Revolution from Egypt to the Americas

Pharoah Mubarak Falls,
All Power to the People
Long Live the Pan African Revolution!
Al Humdulilah!!!!!!!

Revolution
from Egypt to the Americas

Marvin X

Parable of the Parrot


for Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and the Pan African Revolution


The king wanted parrots around him. He wants his ministers to wear parrot masks. He said he had to do the same for the previous king. He only said what the king wanted to hear, nothing more, so he advised his ministers to do the same. In fact, they must encourage the people to become parrots. Yes, he wanted a nation of parrots.

Don't say anything the king does not want to hear. Everything said should be music to his ears. And don't worry, he will tell you exactly what he wants to hear in his regular meetings and public addresses to the nation. Everyone will be kept informed what parrot song to sing.

No one must be allowed to disagree with the king. This would be sacrilegious and punishable by death. The king must be allowed to carry out the dreams that come to his head. No one else should dream, only the king.

In this manner, according to the king, the people can make real progress. There shall always be ups and downs, but have faith in the king and everything will be all right.

Now everyone sing the national anthem, the king told the people. There must be a chorus of parrots, a choir, mass choir singing in perfect unity. Let there be parrots on every corner of the kingdom, in every branch and tree. Let all the boys sing like parrots in the beer halls.
Let the preacher lead the congregation in parrot songs. Let the teachers train students to sound like parrots.

Let the university professors give good grades to those who best imitate parrot sounds. Let the journalists allow no stories over the airwaves and in print if they do not have the parrot sound.

The king was happy when the entire nation put on their parrot masks. Those who refused suffered greatly until they agreed to join in.

The state academics and intellectuals joined loudly in parroting the king's every wish. Thank God the masses do not hear them pontificate or read their books. After all, these intellectual and academic parrots are well paid, tenured and eat much parrot seed. Their magic song impresses the bourgeoisie who have a vested interest in keeping the song of the parrot alive.

Deep down in the hood, in the bush, the parrot song is seldom heard, only the sound of the hawk gliding through the air in stone silence looking for a parrot to eat.
--Marvin X
4/5/10

After Friday Prayers

After Friday Prayers
After salat
salaam-alaikum
al humdulilah
we shall meet in the streets
to shout no more pharaoh
no more presidents for life
no more American aid for guns, tear gas tanks
no more uncle abdullah
no more
no more reactionary theology
no honor killings
suppression of women's dignity
no more
after Friday prayers
in Tunisia
Cairo
Yemen
Sudan
Jordan
Saudi Arabia
Persian Gulf
no more
after Fatihah/Ikhlas
we shall meet the guns of Pharaoh Mubarak
we shall meet the tear gas
death even
we shall meet
and go to paradise
for freedom
no fear of Pharaoh's guns/tear gas
no fear no more
young and invincible
we have the model
wel meet in the streets
to live again
to breathe
to love
to control our lives
feed our families
to fly in the sun of freedom and liberty.
--Marvin X
1/27/11

To Egypt With Love

Dedicated to my son, Abdul (Darrel P. Jackmon, RIP)

He studied at the American University in Egypt
he fell in love in Egypt
some Ghanian ambassador's daughter
I told him don't give no woman the key to your apartment
he never did
not even the ambassador's daughter, he told me
he loved Egypt
he spoke the language
graduated from UC Berkeley in Arabic and Middle Eastern Literature
He said the Africans were slaves throughout the Middle East
The Arabs took their passports
making them virtual slaves
their racism was pervasive
totally unsustainable
yet understandable
for they are not the aboriginal Arabs
they are not the Arabs of Sabah
Queen of Sabah's land
who ruled from Canaan to Jerusalem to the Persian Gulf
Queen of Sabah
who fascinated King Solomon

My son loved Arabic and Persian
He got a Fulbright fellowship to the University of Damascus
He said Syrian intelligence officers interrogated him daily
why was he hanging around those filthy Palestinians
Why did he go to the American embassy to swim

He said, Daid, they tried to recruit me for the C.I.A
The Mormons controlled the US Embassy
they wanted me to be a Mormon

Toward the end my son became a Mormon
He lived with Eldridge Cleaver
himself a Mormon, for a time
My son said Eldridge got strange phone calls
from strange people
we know Eldridge was dr. strangelove

The Ghanaian woman came to see my son in Cali
I do not know what happened
but she went home

In the end he loved a Portuguese woman
he loved Brazil
said he wanted to live in Bahia
dance Condomble rituals

a man of the world
at his funeral came his friends
no black man no black woman
Asians whites
after all
he was a man of the world
what could he say to a nigguh in the ghetto
his travels to Africa, Egypt, Jerusalem, Brazil,Japan, what could he say to a ghetto nigguh
In Japan, he said they teach the women to say three things:
yes, thank you and I'm sorry
but the Japanese woman he got pregnant said no to his black baby
so she could go home in peace
her family told her don't bring no black baby home.

Abdul loved the Middle East
He loved Persian
the poetry
the rhythms of the language
of the poets who do the dance of the dervish.

Egypt may fall today or tomorrow
but my son will be pleased
to know Pharaoh Mubarak is no more
the regime is history
what a story to tell my son
who walked into a train
in his midnight madness
Dr. Hare said he was like Malcolm and Martin
he was 38, they were 39
but nonetheless he self destructed
suicide and homicide is the same
simply different sides of the same coin.

Let Egypt arise for the sons and daughters who have suffered
a long suffering that has come to an end.
Let Mubarak be a page in history
a pitiful note in the eternal narrative of a people.
--Marvin X
1/31/11

A Night in Tunisia

The oppressed man lives in desperate straits, at the edge of society, marginalized without any hope. It is revolution or death. It doesn't matter any longer for we have no choice but to revolt.

It is a sacrifice as the brother in Tunisia demonstrated by setting himself on fire. And yet a single spark can set off a prairie fire. His symbol and sacrifice set off a fire storm that swept the old dictator from the nation he'd ruled for nearly three decades, overseeing a nest of nepotism, only family members received high benefits from the society.

The excluded go from bad to worse until many segments of society join with the struggle, the unions, workers, students, unemployed, the military, the writers and artists, the religious and/or spiritual community. Revolution is a family affair, a community affair wherein consensus is clear.

We agree the situation is bleak unless we correct it by coming into control of it. The president flew to exile in Saudi Arabia, the refugee camp for dictators for life in the Middle East and Africa.
The people want justice for the terror of the last regime. And then the rebuilding of society.
Legitimate order must demand control. A night in Tunisia.

Is revolution on fire in Africa and the Middle East. There have been three suicides by fire in Egypt. The desperate man is at wits end.
--Marvin X
1/18/11

1. Egypt: All Decolonialism is Successful--the West Just Doesn't Get It!

Fanon taught us all decolonialism is successful, i.e., once the colonized man and woman determine freedom is the goal, only death itself can stop them from achieving victory. Today in Egypt we have seen people lying in front of tanks declaring the tanks shall crush them before they will leave Tahrir or Liberation Square if Mubarak doesn't leave first. It is this ineluctable energy and will to be free that must first be implanted in the minds of the stunted men and women seeking freedom from colonialism and neo-colonialism, which are one and the same, for Nkrumah told us neo-colonialism is merely colonialism playing possum, hiding in the shadows, just as America has been doing the past thirty years.

Indeed, the crucial player is not the puppet but the puppet master. He who pays the piper calls the tunes. The Egyptian kleptocracy has ripped off billions of the people's money for their personal consumption. But the greater theft is stealing the soul of a people, to instill them with fear from a brutal regime acting at the request of its master playing possum in the corner, yet calling all the tunes, neutering a people of their birthright to be free. The arrogance of America is overwhelming when we consider their advice on solving matters in Egypt, a nation with ten thousand years of continuous culture and history while America has been on the scene of the world for a few seconds and is the master of modern savagery disguised as civility.

While we focus on Mubarak and his regional kleptocrats of their people's humanity, we shall ultimately come to the realization he was only following orders from America and Israel. How can a president agree to imprison his Muslim brothers and sisters in Palestine for Zionism, to deny them food, water, building materials after they suffered a devastating military attack with overwhelming force executed by the Zionists in the last Gaza war of genocide? We need not ask how a Jew can create a concentration camp of 1.4 million people, then systematically slaughter them within it.

The power Mubarak has exercised for three decades, along with similar behavior by his counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and the Persian Gulf, stem directly from the roots of Western White Supremacy. The brutality is the residue of behavior learned from the playbook of the Slave System so well practiced in America, and before America by her European brother, the English, Spanish and French, who perfected such torture, psychosocial and economic rape and robbery.

Thus while we watch the final dance of the puppets, our eyes must follow the strings leading to the puppet master. We must examine his behavior at this hour, his verbal contradictions, hesitations, equivocations. For he is the one really in trouble at the new day dawning before his eyes, before he ever imagined such a day would occur and he would be so utterly unprepared for the new reality that is a challenge to the core of his psyche.

And so he requests a stalling action to delay the people's victory. He calls for stability and most of all no violence, although he paid an annual grant of nearly two billion dollars to maintain a regime with violence, including state murder, torture, robbery and the theft of a nation's soul, the most criminal act of all, to crush the spirit of a people with ten thousand years of history.

The question is thus what shall happen to the master, not the slave. The Slave System can and shall be removed by the very nature of itself. Once the oppressed realizes his conditon and yearns for freedom, the matter is solved, yes, it becomes a life and death affair, and finally, he has no fear of death, for he realizes persecution is worse than slaughter, as the Qur'an teaches.

For the West, the oppressor also is a stunted man or crazed man, drunk on power and domination, a glutton for conspicuous consumption or materialism. He and his minions shall resist and resist but they face a more determined opponent now, one who has regained his mental equilibrium and is thus fearless unto death. The military budget is useless, the bullets harmless, the tear gas a balm in Gilead, the torture chambers a hotel suite in paradise.


Like the suicide bomber, but with a more sane objective that transcends religiosity, the oppressed cannot be persuaded or tricked out of their birthright any longer. They see clearly now that their date with destiny is achievable and within range. This is why all decolonialism is successful once the people are mobilized and unified.

Facing such a formidable people, the Slave System must stand down because the people shall have it no other way. The master naturally wants a gradual dismantling of his apparatus of oppression, after all, it has been great fun this standing on the necks of people with his boots in their backs and up their asses.

But the master is now forced to detox and enter long term recovery from the addiction to White Supremacy. He may need to take in a few of his colonial elites and servants, yes, bring them home to the Motherland with him.

But, alas, even the Motherland is no longer a safe haven because those captured in the domestic Slave System want freedom as well. They shall have a message to the master once it is crystal clear in their minds the master only knows the slave system and is thus incapable of any other arrangement that is fair and equitable, that is true freedom, justice and equality, for no slave system wants to share the wealth, thus it must be taken by the awakened people who vow to sleep no more.

Yes, the Million Man Marchers must return to complete their march, since they left the Washington Mall prematurely, most likely because they were ordered to get out of town before sundown and were not prepared in the manner of their Egyptian brothers and sisters, to achieve liberty or death.

Consequently, the Million Man Marchers have only treaded water since their trip to Washington. It was a feel good session, a necessary brotherhood ritual, but Sun Ra said the Creator got things fixed, if you don't do the right thing you cannot go forward or backward, one is simply stuck, yes, stuck on stupid with Super Glue on our behinds. We must finish the march, like those Civil Rights marchers who had to regroup to cross that bridge into Selma, Alabama.

The victory of Obama was a Pyrrhic victory, hollow and almost useless except for the few opportunists who shall benefit, it was a transformation but not a transaction, proving of no utilitarian value, certainly no economic value since Obama has primarily sought to placate his Wall Street bandits and Global finance benefactors, although he shall offer a few crumbs to the masses around reelection time. He must surely be aware of happenings around the world that may alter his agenda of dispensing kibbles and bits to those suffering the slave system. By 2012, it is quite possible those who suffer the slave system shall have had enough, kafeya, basta ya, nada mas!

"I could have freed more slaves if they had known they were slaves."
--Harriet Tubman, the Moses of her people



--Marvin X







2. Egypt, Take Me to Your Leader!
And Jesus met a woman at the well.
He said, Woman, where is your husband?
She said, Savior, I have none.


The Western concept of leadership is being destroyed by the Egyptian revolution. The West is persistent to attach leadership to some person or group for the purpose of demonizing that person or group if it is not in harmony with American policy of supplication to oppression.

