell was also working as part of the Reagan Administration, along with Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld.

They created the plan that is being initiated now with the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act and the pre-emptive strike. They had been floating these ideas around since 1992. They only now got in power. This is why they’re implementing this stuff now. Even Madeline Albright, of all persons, said that this crew that’s around the President has wanted to do this for more than ten years. We’re not looking at a new phenomenon.

So, you have this crew that includes Colin Powell. You have Rumsfeld who previously was Secretary of Defense, if I’m not mistaken. You have Cheney, who’s also been Secretary of Defense. You know he was CEO of Halliburton, the largest oil entity of its kind in the world.
There’s Condoleeza Rice, a frothing-at-the-mouth person tied to the oil corporations.

There’s an oil tanker named for her, the Condoleeza. Then there is this religious fundamentalist, Ashcroft. You know, given the opportunity he would exchange the Constitution for the bible. This is the crew that’s in power.

Now, even as this is going on, there are other manifestations of crisis. I mentioned Brzezinski’s books. There are other persons tied to these think tanks, like Samuel Huntington who is out of Harvard University. He wrote a book The Clash of Cultures. It had a subtitle, something about how the world is getting out of hand.

He opens his book up with a discussion about a demonstration at the Republican Convention in San Diego. I forget what year it was. He was concerned because the Mexicans who were marching at that demonstration were carrying Mexican flags, not American flags, and they were "Mexican-Americans." He began to anticipate this cultural clash between Muslims and others.

Then there’s Pat Buchanan’s book, Death of the West. It is another expression of the crisis. Many liberals like to discount Buchanan because he’s supposed to be so far out. But, Buchanan, Huntington and Brzezinski are running the same essential line. Buchanan was a speechwriter for Nixon and Reagan. This guy is as legitimate as any other imperialist thug in the world is.

Buchanan’s concern is that by 2050 or sooner, white people will be a serious minority. I think he said they would make up around ten percent of the world’s population. White people are not reproducing, he said. Other people are reproducing. Even in places where there seems to be quite a few white people, they’re old.

He was decrying the Muslims and the declining influence of Christianity, which he characterized as the ideological glue of the Western world.

They are all seeing the same kind of threat. This threat is coming from these hordes of oppressed peoples around the world. The world is descending into chaos because it is no longer being controlled by Europe and North America. That’s the crisis that they’re hell-bent on trying to resolve.

I don’t know any more than anyone else does in this room about who did 9/11. In my estimation, it could be argued effectively that the United States government did it. The fear that I have about that argument is that it also could represent liberals running from another possibility. I think they might fear even more that there are oppressed peoples around the world who are so fed up with the relationship with U.S. imperialism that they’ll do any damn thing they can to bring it down.

I think that some people might rather believe that the Bush regime did it than believe that there might be Arabs and other people who are out there trying to find any way they can to bring America and imperialism down. I believe there are people like that.

I was listening to a presentation I made some years ago and I said then that if there were a nuclear accident in America that wiped it out, then there are peoples all around the world who would celebrate. That is an objective truth. I wasn’t saying that to be alarmist. It is true because of the stranglehold that America has had on the people around the world.

I’m not trying to offend any patriots. I’m really struggling for objectivity. I’m open to being challenged and struggled with. I am not just saying these things to be saying them. I’m not trying to hand out some doctrine. I believe what I’m saying.

I told you my biases. I told you the foundation of where I’m coming from so that you can check it with some type of logic yourself. I believe what I’m talking about. You can go to any library, even right down the street, and pick out books that will show you the historical data that backs up what I’m talking about now.

My concern now is that people in this country are the most politically backward people in the world. They base their politics on raw and naked emotion. How silly is it for a whole population, when talking about 9/11, to be saying, "I don’t care why they did it"? You ought to care why they did it. Hell, they might do it again!

It seems to me that you want to know why the hell they did it. There might be something you can do to stop it from happening again.

So to say, "I’d rather be stupid, I’d rather be dumb and ignorant," is just the most ridiculous thing. That’s the kind of thing that permeates the political culture in this country. It makes it difficult to have the kind of discussion that we need to have if we’re going to move things forward.

Obviously, we have a situation. Either way it’s a statement of crisis. The Bush regime could be so desperate that they would do what happened on 9/11. There’s no morality in the politic of imperialism. I’m not suggesting that it’s outlandish to assume that they would kill 3,000 people in the Trade Center. Hell, they’ve killed more than that in Afghanistan in the last period and regularly in other places.

