We Have Here, in Africa, Everything Necessary to Become a Powerful, Modern, and Industrialised Continent

by Vijay Prashad / October 5th, 2023

Wu Fang (China), 行走 (‘Journey’), 2017.

In his 1963 book, Africa Must Unite, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, wrote, ‘We have here, in Africa, everything necessary to become a powerful, modern, industrialised continent. United Nations investigators have recently shown that Africa, far from having inadequate resources, is probably better equipped for industrialisation than almost any other region in the world’. Here, Nkrumah was referring to the Special Study on Economic Conditions and Development, Non-Self-Governing Territories (United Nations, 1958), which detailed the continent’s immense natural resources. ‘The true explanation for the slowness of industrial development in Africa’, Nkrumah wrote, ‘lies in the policies of the colonial period. Practically all our natural resources, not to mention trade, shipping, banking, building, and so on, fell into, and have remained in, the hands of foreigners seeking to enrich alien investors, and to hold back local economic initiative’. Nkrumah further expanded upon this view in his remarkable book, Neo-Colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965).

As the leader of Ghana’s government, Nkrumah devised a policy to reverse this trend by promoting public education (with an emphasis on science and technology), building a robust public sector to provide his country with infrastructure (including electricity, roads, and railways), and developing an industrial sector that would add value to the raw materials that had previously been exported at meagre prices. However, such a project would fail if it were only tried in one country. That is why Nkrumah was a great champion of African unity, articulated at length in his book Africa Must Unite (1963). It was because of his determination that African countries formed the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) the same year as his book was published. In 1999, the OAU became the African Union.

As Ghana and Africa made small strides to establish national and continental sovereignty, some people had other ideas. Nkrumah was removed from office in a Western-backed coup in 1966, five years after Patrice Lumumba was ejected as prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and then assassinated. Anyone who wanted to build a project for the sovereignty of the continent and the dignity of the African people would find themselves either deposed, dead, or both.

Guo Hongwu (China), 革命友谊深如海 (‘Revolutionary Friendship Is as Deep as the Ocean’), 1975.

The Western-backed governments that followed these coups often reversed the policies to exercise national sovereignty and build continental unity. For instance, in 1966, the military leaders of Ghana’s National Liberation Council began to gut the policy of establishing quality public education and an efficient public sector with industrialisation and continental trade at its centre. Import-substitution policies that had been important to the new Third World states were rejected in favour of exporting cheapened raw materials and importing expensive finished products. The spiral of debt and dependency wracked the continent. This situation was worsened by the International Monetary Fund’s Structural Adjustment Programmes, set in motion during the worst of the 1980s debt crisis. A 2009 research paper from the South Centre noted that ‘the continent is the least industrialised region of the world, while the share of sub-Saharan Africa in global manufacturing value added actually declined in most sectors between 1990 and 2000’. Indeed, the South Centre paper referred to the situation in Africa as one of ‘de-industrialisation’.

In April 1980, African leaders gathered in Lagos, Nigeria, under the aegis of the OAU to deliberate about the harsh climate created by the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programmes, which targeted their fiscal policies but did nothing to change the adverse international credit markets. Out of this meeting came the Lagos Plan of Action (1980–2000), whose main argument was for African states to establish their sovereignty from international capital and to build industrial policies for their countries and for the continent. This was, in essence, a renewal of the Nkrumah policy of the 1960s. Alongside the Lagos Plan of Action, the United Nations established the Industrial Development Decade for Africa (1980–1990). Towards the end of that decade, in 1989 the OAU – cognisant of the policy’s failure due to the deepening of neoliberal approaches that slashed budgets and intensified the export-oriented theft of African resources – worked with the United Nations to establish 20 November as Africa Industrialisation Day. The failure of the Industrial Development Decade for Africa was followed by a second decade (1993–2002) and then a third (2016–2025). In January 2015, the African Union adopted Agenda 2063 to combine the imperative of industrialisation with Africa’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals. These ‘decades’ and Agenda 2063 have become merely symbolic. There is no agenda to undo external debt and debt servicing burdens nor any policy to create a climate to advance industrial development or finance the provision of basic needs.

Pan Jianglong (China), 撒哈拉以东 (‘To the East of the Sahara’), 2017.

At the China-Africa Leaders’ Dialogue, held on the side-lines of the fifteenth BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) summit in Johannesburg, China launched the Initiative on Supporting Africa’s Industrialisation ‘to support Africa in growing its manufacturing sector and realising industrialisation and economic diversification’. The Chinese government pledged to increase its funding to build infrastructure, design and create industrial parks, and assist African governments and firms in developing their industrial policies and industries. This new initiative will build off of China’s commitments at the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation to strengthen infrastructure on the continent, share its own experiences with industrialisation, and support a development project that emerges out of the African experience rather than one forced upon African states by the IMF or other agencies.

This week, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Dongsheng launched the third issue of the international edition of the journal Wenhua Zongheng (文化纵横), entitled ‘China-Africa Relations in the Belt and Road Era’. This issue features three articles, written by Grieve Chelwa, Zhou Jinyan, and Tang Xiaoyang. Professor Zhou, concurring with the South Centre report, notes that ‘African countries were essentially de-industrialised’ since the 1980s and that whatever growth African countries experienced was a consequence of high commodity prices for exported raw materials. She points out that Western countries – offering debt, aid, and structural adjustment – are ‘not motivated to promote African industrialisation’. Drawing heavily from the UN Economic Commission for Africa and analysing the industrial policies of most African countries, Professor Zhou highlights four important points: first, the state must play an active role in any industrial development; second, industrialisation must take place on a regional and continental level – not within African states alone, given that 86 percent of Africa’s total trade is ‘still conducted with other regions of the world, not within the continent; third, urbanisation and industrialisation must be coordinated so that cities on the continent do not continue to grow into large slums filled with jobless youth; and fourth, manufacturing will be the engine of African economic development rather than the fantasy of service sector-led growth.

