| News Comments 2001 | ||
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PREVIOUS WEEKS' COMMENTS IN 2001
30/12/01 11/9/01 11/9/01 8/9/01 Show Bush it is detrimental to the US economy to ignore
8/9/01
27/8/01
20/8/01 22/7/01 11/7/01
SEGREGATION,
ISOLATION, DEPRIVATION 22/6/01 26/5/01 !.
5. 01 |
ISRAELI TERRORIST ATTACKS ON PALESTINIANS Arial Sharon,
the Butcher of Beirut, is seeking to take advantage of the
current obsession in the United States of North America with
wreaking revenge on the Islamic extremists who committed the
atrocities against them on 11th September. This war
criminal, who has been made Prime Minister of Israel by the
substantial minority of religious extremists who have poured
into the Holy Land during the past half century, is pursuing
his policy of driving the indigenous Arab population out of
the West Bank and Gaza in order to settle Jews from any part
of the world, so long as, of course, they are not black. Sharon has no respect for any of the non-Jewish population of what he regards as Greater Israel and demonstrated this a year ago by his sacrilegiously arrogant visit to the Dome of the Rock Mosque in Jerusalem over a year ago, which was the immediate cause of the present violence. Sharon has no more respect for the Christian communities either and, boasting that he is an archeologist, has stolen many ancient artifacts to add to his private collection of Moslem, Christian and Jewish trophies. This war criminal who, so long as he enjoys the protection of the USNA demanded by the Jewish lobby in Washington, will never be brought to trial, has no interest in peace because Sharon believes that the Palestinians should be driven from the land of Israel or treated as near-slaves. Perhaps he dreams of controlling all the territory ruled by King David three thousand years ago, an empire stretching from Egypt to Babylon. Moreover his treatment of Palestinians suggests that he considers them to be the descendants of the Canaanites cursed by Noah rather than of Ishmael, son of Abraham.
This is of course the text used by Europeans to justify their genocidal enslavement or suppression of Africans for 500 years. Meanwhile Bush and Blair give eager support to the murderous terrorist raids by Israeli troops into Palestinian territory, for they appear to define atrocities committed by trained soldiers in uniform as acts of war not terrorism. So were not the French resistance fighters who shot occupying German officers taking their morning Pernods also terrorists? And what of the Contras, trained by the US military and funded by that war criminal, Col North, who were fighting the legally constituted, but communist government of Nicaragua? Were they not also terrorists? There are too many other examples of western hypocrisy to list here. One man's terrorist is still another's freedom-fighter. Kwesi Bacchra 30.12.2001 WHAT WILL SALVE THE GRIEF THAT GRIPS THE WORLD?
As wax candles are lit, bunches flowers are laid and hot, bitter tears are shed by many thousands of ordinary people around the world in memory of those innocents who so brutally lost their lives in New York and Washington DC, we must also think of the many millions who have died by terrorist acts in the last half century but whose deaths have not been acknowledged by the 'free' world nor the manner of their murders.
Loving hearts have been rent asunder and stomachs twisted in sorrowing cramps by unfathomable grief for loved ones whose tender bodies have been broken, torn and burnt. These tragic deaths are the result not only of the perverted use by arrogant fanatics of non-military airliners but, particularly the hundreds of firemen and other rescuers, also of the failure of the irresponsible architects and unaccountable builders of the twin World Trade Centre towers. These were supposed to be built to withstand hurricanes or collision by aircraft, but neither of them sustained the terrorist crashing of jetliners into them. Will the FBI also pursue those who failed to carry out their responsibilities in the interests of profit?
When the B-52 aircraft crashed accidentally into the 47th floor of the Empire State Building in New York in 1945, only fourteen people died, and at no time was the skyscraper, then the world's tallest, in danger of collapse. The truth needs to be faced: of the 5,000 fatalities in New York, rather less than 1,000 died directly as a result of the terrorist jetliner assault, while at least 4,000 deaths were caused by the negligence of their fellow citizens who built the two towers.
The Victims of Terrorism including US Terrorism Webster's Universal Dictionary defines terrorism as "methods of government by inspiring terror by acts of brutality and savagery" and the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a terrorist as "one who favours or uses terror-inspiring methods of governing or of coercing government or community." Therefore a war against terrorism must include its prosecution against states which employ terror to subjugate their own as well as other peoples, not just non-governmental groups or individuals.
