Ida B. Wells-Barnett and the Anti-Lynching Campaign

Ida B. Wells Portrait During Her Days in Memphis Around 1887
Originally uploaded by panafnewswire.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett and the Anti-Lynching Campaign

By Abayomi Azikiwe

Between 1882 and the conclusion of the 1890s, the annual victims of lynchings grew at an exceedingly rapid rate. In 1892 and 1893, nearly 100 Africans were officially murdered as a result of mob violence. These figures do not include those who were murdered in the numerous one on one or small group disputes between blacks and whites which oftentimes resulted in the murders of African-Americans. These acts almost always went unpunished by the law-enforcement authorities in the South. As a result of the limitations of this study, a more comprehensive disclosure of racial mob violence directed against African-Americans between the period extending from the collapse of Reconstruction in the 1880s and 1890s and the Great Depression of the 1930s, will not be possible. Future studies of a more extensive nature are required in order to properly quantify the enormity of state sanctioned race terror inflicted on African people during this period--violence that was aimed at the suppression of the political will of this domestically colonized oppressed nation. However, an examination of one of these acts of collective violence illustrates clearly the atmosphere prevalent during the 1880s and 1890s.

In the Yazoo Delta region of Mississippi in Leflore County, the massacre of 25 African-Americans in 1889 was representative of the white political response to attempts aimed at empowerment for the former slaves. Finnegan, in relationship to this tragedy states that:
"The outrages in Leflore County grew out of black farmers' attempts to overcome their 'peasant status'. Under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, a dynamic black organizer, the Colored Farmers' Alliance in Leflore County became a force for independence among delta blacks. Through personal contact and charismatic speeches, Cromwell convinced mainly African-American farmers to join the Alliance and to trade with a cooperative store some thirty miles south of Leflore County instead of with local white merchants, on whom blacks had traditionally relied for credit and supplies."

Mississippi Governor Robert Lowry sent in an all-white militia to ostensibly maintain order in the County. Prior to dispatching the troops, the Governor compelled them to "always uphold the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race." Finnegan described what happened after the Mississippi State Militia arrived in the County: "In apprehending some forty black Alliance leaders, the militia and white posses killed approximately twenty-five blacks, although white authorities never acknowledged the deaths".... Days after the initial massacre of the top leadership of the Alliance, white militia and posse members continued to search for other African-American leaders and lynched those who were suspected of being involved with Cromwell's group. Despite this mass killing of approximately 25 people, one year later two other African-Americanss were lynched in the same county-- one for the alleged offense of murdering a white merchant in an argument and the second man for involvement in a plot to avenge the first man's death.

It was not until the emergence of the campaign launched by Ida B. Wells during the early 1890s that there was widespread attention given to the genocidal wave of terror inflicted on African-Americans centered in the southern United States, but not necessarily limited to this region. Wells, who was born during the twilight of the slave system during the Civil War in 1862, was a native of Holly Springs, Mississippi. Known for its majority African populated counties in the Delta region, the State officials after the crusing of Reconstruction, maintained a fierce grip on the activities of the former slaves. Wells, whose parents had been slaves, studied at Shaw University and eventually became a primary school teacher in Mississippi as well as in Shelby County, Tennessee during later years.

However, during her early teenage years her family was struck by the yellow fever epidemic that swept the region in 1878. The outbreak was widely noticed initially in Memphis, fifty miles from Holly Springs, as thousands of people perished in the rapid spread of the dreaded sickness. Her parents died in the epidemic leaving Wells as head of the household at fourteen years old. After gaining employment as a teacher in a rural school, she maintained her younger brothers and sisters with the assistance of her grandmother and aunt. Soon Wells went to Memphis to live with the widow of her uncle who had also perished during the yellow fever epidemic. She eventually gained employment with the Shelby County school system where she taught in Woodstock, Tennessee.

It was during her tenure as a school teacher in Woodstock in 1884, that she became embroiled in a racial segregation suit after the young educator was forcibly removed from a ladies coach reserved for whites only onthe Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. After filing suit in the Circuit Court and winning a favorable judgement against the railroad company, the firm appealed to the State Supreme Court of Tennessee, having the lower court's decision overturned against Wells.

As a young school teacher in Memphis, Ida B. Wells participated in the social life of the educated African-American elites of the time period. She joined a lyceum in the city which met at the Vance Street Christian Church to read poetry, essays, recitations and to engage in debates on the contemporary issues of the times. After making an impression on her colleagues at the lyceum, she was asked to take over the editorship of their literary journal, the Evening Star. Attendance at the gatherings grew with people being attracted to the events in order to hear the Evening Star journal read to the participants. At a lyceum function, Reverend R.N. Countee of one of the prominent black baptist congregations in Memphis, requested that Wells write for the Living Ways, a news weekly published by his church.