The more it is revealed there is no leader, the more the West persists in its search, for surely the evil, terrorist, Zionist hating Muslim Brotherhood must be the leaders. Surely Al Quida has slipped into Cairo's Tahrir Square. There's no way the ignorant Egyptian masses could formulate a program to end three decades of oppression, even with a grounding in ten thousand years of African culture and civilization.

We need only recall during the Vietnam war President Nixon claimed he invaded Cambodia because the Viet Cong's Central Commend moved into Cambodia. The Viet Cong came on the news with a reply, "The Americans do not understand that they cannot destroy our Central Command because we are all the Central Command!"

And so it is today in Egypt. Does someone need to come from the moon to tell the oppressed they are oppressed, that they must rise up and throw off the chains of the slave system? We think not. We think people have common sense to stand up after a long train of abuse has drained all the sand out the hour glass.

Leaders cannot lead before the people are ready to stand up, thus leaders are actually followers who must do the people's will, not the will of leaders. It is when leaders exercise their will over the people that we get such demonic personalities as Mubarak and his peers in the Middle East, Africa and around the world.

We were taught in Politics 101 that leaders govern by and with the consent of the governed. It is clear to the world Mubarak has lost the consent of the governed. The people do not care about his legacy, they know all too well his legacy of absolute brutality. Yes, he has instituted peace between Arabs and Israel, but peace is useless without justice and there is no justice whatsoever with respect to the problem of Palestinian statehood and Zionist intransigence that is tolerated by the West that subjected the Arabs to three decades of peace and passivity but no justice, and certainly no democracy.

We saw democracy destroyed in occupied Palestine after Hamas won a democratic victory. Therefore we should not place one iota of faith in any American support for democracy in Egypt. The best thing America can do is shut up and get its own house in order.

America is no model of democratic leadership, other than the best democracy money can buy. The Egyptian people can stand up without any advice from America and her allies in Europe and elsewhere. If the Egyptian people decide any form of government it is their business. If they decide to remain leaderless, it is up to them.
--Marvin X
2/7/11


3. The Vice Devil of Egypt

Sometimes we think the President is the Man, yet often it is the Vice Man who actually controls the vice, as Sun Ra taught me.

In the Bush Administration Dick Chaney was the man in charge, who did all the dark deeds.

In Egypt the same scenario has been played out, for it is clear Mubarak is about to exit, yet the man he appointed Vice President is the real devil in charge, Omar Suleiman, the man who has directed the Egyptian Intelligence Service, including the torturing of American captured so called terrorists from around the world who were brought to Egypt to suffer behavior modification in the torture chambers supervised by the VP. He is thus known as America's man and Israel's man.

Shall we not be concerned this man departs along with Mubarak, if not before?

The VP is not calling for the departure of Mubarak, suggesting he is necessary for stability. America sent its arch devil to the scene to concur with the VP. When he announced his findings, the US State Department disassociated itself from his conclusion. We see this is a game direct from the devil's den of iniquity. Hold on until the final hour.

The Muslim Brotherhood has agreed to enter negotiations with the despots, since the Muslim Brotherhood is recognized as the most organized political force, the longtime bogeyman of Mubarak, the US and the Zionist Entity.
--Marvin X

Note FYI:

Some developing news out of Egypt, where president Mubarak has just appointed Omar Soliman as vice president. This is a notable event as it is the first time since 1981 that Egypt has a Vice President, indicating just how much of a pseudo-dictatorial system the Mubarak regime has been. We are rather confident that the people will not be all that excited about getting the former head of the country's intelligence (read spying) service as the second in command. And just like in Russia during the Yeltsin-Putin succession, we are confident that Mubarak will promptly fade from the scene as soon as Soliman gives him reps and warranties (preferably better than those by Bank of America) that he will not be prosecuted. Incidentally, the last time Egypt had a VP was when Anwar Al Sadat appointed Mubarak as VP. Al Sadat was assassinated shortly thereafter.

4. Oil, the Magic Word in White Supremacy America

We know America cares nothing about freedom in the Middle East. The American government and the American people only care about the oil, oil, oil, will they be able to continue their conspicuous consumption and world of make believe white supremacy domination.

Nothing else matters. We told you before he spoke in Cairo that President Barack Hussein Obama was a phony, talking peace while occupying Muslim lands, saying As-Salaam-Alaikum but practicing As-Salaam-Afakum.

He has revealed that his hand is not open to the Muslim world but instead he has a clinched fist as Egyptian goon squads plummet to death the masses determined to stand up from thirty years of Pharaoh Mubarak's oppression.

They say enough of infantilization, as journalist Robert Fisk described the condition of stunted men and women, almost childlike in their submission to oppression.

Underneath it all is the magic word oil that presents the West with such a conundrum, to be or not to be for democracy, to stand with the people or the oppressors of the people they have supported as long as oil as been at their disposal. The oppressive Middle Eastern nations have largely endured colonialism and neo-colonialism to enable to West to enjoy its world of make believe White Supremacy domination.

Even now, in the midst of a people's revolution of major proportion throughout the region, the West is scrambling to configure a way to maintain business as usual, yet knowing full well the game has changed overnight and that things shall never be the same again.

The West shall not enjoy a continued infantilization of the Middle East. The little retarded children, the stunted men and woman have arrived in liberation square and it doesn't matter whether they go home again. For what was home but the domain of Pharaoh. Oppression is worse than slaughter.

We see they face the tanks, the goon squads, the machine guns, tear gas, knives, all the madness orchestrated by Pharaoh Mubarak and his Zionist/American puppet masters.

Watch the oil lines as we watch the people rise up. Any disruption in the oil flow shall be anathema to the West. Then we shall see how clearly America shall reveal the materialistic greed and insatiable desire for conspicuous consumption or the world of make believe described so eloquently by sociologist E. Franklin Frazier in delineating the socio-psychology of the so-called Negro but his thesis applies as well to the white master.

Dr. Nathan Hare says Blacks or North American Africans suffer Type II White Supremacy, an over identification with Whiteness and, yes,the condition of infantilization, a childlike dependence, much like his mental state upon emancipation, what is freedom, what shall we do, where shall we go, for all we know is the plantation.

But the white master suffers a severe form of addiction to white supremacy, Type I White Supremacy. He lives in total and absolute denial, thus he has no desire to change his behavior, but shall persist until he hits rock bottom, the classic addict delusional state of mind that is in urgent need of detoxification and long term recovery.

He will persist in attempting to maintain the mold of the Middle East he has created at least since WWI, the end of the Ottoman Empire. It is his firm belief that he can exercise such an ambidextrous diplomatic and military maneuver that things will get back to business as usual.

Somehow, in his mind, he shall be able to bribe and cajole another group of men and women who will claim the moderate line that insures the perpetuation of white supremacy. Neo-colonial politicians will get paid in such degree that their loyalties to the people shall quickly erode.

The West believes anyone and everyone is up for sale. After all, in God We Trust is on the money. Money is their God and they will do all in their power to maintain the flow of oil and the oppression of the Palestinian people, along with others in Saudi Arabia, Persian Gulf, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and elsewhere. They must and will do all they can to kiss the behind of Zionism, that is tied to global finance. But in the game of global finance there are no national concerns, only the concern of the international global finance bandits and their military machine, spearheaded by the Infidel US Army.

The Middle East is but the beginning of America's sorrows. Wait until her own citizens rise up and cast out the Democrats and Republicans, for they are birds of a feather. The American politicians are identical to those in the Middle East who are corrupt, dictatorial, oppressive and determined to ignore the consent of the governed.

Both parties are determined to have permanent war, for it is essential to the American economy, America, Number One Arms Merchant of the World! A trillion dollar defense budget, for what, for who is able to challenge the Beast? Who is able to make war with the Beast?

Former generals run the corporations, especially the ones connected to the arms industry. Lobbyists absolutely control politicians who are at their beck and call, for a price of course, and those corporate dogs who pay lobbyists will spare no amount of dollars to maintain the best democracy money can buy!

Stay tuned for the fall of Pharaoh Mubarak and Pharaoh Barack Obama, birds of a feather....
--Marvin X
2/3/11




5. Long Live the Egyptian Masses, Down with American Imperialism and all Reactionaries

As predicted, after Friday Prayers the Egyptian masses exploded into the streets signaling the end of Pharaoh Mubarak's thirty year regime and its collaboration with American imperialism. The US government has sustained the dictatorial Mubarak government with a two billion dollar annual bailout that mainly went to the military to oppress the masses.

It was payment for the Egyptian peace deal with the Zionists in Israel, to prevent the liberation of Palestine. The US has done the same with Arab regimes throughout the region. It has forced Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Persian Gulf states to collaborate with Zionism, including the Palestinian Authority as revealed in the Palestine Papers released by Al Jazeera News.

Hamas was democratically elected but isolated by the US, her Uncle Abdullah Arabs and the Europeans. In Labanon Hezbollah has taken de facto power through the democratic process, yet America keeps it on the terrorist list.

America is thus on the wrong side of history and shall pay for her political blindness and backwardness fueled by capitalist greed and white supremacy notions of domination. The ultimate price shall be when the American masses stand up to the US military/corporate/university complex that has kept the American people in poverty, ignorance and disease while the top 1% own wealth equal to that of the bottom 90% of the population.

Obama, the neo-colonial Negro is nothing but an imperialist in black face and he must be discarded along with his white cohorts on the day American masses take to the streets to demand true freedom, justice and equality--liberty or death!

This is the mantra in the streets of the Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere at this hour. The American people must wise up and rise up to their manhood and womanhood, not remain political cowards and economic slaves. We see when the people stand up, the reactionaries stand down, no matter their guns, tear gas, intelligence agencies, phony homeland security spies, snitches and agent provocateurs, no matter their jails, prisons and hidden dungeons throughout America and the world.

Fear is the great monster of the slave system. Once fear is discarded, the stunted man and woman can rise to great heights, reaching the mountain top MLK, Jr. told us about in his last speech. Long live the Arab masses. Long live the American masses!

We see the spirit of the people is greater than all the technology. The cry for freedom needs no cell phone, facebook, twitter! Not even guns can stop the people united! The only thing to fear is fear itself!!!!!
--Marvin X
1/28/11

6. Parable of Iraq

The war in Iraq has not begun. It shall begin when the Americans leave--now what day might that be? They are still in Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. They ain't in Vietnam, ha? But in Iraq, they have merely opened Pandora's box. As they draw down, the spirits shall dance in the desert winds.

The Shia have power they've never had before, not since before the martyrdom of their imams after the death of the prophet. The Shia say to hell with the democratic process, there shall be Shia power until they see fit to share power with the Sunnis, their oppressors and eternal theological enemy.

The Sunni must receive the big payback! They must suffer justice for the years of domination and destruction of Shia culture. Why should they share equal power after years of oppression. When a man beats his wife, he loses a certain power, his stature is reduced, his rights curtailed.
His wife will say, you blew it buddy. You're lucky I didn't kill you in your sleep. We have seen the sectarian battles in Iraq. But we ain't seen nothing yet. Of course the sectarian is in reality geo-political. The Sunni neighbors in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf States have no intention to allow Shia power to rule unobstructed, without sabotage at every turn, especially since the Shia are theological and geo-political brothers with Iran.

The Sunni will do as they have been doing since the US invasion: collaborate with the US, while at the same time undermine the Shia at every turn. The Shia can be destroyed because they are not considered real Muslims. Just as Sunni Muslims do not consider the Nation of Islam real Muslims. They barely accept the followers of Warthideem Muhammad as real Muslims, after all, what do niggers know about Islam? This racism is no different than Christian racism. One o'clock Friday is the most racist hour in Islam, just as eleven 0'clock Sunday is the most racist hour in Christianity.

The Sunni/Shia conflict is an eternal contradiction that cannot be resolved except by political domination, or politics by other means, as in war.

The Shia are in a mode of expansion, from Iran, through Iraq to Lebanon, or from the Tigris and Euphrates to the Mediterranean. The Sunni will attempt to block them, and the Zionist and Christian America shall assist as they are doing at this hour.

They will do so under the guise of stopping Iran's nuclear program. The Sunni/Zionist/US propaganda machine is in high gear preparing the world for the destruction of Iran, but the real purpose is not their fear of Iranian Nukes, but Shia geo-political expansion. Of course what we are witnessing is the rise of the Persian empire. Even with their reactionary theocracy, the Iranians/Persians have outflanked the Sunni regimes by supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, thus earning the respect of the Arab masses suffering under the yoke of reactionary Sunni Muslim regimes.