These points guide Professor Zhou’s assessment of how China can support the process of African industrialisation. In sharing its experiences with African countries, she notes that ‘China’s failures’ are as important as its successes.

Zhao Jianqi (China), 回望故乡 (‘Longing for Home’), n.d.

In his essay, Professor Tang tracks the record of the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on the continent. Established in 2013, the BRI is only a decade old, which barely allows enough time to fully assess this massive, global infrastructural and industrial development project. At the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (April 2019), UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, ‘With the scale of its planned investments, [the BRI] offers a meaningful opportunity to contribute to the creation of a more equitable, prosperous world for all, and to reversing the negative impact of climate change’. In 2022, the UN released a report on the role of the BRI called Partnering for a Brighter Shared Future, which noted that the BRI – unlike most other development projects – provided significant funding for infrastructure projects that may form the basis for industrialisation in regions that had previously been exporters of raw materials and importers of manufactured products.

Building on such assessments of the BRI, Professor Tang offers three practical ways in which the BRI has promoted industrialisation on the African continent: first, by constructing industrial parks with integrated power sources and creating industrial clusters of interconnected firms; second, by building industries to supply infrastructural materials; and third, by prioritising production for local markets rather than for export. Unlike the IMF policies that are forced on African countries, Professor Tang argues that ‘China encourages each country to follow its own path of development and to not blindly follow any model’.

Neither Tang nor Zhou nor Chelwa indicate that China is somehow the saviour of Africa. Those days are gone. No country or continent seeks its salvation elsewhere. Africa’s path will be built by Africans. Nonetheless, given its own experiences of building manufacturing against a structure that reproduces dependency, China has a lot to share. Since it has enormous financial reserves and does not impose Western-styled conditionality, China can, of course, be a source of financing for alternative development projects.

In December 2022, African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina said that ‘Africa’s prosperity must no longer depend on exports of raw materials but on value-added finished products’. ‘Across Africa’, he continued, ‘we need to turn cocoa beans into chocolate, cotton into textiles and garments, coffee beans into brewed coffee’. To keep in step with the times, we might add that Africa must also turn cobalt and nickel into lithium-ion batteries and electric cars and turn copper and silver into smartphones. Inside Adesina’s statement is Nkrumah’s dream: as he wrote in 1963, we have here, in Africa, everything necessary to become a powerful, modern, industrialised continent

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Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

 

Poverty in Greece

by Dimitris Eleas / October 6th, 2023

New York Times published a news article “Greece, Battered a Decade Ago, Is Booming” by Liz Alderman, with additional reporting from Niki Kitsantonis (Monday, Sept. 25 / in print on Saturday, Sept. 30, Section B, Page 1 with the headline: “A New Era of Prosperity for Greece”).

The article informs us that Greece was hit by an economic crisis a decade ago. It had, then, a load of debt – (doesn’t it now?) – which it could not repay and almost left the eurozone. So far so good.

The newspaper informs that today it is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe. Again, so far so good. And clearly, the famous credit rating agencies are upgrading Greece’s debt rating and thus, opening the way for large investors and the economy is growing at twice the rate of the eurozone average. That’s right. CEPR economist Dean Baker, commenting on the article after its publication, wrote with emphasis: “Since the eurozone growth rate for 2023 is projected to be 0.8 percent, growing twice as fast is a rather low bar.”

The journalist mentions that unemployment is at 11 percent, which one would say, with a dose of humor,  is “Greek statistics” because the probability is that unemployment is much higher. (Greece’s past government falsified fiscal data in order to enter eurozone.) Dean Baker will point out though, “The 11 percent unemployment rate is far higher than the rest of the European Union, which has a 5.9 percent unemployment rate.” Everywhere in Greece there is poverty, and mine conditions in society.

I am one of the Greeks living in New York, and I have received many messages and phone calls from Greek people who want to immigrate to America because they cannot make ends meet. Friends and family members ask me the same. They are forced to do two-three jobs to survive. The minimum wage is 780 euros (650 net). So, how is it that the article describes “a miracle”? One would say that even the examples of the people mentioned in the article are not typical.

And the tourists who have returned en masse, as the article states, has not helped to improve incomes. On the popular islands – that the average Greek cannot visit – usually, there are galley conditions for the workers.

Unfortunately, in Greek society, a small percentage of 5%-10% live well – “the oligarchs eat with golden spoons” – and the rest suffer. Children of the poor go to school hungry. The country has some of the most expensive fuel in Europe, expensive food, high VAT, and very expensive electricity. Many do not have money for dental care, to change tires on the car, or, to start a new family. The journalist writes “misery of austerity is still fresh”, no, it is not fresh; it is still present in the social conditions. Nowhere is mentioned that the government gave, until recently, “Soviet-style” Food Pass and Fuel Pass coupons, which helped the re-election by a landslide of the conservative leader Mr. Mitsotakis. This image is not beautified by the fact that the companies Microsoft and Pfizer are investing in Greece.

For reasons that are understandable, rating agencies like DBRS Morningstar and Moody’s do their job. Very likely for them, a strong economy means neoliberalism, purchasing power that is getting worse every year, and cheap labor. And Greece is a country that lacks personalities like AOC and Bernie. But the NYTimes should not present these assessments while ignoring the poverty that still exists in the country that gave birth to Democracy. The NYTimes has accustomed us to a more critical look at the suffering of ordinary people.