Through her columns in the Living Way, Wells reached a broader audience among the African-American population in Memphis and the surrounding communities. In her autobiography Wells states that during this time period in the mid-1880s: "...I had observed and thought much about conditions as I had seen them inthe country schools and churches. I had an instinctive feeling that the people who had little or no school training should have something coming into their homes weekly which dealt with their problems in a simple, helpful way. So in weekly letters to the Living Way, I wrote in a plain common sense way on the things which concerned our people. Knowing that their education was limited, I never used a word of two syllables where one would serve the purpose. I signed these articles 'Iola'."

Her experience was enhanced when she took one-third control of a larger African-American weekly, the Free Speech and Headlight, in Memphis. Hundred of copies of the paper were sold every week through the Beale Street Baptist Church, the largest African-American congregation in the city. However, Wells outspoken criticism of the Shelby County school system lead to her dismissal as a teacher. She then became a full-time editor and promotional director for the Free Speech-- taking her throughout the region in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas. She related in her above-mentioned autobiograhy that: "I went to most of the large towns throughout the Delta, across the Mississippi River into Arkansas and back into Tennessee. Wherever there was a gathering of the people, there I was in the midst of them, to solicit subscribers for the Free Press and to appoint a correspondent to send us weekly news. Wherever I went people received me cordially and gave me their warm support...A woman editor and correspondent was a novelty; besides, Mississippi was my native state."

It was during the course of building her career as a newspaper owner and editor that a murderous act of mob violence in Memphis would change the course of the life of Ida B. Wells. While away from Memphis on newspaper business in Natchez, Mississippi, word came to "Iola" on the lynchings of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and Henry Stewart who were friends of the Free Speech editor. The three men were proprietors of the People's Grocery Store located outside of Memphis in an area known as the "Curve". According to published newspaper reports of the period, the three African-American men had wounded three whites who had unlawfully entered the store in order to rob the owners. Jealously could have been a motivating factor because of the competition between the People's Grocery Store and white business owners located adjacent to the establishment.

After these men were arrested and placed in the Shelby County jail, the Tennessee Rifles, a black militia, went to their place of incarceration in order to guard against the possibility of a lynching. After watching the jail for three nights, the wounded white men in the initial shooting at the People's Grocery Store began to recover from their wounds. Subsequent accounts of this incident claims that the black men guarding the jail left thinking that the crisis had subsided. However, another resident of the city at the time stated in an interview some years later that: "The court...ordered the sheriff to take charge of the arms of the Tennessee Rifles, a Negro Guard, whose amory is near Hernando and Union streets."

In any event, a select group of white men admitted by the authorities inside the jail in order to remove Moss, McDowell and Stewart. They were then forced on to a switch engine rail car which ran in back of the County jail. The African men were then taken by train one mile north to the Memphis city limits and shot to death by the white mob. Press reports in the local papers indicated the Tome Moss had pleaded with the perpetrators to save his life for the sake of his wife and child. When asked for his last wods, Moss was reported to have said that his final message to African-Americans was to "tell my peole to go west-- there is no justice for them here." In the aftermath of the lynching, ajudge of the criminal court ordered the County Sheriff to carry one-hundred men to the location of the People's Grocery Store and to shoot on sight any African-Americans causing trouble at the location.

When a gang of armed white men reached the store, they immediately opened fire on a group of African-Americans congregated there to discuss the triple lynching of the business proprietors. Fortunately no one was killed in the attempted ambush, although the store was eventually looted and destroyed with the approval of the police, the courts and the white press. In an editorial written by Wells in the Free Speech she stated the following:
"The city of Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the white man or become his rival. There is nothing we can do about the lynching now, as we are out-numbered and without arms. The white mob could help itself to ammunition without pay, but the order was rigidly enforced against the selling of guns to Negroes. There is therefore only one thing left that we can do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons."

For several weeks following the triple lynching of Moss, McDowell and Stewart, hundreds of African-Americans fled the city of Memphis heading westward towards Oklahoma. Quickly disposing of their properties in the city, the people left were following the advice of the Free Speech and the last statement attributed to Thomas Moss. Two leading pastors in the African-American community, Reverend R.N. Countee and Reverend W.A. Brinkly transported their entire congregations westward. This exodous of people had noticeable impact on the business community which suffered a decline in demand for consumer goods and a shortage of cheap labor. The Free Speech newspaper was eventually approached by the superintendent and treasurer of the City Railway Company requesting that the publication use its influence to encourage Africans to again ride the streetcars to work and home. Of course these efforts failed along with other attempts by the white press to discourage African-Americans from moving westward.

While Ida B. Wells was away on a tour to promote her newspaper and to organize public opinion around the atrocities that were occuring in Memphis, the office of the Free Speech was ransacked and destroyed. These actions were taken after an editorial was published in the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper that incited white violence against Wells and the publication. Her business partner J.L. Fleming, escaped without harm from the premises before it was attacked by a white mob. Wells summed up her feelings at the time by stating that:
"Although I had been warned repeatedly by my own people that something would happen if I did not cease harping on the lynching of three months before. I had expected that happening to come when I was at home. I had bought a pistol the first thing after Tom Moss was lynched, because I expected some cowardly retaliation from the lynchers. I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap. I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit. But fate decided that the blow should fall when I was away, thus settling for me the question of whether I should go west or east."