The Iranian theocracy does not have clean hands, but they do stand closer to the Arab masses than the oppressive Sunni governments. America's mission is, of course, oil, oil, oil. She doesn't give a damn about Sunni or Shia, only as pawns in the game of geo-political/economic hegemony. As per America, even the Zionists are expendable. In the end, she will give up support of the Zionist for a barrel of oil! She will give up her mother for two barrels!
--Marvin X
4/16/10

7. Battle of Fallujah

A former US soldier who fought in the Battle of Fallujah, Iraq, told Plato Negro he and his buddies kicked in 400 doors in Fallujah. He said they became professional home invaders. Once inside, they were able to discover a weapons cache in 90 seconds, whether hidden in the living room, bedroom, kitchen, attic , under the floor, etc.


They separated men from women then searched and seized anything of value, money, jewelery, whatever.

After awhile, the soldier said he no longer dodged bullets. He accepted his fate for he knew he deserved death or whatever. He was wounded several times, once by an IUD, a stabbing, bullets. He showed Plato Negro is wounds.

He said it is very difficult if not impossible to defeat a people who do not fear death, who relish death like a thirsty man craves water. He mocked the insurgents who desire to die for virgins in the sky!

His remarks reminded Plato Negro of another former soldier who also said after a time he did not bother to stay on his post at night because he knew he deserved death, so he went to sleep.

A Special Forces veteran told Plato Negro America deserved 9/11 for the crimes she had him doing around the world, mainly murdering in cold blood and other despicable actions. He loves Plato Negro but says he cannot read but twenty pages of his writings at a time because it inflames him and makes him again want to kill, this time the real enemy!

As per Fallujah, Plato Negro is aware the town is suffering an epidemic of birth defects in newborn children, supposedly from depleted uranium used in bullets, shells and bombs. The birth defect rate is higher than in Japan after the US dropped the atomic bomb in WWII.

In Fallujah, babies are born with no arms, no legs, no head, two heads, etc. The town was brought to its knees after being one of the most radical centers of Sunni resistance to the US occupation. It had to be broken--and it was!

The veteran who was a master home invader is now working security at an after hours club in Oakland. He appreciated Plato's book Pull Yo Pants Up fada Black Prez and Yoself. The brother said it is ironic Plato's classroom is at 14th and Broadway and his after hours club is two blocks away at 14th and Webster, but he does not allow youth in his club to wear sagging pants. He encouraged Plato Negro to attend the after hours to distribute his literature.

At the club, the brother is as armed as he was in Iraq, body armor, tasser and side arm. The women must be searched as well since the men hide their weapons with the women. He said the brothers and sisters don't understand he is not going to take any b.s. from them, especially after facing death angels in Iraq. And even though he is only 5'8'' or 9'', no one is going to push him aside and enter the club. He presses 400lbs. One night a tall, drunk brother tried to go pass him but it didn't happen. The brother departed but returned to apologize to the man who had faced death angels on the streets of Fallujah!
--Marvin X
8/2/10


8. Gaza Concentration Camp

The Jews learned nothing from the Nazi genocide, or perhaps they learned everything since the Zionist occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is sealed tight, a land of closed borders, check points, walls and innumerable spies and snitches.

Gaza is one giant concentration camp of 1.4 million inmates who live stunted lives, even denied the right to fish off their coast on the Mediterranean. The democratically elected government is denied recognition, though it has as much human right to exist as the state of Israel, if not more.
Why should Hamas recognize the Zionist entity, a usurper, land grabber, exterminator, mass killer, thugs, pirates on the high seas, state terrorist, in collusion with quisling Muslim governments and Christian America, the sycophant of sycophants, who kisses Israel's ass at every turn, even her farts America smells.

The Muslim collaborators work in league with the Zionists, especially Egypt who sealed her border to starve the concentration camp inmates, partly because Hamas is allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most formidable opposition party, and further, because Hamas is allied and supported by Shia Iran, the new/old boy on the block of Middle Eastern geo-politics.

Iran backs Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as her neighbors in Iraq. Praise be to Allah somebody supports the Gaza inmates since they survive by tunneling underground to Egypt for basic life support.

The Zionist slaughter of Gazens in the last invasion was a replay of Nazi horrors, 1,500 dead, many thousands wounded, homes, mosques, schools, hospitals bombed to eternity. Clearly the Zionists learned their behavior from the Nazis. It is well known if they had not collaborated with the Nazis, they would not have survived to make the trip from Europe to Palestine to displace the Arabs.

The Gaza concentration camp is a reminder Nazism and fascism is alive and well, supported by reactionary Muslims and Christian Crusader America. Not only should Turkey dispatch ships to break the blockade, but the billion plus Muslim world should send ships to Gaza until the inmates are liberated. The irony is that the Muslim populations live under regimes no less repressive than the Zionists in occupied Palestine.

In our romanticism, we wish the Muslim ships would sail from Gaza to America to assist the 40 million North American Africans in concentration camps called ghettos and hoods, a nation of people still 3/5ths of a man, suffering involuntary servitude (slavery) under the constitution. No matter they have a president with the middle name Hussein. He is no different than Egypt's Mubarak, for they have the same agenda that supports Zionism and oppression within their own populations. Why doesn't President Obama give a general amnesty of the two million inmates in the gulags of America, since most of them are petty criminals, mostly drug addicts, mentally ill and political prisoners.
--Marvin X
6/4/10

9. Afghanistan:Parable of War that is Not War

There are wars and there are not wars. There are mock battles, turkey fights full of sound and fury, signifying nothing--or maybe something, for there are motives and agendas far beyond the battle ground, motives and agendas of presidents, prime ministers, generals and war lords in near and distant lands.

Some of these war mongers we hear about, some we don't. In Afghanistan, major players have names like India, Pakistan, Iran, China, Russia, America, Europe--and don't leave out Saudi Arabia, the Taliban's mother-teacher, ideological and spiritual sponsor.

And so we have a geo-political chess game with movement for short and long term gain. And there are pawns and queens that will be sacrificed, and kings shall fall and fake falls, since alliances only last so long in the ephemeral world of war, of politics by other means.

Yet, there is the constant sound of war, the killing, captives ,wounded, towns falling, advance and retreat, all the games of war, tactics, strategy, prognosis, analysis, policy changes, subterfuge, circumlocution. All is drama. Smoke and mirrors. Deals made in the dark of night, between warlords, generals, enemies and friends.

It is neon lights on the strip in Las Vegas. It can be blinding, this blinking, shifting of sands, melting of snow capped mountains. We see one player, then another, arrive in town to broker a deal, departing with a bag of gold or bag of opium, an oil pipeline, a pledge of long range involvement, no matter who wins. Actually there are no winners, only losers. For a moment, one player out maneuvers another.

One sends in a surrogate, more pliant than his superior. There is a willingness to be liberal in the new order coming soon. The conservatives will stay in the background, manage their drug money or bribe money to lay down their arms.

The surrogates will do as told by their sponsors in nearby and distant lands. Each day the killing goes on, the spilling of blood, the breaking of bones. All drama. A scam called democracy.

--Marvin X

3/30/10

10. African Drama: the Reactionaries will never
put down their butcher knives

We have heard the defiance of Pharaoh Mubarak. It is the arrogance of the king who refuses to leave his throne when his time has come, who is blind to the fact that his divinity arises from the consent of the governed. Such hardheadedness is one of those classic tragic flaws so well delineated repeatedly in the plays of William Shakespeare. And yet Diop told us the central theme in African drama is not tragedy but comedy, and for sure Mubarak is the clown and his actions are comedic to the extreme because his words were full of sound and fury but signified nothing except the wisdom of a fool.

The people have decided his fate and they are absolute and resolute that his reign has ended. The only person who is not clear that a new day has dawned is the president himself. Thus, this is a classic African comedy, for in the end we know the people shall triumph. Mubarak is not alone in his intransigence, it is the same performance by the madman in the Ivory Coast who lost the election yet refuses to go. So there are African clowns from the North to the West and all points in between. Yet the comedy is that the people shall triumph, they shall win in the end. All's well that ends well. The tragic elements are the past horrors and the momentary conflagration , the comedic element is the reality of a new tomorrow, a tomorrow that will reconnect the people with their eternal history of glory.

This Egyptian tragi-comedy of obstinacy reveals a personality totally delusional and separated from reality. We know the people shall not be moved, that their will must be done. His benefactors in the West should advise him that the show is over, that there is an airplane awaiting his arrival. And they should advise him to take his vice devil, Omar Solieman, with him. And on the same plane reserve a space for other reactionaries throughout the region and the world. Mao was right,"The reactionaries will never put down their butcher knives, they will never turn into Buddha heads!"

This tragi-comedy is so very different from the Osirian drama that Egypt originated, and yet it is similar, for it is about change, the annual inundation of the Nile, the harvesting of the corn, the triumph of life over death, yes, we are witnessing a resurrection drama of the first order. It is the self crucifixion of the pseudo savior and the resurrection of a people.
--Marvin X (El Muhajir)
2/10/11

11. Nation Time in the Sudan, What About North American African Nation?

On the eve of the vote in the Southern Sudan for independence, North American Africans should reconsider Nation Time for the 40 million neo-slaves in the belly of the beast, tortured victims of domestic colonialism who never exercised the right of self-determination but had their American pseudo citizenship forced upon them by the 14th Amendment. Even today they are not hardly treated as full citizens for a Voting Rights Act must be continually renewed to confirm their wretched status, no matter the neo-colonial Negro in the White House.

As we rejoice at the coming independence of the Southern Sudan from Muslim Arab racism, surely we can imagine the possibility of self determination for ourselves in a nation of our own, yes, here in America for the 400 years of free and nearly free labor, the most inhumane treatment ever afforded human beings. Reparations must surely include more than a wage slave job, a white woman and a Cadillac . Surely land is the priority, thus there can be no reparations and independence without the partitioning of the American geography for those of us who are totally alienated from this society, those marginalized from the economic prosperity and traumatized from the hostile environment we must navigate in our daily round.

We seriously doubt the depths of our trauma, grief and the especially the feelings for vengeance
is known. But it is made clear to me with each passing day there are those who feel totally alienated and marginalized from this society, who have no faith whatsoever in its promise of a better tomorrow and wish to do great harm to massa before they transition, i.e., "pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back...."

We noticed in our Mental Health Peer Groups to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy that the Black females were the most alienated and traumatized by this society. She seems the most willing to execute justice for damage done to herself, her man and children, but most especially her sons. Now we know there are fathers who are in grief and trauma as well, the the female seems to suffer the most pervasive marginalization and thus the most pressing need to retaliate for the damages to her being.

We recalled at the rally in Oakland after the Oscar Grant, Jr. murder sentence was announced the degree of rage and grief expressed by all segments of the North American African population, from youth to elders, males and females. Their attitude was to hell with America!
Yes, there were those who wished to burn it down!

Surely we can take Oakland as a microcosm of the North American African Nation, the deep frustration, the economic deprivation, the perennial unemployment, worse now with the global economic meltdown.

What do our leaders actually believe will suffice in the short and long term? They shall not be able to remain the gate keepers forever. We recall how they were disposed of in the 60s once the cry for Black Power was announced. Yes, they were denounced and a new crop of radicals came to the forefront of the liberation movement.

Assassinations of leaders, co-option, infiltration, agent provocateurs, opportunists and internal contradictions aborted the movement of liberation, especially the call for Nation Time. After the 1972 Gary Convention, elected politicians replaced the radical political leadership, taking us down the road of reaction and neo-colonialism that has persisted until today.

It seems that no amount of elected politicians can deliver the transaction to elevate our status above wretchedness, for even if we are the 16th richest nation in the world in terms of annual income, we are basically consumers rather than producers, thus most of our wealth leaves the hood to enrich White America and other ethnic groups. Despite the annual pitiful Kwanza ritual where we recite the Seven Principles, there is no practice of substance we can write home about.

Our national consciousness seems to have retreated, especially with the selection of our first Black President by the Wall Street robber barons who emptied the treasury in the process of his donning the presidential garb. At least three trillion went to the global bankers during the sub prime crisis. Obama instituted that old black magic or voodoo economics from the first Bush era by replenishing the Wall Street global financiers, corporations and other bandits while the robbed suffer joblessness, homelessness and the mental trauma of realizing they have been thoroughly hoodwinked and bamboozled.