Someone attacked symbols of U.S. financial and military power and they were willing to kill themselves in the process of doing that. That is a statement of crisis. In my opinion, this is something that needs to be recognized.

Bush regime attempts to re-colonize world
So, now the Bush regime is in a process of attempting to rescue the entire imperialist system. It does it in the most selfish way, because it’s objective is not simply to rescue imperialism, but to rescue the imperialism in which America would have absolute hegemony.

In fact, in September, they put forth the so-called Strategic Defense Plan. This Strategic Defense Plan had three components to it:

One, it stated quite clearly that America is the most powerful country in the world, and that it would never allow any other country to become as powerful.

Two, that if any power who is opposed to U.S. imperialism, in any region in the world, begins to acquire weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. would use pre-emptive attacks to wipe them out.

Three, they would do it unilaterally, by themselves, if necessary.

All these other arguments are nonsense. We’ve been hearing about the United Nations, and having somebody else with the U.S. If you read just the document they have put out themselves, they have stated that their policy is world hegemony. Their objective is to re-colonize the world. It is to stop the bleeding of the imperialist system that comes as a consequence of oppressed peoples around the world fighting and winning their freedom, whether it is in the Middle East or any place else. That’s what seems to be happening.

Now, in my opinion and the opinion of the Party, the Bush regime can’t do anything right. There’s nothing right they can do. That’s the place where they are.

The government says it is fighting against violence. It has characterized this massacre that it wants to commit against the people of Iraq as somehow rescuing the people from the violence of Saddam Hussein!

So, I’m truly, truly, truly concerned about that. I think that we are in a very serious and tenuous place in the world. We need to struggle for more political clarity and maturity in our movement. We need to be willing to look objectively at what America’s about.

U.S. fighting in Asia, Africa and Latin America, as well as Middle East
There’s another reason that I’m concerned. I’m concerned because the situation with Iraq is obvious to everybody. What’s not so obvious is what the U.S. is doing in all these other places.

They have now effectively declared war in the Philippines. Initially they were just going to send somebody over to help and advise in the Philippines. Now they say they are going in ostensibly to get the Abu Sayaf.

Who is America to go and get any damn body? I mean they can’t even get the white guy that did anthrax in this country. There was a guy right over here in Seminole. They found him with weapons of mass destruction, but they haven’t characterized him as a terrorist. They didn’t do to him what they’ve done to Sami Al-Arian.

We’re confronted with a serious question, particularly in Africa. You read about the million Africans killed in Rwanda, because of so-called contradictions between the Hutu and the Tutsi. Many of those Africans died in 1998 and 1999.

Then, of course, every day you pick up the newspaper and there’s something about the situation in Congo. There’s the situation in Ivory Coast. There’s a near-situation in Central African Republic.

All over Africa, you see this stuff. What most people do not understand is that what you’re looking at in Rwanda, Congo, Ivory Coast, and Central African Republic is a contest between France and the United States. France used to be the dominant force in these so-called Francophone states.

The United States no longer recognizes the French sphere of interest in Africa. It has now moved to take all of it away from France. You’re looking at proxy wars that sometimes have resulted in skirmishes between U.S. and French troops in Africa.

We’re not just looking at Iraq. When we talk about peace, we have to be talking about a peace that comes as a consequence of national liberation. People have to be free.

Latin America has to be considered, also. The most dynamic force in the world is the struggle for national liberation. This is the most progressive force. Anybody who’s standing in the way of that is standing in the way of progress, whether it’s in the black community in America or in Bolivia which just had a major uprising. It’s in a very unstable situation.

You don’t even know half of what’s happening in Colombia. I talked to a comrade who just got back from Venezuela. It’s nothing like what you think because the media only lets you see what they want you to see. It’s boiling in Venezuela. In Venezuela, comrades from the FARC from Colombia are passing out leaflets on the streets. It’s that serious there.

Then of course, U.S. troops have made it clear why they went to Colombia. They went there to fight the revolutionaries.

Then in Brazil, which is huge, you have a changed situation with the election of this social democrat.

You know about the economy in Argentina. You know about the situation in Peru. It is an extremely volatile situation all over the world. There is no way that the U.S. can do what it wants to do and come out of it the way it wants to come out. It’s attempting to re-colonize the world, and it is serious. That is the context for everything that we’re looking at right now, including this war that they’re talking about making against Iraq. This is the crisis that imperialism is looking at.