In conclusion, “can a dead man dance?” No! So, the information given by the NYTimes should create “a complete picture” and not the opposite. Perhaps, we can accept that somehow, the good American newspaper wants to help improve the desperate economic situation that continues to impoverish the Greeks and stop the transfer of wealth to the few. Good psychology is everything, even in economy. Until then, the country will continue to live its own difficult fate, its own 1929, similar to the conditions America experienced at the start of the Great Depression era.

Dimitris Eleas in a new immigrant in America. He is a New York-based article writer/political scientist and contributes to SLpress (Athens). You can contact him at: dimitris.eleas@gmail.com. Read other articles by Dimitris.

 

Antarctica’s Dicey Summer

by Robert Hunziker / October 6th, 2023

The past couple of years in Antarctica have been a rough and tumble affair of erratic climate change with record-high temperatures and totally unexpected ice shelf collapse. The continent is starting to reflect the impact of a warming planet that’s just too hot for icy comfort. So, what surprises will this year’s summer season bring?

At the tail end of Antarctica’s 2022 summer, during the start of autumn/March ‘22, temperatures along the eastern coast spiked 70°F (39°C) above normal. Scientists called it “unthinkable.” According to Edward Blanchard-Wrigglesworth, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington: “We found that temperature anomaly, the 39-degree temperature anomaly, that’s the largest anywhere ever measured anywhere in the world.” (Source: “Scientists Found the Most Intense Heat Wave Ever Recorded – in Antarctica,” Washington Post, September 24, 2023)

Within weeks, the unthinkable happened in East Antarctica. Conger Ice Shelf suddenly collapsed. According to NASA: “It is relatively common for ice shelves in Antarctica to spawn icebergs, it is less common for an ice shelf to completely disintegrate. The collapse has reshaped a part of the Antarctic landscape where coastal glacial ice was once thought to be stable. The change happened fast… All of the previous collapses have taken place in West Antarctica, not East Antarctica, which until recently has been thought of as relatively stable. This is something like a dress rehearsal for what we could expect from other, more massive ice shelves if they continue to melt and destabilize. Then we’ll really be past the turnaround point in terms of slowing sea level rise” (Source: “Ice Shelf Collapse in East Antarctica,” Earth Observatory, NASA, March 29, 2022).

Antarctica’s upcoming summer of 2023 with sunshine 24/7 from October thru February will bring a new season that is especially notable considering the fact that global warming strutted its stuff during Antarctica’s dark winter months of March-to-October 2023, setting new high temperature records and especially true of global warming’s impact on abnormally high ocean temperatures, which serve to undercut and weaken ice shelves: “The Southern Ocean has warmed substantially.” (Source: “Southern Ocean Warming and its Climatic Impacts,” Science Bulletin, 68:9, May 15, 2023) thus creating higher risks for 90% of the world’s surface water that’s impermanently locked in ice.

Already, strange things may be happening. For example, according to a non-authoritative source, the crucial Pinning Point 5 is gone at Thwaites/Pine Island glaciers. That source claims this risks an acceleration of glacial flow and termed the occurrence ‘”an emergency,” but that has not been verified by other sources. It should be noted that the source has a reasonable track record of following Antarctic events that later make news. (Source: “Pinning Point Five Collapsed, the Sea Ice Barrier Buttressing Thwaites and Pine Island Glacier,” Daily Kos, Sept. 29, 2023)

Along the way, the erratic behavior of the climate system over the past 18-24 months is of major concern, as global heat has enveloped the planet, setting records from the peaks of the tallest mountains in the Alps to the deepest interior of Antarctica, almost as if the climate system is programmed to keep turning up the thermostat, regardless of location, regardless of time, whatever season. Of course, this is as threatening to survival of Antarctica’s icy stature as it is fatal to the world’s coastal cities.

Polar Amplification in Antarctica

Times are changing fast as Antarctica, like its cousin up north, heats up much faster than the rest of the planet. According to Dr. Mathieu Casado, Laboratoire des Science du Climat et de l’Environment/France, there is direct evidence that Antarctica is undergoing “polar amplification.” (Source: “Ice Cores Reveal Antarctica is Warming Twice as Fast as Global Average,” CarbonBrief, September 13, 2023)

In plain English, it’s heating up much faster than the overall planet, which is horribly threatening news. In fact, the study found the continent is heating up per decade as much as 50% over climate models. This is a shocker to climate scientists and should be of serious concern to any sane/grounded person. It speaks to the necessity of taking immediate action by nation/states to convert energy systems to renewables.

According to the Casado study, Antarctica’s warming “is almost twice as strong as global warming estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) … also 20-50% larger than the estimates from the climate models used to produce the IPCC reports -even in East Antarctica, which was believed to be largely unaffected by climate change so far.” Accordingly, the study anticipates “dire consequences for the low-lying lands… further warning of the consequences of greenhouse gas emissions, even in one of the most remote parts of the world.”

Therefore, sea level rise as currently anticipated by consensus opinion is very likely too low in terms of potential and resultant coastal impacts, including calculations used by the IPCC, underestimating global warming’s impact on Antarctica by a wide margin.

It is instructive to look at the latest IPCC report, which is a synthesis d/d March 2023 that integrates the findings from its Sixth Assessment Report Cycle, stating: “Climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying… There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all. Choices made this current decade will impact us now and for thousands of years.” (Source: “IPCC Climate Change Reports: Why They Matter to Everyone on the Planet,” National Resources Defense Council, April 14, 2023) Thus, the IPCC puts the decade of the 2020s on a pedestal of achievement that must be achieved, or it’ll crash.