Amongst the other innocent victims of terrorism may be included the men, women and children killed by victorious Allied forces in southern Asia and Indonesia in order to hold onto control against indigenous fighters for self-rule in order to hand power back to tinpot colonial powers such as France and Holland. Also there are the hundreds of thousands of innocents who died in Vietnam as a result of the state terrorism meted out by the eventually defeated United States of North America, or those in Chile during the US inspired violent overthrow of the democratically elected President Allende and at the hands of the death squads of the US supported butcher Pinochet, the beloved of another state terrorist, Margaret Thatcher.
Then there are those who resisted the US led terrorist invasion of Grenada, as well as the US supported terrorist rebels in Nicaragua called the Contras. These were illegally financed out of profits from arms sales to Iran by the international Yankee terrorist, Colonel North. This criminal was described by former President Reagan as a Yankee hero and Iran designated as a 'terrorist state'. The United States failed in its Bay of Pigs terrorist invasion of Cuba as it has failed on numerous occasions to assassinate its popular leader, Fidel Castro.
In southern Africa the rebel regime in Rhodesia, while outwardly condemned by the US and UK, was covertly supported by them in its terrorist war against the indigenous Africans led by Mugabe, who sadly now resorts to terrorist activity against even some of his own Zimbabwe people in pursuit of what otherwise is a just cause. The United States also provided financial and logistical support to the terrorist units in Angola and Mozambique which were trying to overthrow the legal socialist governments in those two countries.
As demonstrated at the Sharpville massacre, the apartheid regime in South Africa employed terrorist methods to keep the majority Black population in near slave conditions. In this that evil government was supported for many years by the United States and other western countries ...... to be continued. WHICH IS THE GREATEST THREAT TO THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD? UNBRIDLED TERRORISM OR GLOBAL CAPITALISM?
As I write it is less than two hours since the airliner attacks on the two World Trade Centre towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. In Brighton, England, the British prime minister, Tony Blair, who was due to address the Trades Union Congress on his unacceptable proposals to privatise the National Health Service and Education system, cancelled his speech and spoke only of the disastrous events in the United States.
Before returning to London to be available to advise or be at the disposal of his imperial master, George Bush, he told the Congress that he sent the nation's condolences to him. While feeling every sympathy for the innocent victims of these atrocities, the hypocrisy of Blair cannot be dismissed. He said the 'free' world must work together to defeat the terrorists who have no respect for the sanctity of human life, but this comes within a few days following the demonstration by European countries of their reluctance to apologise for the crimes of chattel slavery over a three hundred year period of disrespect for the sanctity of African lives; and that disrespect has not ended yet.
However, although lacking the drama and indeed trauma of terrorist attacks such as those unleashed on New York and Washington, global capitalism is devastating the lives of millions of people around the world in order to massively enrich the few faceless controllers of all our lives. Moreover all true evidence of the democratic ability of ordinary people to control their own lives and determine who should govern them is rapidly disappearing as each conference of the world's richest capitalist nations reinforces the power of global capitalism.
Clearly such awful acts of terrorism have no place in democratic society but they will continue until the United States stops wreaking its own terrorist acts on small or weaker countries like Grenada or Nicaragua and it stops supporting the terrorist acts of the Israeli apartheid state against the Palestinian people who want only to rule themselves.
K.B. 11/09/2001 Boycott
the world's greatest polluter...
IS COLIN POWELL A COWARD?
Since their defeat by the Viet Cong a quarter of a century ago, the armed forces of the United States of North America have exhibited an extreme reluctance to commit themselves to battle which might result in their loss of life. They are quite happy to attack small nations such as Grenada with troops from other countries under their thumb or to sit in planes from which to drop smart bombs while they remain out of range to retaliatory fire, but they lack the guts to come face to face with the enemy. A refusal by soldiers to risk their lives has always been described as cowardice as well as being frequently punished as such.