Wells continued as a writer for the New York Age under the editorship of the well known activist, T. Thomas Fortune. She embarked on a speaking tour throughout the northeast region of the United States, where she later received an invitation to travel to England, Scotland and Wales in order to build support for an anti-lynching movement in North America. During her trip abroad in April and May of 1893, she was influenced by the involvement of British women in civic affairs. Upon returning to the United States, she played an instrumental role in building the African-American women's club movement named after here which created groups of female activists throughout the United States. After a second trip to England in 1894, she returned to settle in Chicago and publish the first serious study on the problem of racially motivated mob violence. This book was entitled, A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings in the United States, 1892-1893-1894.

In 1895, Wells married Ferdinand Lee Barnett, founder of the Conservator, the first African-American newspaper in Chicago. Barnett was also a practicing attorney and political activists. Barnett was also a practicing attorney and political activists. Wells-Barnett continued her activism through involvement with the Afro-American League, the Negro Fellowship League and the Metropolitan Community Church in Chicago, where she was a Sunday School teacher for many years after 1920. She continued her research, writing and campaigning around the prevalence of lynching well into the 1920s.

Wells-Barnett died on March 21, 1931 in Chicago leaving a legacy of pioneering work related to the African struggle against racial violence and the acquisition of human and civil rights. In a tribute to Wells-Barnett her daughter wrote many years after her death that" "The most remarkable thing about Ida B. Wells-Barnett is not that she fought lynching and other forms of barbarism. It is rather that she fought a lonely single-handed fight, with the single-mindedness of a crusader, long before men or women of any race entered the arena; and the measure of success she achieved goes far beyond the credit she has been given in the history of the country."
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. This article was originally published as a section of a mongraph entitled: "Race Terror: African Resistance and Genocidal Violence, From Slavery to the Great Depression." This publication was issued during the Winter of 1998 in Pambana Journal that was published at the time by the Pan-African Research and Documentation Project at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.
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Race Terror: From the Fort Pillow Massacre to the So-called Memphis Riot of 1866

Illustration Depicting the Fort Pillow Massacre in Southwest Tennessee During 1864 Where Black Union Soldiers, Refugees and White Officers Were Slaughtered on the Orders of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest
Originally uploaded by panafnewswire.

In The Court of Judge Lynch: The Post-Civil War South

By Abayomi Azikiwe

After the conclusion of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the defeated Confederate soldiers intensified their efforts in forming para-military terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan in order to prevent the enfranchisement and political empowerment of the African population in the South. Debates arose over what to do with the 4.5 million Africans during the course of the Civil War. Efforts aimed at deportation and colonization of free Africans dated back to the early 19th century with the formation of the American Colonization Society in 1816. Radical Republicans saw the opportunity of utilizing the newly freed slaves as appendages of their political designs for the reconstruction of the rebel southern states under northern economic and governmental control.

An alliance formed between the African-American politicians and the northern based Radicals (Republicans). In opposition the Democrats or Conservatives advanced the positions of the former slave-owning class which had suffered tremendous economic and political losses over the duration of the Civil War. Numerous African-Americans were elected to state and federal legislative positions and began to sponsor bills that would provide public education for the former slaves or Freedmen, and to re-correct the legal de-humanization of African people in the United States. During the same period, the Union Leagues were formed as political organizations consisting of black and white pro-Radical consituents who attempted to promote the expansion of Republican Party affiliations in the former Confederate states. After the repealof the suffrage for former rebel soldiers and their supporters, during the late 1860s, the expansion of African-American political influence rose to an appreciable level. However, the Ku Klux Klan and similar secret socieities based among the former soldiers of the Confederacy began a reign of terror desinged to reverse all the legal and social rights guaranteed to Africans through the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Consitution.

One tragic and violent series of events took place in south-west Tennessee in what has become known as the Memphis Riot of 1866. In actuality the overwhelming thrust of the disturbances centered around the wanton white mob assaults, pillage, rape, arson and murder against the African community of the city in the aftermath of the War. Although Tennessee was the last state to leave the Union for the Confederacy and the first to return to the Republic under the military governorship of Andrew Johnson, the rebel forces had considerable support among the planters class in the western cotton producing counties of Fayette, Haywood, Tipton and Shelby. The state was also the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan, which was formed in Pulaski, located in Bedford County, by Nathan Bedford Forrest, the former Confederate General who ordered the massacre at Fort Pillow and was widely known during slavery as a trader in human flesh. In relationship to the so-called Memphis Riot, it is said that the presence of state militias consisting of African and European units stationed in the city during the immediate post-War period, inflamed white racist passions and the potential for violent conflict and reprisals.