According to the IPCC’s Best-Case analysis: “If the world bands together to slash emissions immediately, the world can avoid the most catastrophic version of the climate crisis, but it will continue to warm until at least mid-century, due to the impact of past emissions.” For example, some changes that are already set in motion, like sea level rise, are irreversible over many decades. Adaptation is necessary.

In point of fact, the Casado study adds a haunting new perspective to the 6th Assessment Report, i.e., Antarctica’s warming is almost twice as strong as stated by the IPCC. In the final analysis, the study means the IPCC vastly understates the impact of global warming on Antarctica, which can only mean that low-lying coastal cities should build massive sea walls.

After all, according to the Miami Herald regarding southern Florida, within the next couple of years:  “Some Keys Roads Will Flood by 2025 Due to Sea Rise, Fixing Them Could Cost $750 Million,” Miami Herald, Oct. 21, 2021.

And this: “Several parts of coastal North Carolina could fall victim to extreme flooding in the very near future… several portions of North Carolina can be seen below the annual flood level by the year 2030,” Breaking News, Fox8/North Carolina, July 21, 2023.

Indeed, mainstream news outlets like the Miami Herald and Fox8 News are ringing the bell at the town square, warning about sea level rise flooding portions of Florida and North Carolina… real soon!

And this: According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Gulf Coast region saw more than a 1,000% increase in the number of high tide flooding days in 2020 over the past two decades. (Source: “Gulf Coast Sea Level Rising at ‘Unprecedented’ Rate, Recent Studies Find,” Houston Public Media, April 12, 2023)

In turn, all above brings to surface questions about motives of people who denigrate, attack, and belittle the climate change issue, human-caused global warming, and renewables thereby serving to block or interfere with nationwide efforts to do something constructive. Their line of thinking is extraordinarily dangerous to the country in the face of actual flooding events along America’s coasts that are locked loaded and ready for more action very soon. Mainstream news has clearly identified impending danger.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), sea level rise over the next 30 years will equal the past 100 years. “In the United States, the most vulnerable populations live on the East and Gulf Coasts… The acceleration of sea level rise along these coasts is ‘unprecedented in at least 120 years.” (Source: “Acceleration of U.S. Southeast and Gulf Coast Sea-Level Rise Amplified by Internal Climate Variability,” Nature Communications, April 2023)

The Antarctic summer of 2023 is on shaky footing as global heat is on the march worldwide like never before, and it knows no boundaries from south to north, every ecosystem everywhere is fair game. Of course, a major concern is rapid acceleration of ice shelf disintegration, especially fragile West Antarctica where Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier are already the fastest changing and most unstable glaciers in the world. Incidentally, Thwaites has a nickname: The Doomsday Glacier.

Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history, DePaul University) is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He can be contacted at: rlhunziker@gmail.com. Read other articles by Robert.

How a Battle between Pirates and the British Navy off the Coast of West Africa Triggered the Spread of Chattel Slavery and Changed the Course of History for the United States and the World

by Angela C. Sutton / October 6th, 2023

An excerpt from a new book, Pirates of the Slave Trade: The Battle of Cape Lopez and the Birth of an American Institution, by historian Angela C. Sutton shows how a pivotal battle between the British navy and a notorious pirate crew, led by “Black Bart” Roberts, cleared the way for an explosion of the slave trade, the establishment of chattel slavery in the Americas, and the deadly racism that still permeates U.S. society.

*****

In 1722 a British navy vessel helmed by Chaloner Ogle, a social-climbing captain with a mandate to end piracy, secured a decisive win in the waters off the coast of present-day Gabon. In the Battle of Cape Lopez, Ogle and his crew faced off against an infamous pirate band led by Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts. The defeat of one of the most prolific pirate crews gave the British dominance in the slave trade and curtailed the piracy that had so often scuttled their dealings with West African slave traders. While few in the United States know about the Battle of Cape Lopez, its role in shaping the horrific form of slavery that took hold here and its impact on the course of American history is pivotal.

Specifically, in the Americas, the ascendance and systemization of the British trade was the catalyst for the emergence of chattel slavery. Settlers departed from the Roman-derived systems of slavery, which afforded the enslaved some basic rights, after the Battle of Cape Lopez and moved toward a legacy of total ownership and dominion over their involuntary workforce and any future descendants in what is now referred to as the chattel model. The Roman system, which had been practiced by other European powers who saw their empires and international influence wane at this time, was incompatible with the aims of British American planters.

Before the eighteenth century and this dramatic shift, the Portuguese were the first and central European participants in the slave trade who set the tone for enslavement in the Atlantic world. They brought with them to the trade the Roman understanding of slavery. Under the systems of the Roman Empire, enslavement was often a temporary state of being, not a permanent identity. Enslavers could claim the labor of their enslaved, but not their full personhood. Enslaved people had a lesser status and fewer rights, yet some of their key human rights remained recognized. They could and did make use of the legal system, suing enslavers for cruel treatment, for their emancipation, or for the emancipation of their children. The Portuguese enshrined this system of enslavement in West Central Africa and Brazil beginning in the 1500s.