In withdrawing the US delegation from the World Conference Against Racism 2001 in South Africa, it would seem that Secretary of State former General Colin Powell is himself infected with that cowardice. Instead of having the courage to stand up to George W Bush, the usurping president, and forcing his own countrymen as well as their apartheid allies in Israel to recognise their own continuing racist guilt, the most powerful Black man in the world seems to have sold out his African brethren. But then for half a millennium African peoples have been bedeviled by too many leaders who were more interested in their own comfort and bank balances.
K.B. 08/09/2001 RELUCTANT APOLOGY FOR SLAVERY EU COUNTRIES THREATENED WALKOUT
The compromise apology by European Union countries for the crime of chattel slavery from 16th to 19th centuries was reached only after they had threatened to walk out of a closed meeting with African delegations on Tuesday 4th September at the World Conference Against Racism 2001 in Durban, South Africa. Sources report that antagonisms had erupted and the South African National Business Daily newspaper reported that the European delegates had called the African demands "unreasonable to the point of psychotic" while threatening to join their Yankee and Israeli brethren in abandoning the conference.
The greatest fear of all those nations which had been guilty of the genocidal crimes was that a full admission of their guilt would result in compensation claims beyond their ability to pay. The British and French in particular exhibit a peculiar hypocrisy as they have demanded and received compensation from the German government for those of their citizens who were subjected to slave labour during the 1939-45 European Tribal War.
A 17,000 plus phone-in poll on BBC Television on 8th September revealed that 80% were opposed to compensation being paid by the British taxpayer, but how can the countries of Africa or the African diaspora be compensated for the devastation inflicted on that unhappy continent or the losses suffered by those taken into slavery or their descendants? Adequate compensation could never be paid, but the criminal nations could commence reparations.
Reparations could take three forms: Firstly, the investment of sufficient capital funds to provide the industrial, environmental and social infrastructures to enable victim countries in Africa and the Caribbean to compete on fair terms with the rest of the world with fair prices for their raw materials and produce. Secondly, the funding of measures to deal with the effects of racism within the industrialised countries such as the high levels of Black unemployment and educational underachievement by many Black students due to disaffection caused by racism. Thirdly, a vigorous campaign to educate the European populations with the real facts of African history and achievement and a cessation of the continuing promulgation of distorted versions of history invented by white intellectuals in order to justify their crime of slavery.
K.B. 08/09/2001
BRITISH
HIGH COMMISSIONER FILMS
The
governor of Mashonaland West Province in Zimbabwe, Peter
Chanetsa, has accused the High Commissioner from Britain,
Brian Donnelly, of complicity in a conspiracy by white
farmers. The aim has been to put the blame on President
Mugabe for the looting of white owned farms by Africans
pretending to be veterans reclaiming land stolen from their
grandfathers.
K.B. 27/08/01
ISRAEL
AND ZIMBABWE
There are a number of similarities between the situations in Mugabe's Zimbabawe and Sharon's Israel, but the differences of approach towards these two states by social capitalist Blair and imperial capitalist Bush are significant. Cloaked in the guilt of the atrocious treatment meted out to the Jews by Europeans over the centuries and conscious of the Zionist influence within their countries, the two Bs are trying to restrain Ariel Sharon, the Butcher of Beirut, from emulating Hitler by demanding 10 Palestinian lives, even of children, for every Israeli killed or injured.
Meanwhile Mugabe, the victor in the war to remove the illegal white Rhodesian rebels and restore the country to the people whose land it had been for millennia, is being demonised by the two Bs as a dangerous, racist dictator. This is because he wants to hold onto power until his task of restoration of the land to its original owners has been completed. His methods may be questionable but they are hardly more extreme than numerous illegal and anti-democratic actions such as the US invasion of Grenada.
Natural justice stands on Mugabe's side. White colonists killed thousands of Africans in their campaign to steal the best farmland in the land they cynically named Rhodesia after the murderous rogue who aimed to seize all the land between Cape Town and Cairo. Now those colonists' grandsons insist they have the right to retain ownership of their ill gotten farms while the grandsons of the victims, many of whom also fought for the right, are supposed accept unending positions of subservience to their white masters.