Historian Gerda Lerner points out that in connection to the Memphis incident, the state militias "became a symbol of 'black rule' even though these militia units functioned everywhere under the orders and in defense of white-dominated state legislatures. Conflicts between black militia and white police forces have to be understood in this context. In Memphis, Tennessee, a jostling incident between black militia and white policemen became the excuse for a white mob attack on the entire black community. Rioting lasted for three days and was ended only by the intervention of federal forces. During the mob action 46 Negro men, women and children were killed, and more than 80 wounded. One white man was injured. Four Negro churches, twelve schools and innumerable homes were burned to the ground. The House of Representatives appointed a three-man investigating committee...." (Taken from Black Women in White America: A Documentary History 1972, p. 4 ).

These violations of the safety and security of the African population in Memphis at the time established a trend of lawless violence aimed at the suppression of political activity among the Freedmen. Mob activity intensified during the 1870s when groups such as the Ku Klux Klan evaded federal prosecution for their organized terrorist campaigns designed to overturn the laws passed in support of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. After 1876, with the withdrawal of federal troops from the South and the institution of the "black codes", the terrorists groups aimed at the total disenfranchisement of African people went largely unpunished for their criminal activities. Lynchings of African people escalated durng the 1880s coinciding with the major thrust to force the remaining African-Americans from public offices held in the southern states.

Brutal acts of carnage and brutality took on a public character when thousands of people would travel to witness the horrible spectacle of a mutilation murder of one or more individuals. The majority of these lynchings occured in the South, accounting for 82 percent of all such killings during the 1880s; and by the 1920s, more than 95 percent of these murders took place in the former Confederate states. Between 1880 and 1930, there were 3,220 African-Americans reportedly lynched in the southern region of the United States. These numbers are reflective of those individuals who are officially cited as lynch victims by the white press and other reporting agencies. However, when one compares and collates the data provided through sources such as African-American newspaper archives, against those provided by organizational reports and papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching and the Tuskegee Institute Research Center, the critical examiner will understand that the criteria for defining a lynching does not totally capture the degree of societal sanctioned terror against African-Americans characteristic of the time period in question.

At this historical juncture the overwhelming majority of Africans still resided in the former slave-holding states of the South. In the aftermath of the disenfranchisement of the majority of this section of the population, people still attempted to organize through the churches, the formation of a National Afro-American Council, and a proliferation of newspapers and journals that spoke against the rise of racial violence. The United States Government turned a deaf ear to the race terror perpetrated by organized white hate groups consisting of tens of thousands of members throughout the South as well as in northern regions of the country. It would require the intervention of Africans themselves to draw real attention to the critical situation prevailing during the late 19th century.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. The above article originally appeared in Pambana Journal during the winter of 1998 as a section of a monograph entitled: "Race Terror: African Resistance and Genocidal Violence, From Slavery to the Great Depression". Pambana Journal was published at the time by the Pan-African Research and Documentation Project at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.
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President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela on US Assassination Plans

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela Threatened With Assassination by the US Government
Originally uploaded by panafnewswire.

Chavez denies being anti-US

Wednesday 04 October 2006, 21:45 Makka Time, 18:45 GMT

Chavez says he wants to strengthen ties with Arab nations

Hugo Rafael Chavez Frías, the 53rd president of Venezuela, was born on July 28 1954. He came to power in 1998, promising to help Venezuela's poor majority, and was re-elected in 2000. He survived a coup in 2002 and faces a presidential election in December.

Since becoming president he has followed a policy of democratic socialism, Latin American integration and anti-imperialism.

His reforms have created much controversy in Venezuela and abroad. Most Venezuelans are split between those who say he has empowered the poor and stimulated economic growth, and those who say he is autocratic and has badly managed the economy.

Some foreign governments view Chavez as a threat to world oil prices and regional stability, while others welcome his bilateral trade and reciprocal aid agreements.

Chavez recently described George Bush, the US president, as "the devil" and says Bush has plans to assassinate him and invade Venezuela. He recently talked to Aljazeera about his relationship with the US, the Venezuelan army and why he gets only a few hours' sleep a night.

Aljazeera.net: You are strengthening ties with countries that are dissatisfied with Washington, countries such as Iran, Bolivia and Cuba. What is the end game of such an alliance?

Hugo Chavez: We are not against the US people, where there are children, women, intellectuals and students. We have investments in the US, we have eight refineries there, we have 14,000 gas stations. I have many friends there, I have played baseball there, I even have a nephew there.

What we are against is the imperial elite and that is very different. This is not a game. Do you think Iraq is a game, the aggression against Latin America for a century is a game, the toppling of Allende, the invasions of Grenada, Haiti, Panama, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, is that a game?

If that's a game, then my goodness that would be awful. This is an aggression and every day more and more people are against this hegemony and trying to save the world. Look at Lebanon, the aggression against the Palestinian people, why do they do that? Because the Israelis are supported by the elite of the US. We are against that.

Some would say in order for such an alliance to stop these events and counter the power of Washington that you refer to, regional powers such as China and Russia would need to back it. You hold talks with the leaders of these countries, are they ready to come on board for such an alliance?

You insist on something that is out of my main focus. I have never said we want to build an alliance against the US, so your question is not really focused.