As the elation of his election to the White House has not brought any benefit or relief to the suffering in the hood, surely there are those wretched of the earth who are now ready to configure an alternative, another path to escape our nothingness and dread.

So we come again to the idea of Nation Time. We see the Southern Sudanese about to realize their long held dream of independence. Why is such a dream so utterly fantastic and impossible for us? The world is full of infinite possibilities, especially if we are in unity, if we plan, take, hold, build and exercise eternal vigilance, staying ever on the alert and never disarm as we did after the Civil War when we were an army of 200,000 strong, but gave up our guns which resulted in the virtual slavery of short-lived Reconstruction and long lived Jim Crow period thereafter unto the present hour of Neo Jim Crow.

We must study carefully the National Liberation movement of North American Africans and others globally. We must examine the contradictions in the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Africa, the UNIA, the Moorish Science of Noble Drew Ali, the 19th Century Black Nationalist thinkers and come to a new vision and plan for a national configuration transcending Americana. Surely we know we must have a Plan B since it is a sad rat that has one hole. As I've said, we can plant our feet on solid ground, but still have an exit plan just in case it becomes clear to us our situation in this political climate is unsustainable, to say nothing of our economic status. This ground may suddenly turn into quicksand by the nature of unpredictable events on the world stage and especially internal events.

For sure, the devils are planning nothing good for us. We ought to take the dead black birds as an omen. We know the death of those black birds and white fish is nothing but a highly technological experiment in warfare, so we must be prepared for the worse that should include an exit plan that should include the partitioning of this land for our Nation Time.

We sense the great possibility that ethnic rivalries shall one day cause the Balkinization of these United States, therefore be forewarned to configure your portion of the American pie. America will try to stall the day of judgment when justice must be delivered, just as the Jews are doing in occupied Palestine, but we know the day shall come when Palestine shall be liberated, no matter what. And likewise, the day shall come when North American Africans shall enjoy a full and complete freedom on some of this earth we can call our own. If we settle for a mess of pottage, surely the ancestors shall curse us to the end of the world for the cowards we be.

Pakistan: Ya, Benazir Bhutto
1953-2007

Ya, Bhutto
Who are these people
Who kill fathers sons daughters
What God do they serve
What ghost in the night
Is there money enough
Power enough
Greed enough
Murder enough
To satisfy this beast
Who devours all

children of the poor are not safe
Even children of the rich
This monster is vile
teeth a wicked bite
Snatching like Godzilla

Ya, Bhutto
you came home preaching freedom
there are those who cry freedom
But mean slavery
who pray in the mosque
Then murder in the street
who crush the spirit
Who silence poets
their freedom songs
deny the humanity of women
What God is this
Who empowers devils
with venom
Worse than cobra’s sting

Ya Bhutto
What now in your sacred land
Shall your sons take mantle
Shall children cower in fear
Or face the guns bombs
Paid by the Mighty Beast
Who shouts democracy
But means slavery
Who allows dictators to crush opposition
To be president for life.
discards his general uniform
To dawn the suit and tie of Shaitan
persona of the puppet
Who smiles in tears
Choking from hanging.

Ya, Bhutto,
you tried
To bring a better day
demons must play their drama
dance in the night
will never put down their butcher knives
Never turn into Buddha heads.
More sacrifice
judges and lawyers are not enough
soldiers must accept flowers from the people
Not slaughter in the streets
There are not jails enough to confine freedom
The torture chambers fill to overflow
freedom must rise.

Ya, Bhutto, your last magic word: Allah.
Surely we are from Allah
And to Him we return.
12/28/07


PART TWO: Revolution in the Americas



I Am American

Dedicated to my brother Ollie (January 21)
and daughter Nefertiti (January 29) in celebration of their birthdays

I am American
no citizen of the United States
gave that up years ago
in Toronto
protesting US in Vietnam
exiled in Canada
underground to Chicago, Harlem
crucified at Fresno State University
same time Angela Davis was on the cross at UCLA, 1969

I am American
exiled a second time in Mexico City
with all the exiled Americans from the Americas
from Cuba, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Columbia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil
they call me Pele Pele Pele on the streets of Mexico City
want to touch my hair for good luck

I am American
in Mexico City founded by Africans
now exiled by president for life regimes
we are young men of resistance
and women too, my wife is with me
young men
put aboard planes that landed in Chapultepec Park
cerca de Paseo de Reforma
my wife and I live near the Metro by the park
we see the lovers in the park on Sundays
and we are in love
she is pregnant with our daughter Nefertiti
I am American
I cannot speak with my brothers in exile
Jorge from Choco, Columbia
Enrique from Venezuela
I speak Spanish pochito
muy pochito
no Portuguese
I can only say Poder Negro to my revolutionary amigos.
They comprende
I give them the black power salute
I am American
I flee Mexico City for Belize
I pass through Yucatan, Vera Cruz, Merida, Chetumal
the land of Yanga el Africano Mexicano
Yanga was so bad the Spanish gave him a town
San Lorenzo de los Negroes
down in Vera Cruz
I flee against advice of Elizabeth Catlett Mora
elder revolutionary artist
she begged me not to go
those negroes in raw colonialism
not neo-colonialism she said
I am American
young hard headed
easy to lead in the wrong direction
hard to lead in the right direction
I am American

I want to hear English
tired of Spanish
basta ya!
I want to see los Negroes
in Belize
esclavos pero Negroes
yo esclavo tambien
I am American

This is my land the Americas
all of it
I was here before Columbus
Before Maya Aztec Incas Olmec
I was here
I came by canoe from Ghana, Mali, Songhay
from the land of Sonni Ali, Askia the Great
bling bling of Mansa Musa
a thousand camels with gold on his haj to Mecca

I am American
in Belize los Negroes speak English
pero muy rapido pero English
Espanol tambien
I am American
Norte Americano Africano
Simon Bolivar Americano
Simon Simon Simon

I am American
North Central South American
Caribbean American
I am American
from Toronto, Montreal
to Georgetown, Caracas

Slums of Mexico City are mine
shacks of Belize
madness of Kingston
cocaine of Port of Spain
yes, Trinidad
land of C. Eric Williams
victim of Capitalism and Slavery
Guyana is mine
I interviewed PM Burnham at his residence
Africans with AK47s at his gate
genocide of Jonestown
assassination of Dr. Walter Rodney
how can we forgive the reactionaries
who never turn into Buddha heads
who never put down their butcher knives

I am American
in Belize I join the revolution of Evan X and Shabazz
on trial for sedition
the government is games old people play they say
this is sedition
I covered the trial for Muhammad Speaks
this was my sin
a 1970 Wikileaks
exposing emperor has no clothes
people have no clothes
no water no electricity no toilet
no nothing
brothers want to know why I left America with no gold
they want to go to American to get gold
why did I leave without gold
what is America but gold
nothing else there but gold
and slaves and gold

I am American
people are rich in Belize
poor yet rich
joy and peace, sun and land
gardens of paradise
islands in the sun
I live on Gales Point
a little shack with no water no electricity no bathroom
but I am happy
my wife is pregnant and happy
except for the sand flies
mosquitoes who love her blood
we bathe in the river
the out house is on the other side of the island
the catfish collect waste
people do not swim on that side of the island
people do not eat catfish

I am American
people beg me to teach black power
I do not check in with village headman

a drunk man sings outside my house
day comin ta git ya in da mornin
been down here teachin dat black power
day comin to get ya in da mornin, boy

my wife and I laugh
wish dat drunk nigguh git way from our door
but they come to get me in the morning

I am American
When I get on the boat into the city
five hour ride through the jungle
police on boat
I am under arrest
but don't know it
police undercover
don't say nothing to me
when we get to the city
he don't say nothing
police come to my friends house
call me out
I grab rifle
but put it down
surrender
a mulatto greets me outside
I am under arrest
take me to Ministry of Home Affairs
Minister reads my deportation order
Your presence is not beneficial to the welfare of the British Colony of Honduras
therefore you shall be deported to the United States on the next plane to Miami
leaving at 4pm.
Until then you are under arrest.
Mulatto takes me to police station
I am told to sit down. No cell, no handcuffs.
Soon the police gather around me
I am in the middle of a circle of police
I do not know what's up.
Soon they say, broder man, teach us about black power!
I am American

victim of the slave system
police victims too
teach us broder man.
I say
Marcus Garvey came here in 1923
told you to get the Queen of English off yo walls.
It's 1970 and you still got that white bitch on yo walls.
Get that bitch off yo walls!
police crack up
they say you all ite broder man
They point out uncle tom police
they say he black man wit white heart
black man wit white heart!
I am American

Plane came for me on time. Mulatto pushed me onto the plane. I refused to leave without my wife. The plane door slammed. Fly south to Tegucigalpa, Spanish Honduras.
I ask for asylum . Espera un momento, Negro!
I am marched back onto the plane.
We land in Miami. Two gentlemen greet me at the airport. Escort me to my hotel suite at Dade County Jail. I am put into a pit with dead, deaf dumb and blind negroes.
I call them brother.
They say we ain't yo brother, nigguh. I am silent.
After a few days the gentlemen come to transfer me to Miami City jail, the Federal facility.
White Cuban drug dealers greet me. What do you want, my brother, they say.
You need money, food? We send out for food to the restaurant, what do you want.
I am American
I want hamburger, fries and milkshake!
No problema, hermano!
They give me money to call my wife.
She is home in America.
I am American
Cubans say again, whatever you need just let us know.
I am American
like Simon Bolivar
like Che
like Fidel
Toussaint
like Nat Turner
Grabriel Prosser
Harriet Tubman
Like Garvey
Elijah
Malcolm
Stokely (Kwame Toure)
CLR James
Padmore
Chavez
Morales

I am American.--Marvin X1/29/11

12. Obama's Fake Speech to Muslims in Cairo, Egypt

In his Cairo speech, President Obama's called upon the Muslim world to reach out and touch him, don't keep a clinched fist, and yet when the Egyptian revolution exploded, it was he who clinched his fist in refusing to champion the cause of the Egyptian masses for democracy. It was he who was exposed as a collaborator with oppression. It was he who called for stability rather than radical change.
--Marvin X


Our President will go down in history as a great actor. In Cairo we will see him pretend to address the Islamic nations, calling for moderation and cooperation with the US toward a Palestinian state and a united front against Iran.In truth, there is already a group of moderate, uncle tom Muslim nations in league with the US and Zionism and united against Iran.

This group includes the sycophants Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf states. These nations are conspiring with Israel to contain Shite expansion from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon via Hezbollah. The Sunni Muslim Nations have no intention to allow a functioning Shite government in Iraq. They are and will do everything in their power to check Iran's influence in Iraq, including sending insurgents from their countries, not only to counter Shite power but to get the young men away from home where they are potential trouble makers and might join the opposition to overthrow the reactionary Sunni regimes who are aligned with Zionism and American imperialism, now called Globalism.

So send them away from Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and elsewhere to be suicide bombers and blame Shite Islam as the problem, includingIran's nuclear program, while only America has used nuclear weapons in our lifetime and the Zionists are prepared to use such weapons to prevent justice in Palestine. Thus we need to be concerned about the American use of such weapons of mass destruction, more than anyone else, including North Korea.

Does not America have the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world and has she not proven she will use it, especially to attack her non-white enemies?It is totally hypocritical for Obama to talk of peace with Muslim nations while the US is still occupying Muslim land in Iraq, Afghanistan and slowly but surely moving into Pakistan as he vowed to do while running for president.

So, yes, we have a white imperialist in black face, a negro afraid to say the word Black, but if one million black men return to Washington DC and camp out until freedom is won, he will immediately seek out black leaders to make a deal. So called black leaders and thinkers should be planning for a post-white supremacy America. As Baraka asked years ago, "What are you going to do when white power falls?" Answer this question, Black America! Don't tell me all you want is a job, a good slave job for which you were brought here in the beginning.

Are you that delusional, is your break with reality so profound that you cannot see the day of jobs in America is over and done, and that you are now on your own, finally free and independent whether you want to be or not. You are now forced to get your nuts out the sand and stand up to do something for self. You are now being called upon, yes, by God Himself/Herself, to get you black ass out the white house intoyour own house because when white power falls, including white power in black face, you may find yourself again with the scraps in the multiracial power grab or Balkanization of your land of the free and home of the brave.