I’m not trying to find a way out of the crisis for imperialism, because everybody else lives in crisis. When you have a world where more than half the people live on two dollars a day, that’s a damn crisis for the rest of the world. The fact that people are trying to resolve those crises is causing the crisis for the parasite that feeds off of them.

It seems to me that we’re confronted with the question of how we move to unite with the vast majority of humanity that wants to be free! I think that’s what we’re contending with.

You have this interesting contradiction. It’s not all that it looks like. Almost everything is up for grabs.

Europe fears U.S. hegemony over entire world
Europe is uneasy with the United States. It has been for a while, especially since the so-called Soviet threat has disappeared. Europe has been trying to move as rapidly as possible for unification.

It has been clear that there are two objectives of the European Union (EU). One of them was to contain Germany. Every time Germany flexes its muscles, it kicks everybody else’s ass in Europe. So, they want to contain Germany.

They also want to grow an economy and a military that is as strong or stronger than those of the United States. They’ve even commented on this in their journals. This is one of their intentions. With the so-called Soviet threat gone, there was no reason why they could not do that.

Now, you have forces in Europe with their own interests that are separate and distinct from those of the United States. They have interests in Iraq. They want the loot from Iraq and Iran.
France was trading seriously with Iran and Iraq. China was as well, although China’s not part of Europe. These countries and entities want their own relationships. They want to look after their own interest. Sometimes that’s in contention with the interests of the United States.

Now, everybody’s concerned about the United States taking Iraq. They say that Iraq has more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. In fact, they call it the second largest. They say that every time you dig a hole in Iraq you get oil. They say they have enough oil, I think, for the next hundred years.

The problem is that Europe is dependent on oil too. So is Japan. If the United States sits astride all the oil in the Middle East, then they’ve got control of Europe, period!

That is the real concern. Another concern is the arrogance of U.S. imperialism. It disallows these spheres of interest that I was talking about. It is quite blatant in its statement of world hegemony.

It doesn’t even pretend that the Europeans are equal powers. They say this is how it’s going to be and you fall in line or you get left out.

This is creating serious contradictions among the populations in Europe. There is a form of nationalism: European nationalism, French nationalism, British nationalism. They resent America telling Tony Blair what to do. They are ashamed. They hate it. They write in newspapers that Blair is Bush’s poodle.

Just yesterday, in the House of Commons, Blair received the largest defeat in the history of England. More than a third of his own party fought him against this war resolution. He won the resolution, but he won it because the Tories, many of who were against him, carried the day for him. They said it was a humiliating defeat for Blair.

You have all these people who hate that their fallen empire is a footstool for U.S. imperialism. The same thing is happening with the French and the Germans.

There is a kind of nationalism that, even as it uses expressions about sympathy for the people in Iraq, is opposed to it being dominated by the United States the way it’s being dominated. So, millions of people are in motion around that question.

You have certain sectors of the ruling elite in England who are afraid of the European Union, because if Europe united as it’s talking about, Germany and France are going to be the primary forces in Europe. To contend with them, England is hanging with the United States, come what may. That’s going to be their seat at the table. They would be eaten up by a Europe dominated by Germany and France.

The U.S. is taking advantage of Europe in some interesting ways. The former Soviet states are being brought into the European Union and they are on the payroll of the United States.
There is the notion that their so-called development is going to come from the United States. So, that’s why Rumsfeld is playing the game of the old Europe versus the new Europe. He’s telling Germany and France to go to hell, because he has Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. He is going to try to play the new Europe against the old Europe.

Because they’re in the pocket of Uncle Sam, England is struggling with Germany and France about where they are trying to take Europe and the European Union.

The type of EU that France and Germany want is problematic. They want a closely-knit, single economy and a single military. These new forces coming in are struggling for something loose. They’re going to be the U.S. Trojan Horse inside this situation.

So, you have a highly volatile, unstable situation where the U.S. is exposing itself to the whole world. That’s no little thing. It’s antagonizing so many allies. One of the ways the U.S. gets to project its imperial power around the world is through military bases stuck in these other countries that it’s now making hostile.

It has already been suggested that the bases would be going in Germany. You know that U.S. troops are training so-called Iraqi dissidents in Hungary. Now there’s a military base in Hungary, so they’re anticipating that.

You know there was a time when this contradiction we’re looking at now might have caused a war among the imperialists themselves. The problem now is that the United States has a military budget that is larger than the next 20 countries combined.

You aren’t going to get one of the other imperialists to be willing to take on the U.S. The EU might have the muscle to try to push the U.S. around sometime in the future, but there is not a single one of the European nations that’s capable of challenging the United States now.