If you take Moscow, Iran, Vietnam, China, Malaysia, what we are doing is getting closer through integration, through energy, oil, gas, trade and respect for international law.

We are today on a campaign around the world asking for support for Venezuela to become part of the Security Council as a non–permanent member. The US is in a terrible campaign to prevent us being elected. We are defending our interests but we are not proposing an alliance against anyone, much less the people of the United States. So your question is out of focus.

In May 2005, you called for an alliance between Latin America and the Arab world. How far has that initiative gone?

Not only me, Lula [Brazil's president] has been outspoken in calling for the coming together of Latin America and the Arab countries.

In Brasilia in May we had the first ever Arab-South American summit. It was a very important meeting.

In the past, only Venezuela had strong relations with the Arab world through Opec and through links with other non-Opec countries such as Egypt.

But now Lula is convening these meetings, he is coming to the Arab world. Not long ago in Venezuela we held a meeting between senior ministers in charge of education and social matters in both Latin America and the Arab world. We have made serious progress. It is not just an individual proposal of Hugo Chavez, it is a proposal of leaders like Muammar al-Qadhafi and the amir of Qatar. As well as Lula and Eva Morales [Bolivia's president]. And we want to get our two regions together.

You have started an ambitious programme to rebuild your military, you are buying new weapons, you are trying to raise, I think, the largest standing army in the Americas. If everything goes to plan, you will have two million reserve troops. What has prompted this military build up?

Let me tell you something. I hardly have time to sleep a few hours a day, but I don't care because I've decided to devote my life to taking my people out of poverty and misery.

To make a great effort for all Venezuelans to have access to education, health, housing, to life. When we were elected, poverty in Venezuela was over 55 per cent based on UN figures, it is now between 30 per cent and 40 per cent.

We are building a system of Bolivarian schools where children can have breakfast, lunch and dinner, gain internet access and take part in sports activities.

I devote a tiny part of my time to being commander-in-chief of the Venezuelan army. The imperialists have threatened to invade Venezuela, they have already conducted a coup d'etat four years ago. Recently they conducted manoeuvres in the Caribbean. We have even captured US soldiers taking pictures of military installations and we have expelled them.

We have much evidence, proof and documents that show there is a plan to invade Venezuela. What do you want us to do? That I forget my task of minimum defence of the country?

We had old rifles, they were 60-years old. We depended almost totally on US supplies. The F16 fighters we bought 20 years ago, they refused to give us spare parts, and they were stranded on the ground. So I have bought better planes and Kalashnikovs from Moscow. We have a vast border with Colombia, we have a huge coastal line along the Caribbean. We have to defend this country. We are not going to be aggressors.

Do you feel you are still being targeted and threatened by the US? We know that some people in the US have spoken in the past about assassinating you. Do you still feel personally targeted by the US?

Yes indeed. People have publicly called for my assassination and that is a crime. However, this person is not in jail, he is a close friend of the US president.

Venezuelan terrorists who left for the US after the 2002 coup, who killed people in Venezuela, are today living in the US. The US will not extradite them. Some of them are organising actions against myself and Venezuela.

The US is protecting terrorism. They are applying state terror. President Bush has left a measure taken by a former president that authorises the CIA, like 007, with a permit to kill whoever, whenever and however. They have a green light. President Carter banned that practice and the current president has just reinstated it. I am one of the targets, no doubt about it.

If the opposition parties do take part in the forthcoming Venezuelan presidential elections will you make a move towards presidency for life?

There is no way I can adopt such a provision. We have a constitution and it is only the people who might change the constitution in this direction or any other direction. They have the power to hold a referendum to remove the power given to me. The people can collect and gather signatures to ask for a referendum to recall a government official and that is totally democratic.

Aljazeera


From AxisofLogic.com

Bush will authorise this month the State assassination of Hugo Chávez

By Heinz Dieterich. Translated from Spanish by Ron Ridenour
Oct 4, 2006, 14:14

Bush will authorise this month the State assassination of Hugo Chávez

By Heinz Dieterich
Translated from the Spanish by Ron Ridenour

1. The price of his anti-diabolical discourse

Hugo Chávez’s United Nations speech was the culmination of magisterial international vanguard politics, which converted George Bush into the pariah of the worldwide institution. The price for this successful spectacle—which can not be understood without the proverbial audacity of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro—is the authorisation of State assassination by the White House.

2. Strategic change: the institutional entanglement of political assassination

The fascist government-in-formation will not use as its legal basis for the assassination the customary verbal formula applied by United States executives for such ends—“get rid of him”—rather, it will use the terminology, “Top secret presidential finding”.

Most probably it will use proxies; for example, death squads of the Israeli secret services, which habitually assassinate citizen “enemies” in other countries.

The decision of State assassination [of the president of Venezuela] constitutes a change in White House strategy, employed since 2003, which opted for a political war of annexation by wearing out, in order to impose upon the system the replacement of the president by the right-wing of the New Political Class (NPC). This strategy aspires to gradually capitalise upon the internal weaknesses of the revolution and avoid a civil war in Venezuela, which will inevitably be unleashed with the assassination of the popular president.