The settlement of the Zimbabwe independence war acknowledged the need to redistribute land but white farmers have continued to live their privileged lives while resisting reforms. Meanwhile millions of pounds earned from Zimbabwe's exports have been salted away by them in Geneva banks to the detriment of the Zimbabwe economy and, according to British government figures, 40,000 of them have demonstrated their loyalty to Zimbabwe by retaining their British passports or claiming patriality rights to enter Britain.
The objective of allowing the thieves to keep their spoils is also the ruling principle in Israel, and not only as regards Jewish settlements within territory recognised to be Palestinian. Since its establishment in 1948 by the US and UK dominated United Nations, the state of Israel has operated a racist citizenship policy which permits any Jew anywhere in the world to claim the right to live in the apartheid state. Meanwhile Palestinians are prevented from returning to their former homes and are all treated as second class citizens.
Of course 2,000 years ago Palestine was a mainly Jewish land, but what would happen if all over the world people were required to hand over territories to those who occupied them two millennia ago? No Europeans or Asians and only a few Africans in the Americas; no Europeans, Asians or Arabs in Africa except for a few Greeks and Romans in the very north: no-one except the Aboriginal Australians and Maoris in the Antipodes; no Chinese in Southern Asia; and the list goes on. And yet whites in Zimbabwe claim they have a right to be there!
K.B. 20/0 8/2001 WAS VIOLENCE JUSTIFIED AT THE G8 SUMMIT IN GENOA? It would appear that the Italian Police think so, because the way they fortified the old city of Genoa to confront demonstrators had all the characteristics of an army preparing for a siege. Two perimeter walls were established with the world leaders protected within an inner sanctum like medieval barons within a castle keep.
Such bellicose precautions were likely to represent a challenge to the supposed enemy, ordinary members of the public from around the world without power, and a minority responded accordingly. Social capitalist Tony Blair ranted against the violent peasants who had dared to protest against the 'democratically elected' leaders of the 'free' world, while he and the heads of state of the six other most economically powerful nations plus Russia debated but agreed to next to nothing that would benefit the poor peoples of the world on which they sustain their wealth.
Meanwhile one Italian policeman shot a young protester in the head while another ran over his dieing body with a police van. Clearly they were only exhibiting the hatred stimulated by the almost fascist government now in power in Italy with the approval of world leaders like Bush. This abomination to democracy stole the presidency of the United States of North America using his his brother's henchmen in Florida to deprive thousands of citizens of the right to have their votes counted. Which of these world leaders were really elected democratically with the wholehearted support of their electorate?
Throughout the 'free' world information and therefor opinion is controlled by global truth manipulators like Murdoch, so on what basis are the people able to decide? In overthrowing the state capitalism of the corrupt Soviet Union a decade ago, global capitalists succeeded in persuading millions that Socialism was evil. Now they insist that the electorate should no longer control their own economic welfare by owning the produce of their lands and from beneath, nor the manufacture of their raw materials, nor the means of transport or of finance and especially not control over information lest the people become aware of the truth. If poorer nations are to regain any of the wealth extorted from them they will have to privatise, that is hand over their economies to the global capitalists who oppress them.
Is any of this surprising, however, when we look back at the behaviour of the Western World through the organisations they have established to ensure their continued control? The World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organisation were all set up to achieve continual economic growth for the handful of victors of the 1939-45 wars plus later the leading defeated states after they had reformed their ways and adopted capitalism. In 1945 the first task was to finance the reestablishment of the former colonial order intended to keep Black peoples in their place.
In 1945 British troops marched into Saigon and put the occupying Japanese soldiers into prisoner of war camps while Ho Chi-Minh demanded self determination for his people before the disgraced French returned to reclaim their colony. Britain refused and, when the Vietnamese threatened to take power by force, they put rifles back into the hands of Japanese POWs who they knew would enforce British control with all the brutality they had wreaked during their occupation.
Meanwhile Indian troops under British control were sent to Indonesia to hold the reins of power against insurgent nationalists until the tin-pot European state, the Netherlands, could put together an administration after the Nazis had been driven from their little monarchy and take back the colony which supplied them with so much wealth. These actions to reestablish the pre-war colonial order were to result in the loss of millions of Asian lives as well as the defeat of the world's leading super-power by a peasant army of the Vietnamese people. So devastating was that debacle that the US armed forces are now too cowardly to risk their lives enforcing their imperial policies but instead attack guerilla armies from the safety of aircraft thousands of feet out of range.