It seems France is going to jump on board once the war starts, because they want their own action in Iraq. They want to have their own relationships with the economy there. But if the U.S. takes it, then everybody gets left out, unless they jump on board now.

So, if France wants contracts for rebuilding, or any kind of favorable business deals, then they need to be on board when the U.S. goes into Iraq. That’s why some people are suspecting that France will jump in at the last minute. It won’t want to be left out of the business deals that are going to come with the conquest of that territory.

It’s all cold-blooded. All their moralistic nonsense has nothing to do with morality. It’s all cold-blooded.

U.S. fears China will defend Korea in struggle
The Korea issue is blatant to everybody, too. They’re going to kill Saddam Hussein. They don’t make any bones about that. They’ll kill him, his family and everybody who’s close to him because he might one day have nuclear weapons, and he might have some weapons of mass destruction.

Well, Korea says, "We’ve got them!" — nuclear weapons. Korea said America’s not the only one that can do a pre-emptive strike. We can do one too. Korea said, well bring it on, no matter what they do. Every day they do something new. They crank up the nuclear reactors. They shoot a missile over Colin Powell when he goes to the Middle East to try to calm things down.

This is an interesting situation. It’s going to be hard for the U.S. to attack Korea because if the U.S. attacks Korea there’s an 800- pound gorilla that nobody’s talking about — China.
I do not see how China could stand aside and see that happen. This is true, not because China has a love affair with the Korean people necessarily. China has its own interests, and it is not interested in U.S. hegemony over that area of the world. China expects to be the dominant force, not only there, but maybe in the whole world.

Given an opportunity, China will just go along, industrialize and build itself. But if the U.S. attacks Korea, I don’t see how China could sit by and watch that happen. That’s the 800-pound gorilla that’s sort of out there, and no one’s talking too much about it.

Colin Powell went over there and talked to China. He said, "Say something to Korea." China responded, "That’s your problem, you deal with it!" Guess what? Not only did China tell them that, but also the new president of so-called South Korea said in his inaugural presentation that they are not going to be a lapdog of the United States. They said they were not going to allow the United States to tell them what to do. They said that their move is now towards re-unification of Korea.

This brings us to the basis of the contradiction between the Democratic Republic of Korea and the United States. The contradiction is one that the U.S. initiated because it saw the growing movement towards re-unification of the Koreas. If Korea reunifies, the U.S. has no basis for having almost 40,000 troops there. Those troops ostensibly protect South Korea from so-called North Korea. Of course, we know those troops are there for the 800-pound gorilla, China. That’s a serious contradiction.

Now, everybody in the whole world is watching this thing happen. There’s no mystery here, it’s not like Viet Nam. It’s not like the Second Imperialist War. It’s not like Korea.
Bush says, "We’re not going for the oil." Companies say, "We don’t want their oil." Colin Powell says, "We don’t want their oil." All of them have to say that because the whole world knows what’s going on.

The whole world knows that millions of people came out in opposition to this war, yet the Bush regime still intends to do it. It exposes this fantasy of so-called western democracy. Bush said that the demonstrations show that democracy’s at work. He’s a fool. I’m sorry. To say Bush and fool is being redundant.

Bush would say that it’s democracy at work because people are marching. That isn’t democracy. Democracy is when the majority says don’t do something, and then you don’t do it. That’s democracy, you understand.

The imperialists have this very cavalier attitude. They’re even using words like imperialism in their own journals. You should read Foreign Affairs.

Bush’s statement is so cavalier! He would actually liquidate that a real democracy would require him to be bound by the interests and wishes of the masses of people.

Iraq war will have serious implications for imperialism
If Bush doesn’t go to war against Iraq his career and his regime are gone. Make no mistake about it. Bush isn’t doing this as an individual. As an individual, he would certainly be concerned about his career.

If he goes to war, which is very likely, he’s going to unleash forces he cannot even imagine.
This whole notion of some democratic space will be gone. It’s gone for people in this country who actually thought there was democracy. Jimmy Wickets asks, "You mean there’s no democracy?" No! You should have listened to what people were saying to you in the Barrio 30 years ago. That’s going to be an extraordinary event for many people.

You think it was bad when people learned that Richard Nixon used all those curse words on the tapes! For this guy to go to war while all these people are out there demonstrating and all kinds of people went out there to try to bring some kind of reasoning to this thing is going to have consequences. I can’t say what they all are.