As Predicted

As I predicted, his speech was Obama Light, full of poetic sounds but no fury. How can you tell a man not to be violent when you've invaded his house for 60 years? And now you want to be recognized as the owner of his house while he is living in a tent in the backyard. I don't blame Hamas, if it takes one hundred years (as with the Crusaders who finally departed with Saladin's sword on their throats) or two hundred years. No one is going to give up his land, no matter how long it takes. And furthermore, Mr. Obama, don't tell me to be non-violent when you too have invaded the land of my brother's in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and maybe soon you will plant your feet, guns, and bombs in Iran.

Yes, you spoke in the land of Pharaoh, talking of democracy while you know Pharaoh Mubarak's son is about to take over to extend the dynasty. You speak of democratic elections but Hamas was elected but you overthrew their election with money and guns delievered by that whore Condi. You said you were about truth but you hide the truth while you know.

You know you are already in bed with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf States to stop the spread of Shia Islam which is flowing rapidly from the Tigris to the Mediterranean. And the Jew is in the middle of the bed with you all in one giant orgy of lies, death and destruction. Can the devil fool a Muslim? No, not these days!

As-Salaam-Afakekum

Yes, your President and mine, Barack Hussein Obama, said As-Salaam-Alaikum at Cairo University last week. But Peace be unto you is meaningless while the US is conspiring with Israel and the Uncle Abdullah regimes of Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf States to undermine the resistance forces in the Middle East. Obama, peace be upon him, cannot say As-Salaam-Alaikum while aiding and abeting the oppression of Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and soon Iran. Such action is unacceptable. As-Salaam-Alaikum means peace.

If you mean peace, depart Muslim lands and take your Jews with you, back to Europe or anywhere, does it matter? Who cares? Go to the moon. Did the Arabs or Muslims gas the Jews? This is a Christian problem, let the European Christians settle the problem in Europe, there is plenty of land. Don't wait until another Saladin arises to force you out of occupied Palestine! If it takes one hundred years, who cares! Let the Palestinian have his land, let him decide to share it or not, not at the point of a gun and nuclear bomb! Come in the name of Love and be prepared to receive love and return love.

Otherwise, you must depart. There is a new consciousness in the universe, accept it and be saved, reject it and be condemned to destruction, for you are of the unjust and wicked, who wish to oppress the poor, rejected and despised of the earth, the wretched of the earth.
--Marvin X

from Pull Yo Pants Up fada Black Prez and Yosef, essays on Obama Drama,
Marvin X, Black Bird Press, Berkeley.



13. Obama Drama, State of the Nation



We must admit this Harvard Negro is well skilled in the art of rhetoric, logic and lying that are so needed for all politicians since time immemorial, especially since the time of Machiavelli and his discourse on The Prince.


Tonight we heard more of the same flowery imagery and metaphors this character is known for internationally.

His ability to stay on the plane of abstraction is remarkable, but while the corporations are flowing with profits and bonuses, and the banks and financial institutions reap new trillions from their bailout after an era of global banditry and pyramid scheme speculation, we yet hear nothing substantial for the poor, the unemployed, the homeless who were tricked by the sub prime loan scam and global outsourcing.

Can we be clear, there is no job program to address the immediate needs of the millions of unemployed. And how shall the millions who are now homeless from foreclosures find remedy? What good is a health plan when one is unemployed and without means of payment?

While his rhetoric seeks to flow from Center to Right, his predilection of placating the Right Wing
Conservatives who reject him at every turn, especially from now to the 2012 elections, he leaves his progressive base in the woods, lost and turned out on the way to grandmother's house!

Iraq is a sham and the world knows it. When the last fifty thousand troops depart, there shall remain 200,000 mercenaries or private contractor killers and torturers, along with the grandest American embassy in the world to oversee the oil contracts and satisfy the reactionary regional regimes, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Gulf States and of course the Zionist regime called Israel.

Obama and his cohorts in the Congress shall be quite unnerved if Egypt suddenly crumbles in unity with the Tunisian revolution. He failed to mention Egypt tonight, while only briefly alluding to Tunisia. And hardly nothing was said about Afghanistan that is lost. We understand all but one province is under Taliban control. Nor was there any mention of so-called terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, except in the Bush/Colin Powell tradition of promising to cut them off.

What if all these nations not only throw out their reactionary regimes but any semblance of American hegemony as well. Will Americans suddenly get a similar idea to send the White House and Congress packing

We heard of long term plans for correcting the corrupt white supremacy educational system with its 50% drop out/push out rate. His call for teachers shall ring hollow, for why should a teacher work for the same wages as a janitor? There are very few Blacks going into teaching these days.
We attended a State Education conference in California with four thousand teachers, yet we doubt if 400 were Black. There are so few Black teachers in Alabama, we understand the state is importing teachers from the Philippines.

And of course nothing was said about the high incarceration rate of young black men, and the many thousands on probation and parole that are destabilizing our community coast to coast.

He ranted about the deficit to capitulate as is his habit. Don't worry, there shall be no shrinking of the military budget as he suggested--it is a scam in the permanent war philosophy of this military/corporate complex. But he called for the return of military recruiters on college and university campuses. Does this sound like a president who is anti-war? He sounds more like Bush with every passing moment.

We must excuse the 18-35 youth who reportedly gave him a thumbs up, for they are simply naive and will gain political maturity with time. With every speech he moves closer to those neo-colonial leaders in Africa, Asia and the Americas. We know they are a most wretched lot and Obama is slowly falling in league with them. The torture chamber of Gitmo continues, including the torture of Bradly Manning for giving information to Wikileaks, blowing the whistle on American global subterfuge.

His address is designed to set the stage for the 2012 election, but 2012 may prove a conundrum of major proportion, especially with all the mythology in the Mayan calendar.

Yes, we initially hailed Obama and supported him enthusiastically, but we seem him as a spineless personality urgently in need of backbone, a man who kisses right wing asses at every turn, and we should expect more of the same going into 2012 since he will need the support of the Wall Street robber barons to finance his billion dollar election campaign.
--Marvin X
1/25/11


14. From Savagery to Civility

















14. From Savagery to Civility


It is imbecilic to think a nation steeped in the blood of global violence and permanent war can attain civility at home, for as Baldwin noted, "The murder of my child will not make your child safe."

It is indeed ironic and most tragic that the nine year old girl born on 9/11 was the model of civil engagement and gave her life to the process. As she tried to exercise civility, her sick brother reflected the blow back from the deranged mentality that lurks in the deep structure of most American minds, rooted in the mythology of white supremacy that insures domination by use of the gun.

How can America be the number one arms merchant of the world yet pretend civility? No, you are a savage who must be corralled and disarmed as must happen to the citizens in the cowboys-gone-wild state of Arizona and throughout the American states where guns are the number one past time, the cultural residue of kidnappers, rapers, robbers, land grabbers and moral hypocrites.

The call to civility shall ring hollow for the sick savages in America shall only sink deeper into the chasm of mental darkness. The alleged mass killer in Tucson, Arizona symbolizes the general pathological state of Americans who imagine they can expend an annual trillion dollar military budget to kill, yet maintain peace at home. What goes around comes around, they say in the hood. Yes, the chickens come home to roost.

Just as there is little mental health treatment for the soldiers returning from savagery in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, there is obviously little mental health treatment for the mass killer in Tucson who wandered the streets of the city with severe mental health issues that were obvious to all.

We can listen to Right and Left wing radio and decipher the same pathology that the mass killer actualized. The Left is simply spineless while the Right is heartless, but we can do nothing when lacking heart or spine!

Where is the voice on the Left calling for an end to permanent wars? Where are the protests, demonstrations, mass marches? The Left hardly said a peep as the military budget was passed for the coming killing season. The American Left and Right are simply different sides of the same coin of white supremacy.

And the silent Blacks and other ethnic groups suffer Type II White Supremacy as Dr. Nathan Hare teaches us. Their over identification with white supremacy has addicted them to singing Silent Night and Onward Christian Soldiers. They are like those monkeys who know nothing, see nothing and do nothing.

The only hope is the children, like nine year old Christine, who indeed represented the generation that may achieve the civility of political engagement and clean up the mess of the elders. Christine was in league with my grandson, now three, who told me at two years old: "Grandpa, you can't save the world, but I can!"
--Marvin X
1/13/11

Marvin X facilitates Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. His Academy of da Corner Reader's Theatre will perform poetry from the Journal of Pan African Studies, Poetry Issue, Saturday, February 19, 3-6pm, at the Joyce Gordon Gallery, 14th and Franklin, Oakland.



15. Obama, War Monger

The following report by Glen Ford is something we should have known, i.e., that Obama would out do the white man to prove himself. Black police and correctional officers are known to be twice as vicious in their treatment of blacks to prove themselves to their colleagues. So it is not shocking to see President Obama get top honors for the biggest military spender in US history.

Although we supported him initially, as Dr. Cornel West says, we must protect him, respect him but check him. We respect him for saying during his campaign that he would expand the war into Pakistan and he kept his word, even though it may be the nail in his coffin since the Pakistani loyalty to their US partner is dubious at best. The world knows they split their loyalty between the US and the Taliban, for the population, the military, intelligence services and the religious community are clearly divided if not in outright opposition to the US presence in their land.

Glen Ford points out how spineless the Democrats are in submitting to Obama's war economy. Hardly a peep out of them, and of course the heartless Republicans support the military at all costs. Stay tuned for more Obama Drama.
--Marvin X
1/11/11


Obama War Budget Breaks All Records-- But When Will Black America Break with Him?

by Glen Ford, Executive Editor, Black Agenda Report

The Republican House majority hadn't even taken their seats yet, but their presence wasn't necessary to pass the biggest military budget since World War II. Not only can't Obama blame his wars on George Bush, but the First Black President has dramatically outdone his predecessor in expenditures on the machinery of death.

On Capitol Hill, resistance to U.S. militarism has all but collapsed -- and the Republican majority in the U.S. House has not even arrived, yet. With no opposition whatsoever in the Senate, and only 48 nay votes in the House, the Congress last week passed the biggest military budget since the end of World War Two. Only 42 Democrats, including just 12 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, dared to defy their warmongering president and compliant House leadership.

From the moment that Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination, we at Black Agenda Report have been predicting that he would become the most pro-war president in modern American history. Forget about the Obama's phony rhetoric; the proof is in the numbers.

The military budget firmly cements Barack Obama's place as the biggest pro-war president in two generations. Today, the United States, although it is the world's only superpower, spends almost as much as all of the rest of the world's militaries, combined. The U.S. defense authorization for 2011 is $725 billion. China, with the second most expensive military machine on the planet, spends less than $80 billion a year.

If Barack Obama lasts for eight years in office, he is on track to spend $5 trillion dollars on the Pentagon, significantly more than George Bush, who in turn spent a lot more than Ronald Reagan. But, as they say on the TV commercials, that's not all.

The defense budget doesn't include expenditures for Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, nuclear weapons work at the Department of Energy, military aid to other countries through the Department of State, NASA space programs that are really military projects, the military retirement fund run out of the Department of Treasury, and the interest payments on past military expenditures that were financed by debt. Inclusion of those hidden costs of war would bring military-related spending to well over $1 trillion dollars a year -- and rising all the time.

The Black misleadership class in general demands that African Americans sacrifice their own economic survival interests to Barack Obama's political interests.

In real dollars, the U.S. is spending far more on the military than at any time during the Cold War, when there was another superpower in competition, and more than President Lyndon Johnson spent at the height of the Vietnam War. Dr. Martin Luther King broke with LBJ over that war, in part because he knew, in King's words, "that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube."

Under the First Black President, that military suction tube is far bigger and more destructive than in Dr. King's day, while the economic crisis is arguably much worse, threatening the very viability of Black America as a national community.

Yet only 12 Black members of Congress can bring themselves to vote against Obama's wars, and the Black misleadership class in general demands that African Americans sacrifice their own economic survival interests to Barack Obama's political interests.

Obama is not merely a continuation of the Bush administration's war policies, he has accelerated the descent into a war economy.

That is nothing for any Black person to be proud about.


16. On Reading the Constitution

They promised to read the Constitution, so they did, the heartless Republicans, joined by the spineless Democrats, though they skipped the original version for the revised, yes, like skipping the original Bible for the King James wickedpedia version. They skipped that 3/5ths of a man original that dehumanized the only humans in America. Yes, James Baldwin said, "We're the only thing that happened here!"