The history of global capitalism demonstrates that it will use violence wherever and whenever it sees fit to protect its interests. It will permit protest from those opposed to it but will take absolutely no notice of their demands. Frequently all that remains for their voices to be heard and their complaints taken seriously is for there to be violence, the only language global capitalism understands.
Global capitalism has no morals, it supports only short term profit for the benefit of an elite while keeping less industrialised countries subject to that aim. They do not even care about their own grandchildren for, In order to achieve the growth and profits they seek, no concern is shown for global warming. They have always been more happy doing business with dictators whom they can buy rather than democracies which are less easy to corrupt. They support child labour and slavery which produces their goods cheaply so that an estimated 27 million children, women and men are trapped in slavery today, while the ILO estimates that there are more than 80 million children under 14 worldwide who work in conditions hazardous to their health. (Figures taken from August 2001 edition of New Internationalist. Check www.antislavery.org for other facts on present day slavery).
Ensuring that less industrialised countries continue to be swamped by debt ensures that they remain subject to the demands of global capitalists, although even they are beginning to realise that this conflicts with the principle that, without the means to pay, these countries will never be able to buy the goods and services of G7 countries. But before their debts can be written off, each debtor country must privatise its mines, agriculture, industries, education, health services etc. to ensure that the global capitalists can maintain a stranglehold control.
So was violence in Genoa justified, or in Oldham, Burnley, Bradford or Brixton? And whose violence are we talking about? Let them not forget that those who rule by the sword will die by the sword, no matter how many buttressed barriers they hide behind.
KB 22.7.2001 SEGREGATION,
ISOLATION, DEPRIVATION This summer's riots in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford have exposed just how deeply goes the pain of racism in Britain today. But it is not just racism which lies at the heart of the sense of betrayal felt by the young South Asians who have taken to their streets with cries of anguished anger on their lips and petrol bombs in their hands. Their reaction reveals elements of the recent protests in Sweden and elsewhere in the world against the detrimental effects of global capitalism as so heartily embraced by Social Capitalist prime minister Tony Blair. The highjackers of the British Labour Party can respond with what may seem to them justified annoyance that the good work they think they have done is being destroyed. But this only reveals their arrogance and failure to recognise that, not only have they usurped the socialist principles in which most Labour Party members still believe, but they still think they know better what ethnic minority communities need than they do themselves. In several British towns the ghettos created mainly under Tory administrations have remained untouched under New Labour rule with particularly primary schools operating as if apartheid education were the rule: White kids only in one school with Black youngsters only in the next. Moreover what is taught deepens the divisions too many children learn at home in all communities. It is time to stop teaching a history in which the English are gloriously portrayed as bringing peace, knowledge and civilisation to the world whereas the truth is that from Ireland to Australia and from China to the Americas the British Empire spelled devastation, disease and death to hosts of Black peoples. Whenever African history is proposed, the first thing thought of is slavery: and never without protesting that it was all the fault of African kings who sold their own people to obliging European traders! The truth is of course that slavery is more a part of English history, while important African contributions to world welfare such as vaccination against smallpox many centuries before Jenner should be taught. English children as well as Black need to be exposed to truth of the many amazing achievements of the peoples of the Indian sub-continent: eg the development of the concept of zero and how Indian surgeons taught the British how to rebuild a severely damaged face as well as other methods of cosmetic surgery. It remains a fact that unemployment is persistently much higher within Black communities with African Caribbeans still suffering more than Asians. Housing and services still fall behind provision awarded to the native white population while far too many police officers are ignoring the lessons from the appallingly racist handling of the Stephen Lawrence murder. Govermental authorities continue to use language to keep Black people down and reinforce divisions between the various ethnic minorities with divisive phraseology like 'black and Asian' and negatitvities such as 'Black Wednesday'. However, it is also time for African Caribbeans and Asians to rid themselves of their own petty racisms which only serve to weaken us all. KB 11:7:01 BLAIR AND BUSH REPAY BACKERS 'Hail to the Thief' Ignoring the fact that the Yankee Evil Empire is responsible for one quarter