Not to repeat the consequences of the State assassination of the Colombian President Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, has been the slogan of the White House since the defeat of the 2002-3 oil coup d’état in Venezuela. Nevertheless, the incessant Latin American and worldwide diplomatic offensive of Hugo Chávez—which not only threatens the Monroe Doctrine but also “Manifest Destiny”, which has ruled for two centuries—has reached the point of no return. Chávez’s offensive is the equivalent of the decree of Bolívar’s “war to the death” against the Spanish empire 193 years ago.

3. How to achieve the assassination and avoid popular resistance

The change of US strategy—from containment policy towards Cuba and Venezuela, while breaking the weakest link of the chain, Bolivia—towards State assassination has to resolve the danger of social explosion. The White House calculation is to avoid a long civil war by making it appear that the assassination would be a natural death or an accident. The successful poisoning of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is the model to emulate.

In September 2003, the Israeli security cabinet publicly declared its intention to assassinate Arafat. The then Vice-Premier Minister Ehud Olmert generated a public debate regarding this project by considering this method “legitimate”.

“The question is, by which manner do we put an end to Arafat,” said the Israeli State’s number two man. “Expulsion is one option; assassination is another possibility.” Israel’s problem in applying the option of the elimination of Arafat consisted of the dilemma, “ (it) is not a moral matter, rather to know if it is practical or not.”

Following that successful operation would the fascist presidents Ehud Olmert and George Bush doubt for one second that the “removal…of the obstacle to peace” is extremely “practical” and “legitimate”? That is to say, that Hugo Chávez is a peaceful oil rich and third world leader [and thus an “obstacle”, translator’s note].

4. Hugo Chávez’s great offensive has discovered his dangerous rear guard

With all the audacity and success of the Venezuelan president’s offensive one is reminded of the great offensive of Napoleon against Moscow. Napoleon only looked forward, dreaming of a decisive lightning war. He failed to construct a rear guard capable of detaining an eventual Russian counter-offensive. When such occurred, he was completely destroyed.

The dangerous dispersion of the Bolivarian forces in Venezuela presents a similar scenario. The Bolivarian union movement is divided into, at least, four major currents. Official Bolivarian political forces rest on three major parties. The peasants have, at least, two major groupings. The popular sector is not organised into an integral national structure, such as, for example, in Cuba. The consolidation of the Bolivarian project in the armed forces requires, at least, two to three more years. The Bolivarian means of communication are insufficiently efficient. Many strategic State ministries are inefficient; partly so because in the last three years there have been six changes of ministers and vice-ministers, making quality State management impossible.

The quantitative dispersion of the Bolivarian forces offends, because many have the habit of using factious power plays, which converts the revolution and the party into second place. Hugo Chávez wants to remedy this poor political practice by forming one united political party next year. Minister William Lara hopes to convert Channel 8 into a 24-hour news service like CNN. Who knows if they will succeed, because until now the State has not had the capacity to develop a system to detect revolutionaries to control the media and the vanguard, which is required for the future process.

A frontal confrontation with the most potent world power and its European Union accomplices, in these conditions, will only be victorious if they have the talent and the luck of Alexander the Great. Or if they extend the spirit, the work and the vanguard management capacity not only on the visible front but also in the Achilles Heel of the revolution.

Translation Copyright 2006 by AxisofLogic.com
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Heinz Dieterich Steffan is a German political analyst, living in Mexico. Well known for his apologetics, he collaborates with revolutionary media and adds his voice as a regular columnist to Axis of Logic. He is also a consultant to Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez Frìas.

The US-born anti-imperialist writer Ron Ridenour is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. He lives exiled in Denmark and is the author of “Backfire: The CIA’s Biggest Burn”, “Yankee Sandinistas”, “Cuba at the Crossroads”, “Kuba: ein `Yankee´ Berichtet”; “Cuba: Beyond the Crossroads”. He is also co-author of additional books.

Tlaxcala - Translated from Spanish into English for Axis of Logic by Ron Ridenour, a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. Tlaxcala works in partnership with Axis of Logic. This translation can be freely reproduced provided its author, translator, revisor and site of origin are cited.

This paper appeared originally in Spanish on Rebelión.

The Failure of US Imperialism in Afghanistan

Cultivation of Opium Poppies Are Flourishing in Afghanistan Since the US/NATO Occupation Over the Last Five Years
Originally uploaded by panafnewswire.

The Afghanistan Occupation Five Years Later

PANW Editor's Note: The US invasion of Afghanistan was launched five years ago today. Despite the rhetoric of the Bush administration about fighting the so-called "war of terrorism", the security situation in Afghanistan is far worse than before the American intervention. This war has lasted longer than US military involvement in World War II (1941-1945).

At present the people of Afghanistan are rising up against US/NATO occupation. More American and NATO troops are being killed on a daily basis. This war is loss as it has been in Iraq. The anti-war movement in the United States and Canada must step up its efforts to end the US/NATO reign of terror against the people of Afghanistan and to bring the troops back to these imperialist countries now.