I don’t mean there’s going to be some kind of calamity the next day. But, I’m telling you it’s going to have serious implications. It’s going to deepen the crisis. Nobody will have respect for this thing.

Around the world, he’s causing major contradictions between peoples and governments everywhere. In the Middle East, all these puppet governments — who deny it — are backing Bush up behind the backs of their people.

He’s creating severe crises between the people and the governments there. He’s creating a crisis between the people and the government in England, and other places. It’s a serious, critical crisis that’s emerging.

He’s revealing that the imperialists have no respect for any kind of law. What might have seemed shocking on 9/11 in 2001, in my view, will possibly be looked upon in four or five years as child’s play.

Nobody plays by the rules. Bush is making up the rules as they go along. That’s something that all the peoples in the world will be looking at.

Bush is talking about occupying Iraq. He’s talking about putting forces down there. He’s saying that they’re going to have to occupy Iraq. They used to wonder how to do this because it causes all kinds of destabilization in the Middle East. They don’t care.

In fact, they have been concerned about Saudi Arabia for some time now. They’re concerned about the stability of the government and the ideological influences there. Now they take Iraq and they intend to dominate everything in the Middle East.

They used to rely on the Shah of Iran. They used to rely on the State of Israel as the policeman. Both proved to be unreliable. When the U.S. goes into Iraq, the situation in occupied Palestine that already had been getting worse every day, will get worse under the cover of all this discussion and struggle around Iraq. I suspect that they intend to remove the Palestinian population with this attack on Iraq.

One of the problems that the imperialists have is Islam, because it’s international, and it has some kind of organizational and ideological coherence. It is located in all these places where people are poor and struggling to win some freedom. That’s one of the reasons that Islam itself is under assault.

Turkish government opposes Kurdish struggle for homeland
Turkey is an interesting question. The Turks say that one of the reasons that they’re going into Iraq is to rescue the poor Kurds who live in northern Iraq. Then in the southern part of Iraq, there are the Shiite Muslims.

Iraq really controls a little less than a third of its territory. The integrity of Iraq’s territory has been compromised severely. U.S. and British forces bomb Iraq regularly.

The Kurds are a group of people who were left out when the imperialists redrew the lines in that area. They are a distinct cultural national entity. Because they were left out when the borders were drawn, the majority of the Kurdish populations are in Eastern Turkey, Northern Iraq, Syria and Iran.

The Kurds want a national homeland. They are oppressed everywhere. They are oppressed because the imperialists drew borders in the Middle East and left them as they did. The Kurds can’t get a homeland except at the expense of the territorial integrity of one or another of the states where they now live.

So, none of those states want to say the Kurds can have a homeland because the homeland comes at the expense of what is characterized as the national territory. The Kurds have been played off all the time. The imperialists use the Kurds against one or another state. They use them against Iran or against Syria.

Turkey is most vicious in its attack on the Kurds. The Kurds can’t even use their own language. The Kurds can’t dress in their national clothing. Every now and then, the Kurdish resistance is attacked militarily. When they’re attacked, they go over the border. Turkey and northern Iraq are contiguous, so the Kurds go over the borders. The Turkish army chases Kurds into northern Iraq, just killing them.

The Kurds want Kurdistan, a national homeland in northern Iraq. The Turks say if you give the Kurds a national homeland in northern Iraq, it’s going to threaten the stability in Turkey, because the Kurds who live in Turkey are going to want a national homeland as well. That’s going to destabilize our situation. So, Turkey tells the U.S., "We’ll go down with you, if you give us enough money. We’ll support you, if you let our troops occupy northern Iraq where the Kurds are."

You have the Shiite Muslims in the southern part of Iraq. The Americans are also helping them solve their problem. But if the Shiite Muslims assume national autonomy or some kind of independent status there, all the other Arab states, Saudi Arabia included, will feel threatened. Iran is also Shiite Muslims, and many are concerned that Iran will have influence among the Shiites who are in southern Iraq.

This situation is very volatile and extremely dangerous. They’re about to unleash some stuff they’ve never seen before and cannot even imagine.

Turkey’s been trying for a long time to be white. The European Union won’t allow Turkey to join, mostly because they’re a Muslim state. So, Turkey crushes down any meaningful evidence of Islam. Muslims always win the election because Turkey’s a Muslim state.
Under Attaturk, Turkey was made a secular state, but everybody’s a Muslim there. However, you can’t act as if you’re a Muslim if you’re in power or the army will kick your ass.

Ninety percent of the people in Turkey don’t want to participate in the war. That’s the real deal. It’s a very, very tenuous situation all over the world.