of all greenhouse gases which could spell disaster for many millions of people during the next fifty years, he says he is acting only in the interests of the 'American' people. The question of course is which 'American' people? It is certainly not the mass of ordinary citizens of his country and very definitely not their as yet unborn children and grandchildren, whose very survival will be uncertain for no-one knows what will happen to world temperatures as the thickness of the carbon-dioxide blanket increases. The only people who will really benefit from these irresponsible policies, and then only in the short term, are the billionaires who run the oil and coal companies who backed the George W. Bush election campaign. So now he repays his debts while gambling the future of the world. A Capitalist Sleeper? In his policies of semi-privatising the National Health Service, the educational system and the London underground service, Blair reveals how he will start to repay his capitalist backers. Back in 1996 he ran up a big debt to that arch-capitalist Robert Murdoch who immediately ordered his lead gutter newspaper to ensure that Labour won the election in 1997. He did the same again in this years political battle. Now I do not believe that newspapers win elections, even though their editors do, but their steady drip drip of subtle persuasion can certainly have an effect. Now the time has come for Blair to repay by ensuring that global capitalists have a smooth path to enclose not just Britain but the whole of the European Union in their economic stranglehold. Blair's angry reaction to the anti-capitalist riots in Sweden was another exhibition of the social capitalist supporting his backers. KB 22/6/2001 BLACK VOTES CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE Paul Stinchcombe, in his maiden speech in 1997 as the first Labour MP to represent Wellingborough and Rushden in Northamptonshire for many years, acknowledged that it was Black people getting out to vote for him which turned a safe Tory seat into a marginal Labour constituency with a wafer thin 187 majority. Even the landslide swing to New Labour could not have won him the seat without the efforts of local Black activists from all the African Caribbean and Asian communities. For the first time Black citizens in Wellingborough and Rushden have had a representative in Parliament who has been prepared to speak up for their interests but, in such a close marginal seat, it is imperative that all Black voters in Wellingborough go to the polling station on 7 June to mark their X for Paul Stinchcombe to get him re-elected. Where Black Votes Matter Throughout the country there are 80 constituencies where the votes of Black people can determine who gets elected. If the national result is closer than current polls suggest, such a large number of seats which could be decided by the way Black people vote could determine whether the next Prime Minister will be the social capitalist Tony Blair or the privilege capitalist William Hague. What a choice! Just what have Black people got out of their loyal support for New Labour? How have they benefited from the regime headed by the contol freak Tony Blair? In September 1997 he said:
So what have we got after four years of the Blair regime? The numbers in the senior ranks of the civil service are still disappointing, and there are no Black ambassadors, permanent secretaries or High Court judges. There has even been a slight decrease in the ranks of the top 3,000 civil servants – from 1.8% in 1989 to 1.7% in 1999. The government has promised to double that figure to 3.2% by 2005 by setting targets, but I will not be holding my breath. In the justice system there are still no High Court judges and no Lord Justices, only 6 circuit judges out of a total of 568; only 36 Recorders out of a total of 1,329 and only 19 district judges (including deputies) out of a total of 1,162. A Home Office report in December 2000 admitted that ethnic minorities were under-represented in all grades as employees in the police service, prison service and in the senior posts in all the criminal justice agencies: only 2.4% of police constables, 1.5% of sergeants, 1.2% of chief inspectors and 0.8% of Superintendent and above being from ethnic minorities. One Black Achiever The only saving grace is that there is just one senior officer in the Royal Air Force, Air Commodore David Case. A brilliant engineer born into the back streets of Brixton who has worked his way up through the ranks against all odds. In the Prison Service only 0.8% of governor grades and equivalent new grades are from ethnic minorities and only 2.6% of Prison Officer grades. (All figures are taken from the Black Manifesto which can be read on www.blink.org.uk/campaign/draftindex.htm ) Where are the Black Candiates? But what about some safe Labour seats for Black candidates? When questioned government spokespeople are likely to say that they cannot impose candidates on local parties. Yet a certain former Tory MP by the name of Sean Woodward has been imposed on the Labour voters of St Helens South even though he has never before been there and as a multi-millionaire will never have any empathy with the people of this working class constituency. But he qualifies in the eyes of Tony Blair because he is a natural recruit to the Social Capitalist Tendency within New Labour. This is a seat where a Black candidate would have been