In Afghanistan the cultivation of poppy crops and consequent heroin export has reached an all time high. This is reflected in the new outbreak of herion addiction and overdoses on the streets of the United States and other western capitals. There has been a long history of US military and intelligence involvement in the narcotics trade. Evidence is accumulating that this same situation is manifesting itself in Afghanistan today some five years after the American occupation.

Below are several articles and statements related to the ongoing Afghan tragedy that has been engineered by the US military. The articles, even those initially printed in the corporate press, illustrate that Karzai of Afghanistan is merely a puppet for American imperialist interests throughout south Asia.

Abayomi Azikiwe
---------------------------------------------------------

Karzai for jirga to crush Taleban

By Ahmed Rashid, Kabul

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said he wants to hold a jirga (council) of Pashtun tribes from Pakistan and Afghanistan to end Taleban violence.

The two countries disagree on how to fight the Taleban - mostly drawn from the Pashtun tribes- on their border.

Mr Karzai said he expected both he and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to attend the meeting by the year-end.

Afghan ministers and officials are however concerned that such a meeting may be "manipulated" by Pakistan.

"I am thinking of a meeting between Afghan civil society, Afghan elders, tribal chiefs, clergy and Afghan spiritual leadership plus the intellectuals. From the Pakistan side I am hoping for the same thing," Mr Karzai told this correspondent in an exclusive interview.

"It should be a gathering of the people from one end of the Afghan border with Pakistan to the other end."

Mr Karzai said the jirga would attempt to revive Pashtun civil society on both sides of the border in order to combat what he called the growing Talebanisation of the region.

"The traditional secular Pashtun leadership of Pakistan has been undermined systematically and violently," said Mr Karzai.

"The killing of 150 Pashtun leaders in North Waziristan is a clear indication of that. This can only stop if we support civil society," he said.

Disputed border

The Afghan president said that if Pakistan was transparent about the jirga, it could bring peace between the two countries.

"A jirga means representative and those not representative cannot be there or called to attend. Nobody can fake a jirga in Afghanistan...
and I hope there is similar transparency on the Pakistani side," Mr Karzai said.

Pakistan has long stated that it wants Afghanistan to recognise the Durand Line, the 240km-(1610 miles)-long border between the two countries.

Afghans say the British-drawn, colonial era border line robs Afghanistan of Pashtun territory now inside Pakistan. No Afghan government, including the Pashtun-dominated Taleban regime which was recognised by Pakistan, has felt strong enough to recognise the Durand Line.

Mr Karzai said a joint commission could be set up with United Nations help between the two countries, which would decide on who would be eligible to sit in the jirga and the modalities of the meeting among other things.

Mr Karzai said the jirga plan was suggested by him at last week's dinner meeting hosted by President George W Bush for him and Gen Musharraf.

This correspondent learns that Gen Musharraf first hesitated at the suggestion.

But after Mr Bush said it was a good idea and the US government would support the idea, Gen Musharraf gave his tentative agreement.

Mr Karzai would like to involve the international community in monitoring the jirga.

Mixed feelings

It is learnt that most Western countries support the idea but are reluctant to become involved in what they describe as "complex tribal meetings", between two countries which are both allies of the West in the war on terror, but are also deeply antagonistic to each other.

However, many Pashtuns and non-Pashtun Afghans have expressed concerns about the jirga plan.

They fear the meeting would allow Pakistan to infiltrate
"Taleban ideas through the backdoor".

Several cabinet ministers interviewed by this correspondent said the meeting would be "manipulated by Islamabad for its own ends".

"What happens if the Pakistani nominees to the jirga declare jihad against Mr Karzai and the Americans," said one minister, who asked not be named.

Younis Qanooni, the speaker of the Afghan parliament, said it would be "more productive if parliamentary delegations between the two countries met more often rather than have the jirga".

During the interview, Mr Karzai said he felt anguish about the continuing attacks by the Taleban - some 4,000 people had died in Taleban-related violence this year.

'Outside support'

Senior Nato and Afghan officials say that Taleban fighters were being actively helped by Pakistan, a charge Pakistan denies.

A Nato and Afghan army intelligence report after the two-week long Operation Medusa launched by Nato in Kandahar province in mid-September, in which they say 1,100 Taleban were killed, shows undeniable help to the Taleban from Pakistan, according to senior Nato and Afghan officials.

The report says the Taleban had collected one million rounds of ammunition in the Panjwai district of southern Kandahar province before the fighting.

The fighters had fired off some 2,000 rocket propelled grenades and 1,000 mortar shell during the battle, the report says.

The cost of Taleban ammunition stocks alone before the battle were estimated at $5m - such money and preparations would be impossible without outside support, the Nato and Afghan officials say.

Mr Karzai is hopeful that the jirga will improve relations between the two governments and more importantly the Pashtuns on both sides, which in turn will isolate the Taleban.

"No ethnic group or nation in the world is by its own nature radical," said Mr Karzai.