Enslavement in the 1600s Dutch Atlantic world tended to follow suit. The Dutch began their forays into trafficking in West Africa by emulating their first competitors, the Portuguese, and also following their lead in the Americas, particularly in what would later become the United States. On the Gold Coast, some Africans enslaved unlawfully by the Dutch were able to avail themselves of the Dutch courts to appeal for freedom. In New Netherlands, in the area including parts of present-day New York and Delaware, records reflect enslaved people purchasing their freedom and formerly enslaved Africans marrying free Dutch people in the mid- 1600s. Enslaved Africans and their descendants earned wages that they were permitted to keep, worshipped in the Dutch Reformed Church alongside White and free Black settlers, and some owned farmland in Manhattan. They appear with regularity in church and court records, testifying on their own behalf and insisting on their rights. It is not until the English began importing Africans in its takeover of New Netherlands in 1664 that more rigid race-based rules and racial designations took hold in the region.

By contrast, the British Empire were relative latecomers to the slave trade. They had been trading in Africa since the 1600s, but it took them longer to get a foothold in the trade. In the Atlantic world, they spent the first half of the seventeenth century battling the other European empires for Caribbean and West African territory and mercantile opportunities. Unlike their Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and French competition, Britain’s colonies in North America were administered under a variety of companies and stakeholders, and each colony was created for its own purposes and therefore had its own regulations regarding enslavement. Each procured forced African labor in a variety of ways, often relying on the illicit inter-American market when the British Royal Africa Company (RAC) was unable to meet the voracious demand of colonists. As demand grew and supply did not keep up, colonists stripped more and more rights and freedoms from the enslaved populations to ensure maximum extraction of their labor and the labor of their children. In these ways, the aftereffects of the Battle of Cape Lopez had devastating consequences for what would become the United States.

The increase in the slave trade volume afforded by the British maritime victory allowed British settlers to reject the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and Spanish notions of enslavement modeled after the Roman system, which had become the norm in the Atlantic world. Instead, they adopted the economically efficient chattel model in all their American colonies. This model spread as neighboring colonies, such as French Louisiana and Spanish Florida, became part of the United States after Louisiana was admitted to the union (1812) and the ratification of the Adams-Onis treaty (1821).

Under this new model of slavery, the enslaved were described as chattel, a word that shares its root with cattle, one of the most important forms of nonhuman capital at the time and in the history of the world. The ramifications for the enslaved were dire: slavery became a permanent identity, passed along generations. Enslavers claimed not only the labor of those they enslaved, but their entire beings. There was little to no legal recourse for the enslaved who experienced severe punishments nor was there any justice for the enslaved who were tortured and murdered by their enslavers. People with slave status could not testify in court, because for the first time in the Atlantic system, they were legally considered objects rather than human beings.

The economic efficiency of chattel slavery coincided with the rising popularity of capitalism, and this caused the widespread adoption of this British-introduced model across most of what would become the slaveholding United States and beyond. This is why, for example, other European colonies created in the Americas after this date, like Dutch Suriname, tended more toward the British chattel model.

The results were catastrophic and their reverberations far reaching. The United States would not confer citizenship onto the enslaved, freedmen, or their descendants until the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868—183 years after the French Empire granted citizenship to this population among her colonies.

Just as the enslaved were affected by this transition to a chattel model, so were the enslavers and the nonslaveholding colonists of European descent. This slavery transformed the cultures of the colonists. The all-encompassing nature of chattel slavery created a new type of identity politics: it conditioned people of European ancestry to think of themselves as White and to define themselves in opposition to Black people. This in turn sowed poisonous divisions that Americans still reap today.

Slavery has existed in nearly every society in the world in some form or another. Until British Atlantic societies developed the chattel model, no form of enslavement gave such complete and utter dominion to enslavers on such a scale. Consequently, no society had organized its entire social, political, religious, and economic systems around the exploitation of a more or less permanently enslaved underclass. Over time, the British North American territories became slave societies rather than a society with slaves. The distinction between a society with slaves and a slave society is important. Historian Ira Berlin first noted this in 1998. The British North American colonies began as societies with enslaved people with the charter generations. Race and slavery were more fluid designations, and many free people of African descent took part in many levels of society. Over time, as plantation systems emerged, the colonies became slave societies, wherein every aspect of the society hinged upon the strictures of slavery, and opportunities for people of African descent shrank dramatically.

To maintain generational wealth and power—or at least the dream of it—Whites had to participate and coerce the participation of other Whites in the system of White supremacy that dehumanizes the enslaved other. Colonial American lawmakers made informing on self-emancipating enslaved people and slave-catching mandatory for all White people, whether they personally enslaved anyone or not, whether they supported or opposed the institution. Mandatory reporting meant that failure to inform authorities when an enslaved person was doing anything they were not permitted to do could result in punishment. Legislators in many Southern colonies even formed groups that chased enslaved persons who dared attempt to “steal” themselves by escaping enslavement or by self-emancipating. These groups of White Southerners were expected to discipline enslaved people who were found off their plantations and to guard known escape routes. They were also the genesis of modern sheriff departments.

This social order mandated that the children born of an enslaved person would be born into slavery themselves. For slavery to be heritable, this type of system required a strict delineation between those with enslaved status and those without it. The ability to transfer from one status to another—as the enslaved often did in West Africa and, to lesser extents, elsewhere in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Atlantic world—became a liability in this system, as did racial ambiguity. To keep this system stable, enslavers tied visible Blackness to the status of enslavement. This meant that Africans in the British North American colonies were, according to Ibram X. Kendi, citing a particularly noxious speech of Jefferson Davis, “stamped from the beginning.”

Everyone who profited from the bloody and brutal trade in slaves made the decision to embark on ventures that resulted in African enslavement and death. They all justified these ventures, after the fact, in the letters and narratives they left behind. And the people today who read their writings and say things like “well, that was normal then” or “they didn’t know any better” or “that was just the way things were” are missing the point. It was not normal then.