the ideal choice and my advice to all voters in St Helens South therefor is to vote Socialist Labour on June 7 and send a message to Fuhrer Tony Blair that we will not be dictated to. Blair's Education Policies a Failure For Black people education has always been the gateway out of the catastrophic legacy of slavery and British imperialism, and the unremedied years of underachievement of Caribbean origin children in particular is a continuing source of worry for Black parents. Yet in the last four years there has been no attempt to remedy the lies taught in British schools about not only Black history and achievement but also the false glory of England's past. No wonder racism continues to be perpetuated, although there are now millions of English people who have been able to cast off the prejudices they were taught and who recognise Black people for the quality of their individual characters while not seeing the colour of skin as of any significance. But it is in further education that Blair has
dealt his most wounding blow. The continued withdrawal of grants and
imposition of university fees has hit Black people
disproportionately. The whole of society gains from a well educated
population, and the idea that students alone should pay for the
benefits their qualifications bring to the economy an the quality of
national life is perhaps the most anti-socialist
proposition that our social capitalist, so-called Labour government
has brought in. All citizens who benefit from higher incomes should
help pay for further education even if the only college they ever
attended was the University of Life. A specific additional tax of
10% on earnings over £75,000 per annum would not be unfair as well
as it being cost
effective for such taxpayers as they are the first beneficiaries of
a better educated populace. And the verdict on the last four years: So has our New Labour government carried out the pledges made by our social capitalist Prime Minister for institutions to reflect British society with permanent secretaries, senior judges, ambassadors and MPs? The answer is a resounding 'NO'. So what should Black people do on 7 June? While we cannot risk a return of the Tories, if the polls are to be believed, Black voters can afford to withhold their support from Labour except in places like Wellingborough where an excellent MP like Paul Stinchcombe deserves our support. But elsewhere don't just stay at home, go to the polling station and write across the ballot paper, "Equal representation for Black citizens". If enough of you do that the message will get through. KB 26.5.2001 Who are the real racists? So what if they all want to deny charges of racism ! I think I might prefer the honest racist rather than those in both the New Labour and Conservative parties who play the race card with their right-wing jingoistic tirade against the tens of thousands so called bogus refugees who are supposedly flooding these tiny, overpopulated islands and using up all our housing, education and health resources. Reminds me of Thatcher's fear before she became Prime Minister of her country being "flooded by coloured immigrants". John Townend MP, like a substantial number of his Tory colleagues, was always a racist and he was never told to apologise when claimed the right as an Englishman to use the obnoxious phrase 'Nigger in the Woodpile', which he maintained was not racist. William Hague and the Black peer, Lord John Taylor, had accepted that and were happy to live with him in their party so long as he did not go too public for, after all, isn't what he says just what so many of their constituents actually think? John Taylor is a bit late waking up to that while some of his Black Tory colleagues, like Judith Edwards, are tripping over themselves trying to explain it all away. Toryism is about conserving privilege and it is the result of their policies, still maintained by New Labour, which results in 25% of young Black men being unemployed. Whites who grouse about the help given to deprived communities are essentially complaining about a possible loss of their white privilege. KB 1.5.2001 The
Politicians say they want to 'manage' us all. Hague has exposed himself as a weak leader and a prevaricator, desperately trying to hold on to his right wing and afraid they might defect to their natural homes, the British National Party or United Kingdom Independence Party. But what has been revealed by the the Townend supporter, Laurence Robinson, is their fear that having a diverse multi-cultural population "makes society very difficult to manage". So that is what it is all about; if we are all the same, it is easier to control us. So many of us being different gives our political 'managers' a problem. And I was silly enough to think Democracy was about controlling my own destiny and managing my own life with as little interference or control from governmental agencies as possible. However, the truth is that all British governments have always wanted to control us and, where any difficulty in doing so has been perceived, measures have been taken to divide and rule. That is why they are all so keen on encouraging potential interracial division, one instance being their insistence on continuing to use the obnoxiously divisive phrase 'black and Asian' rather than acknowledge the single proud designation 'Black' which unites us all. KB 1.5.2001
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