As per a Hollywood movie script on diversity, Civil Rites Negro, Georgia Congressman John Lewis was allowed to read the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, except for involuntary servitude for the incarcerated. Now imagine this: the founding fathers (slave owners) were smart enough to know the day would come when North American Africans would fall victim to slave catchers (police) to the extent a great portion of them would again become subjects of involuntary servitude due to incarceration. For sure, the South is rejoicing to have Africans back in chains doing hard labor in fields, roads and streets.

Thus, does it matter whether one is a slave outside or inside the Constitution?The point is that "we got those niggers back in chains, hallelujah!" And so many products on the market today are prison made. Corporations enjoy slave labor that is cheaper than outsourcing to China and India.

Because I could type, the short time I was in prison for refusing to go to Vietnam, my job was in the Yard Office as a clerk, but other brothers came back to the dorms each daily exhausted from hard labor.

The 14th Amendment made us citizens without a consensus from us. We were not allowed or did not demand self determination as a free people but submitted to a pseudo US citizenship in name only. We have suffered ever since from this fake citizenship without any substance whatsoever, no economic parity, educational, health or political equality.

After 400 years of free labor we were released with no reparations and no treatment for our post-traumatic slave syndrome, down to the present moment we yet suffer trauma and unresolved grief for enduring the behavior modification or psychological and physical torture of American democracy.

Obviously the 15th Amendment affording us the right to vote is yet enforced since the Voting Rights Act must be renewed periodically to include North American Africans. And the millions of incarcerated who endured involuntary servitude are excluded from voting upon release.

Don't let me search out the words of Frederick Douglass on the meaning of the Constitution to a slave.
--Marvin X
1/7/11


17. Neo Feudalism or Wage Slavery

Ideally, capitalism desires cheap labor and resources in order to increase profits or capital to the maximum. The primary motive is profit, regarding labor as expendable or replaceable since there is an infinite supply of slaves or workers. And it assumed there will be a infinite amount of natural resources to exploit, ultimately at the point of the gun, i.e., obtainable by warfare.

We can use the African slave trade as a recent example of how capitalists kidnapped Africans and through behavior modification or brainwashing enforced by terror, the whip and gun, made them labor from can't see to can't see til eternity without paying them one dime. African land was in turn raped of all natural resources available, gold, diamonds, ivory, and other precious minerals and metals.

The industrial revolution made a minor change from chattel slavery to wage slavery that has persisted to today, of course for some workers wage slavery existed simultaneously with chattel slavery. The end of Reconstruction returned freed Africans to virtual chattel slavery when they became sharecroppers for racist white landowners, after the Africans were tricked out of their promised 40 acres and a mule. Landless yet forced to work the land without little compensation for their labor ultimately drove them Up South in the great migration of the latter 19th century.
Once there, the status of Africans was upgraded only slightly to the status of wage slaves, but never on par with the white workers, and this wage disparity has persisted to today. White labor is more important than black labor, and of course male labor more precious than female labor.

The unions gave workers a degree of improvement in their wages although the capitalist bosses fought tooth and nail to keep wages low, ultimately conspiring with union bosses to trick workers of their new found gains in job security, health insurance and retirement benefits.

The present economic melt down is the grand opportunity for capitalists to again approach chattel slavery in their wage war with workers. Outsourcing enabled the capitalists to destroy American workers, black and white, male and female. If American workers are prepared to enjoy the wage slavery of workers in outsourced countries, then there may be a few jobs for them. We recently heard that India is prepared to outsource jobs to America, at Indian wage slave levels, of course. An American MBA would therefore receive the same salary of his Indian counterpart, $14,000.00 per year rather than the American salary of $140,000.00.

American corporations desire the same wages from American workers if they can get it, if not, they simply out source. Capitalism does not discriminate when it comes to exploitation of labor, i.e., it cares no more about the white worker than the black worker, except in the dumb white worker's racist mind the black has always been in competition with him, this was the great fear of emancipation among white workers.

Today outsourcing is the cause of shrinking jobs in America, but again dumb white workers are blaming immigrant labor, blacks or even China. In the case of China, white workers do not understand American capitalists are in partnerships with Chinese corporations to rip off American jobs.

We have thus reached a point in time wherein the stage is being set for a workers revolution, if only the workers will get it clear in their minds what's really going on, how they are being hoodwinked and bamboozled by the greedy capitalists who have been rewarded for robbery by use of the global financial system through the perennial pyramid scheme banking network guided by the banker's bank The Federal Reserve, in cahoots with Wall Street and the military/corporate/university/prison complex.

Also understand the vital role of the petrochemical and pharmaceutical bandits who poison us with devitalized foods leading us from the dinner table to the hospital to the graveyard wherein we are laid to rest in poverty after a life of wage slavery in the hostile environment of job, home and the general society wherein we were overcome by consumerism or the world of make believe.

The corporations and banks are again flowing with cash after getting reimbursed from their losses in the global sub prime loan scheme/scam. The bosses are receiving mega salaries with mega bonuses, meanwhile the American workers suffer salary decreases, pervasive job insecurity, loss of benefits such as health insurance and retirement.

When will they protest, when will they demand economic justice? Never as long as the media magicians perpetuate the world of make believe and lull them to sleep watching video games, sport and play, i.e., pussy and dick stories and music videos on giant televisions. Let us not leave out fairy tale religiosity at the Ten Per Cent Club called church, the ultimate opiate of the people although they are being drugged from cradle to grave.

The era of jobs for life is over. Corporations desire contract workers at every level to escape the cost of permanent wage slaves. The largely unqualified black worker pool is expendable and eligible for incarceration if it attempts to rebel against its social-economic insecurity through criminality and/or revolution.

Once in the criminal justice system, the unemployed and unemployable black workers suddenly become a commodity, a valuable product of the prison/corporate complex. Rather than provide the blacks with skills to obtain jobs with living wages, they are made wards of the state at the cost of fifty to sixty thousand dollars per inmate per year, providing necessary jobs for white workers, even though many blacks are also employed at the department of corrections.

The capitalists could provide jobs with a living wage to the two million plus inmates, more than it costs to send them to Harvard, Yale and Stanford, but they rather employ slave catchers called police to round them up, often after they have dropped out or pushed out of public schools that Dr. Julia Hare calls holding cells for the departments of correction. Why should Johnny and Johnny Mae be inspired by a curriculum based on white supremacy mythology?

With a great percentage of black men on probation, parole or incarcerated, the destabilization of community is complete, thus neighborhoods ripe for gentrification. And even upon release from incarceration, they are only presented with mostly minimum wage jobs. In the South, many blacks must hold down three minimum wage jobs to make it. The fear of economic insecurity makes them submissive to racist bosses who will fire them at the first instance of organizing for improvements in salary and working conditions, and especially for spreading any semblance of radical consciousness on the job, or in the community for that matter. Even Up South in the north, the blacks work in fear, afraid to purchase literature during their lunch break for fear the boss will discover they have black consciousness.

As the economy continues in meltdown, we see few opportunities for the national advancement of North American Africans. With wages shrinking, jobs disappearing, incarceration increasing, the social-psychology of the hood is reaching the breaking point. Black mental health is deteriorating rapidly. People are trying to figure a way out of the morass.

I recently offered a woman my book How to Jump Out of the Box. She saw the title and said that's what she needs, and her friend too who was with her. Then she saw a quote by Buddha and hesitated to get the book but caught herself, "Oh, I guess it don't matter who said what, if I can get out the box." I nodded.

But how shall we get out of the box? Where do we go from here? What shall we tell our youth searching for a job when there are none? What shall we tell those smart enough to attend college, yet their future is bleak as well, unless they configure a solution in face of the continued desire for virtual slavery by the greater society.


Economic independence is the only solution, not sitting around waiting for the rustication of capitalism that shall not occur without radical structural change in a system that perpetuates greed rather than social concern. Trillions are lost in the foreign wars that benefit none but the military related corporations headed by former generals. And the supreme irony is that America can promise terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere education, jobs and housing if they will only lay down their guns and pledge allegiance to the puppet regimes the US is backing in her so-called war against terrorism, while who can be a greater world terrorist than the USA itself. She is the number one arms merchant of the world, thus she is the greatest purveyor of global violence. According to Nelson Mandela America is the reason there is no peace in the world.

Meanwhile cities are going broke, states as well, not to mention the looming national deficit, including the outstanding loan due China that is growing weary of the American dollar and is trading in her own currency and switching to Euros, for the Chinese are wise enough to know the American king is no more, half naked and soon to be butt naked in the sun.

Imagine Capitalists owing Communists trillions of dollars. How could this be? We've been taught the Communists were imbeciles and Capitalists were the smart guys. But we know the capitalists practice socialism among themselves and push their rotten capitalism on the deaf, dumb and blind masses, the wage slaves who shall never inherit the earth until they bury the capitalists in their own vomit. We doubt they will suddenly decide to share the wealth, so it must be seized from them by mass unity and ultimately this may include violence. Liberty or death! If you seek a better life for yourselves and your children, you must join the revolution. Fanon said revolution is not only the solution to your economic health but your mental health as well. Mao told us the reactionaries shall never put down their butcher knives, they shall never turn into Buddha heads! Sonia Sanchez says resist, resist, resist!
--Marvin X
1/5/11

18. Obama Must Give General Amnesty to all Prisoners


There has been a long call to free all prisoners unjustly held in American prisons and jails. Ninety per cent were mind altered at the time of their arrest, at least 50% were likely dual diagnosed, i.e., suffer drug abuse and mental illness. The majority are in for petty crimes and if they'd had proper legal representation would serve little or no time at all.

Not only are their crimes petty but should be seen as economic crimes due to poverty and lack of opportunity in a system that is advancing to what must be called neo-feudalism or wage slavery with little permanent employment, no health insurance, no unionism, thus they work at the whim of bosses who earn mega salaries and generous bonuses.

Once incarcerated, they suffer sexual and physical abuse, otherwise known as torture of the worse kind, and this includes inmates of mental wards, juvenile homes, jails and prisons. Those prisoners of conscious are often the most isolated for fear they will infect the population with radical ideology. The death row inmates are usually black and poor again, again, would not be on death row with proper legal representation.

The economic and social cost is astronomical, between fifty and sixty thousand dollars per inmate per year, more than it would cost to send them to Harvard, Yale and Stanford. But incarceration is big business in the era of de-industrialisation or the withering world of work, especially jobs with a living wage. Yet these neo-slaves, i.e., under the US Constitution involuntary servitude is legal, are a valuable commodity in the economic order. Prisons and jails are big business, in many communities the only business. They are now privatized and part of the military/corporate/university complex of institutions that perpetuate the capitalist system of free market exploitation. The incarcerated are of such value that the most powerful union in the state of California is the Correctional Officers Union that obviously has a vital stake in keeping the prison population high so they can maintain their lifestyle of conspicuous consumption. The Union will fight to the death to prevent a general amnesty.

In cahoots with the correctional officers are police departments who must arrest a quota of persons to maintain their jobs and justify their budgets. In some cities the police departments consume the major portion of city funds, to the neglect of schools, libraries and employment projects that would decrease arrests, court costs and incarceration. Many times the police are guilty of planting false evidence, false arrests, engaging in prostitution, drug dealing and money laundering. This behavior by law enforcement is a common feature below the border in Mexico, but is rapidly becoming a feature across the border in the US.

In some cases the police are in conspiracy with developers to destabilize neighborhoods that soon fall to gentrification. All the above applies to Oakland, California. It is a community under siege by police and gangs connected with the police. We suspect half the black on black homicide is police conspired.

A general amnesty must become a top priority of communities, especially with so many men falling victim to the slave catching police. This leads to family disintegration by increasing single family households. It is causing personality deformations in boys and girls who suffer prolong identity crisis since they lack positive male models. A young man attending a drug recovery meeting said, "Man, you might think some of my friends are gay, but they ain't gay, they just never heard a man's voice!"

We must reclaim are people from the dungeons , hellholes and Gulags in America. We cannot continue allowing them to be commodities in the capitalist system, similar to pork, corn, wheat and oil, to be traded on the stock exchange as neo-slaves.