They did know better, and that was not just the way things were. That was the way these men who trafficked human beings after the Battle of Cape Lopez actively created things. If it had ever been normal, moral, and acceptable to profit from the dehumanization of millions of people and to steal their labor, personhood, and that of their descendants in perpetuity, they would not have written thousands of pages of anti-abolitionist propaganda to convince the readership otherwise after the Battle of Cape Lopez, and during the birth of American slavery.

Angela C. Sutton is the author of Pirates of the Slave Trade: The Battle of Cape Lopez and the Birth of an American Institution. She is an Assistant research professor at Vanderbilt University, where she has taught Seapower in History, the Golden Age of Piracy, and Comparative Slavery. Read other articles by Angela.

 

Nuclear-Powered Fixations: The Trump-Pratt Disclosures

by Binoy Kampmark / October 7th, 2023

In April 2021, the Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt had a meeting with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club. According to an ABC News report, “Pratt told Trump he believed Australia should start buying its submarines from the United States, to which an excited Trump – ‘leaning’ towards Pratt as if to be discreet – then told Pratt two pieces of information about US submarines: the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads they routinely carry, and exactly how close they supposedly can get to a Russian submarine without being detected.”

The report, citing “sources familiar with the matter,” goes on to mention that Pratt “allegedly shared the information with scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists”. The net, in other words, proved rather large, with emails and conversations taking place on the subject with three former Australian prime ministers, 10 Australian officials, 11 of Pratt’s employees and six journalists.

The revelation has emerged as part of an ongoing investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into Trump’s retention of classified documents on leaving the White House. Some of the documents, hoarded at Mar-a-Lago, covered US military matters, nuclear weapons, and spy satellites.

What is buried in the latest spray and foam of the Trump disclosures to Pratt is whether that encounter had any bearing on the broader strategic thinking in Canberra and its links to the US military industrial complex. The AUKUS security agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia contemplates the transfer of at least three US nuclear powered Virginia class boats, along with the construction of a specific co-designed nuclear-powered boat for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Did Pratt’s enthusiasm for US nuclear submarines percolate through to other officials, think-tankers and courtiers working for Washington’s interests?

Former Australian Prime Ministers Paul Keating and Tony Abbott have told the Australian Financial Reviewthat Pratt never raised the issue of purchasing US nuclear submarines with them. Who, then, were the other prime ministers who received Pratt’s gobbets of wisdom? Surely Scott Morrison must figure, given his role in brokering the AUKUS agreement.

The ABC News report does acknowledge that a number of Australian officials who featured in the Pratt disclosures were “involved in then-ongoing negotiations with the Biden administration over a deal for Australia to purchase a number of nuclear-powered attack submarines from the United States.”

A number of Australian commentators have tried to minimise the significance of the Trump-Pratt encounter, thereby revealing visible smoke plumes. “We’ve had submariners serve on US nuclear submarines for years,” statedformer Australian ambassador to the US Joe Hockey. “I find it hard to believe that in a conversation between Anthony Pratt and Donald Trump, anything of great significance was discussed that would have an impact on the national security of either Australia or the United States.”

Former Australian Defence Department official Peter Jennings, who also served as executive director of the US-funded and parochially pro-Washington think-tank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, for over a decade, saw little reasonto be concerned about the content of the disclosures. Most of the material on US submarines was already in the public domain. His concern, rather, was with Trump’s cavalier approach to national security information. “It’s just the 1000th example of why Trump is unfit to be president,” he tut-tutted. Jennings, along with the other members of the paid-up Washington consensus in combating Beijing, is no doubt losing sleep about Trump redux. Were Trump to return to the White House, all bets about Australia getting its nuclear-powered submarines are off.

The speed with which AUKUS was entered into by the Scott Morrison government in September 2021, an agreement which also brought no demurral or any murmurs of dissent from the then Labour opposition of Anthony Albanese, had a rank smell to it. For one thing, it has seen Australia further trapped in an insidious game of military competition being waged against China at the behest of US interests, militarising the country and mortgaging the budget to the tune of $368 billion over the course of two decades.

AUKUS also brought with it the abrupt termination of Canberra’s contract with the French Naval Group to construct twelve diesel-electric attack submarines for the RAN. This proved to be a disastrous affair for Australian diplomacy, savaging French-Australian relations and also advertising, to the region, the abject repudiation of Australian sovereignty.

While it should be stressed that Pratt faces no charges of illegality or impropriety, nor features in the 40 charges Smith is levelling against Trump, the Mar-a-Lago meeting with a former US president may prove critical in identifying a nexus with Canberra’s irrational interest in US-nuclear powered technology and the point at which that fascination ended the last vestiges of Australian independence.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

 

Prevention of Dangers: Mark of a Compassionate Society

by Ralph Nader / October 7th, 2023

If only canes, walkers, railings and banisters were sentient, what would their message be to humans on Earth? “Prevention is the Priority, Dummies,” they would exclaim.  “Look at how many trips and falls we prevent for our users compared to the enormous costs in pain, suffering, family disarray and economic expenses that would occur were it not for our reliable presence day after day. We get no respect!”

For the most part, prevention of waste, injury, disease, casualties, wars, toxic chemicals and corporate crimes such as massive over-billing are just not profitable for mindless CEOs. However, selling goods and services that flow from the tragedies, disasters and injustices not prevented produces profits and jobs.

Taking care of broken hips, busted knees, sprained ankles, head trauma and more is a big business and attracts skilled workers to perform these treatments. A capitalist economy blocks obvious public safety standards by governmental agencies and puts profits before people’s safety and health.