Peace movement denies right of colonized people to struggle against our oppressors
We have some serious concerns. We have concerns about a peace movement that would define itself only in terms of what they call stopping the violence. That is a discretion that comes about while not recognizing violence as an absolute component of the conditions of existence of colonized people on the planet. It’s always violence.

If you’re black, you’re always confronting violence. That’s what living seven years less than white people on average means. In the concentration camps that they call Indian reservations, the life span is in the ‘40s. All the other places around the world people are locked into the imperialist system.

A real pacifist in this country would be exhausted just from lying down in front of the police cars that are trying to get to the black community on a regular basis everywhere in this country.

However, they want to talk about "pacifism" and "stopping the violence" and sort of stopping everything in place. This pacifism that they talk about in the peace movement is effectively a pacifism that would guarantee the permanent monopoly of violence in the hands of the imperialists. The only time they talk about stopping the violence is when the oppressed people rise up to try to take back our freedom. That doesn’t play well. I’m concerned about that for a number of reasons.

A peace movement like that will validate the attack that the government is making on peoples by allowing them to characterize any response to the violence of imperialism as violence equal to what the imperialists are doing.

The struggles in Colombia now are characterized as being waged by terrorists, and that is "violent."

The Palestinians are being massacred on a daily basis. Just over the last week, maybe 40 or more Palestinians have been murdered. Their response is "violence." Then you have the "good violence" versus the "bad violence." The "good violence" is violence by the U.S. and its allies. The "bad violence" is committed by anybody who is opposed to that.

Therefore, I’m concerned about the peace movement. I am truly, truly concerned about a peace movement that will validate the policy of the U.S. government, which is fighting against "terrorism" and "violence."

The thing that disturbs me is that less than 44 percent of Africans are for this war. In this country, Africans are the largest group of people opposed to the war, but Africans don’t participate in the peace movement. The Africans can’t participate in the peace movement because the peace movement doesn’t recognize the war that’s being made against the Africans.

The peace movement calls on everybody to fight for peace for white people. It will not include on its agenda the attack that’s happened to Africans, Indians and other people in this country.

In fact, the Quakers have said that they don’t even want to participate in the anti-war movement that we helped to build because it was taking up too many causes of Indians and black people.

We don’t live in peace. We don’t have any peace in our communities. We are opposed to the war because we are witnesses to what the American war is all about right here, where the movement that is supposed to be for peace won’t open the door to allow African people to participate.

This contradiction between oppressed and oppressor nations is really busting wide open. That’s what September 11 seems to have been about. That’s what Afghanistan is about. That’s what Iraq is about. That’s what Colombia is about. That’s what the Philippines are about.

You see they’re not occupying France. The war is happening in all these other places where people have been living under colonial domination all this time. They’re trying to stick people back in that situation.

Inside this country, the so-called peace movements reflect imperial assumptions as they relate to oppressed peoples. They assume that black people should not come in and mess up their damn peace movement. They have a nice peace movement and here’s Omali. They say, "Every time Omali talks, he’s talking about oppression and imperialism and we just want it to stop." Do you understand?

That’s what’s happening. Here’s Sheridan from the American Indian Movement talking about what’s happening on the reservations and they just want the discussion to stop.

It’s happening even with folk who are being redbaited, like A.N.S.W.E.R. They are being redbaited, yet they’re trying to stop us from speaking out.

Driving force in history is national liberation
It’s an incredible, volatile situation, but it’s one that can bode well. The fundamental problem is all the millions of people who are out there in opposition to what the Bush regime is attempting to do. People are opposed to imperialism, but the fundamental contradiction is the lack of organization.

There is no evidence of revolutionary organization. People need organization.

Even with the Soviet Union being the opportunistic entity that it was, it was significant because it gave ideological grounding for many forces throughout the whole world.

The contradiction in this world that’s going to be kicking everybody in the teeth is that oppressed peoples everywhere, including the black communities and Barrios in the cities and communities where you live, are moving forward and are no longer going to live like this.
That’s what’s defining the historical trajectory that we’re moving along today. Bush is trying to stop history. That will not work. I think what revolutionaries struggle to do is to understand the historical trajectories and join them to facilitate the birth of a completely new kind of social system. That in the final analysis is what we’re fighting for. People have to choose sides.

The driving force in history is national liberation. There’s a real attempt to re-colonize the world directly under white power. I believe everything they do will deepen this crisis as opposed to lessening it for them. That’s the world as we see it.

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