If the last act of Saddam Hussein was a general amnesty, surely President Obama can do the same. It may get him some much needed brownie points for his 2012 election bid. But he must do so because it is the right thing to do. To not do so is economically and socially unsustainable.
--Marvin X
1/4/11

19. Obama Drama:
When in trouble at home, go abroad,

Onward Christian Soldiers

After the failure of midterm elections, Obama and his shaggy, effete neo-liberal regime fled America for a propaganda journey throughout Asia. His first stop was India that is one of the new boys and girls on the block, a member of the new global power bloc called BRIC, i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, China. He spent three days begging India to purchase weapons of mass destruction to help the staggering and stalled American economy that may continue its free-fall to the end.
Ironically, for those favoring the end of outsourcing, India says it is willing to outsource jobs to America, with slave wage jobs for unemployed, desperate Americans. Indian MBAs are paid $14,000 per year as opposed to American MBAs at $140,000. Will American workers accept the Indian pay scale? Take it or leave it! America needs India, India doesn't need America. For sure, India doesn't need America facilitation in its dispute with arch-rival Pakistan over Kashmir. America's failure to negotiate a two-state solution in Palestine is a pitiful example of American diplomacy and even handedness. As per Pakistan, America cannot decide if Pakistan is friend or foe. She bombs and invades Pakistan at will, yet claims Pakistan is a partner in the war against terror. An astute Indian student asked Obama why is not Pakistan declared a terrorist state?
Our question is why is not America declared a terrorist state? Its unmanned drone aircraft have killed an unknown toll of Pakistani civilians.

The regional players, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, will play a vital role in the ultimate peace in the area. America will not be involved. There shall never be peace anywhere in the Muslim world as long as the Christian Crusader armies occupy the land. The Afghanistan Taliban say they will not discuss peace with the quisling government of Karsai, Mayor of Kabul, until the Crusaders depart. At present, the Taliban control 80% of the land. Why else would the US concur to hold peace talks with the Taliban. When you're losing, you want to talk. When a wife is getting her ass beat, she wants to talk!

Obama doesn't understand that no amount of rhetoric will placate the Islamic world, thus his speech in Indonesia was poppycock, in line with his Cairo speech, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Yes, 100,000 troops may have departed Iraq since he became president, but 50,000 remain and 200,000 contractors and mercenaries, with the biggest US embassy in the world. Does it sound like America is truly ending its occupation of Iraq? Even the Defense Secretary Gates said there may be some rethinking of the departure date.

Afghanistan is lost, so on to Pakistan and Yemen with drones, Special Ops trained killers and other mercenaries of the Christian Crusader war machine.
--Marvin X

from Notes on the Wisdom of Action or How to Jump Out of the Box, Marvin X, Black Bird Press, 2011

20. Americans Must Smash Neo-Slave System

I feel so sorry for those Egyptians.
--American black girl


When will Americans dance in the streets for true freedom, justice and equality? When will they decide wage slavery is enough, that the slave system must be overthrown? Yes, the corporate, global finance, military, university complex must be thrown into the dustbin of history.

When will Americans agree to seize the wealth created from their sweat, blood and tears, the work of their hands. Why should the top 1% own wealth equal to the bottom 90% percent? When will they dispose their capitalist bosses, seize them by the necks and cast them into the streets for their greed, mega bonuses and life of conspicuous consumption, while the wage slaves are refused a living wage that will advance them above the working poor level of existence?

Like Tunisians and Egyptians, all sectors of society must come together to end the regime of the slave system, whether in white or black face. We are not fooled by a black skin for we know a duck when we hear it. The duck in the White House is a white swan in black face. He supplicates to those in the den of iniquity, the Wall Street robber barons, the former generals who run the military/corporate machine.

Workers, students, religious people, teachers, artists, trysexuals, all must unite. Even the police and army must unite with the people. Even the gangs must stop killing and unite with the people.

Sadly, this phony democracy must be replaced. Yes, the best democracy money can buy is unacceptable and unsustainable. The rotten Supreme Court has agreed your vote is up for sale and can be bought by the highest bidder.

It cost Obama 700 million dollars to be selected President. His reelection will cost one billion dollars. It will be paid for by Wall Street and the corporations of the complex who are the puppet masters. Obama is merely a puppeteer. When American cities were dying and decaying, black mayors were given pseudo power. When the American empire and Republic is dying and in her death throws, a black president is acceptable. It is an act of desperation by a dying monster, too full of hubris to remove itself peacefully, who yet claims exceptionalism that is based on white supremacy mythology. Empires come and go, but the Emperor wants to hold power forever.

American needs a systematic and structural change, for it doesn't matter whether the Democrats or Republicans are in power, they are one and the same, no matter than they sit on opposite sides of the aisle. They are both part and parcel of the US military, corporate, global
finance, university, prison complex of institutions in the neo-slave system.

All politicians are the hostage of lobbyists for whatever cause. Let us send them one million lobbyists to advocate for our cause. If the one million are not enough, we shall call the General Strike until they board a plane for some other world.

When will Americans understand former generals run the corporations. The universities are part of the war machine. Weapons of mass destruction are invented on university labs. And now your President is calling for the return of military recruiters on campus so the permanent war machine can have its cannon fodder soldiers.

Capitalism is against abortion because it wants your sons and daughters to grow up to be soldiers to maintain the global slave system. Let the boys and girls grow up to be 18 so they can go kill and die to maintain the empire, no matter that they come home in body bags, wounded, mentally deranged, suicidal and homicidal. They are valuable in the slave system.

While our sons are captured by the slave catchers (police) and imprisoned by the slave system to become a valuable commodity of the corporate complex( fifty to sixty thousand dollars per inmate per year, two hundred thousand dollars per inmate per year for juveniles), simultaneously our daughters enroll in the universities, wherein they are brainwashed with white supremacy mythology, hence they too are prisoners in the slave system.

They find themselves with advance degrees yet without an eligible mate since the pool of men is desecrated by the very nature of the slave system. Their potential men suffer the ravages of perennial unemployment, incarceration, drug abuse, mental illness and violence, whether internal or external. In short, by the very nature of the slave system, it must be overthrown, totally and absolutely, no quick fixing, no band aid, only radical systematic and structural change will suffice.

We have no guns, no weapons except ourselves, our bodies marching in unity. So let us dance in the streets of America, coast to coast, sea to shining sea. Let the mighty beast fall.

The government rules by the consent of the governed, they taught us in politics 1A. We must deny our consent. We must stand tall without fear, for we have been full of fear since birth. We have lived in fear, eaten fear for breakfast, lunch and dinner. No more fear. The only thing we fear is fear itself!

The stunted man and woman must stand together for today, tomorrow and all the yesterdays. As poet Amiri Baraka says, "For every hurtful thing...."

Surely you can see the Wall Street bandits have robbed you with pyramids schemes of pure speculation, selling toxic assets, bilking investors of trillions, extorting millions of common people of their basic wealth, their homes, depleting retirement funds of the working poor who retire after thirty years with a phony gold watch and must line up for food handouts to get through the month.

The Federal Reserve is the chief instrument of the Global bandits, the masters of the slave system. It is the den of thieves of international capitalist greed and economic domination.
Your money in the bank is now worthless, it is backed by nothing, only the paper it is printed on.

Soon, you shall go to the restaurant with a wheelbarrow full of dollars to buy a hamburger. Before you finish eating, the price shall rise. They have just released 600 billion dollars of worthless paper. We must prepare our home survival kits of emergency food and other items for survival. We can see that the universe herself is moving to rectify matters that have come to the attention of Mother Nature. If we are not in harmony with Mother, we shall we wiped from the face of the earth, and most especially those in league with the slave system.

Many of you shall never know work, for you are expendable in the slave system. The unemployed, underemployed, homeless, mentally ill, broken hearted, let us march to the White House Gates. Let us announce the New man and woman have arrived. And we shall not be moved.
--Marvin X
1/31/11

21. Unity With the Indigenous Peoples in the Americas

There is clear evidence North American Africans were here before Columbus. We know Africans traveled here during the time (circa 900 AD) of the Ghana, Mali and Shonghay empires. Thus we have an integral relationship with the indigenous people throughout the Americas. Certainly we have a blood relationship with the kidnapped Africans who are scattered throughout the Americas, the millions in Brazil who speak Portuguese, the Spanish speaking millions in Columbia, Nicaragua, Peru, Honduras, Mexico and throughout the Caribbean.

Our oppressed condition is more in harmony with the indigenous and Africans throughout the Americas than with the oppressor Euro-Americans. Yet we are mostly ignorant of our historic relationship with our brothers and sisters. It brought tears to my eyes to discover Afro-Mexicans, Afro-Cuban, Afro Columbians, Afro-Hondurans, Afro-Brazilians, et al. Part of the tears was because I could not communicate with them in Spanish and Portuguese. In spite of language, there was an undeniable spiritual unity and brotherhood. There was instant love between us. The tragedy was than we didn't know each other existed.

Today, the moment has arrived for Pan American unity of us with our indigenous and African American brothers and sisters. At this hour we have much to learn from them. Yes, we have a black president for the first time in 400 years. But in Bolivia we have an indigenous man as president for the first time in 500 years and he, unlike Obama, is a revolutionary! The winds of revolutionary change are blowing throughout the Americas and we need to be in harmony with the winds blowing in Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ecuador , Brazil, Venezuela and elsewhere.

They are striving to destroy the raw capitalist economic model imposed on them by Yankee imperialism, that has kept them in poverty, ignorance and disease for centuries. We have been in the identical situation but out leaders would have us continue in this state of economic wretchedness. We must unite and work with our brothers and sisters throughout the Americas to create a common future for ourselves that transcends the European white supremacy culture.
Our ignorance of the need for Pan American unity is quite similar to our attitude toward Pan African unity (but we will deal with Pan African unity is another essay).

We harbor racist attitudes toward our Pan American brothers and sisters just as the white man hates them, though he loves to exploit their labor and natural resources. Yes, he loves everything about them but them, to quote a poem by Paradise. But they have declared death on capitalism. They have declared that economics is not totally about profit but there is a social element, economics is for cultural development, not simply growth.

We must detox from our addiction to raw capitalism. And we need our Pan American brothers and sisters to help us detox and recover. You may need to unite and learn from the people who survive on rice and beans, who live on dirt floors without electricity and running water. You must rid yourselves of your white supremacy mentality of arrogance and superiority. Do not hate the indigenous people for wanting to come across the border to reclaim their land, yes, their land! How can you talk about Mexicans, at least they make their own soap, their own toilet paper, their own beer and tequila , their own clothes. You don't, so yes, we must unite to defeat this horrible monster called capitalism that has enslaved us and seeks to devour us, that has kept us divided and full of hatred, jealousy and envy of each other.



I wanted to read a poem on the theme of love dedicated to Dr. King but I listened to the news all night talking about a new event in Haiti
We thought Haiti was in bad shape
poverty ignorance disease
after defeating the Spanish English French
including Napoleon
don't ever do that
beat the white man
you will suffer forever
in the deepest corner of hell
like Haiti
a freedom never realized
a suffering never seen
we thought Haiti was in bad shape
hurricanes earthquakes cholera
no government
no trees
no water
no housing
no president
we thought Haiti was in bad shape
no reconstruction a year after quake
we thought Haiti was in bad shape
rigged elections
but then came the worse of all possible things
worse than poverty ignorance disease
hurricanes quakes
cholera
worse than no trees water food
we thought Haiti was in bad shape
then the plane landed
evil will prevail he had said
a police escort
evil will prevail he had taught
a hero's welcome

wasn't Aristide, priest of the poor
democratically elected, removed on orders of you know who
by you know who
flow away by you know who
I wasn't Aristide
we thought Haiti was in bad shape
then the prince of evil landed
worse than his Papa
We thought Haiti was in bad shape
then Baby Doc came home.

--Marvin X
1/1
























22. Parable of the Neo-Haitian Revolution


After Palmares (1530-1653) in Brazil, Haiti was the second republic of ex-slaves in the Americas. Palmares was liberated territory for nearly a century. Haiti won its independence in 1804 after defeating the Spanish, English and French colonizers, including a crushing defeat of Napoleon, Europe's greatest military strategist.

Haiti has never been forgiven for her victory of the European slave masters. Since her victory, she has been prescribed to poverty, ignorance and disease, military occupation and brutal dictatorships throughout the centuries. Even her attempt at democracy is perennially sabotaged by the former colonial powers. Her last duly elected president sits exiled in South Africa, seized in the night by American imperialists.