Piles of studies and real-world experiences of people attest to the grisly consequences when prevention is blocked due to greed. Republicans starving the small IRS budget that pays for investigations of complex tax escapes or tax evasions blocks the collection of hundreds of billions of dollars annually from big corporations and the super-rich.

Food companies promoting empty calories to children and adults alike block the known capacity of nutritious diets to prevent heart diseases, diabetes, obesity and other harms to health.

Universal childcare, the child tax credit, paid family leave and an adequate minimum wage all reduce the ravages of family poverty. A Washington Post editorial recently asserted that Republicans blocking the child tax credit extension in January 2022 more than doubled child poverty in our country after it had already been halved in 2021, negatively impacting millions of children with “poorer health, lower educational attainment and fewer job opportunities than their peers.” Think of those immense costs to them and society.

When you think about prevention, you realize these objectives are what many consumer citizen, labor and public health groups are all about.

Simple preventive safety devices such as seatbelts, padded dashboards, head restraints, side and rollover protections, improved tires, brakes and stability have saved millions of lives and even more injuries around the world in motor vehicle collisions.

Educating the public and regulating the homicidal tobacco companies have reduced daily tobacco use from nearly 50% of adults in 1964 to under 14% today. With all the non-smoking bans in public buildings, this helps non-smokers too.

Getting lead out of gasoline and paint in the Seventies reduced the lethal exposure of that menacing toxin, especially to brain-damaged toddlers and children living in run-down tenements with lead paint peeling off apartment walls.

The curse of avoidable famines, especially taking the lives of infants, could be prevented by widely distributed nutrition packages flown into danger zones. Former Senator George McGovern’s last book described the immense savings in life and health by assuring every poor child in the world a free lunch. (See, “What It Means to Be a Democrat” by George McGovern, 2011).

Tested vaccines, without serious side-effects, such as the smallpox vaccines, have saved millions of lives for relatively tiny amounts of prevention money. So have investments in public sanitation.

Prevention – anticipating conflicts and waging peace – pays huge dividends given the devastating costs of wars in terms of lives lost and economic waste. Yet, the arms merchants, the egos and machismo of tyrants and those who build and expand military empires stifle and undermine impoverished peace movements driven by morals, ethics and respect for the rule of law.

The list can go on and on, as the work of Harvard School of Public Health Professor David Hemenway has demonstrated during his long, scholarly career focusing on injury prevention. (See, Harvard Injury Control Research Center).

To make prevention a national priority and a measure of judging candidates for elective office, it is good to start with Congress where in the 60s and 70s important consumer, environmental and worker safety laws were passed, animated by the public’s desire to prevent injuries and diseases.

“Prevention impact statements” should be added to all relevant legislation, including appropriations bills. Establishing a Department of Peace and Academies for Teaching Peace Advocacy should be an essential part of this process. The Defense Department and the military Academies would be more efficient and less militaristic if countervailing peace agencies and educational institutions existed.

Former Representative Dennis Kucinich introduced a bill to establish a Department of Peace. Congressional militarists and those who lobby for weapons of mass destruction made sure it went nowhere. However, senior legislator Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) is interested in pushing such legislation. (Contact him at 202-225-6101.)

In matters large and small, send your ideas for Prevention to your Senators and Representatives and to your state legislators, with copies to us at gro.lrsc@ofni.

Ralph Nader is a leading consumer advocate, the author of Unstoppable The Emerging Left Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State (2014), among many other books, and a four-time candidate for US President. Read other articles by Ralph, or visit Ralph's website.

The Rising Political Battle over Censorship

A Danger to Humanity, Acceptance, and Understanding

by Da’Taeveyon Daniels / October 3rd, 2023

In the land of the free and the home of the brave, a wave in the politically charged battle for intellectual freedom has peaked once more. Censorship threatens to silence underrepresented communities nationwide, encompassing LGBTQ+ youth, marginalized racial and ethnic groups, and many other facets of social identity. In academic spaces from coast to coast, the increasingly politicized, rising tide of book bans and challenges is washing away voices that need to be heard.

Imagine striving to understand your place in the world as a 16-year-old queer student in today’s America. The journey of self-discovery is challenging enough without the additional burden of denied access to literature that reflects your experiences. Yet, this is the reality that many young people face as a growing number of states and school districts ban books that explore themes related to LGBTQ+ identities, racial diversity, gender equality, and the list continues.

For me and my peers, books are not just stories; they are lifelines. Literature provides us with solace, understanding, and a sense of belonging to a world where our voices matter. When narratives that represent the experiences of underprivileged and underrepresented communities are silenced, the message is clear: your experiences and identity are not valid, and your voice does not matter.

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom’s latest report shows that the most recent bans on books strike a deeply troubling chord. It is alarming how these banned books overwhelmingly represent the challenges and lives of underprivileged, underrepresented groups. In the eyes of those imposing these bans, any ideas or identity that doesn’t fit the mold of a perfect white heteronormative America should be denied to our youth.

Recent years have seen Texas leading the nation on this front, with challenges and book bans increasing significantly. In 2023 alone, the rate nearly doubled, and the year has yet to conclude. These bans are not occurring in isolation but are fueled by organized groups, including one that was recently categorized as an extremist organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This is only one of the more organized groups that constantly try to trump the rights of students and youth across the nation in the name of “parental rights.” However, their day of reckoning is soon approaching because students have rights, too, and deserve better. As more and more groups like Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) call out this students’ rights crisis and work with legislators to combat these issues, a powerful movement is emerging.

One leader can ignite a movement in their community, but it is not enough for one voice to rise against this tide. We need a chorus of voices, united in our determination to protect intellectual freedom and diversity of thought. It is time to reject the stifling influence of politics on our education system. We must demand that our schools remain spaces where all voices are heard, and all stories are valued, not where fear and politics supersede our rights.

Whether you are a student, adult ally, policy maker, teacher, librarian, or anything in between or beyond, you can make a difference:

1. Stay Informed: Educate yourself about the issues at hand. Understand what books are commonly banned, where, and why. Stay updated on the actions of groups advocating for censorship.
2. Advocate: Attend school board meetings, engage with local policymakers, and use your voice to advocate for the inclusion of diverse perspectives in education.
3. Support Affected Communities: Offer your support to marginalized communities, including LGBTQ+ youth, racial and ethnic minorities, and others who are disproportionately affected. Amplify their voices and stories.
4. Join or Support Organizations: Engage with SEAT and other groups actively working to combat censorship and promote intellectual freedom.
5. Engage Youth: If you are an adult ally, engage with young people. Listen to their concerns, empower them to speak out, and provide guidance and support in their advocacy efforts.
6. Encourage Open Dialogue: Foster open dialogue in your communities about the importance of intellectual freedom and the value of diverse literature.
7. Vote: Use your voting power to support candidates who prioritize education and intellectual freedom.

In the face of this escalating battle for intellectual freedom, the call to action is clear. The rising tide of politically driven book bans and censorship threatens the very core of our imperfect educational system and the values we hold dear. Book bans are a threat to the voices of underprivileged and underrepresented communities of all backgrounds who deserve to see themselves reflected in the literature they read.

Our response to this challenge must be resolute and unwavering. Let our rallying cry be clear: censorship has no place in our classrooms, and we stand united to protect the right to learn and the freedom to explore diverse ideas. The battle is ongoing, but with the growing coalition of advocates, educators, and students, we can turn the tide.

Together, we can ensure that our future generations inherit a society that values humanity, acceptance, and understanding above all else. Let us march forward, hand in hand, knowing that our collective efforts will bring about the change we seek. In unity and mutual aid, we shall prevail against the forces of censorship, for the sake of a more inclusive, empathetic, and enlightened future.

• First published at Project Censored.

Da’Taeveyon Daniels (he/him) is a high school senior in Fort Worth, Texas. Daniels is the Partnerships Director for Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, the 2023 Youth Honorary Chair of Banned Books Week, and the youngest serving member of the National Coalition Against Censorship’s Advisory Council. Read other articles by Da’Taeveyon.

 

Cultish Element of American Empire

by Philip A. Faruggio / October 7th, 2023

In 2015 Alex Gibney had an insightful documentary on Scientology, Going Clear. What really got to me was how utterly foolish and chronically masochistic many of those former members of this so called Church were. I have studied various cults, and even dabbled within one myself during my younger days. I have seen, firsthand through my own vulnerability, how the need to either belong to or feel needed by a group of others can drive one to enter into these cults. The sad reality is that few people, and this is key, ever realize that it is in fact a cult that they are joining. What made me literally shout at my television screen while listening to some of those interviewed by Gibney was “How much **** did you have to take for so many years before you finally saw the light?” Watch the film and see for yourself how far people allow themselves to be manipulated and exploited and even tortured. Mind you, my experience with cults like Scientology, including my brief visit with LifeSpring (an offshoot of EST), revealed to me the vast number of highly educated and (seemingly) intelligent people who allow themselves to be taken in. I myself was taken in too… all the way up to LifeSpring’s advanced training course which consisted of two weeks of intensive (and expensive) mind control. As I began to speak one-on-one with some of the others sharing this experience, I realized how many overly sensitive and “needy” folks like myself (including many recovering addicts and alcoholics) that were there. The need to “belong” and to “feel wanted” can be so powerful.

Having gone through three years of intensive Freudian analysis in the early 80s I can see how cults like Scientology and EST and LifeSpring copied much from standard psychoanalysis, then tweaked it a bit and renamed it something else. Having studied how our own government has used various techniques of outright torture, especially in regard to the Orwellian War of Terror, I can see how cults copy those techniques and refine them a bit. This is all for the same heinous purpose: Control. Having also spent over half my adult life studying the entire Nazi movement right through WW2, I can see how much of what Hitler’s gang did with their mass rallies and pomp and circumstance has been mirrored by cults like Scientology. Seeing the leaders of this cult and its top executives dressed in uniforms that resemble those worn by movie ushers from the 30s and 40s, one has to laugh at the audaciousness of it all. Yet, it is real! Thousands attend these spectacles and cheer and applaud… just like those fools did in 1930s Germany! How about the overflowing crowds who follow the so called Televangelist preachers and send their hard earned savings for “Prayer cloths” and other nonsense?

Now, allow me to go one step further. One year from now we will have our next Presidential Horserace. Check out the conventions they hold for these two major political parties. You will then realize why cults like Scientology have been so successful. To this writer, the two-party system here in our dear America has been the longest lasting cult in our nation’s history. As with the inane British “Tory vs. Labor” con job, our own “Republican vs. Democrat” garbage has for so long scammed so many good, decent Americans. Do the research and see how the really key issues and policy decisions that keep this Military Industrial Empire going full speed always have the consensus of the two parties. It has to or the wizards behind the curtain would do some pruning to make certain of it.

Cults, any and all, SUCK! Isn’t it time for more Americans to connect the dots?

Philip A Farruggio is regular columnist on itstheempirestupid website. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 500 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the It’s the Empire… Stupid radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.net. Read other articles by Philip.