Since the earthquake, the eagles are gathering for the carcass, making sure of American hegemony. This time she is using black face sycophants to spearhead the island's reconstruction and gentrification. Obama appears in league with Haiti's traditional mulatto ruling class, orchestrating global fundraising with the gold dust twins, former presidents Bush and Clinton. Recently, reactionary entrepreneur Robert Johnson has ingratiated himself with a billion dollar reconstruction contract.

For sure, the neo-revolution will not benefit the Haitian masses, but is clearly designed to profit the usual suspects and those who have long coveted the islands beauty and ambiance, just as whites yearned for that precious real estate in San Francisco called Hunters Point. It is an open secret Hunters Point has the best view and best weather in San Francisco. Similarly, Haiti is that romantic island in the sun, originally the richest slave colony in the Americas, impoverished by demanding the ex-slaves pay compensation to its former masters for the loss of "their property."

Haiti is eternally mocked and blocked by the West, namely the United States, for that original revolutionary victory. Her leaders have been depicted as incapable, paranoid personalities, best described by Eugene Oneil's classic racist drama Emperor Jones. President Aristide is the most recent "unacceptable" personality.

We wonder when will the Haitian people come together with the Vudun version of democracy wherein all the gods are represented equally in their sacred ritual, thus all the people allowed expression of their God given right to freedom, justice and equality?

Will they not be punished until they call forth the ancient spirits who gave them victory over the Spanish, French and English? Now they must overcome the American, that grand deceiver who comes in sheep's clothing but is a wolf of the most vicious kind.
--Marvin X
4/26/10

23. Parable of North American Africans As Haitians

Let us begin with the notion made by Mrs. Amina Baraka that the so-called Negro or North American African is a West Indian or has Caribbean roots since most of the kidnapped Africans were brought to the Caribbean first for the "breaking in," or brain washing/behavior modification to socialize them for eternal servitude throughout the Americas, including North America. Thus when Caribbean Africans refer to North American Africans as "you people," (meaning black American in the most derogatory sense)the North American African can shoot back that we are "you people" too.
But the similarities and parallels are even more glaring than our common Caribbean behavior modification. In the case of Haiti, our condition in the United States is not far different. Just as the Haitians are landless and lack an agricultural base, so are we. It is not stretching the imagination to say the North American African doesn't grow a tomato, a carrot or string bean.
He, like the Haitians, is a basket case, no matter that in terms of GNP he is the 16th richest nation in the world. In truth, he is a consumer who produces nothing, not even his own food, clothes, soap, beauty products or alcohol, of which he is a major consumer.
As a result of his being at the whim of the petrochemical agribusiness industry, he suffers a form of anorexia, starving like the Haitian, for the food he consumes is devoid of nutrients and vitamins, loaded with salt, sugar, and corn starch, leading him directly from the petrochemical (oil based) agribusiness corporations to the pharmaceutical industry/drug stores and medical facilities.

In the old Muslim mythology, the so-called Negroes food consumption causes him to fall victim to the doctor, nurse and undertaker. But unlike the Haitian middle class mulattoes, the black middle class fares no better than the poor wretched underclass, for they do not take advantage of the health care they when they pay for it.

This is partly due to the hostile relationship all blacks have with the medical profession--they have a well deserved fear of the doctor since the medical profession is known to misdiagnose North American Africans, subjecting them to unnecessary operations or over medicating them with pills. Alas, there are more drug stores in the hood than grocery stores, and the grocery stores sell the worse quality food in the hood. A friend of mine recently retired as a truck driver for a grocery chain in southern California. He said the food he delivered to grocery stores in the hood, he didn't consider food when compared to the gourmet food he delivered to white and upscale neighborhoods.

But driving through the hood and seeing the plethora of drug stores, one wonders are we really this sick? Yes, our addiction to white supremacy, especially the hostile environment all blacks work in, leads to the most severe mental and physical ailments. The health director of Alameda County theorizes that life expectancy is not determined by income but rather where one lives or space and place. If one lives in or near the hood, ones life expectancy is shortened by several years compared with those who live up in the hills as opposed to the flatland here in the Bay Area.

The hostile environment makes all blacks susceptible to stress related diseases, especially high blood pressure, depression, schizophrenia and paranoia. As per the later psychosis, someone is, in fact, after the North American African. He, and more often now, she, is not wanted in high positions challenging the glass ceiling of corporate America.

Like the Haitian, the North American African is educationally challenged, to put it mildly. How can his educational system be any better than the Haitians when 50% to 70% of students in the hood either drop out or are pushed out--pushed out so they will not lower standards and disqualify schools of funding. And even if he received education on the level of whites, it would be mediocre compared with students in China and India who far excel whites, thus the reason for outsourcing of jobs. Why would the capitalist swines pay an American MBA, black or white, $140,000 per year when it can outsource to India and obtain MBAs for $14,000 per year who speak better English?
With respect to agribusiness, the North American African, as I've noted above, fares no better than the Haitian who was hoodwinked into leaving the land and seeking wage slavery in the capital city, thus depriving his nation of food sustenance, making Haiti the worse basket case in the world. Not only is the North American African similarly disposed, but in California he lives in the richest agricultural valley in the world, yet is not involved in agribusiness to any meaningful degree.

How many black students in California colleges and universities are majoring in agribusiness?
Even in tourism, seek out the North American African in the tourist cities of San Francisco and Seattle. You will generally only see him as street musician and/or robot at Fisherman's Wharf and Pike's Market. And how does he fare on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, pre and post Katrina?
Just as in Haiti, decades of underdevelopment as led to the criminal society in the ghettos of North America. In America, the prisons are largely de facto drug recovery and mental health facilities. Between 80% and 90% of all inmates were under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs at the time of arrest. With 30% to 40% of inmates severely mentally ill, the jails and prisons are de facto mental wards, minus substantial mental health treatment.
Just as there is no political structure in Haiti, none of substance exists in North America, despite the so called black president who doesn't mention the word black. As in Haiti, the political structure is largely ruled by mulattoes, from Obama down. Poor Jesse Jackson couldn't be president if he ran a thousand times. Just as Haiti is a caste and class society, North American Africans suffer the same. The brown bag test still exists, in politics, education, religion and the arts, especially Hollywood. If you ain't looking like Halle Berry, don't even think about Hollywood.

Even the Nation of Islam is sugar coated with mulattoes in high places. And don't tell me I'm perpetuating the Willie Lynch Syndrome. No, Willie Lynch is perpetuating the Willie Lynch Syndrome.

Politics in Haiti is corrupt to the point of no return, as in the elected president exiled by US authorities who view Haiti as their turf, just as the cities are largely the turf of the Democratic party, with the resultant corruption of black officials on the west coast, dirty south and east coast. Take a trip from coast to coast and listen to the stories of corrupt black officials in politics, religion and education, from city halls, churches, mosques, secondary schools, colleges and universities.
Perhaps the earthquake shall bring about a new day in Haiti, though we doubt it. It will probably be exploited by capitalist swine developers. Their plans are already in motion. But just as Haiti needs a Marshall plan, so does North American Africans. With all the trillions given out to those who caused the global financial meltdown(they were rewarded for robbery), the filthy capitalist swine, those blood suckers of the poor, i.e., bankers, wall street robber barons, insurance companies, the poor in the hood did not receive an honorable mention.

I have never encountered so many broke black people on the streets of Oakland. Think about it, North American Africans have been scammed out of their national wealth (homes) with the sub-prime loan schemes, including those blacks who qualified for prime loans.
The final comparison between Haiti and North American Africans is the fact that Haiti defeated the white slave masters, including the master military strategist of Europe, Napoleon. Haiti has never been forgiven for whipping the white man's ass. How ironic the white supremacist Rev. Pat Robertson said the Haitians are suffering from making a pact with the devil to defeat the slave masters to become the first free black republic in the Americas, aside from Palmares in Brazil that was independent for a century. Since the 200,000 North American African troops were decisive in the Civil War, maybe they made a pact with the devil as well. For a surety, the South has never gotten over the fact they lost the Civil War, and they are determined to put the North American African back in his place. They are making a good effort to reinstate slavery by incarcerating them and subjecting them to involuntary servitude under the US constitution, to say nothing of the wage slavery that forces blacks in the South to work two and three minimum wage jobs to survive. God save Haiti, and God save North American Africans!
--Marvin X
1/20/10


Excuse Me, Mr. President!

Excuse me, Mr. President; the war in Afghanistan is not in the interests of the USA There is nothing in Afghanistan that is vital to American interests unless those interests are heroin and oil pipelines around the Caspian Sea to escape Russian hegemony. Originally, the war in Afghanistan was to deny Al Quida a foothold and punish them for 9/11. The USA global bandits supplied and supported the Taliban as they ran the Russians out, but now they are fighting the Taliban to again deny Al Quida, although there is no Al Quida in Afghanistan.

Thus, there is no need to have a surge of troops in Afghanistan. It is good for the militarist US economy, for the generals who run the corporations, the university/corporate e complex that benefits with contracts and related research. The war in Iraq was a total failure simply because it was unnecessary to kill a million people over the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But again, Iraq was for oil and to check Shia expansion for the reactionary Sunni regimes throughout the Middle East, namely Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Persian Gulf states--and of course to protect Israel.

Of course Obama is a politician looking toward the next elections so he must mollify the right wing militarists. He told you he would expand the war into Pakistan during his election campaign. At least he is true to his word. And so for political expediency he will expand the war in Afghanistan, then try to deescalate near election time.

He is not thinking of the American's who shall die and those sure to come home traumatized, suicidal and homicidal. He is allocating billions to buy off the Taliban's acts of violence, but here at home he does nothing to "buy off" those brothers and sisters terrorizing the hood with internecine violence, depriving the hood of any social security. How can the US pay the insurgents to stop violence yet allow brothers in the hood to wreak havoc throughout America with guns and drugs? Internal violence is the real threat to America’s interests and security. This is why the poet Amiri Baraka warns us, "In the end the Negro will be the terrorist."

The violence in the hood would surely one day cross over to the white community. We see black men redirecting their guns against the police in Oakland and Washington State. If this trend continues, get ready for an escalation in the police/military occupation of the hood. As the depression continues and creates more joblessness, expect the prison population to increase leading to a further destabilization of the hood. As Dr. Cornel West says, we must protect and respect the President but we must also correct the President when he goes down the path of reaction by enacting policies against our national interests as North American Africans.

Meanwhile, North American Africans may be oblivious to the radicalization of Latin America, but how long can we maintain our reactionary support of the US when our friends, brothers and sisters throughout the Americas are charting their own agenda and it does not include the globalist free trade policies of the US and her allies. Where is the North American African leadership that is putting our agenda in harmony with the people of Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Bolivia, Chile and Venezuela? Shall North American Africans continue their addiction to white supremacy domination and exploitation?

Or shall we unite with our brothers and sisters throughout the Americas and work toward an agenda in harmony with our national and regional interests? Further, the so-called attempt to nation build in Afghanistan is legalizing the warlords to continue their traditional tribalism, not unify as a national state. The Pashtun, Tajik, Usbek and others have tribal interests rather than national interests. The loya jurga or meeting of the tribal elders would be the way to resolve matters among the people of Afghanistan, not by a military surge that will include more killing and destruction rather than reconstruction.

If there is no Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, we need to get out now, but it shall not happen because white supremacy must prove its point, no matter that no armies have conquered this land, not the armies of Alexander the Great, the British, nor Russians. Obama now has his opportunity to defy history. Politics, money, oil, dope. And India is the other key player in this madness.

India is playing on Kabul to counter the Pakistan support of Taliban. As reactionary as the Taliban are, they stopped the poppies growing. Enter the US and the poppy fields are blooming with a resultant opium addiction of the country. Whole villages and entire families are addicted, even babies are given opium for any ailment, even as a substitute for food. It is worse than the US supplied Crack addiction of North American Africans.

The saddest part of Obama's speech to West Point was his falsification of American history, claiming America as the good guys in the white hats who've never unjustly occupied people's land around the world. Let us hear from the Native Americans on this point. Let us recount the US support of reactionary regimes around the world, and do not fail to count the number of US military bases around the world to suppress and oppress people in order to steal their labor and resources. We suggest Obama read Howard Zinn's (RIP) People's History of the United States. President Obama is sounding as right wing as his predecessors in the White House, from the beginning to now, all of them promoted white supremacy at home and abroad.