"Extremism makes them suffer that's why governments must stop using this. Afghanistan's stability and peace and prosperity is in the interests of Pakistan."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/5412458.stm

Published: 2006/10/06 11:59:41 GMT


Mental disorders plague more Iraq, Afghanistan war veterans in US

The Associated Press
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2006

WASHINGTON More than one-third of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans seeking medical treatment from the Veterans Health Administration report symptoms of stress or other mental disorders — a tenfold increase in the last 18 months, according to an agency study.

The dramatic jump in cases — coming as more troops face multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan — has triggered concern among some veterans groups that the agency may not be able to meet the demand. They say veterans have had to deal with long waits for doctor appointments, staffing shortages and lack of equipment at medical centers run by the Veterans Affairs Department.

Contributing to the higher levels of stress are the long and often repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, troops also face unpredictable daily attacks and roadside bombings as they battle the stubborn insurgency.

Veterans and Defense Department officials said the increase in soldiers complaining of stress or mental disorder symptoms also may suggest that efforts to reduce the stigma of such problems are working and that commanders and medical personnel are more adept at recognizing symptoms.

"It's definitely better than it was in past generations," said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Veterans Affairs officials say they have increased funding for mental health services, have hired at least 100 more counselors and are not overwhelmed by the rising demands.

"We're not aware that people are having trouble getting services from us in any consistent way or pattern around the country," said Dr. Michael Kussman, acting undersecretary for health and top doctor at the VA.

Nearly 64,000 of the more than 184,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who have sought VA health care were diagnosed with potential symptoms of post-traumatic stress, drug abuse or other mental disorders as of the end of June, according to the latest report by the Veterans Health Administration.

Of those, close to 30,000 had possible post-traumatic stress disorder, said the report.

The Government Accountability Office reported in February 2005 that just 6,400 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans had been treated for stress disorders. The office is an investigative agency of Congress.

Kussman said the numbers of people reporting symptoms of stress probably represent a "gross overestimation" of those actually suffering from a mental health disorder. Most of the troops who return from Iraq have "normal reactions to abnormal situations," such as flashbacks or trouble sleeping, Kussman said.

He said the returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans represent just 3.5 percent of the more than 5 million people seen by the VA each year.

The VA, he said, has targeted $300 million (€234 million) for post-traumatic stress disorders for 2005-06, and is seeking another $300 million for 2007.

VA facilities largely serve veterans who have ended their military service, but some National Guard and Reserve members returning from the war are using VA facilities because they are closer to their homes.

While veterans groups don't have data on the number of veterans encountering problems with the VA, they said veterans are reporting long delays for appointments at the agency's medical centers.

"If they're going to keep recruiting anywhere near where they need to be, they'd better take care of the young vets, because everyone is watching," Rieckhoff said.

One soldier in Virginia Beach, Virginia, said he was having a hard time sleeping after he returned from Iraq, and was told he'd have to wait two-and-a-half months for an appointment at the VA facility, said Rieckhoff.

Rieckhoff said the Buffalo, New York, veterans medical center gave his organization a "wish list" of needed supplies and other expenses, including wheelchairs, rehabilitation equipment and medical monitors.

"If the VA is going to see 30 percent of the 1.5 million U.S. service members who have deployed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the VA may expect a total of 450,000 veteran patients from these two wars," said Paul Sullivan, director of programs for the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. "This is a very ominous trend, indicating a tidal wave of new patients coming in, and the numbers could go up."

The Defense Department has made mental health assessments and education programs mandatory for active-duty service members returning from the war. There are several dozen combat stress teams working with military units to prevent and identify stress or other mental health issues.

The department has also put a self-assessment screening on the Internet so military members can evaluate their symptoms.

Dr. Joyce Adkins, the Pentagon's director of stress management programs, said there has been a slight increase in the number of service members reporting mental health problems or symptoms.

"We've done a lot of education for service members at multiple times, to help them understand ... the common problems associated with deployment, the symptoms they might experience and what that might mean," she said.

On the Net:
Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil

Military Mental Health Self Assessment Program: https://http://www.militarymentalhealth.org/


Drugs and CIA

Submitted by John Boly on Sun, 09/03/2006 - 12:30pm.

It's not just drugs in Afghanistan. Former Wall Street Journal reporter Alexander Cockburn has written an excellent study with Jeffrey St. Clair entitled "Whiteout." They offer well-researched evidence that since the end of WWII, the CIA has organized, supervised, and protected the international drug trade as a means of financing its covert operations (such as overthrowing the democratically elected governments, whether in Iran in the early 'fifties, Nicaragua in the 'eighties, or Venezuela in the present.)

Even more chilling, Cockburn and St. Clair provide vivid proof of how the mainstream American media has knowingly hushed up the whole thing. Any journalist who wants to put a swift end to his or her career need only write an expose of the CIA-drug connection. Example: Gary Webb, who proved that the CIA was behind the crack-cocained plauge that hit LA in the 'nineties and then spread to the rest of the country.


Follow the money

Submitted by wastedspace.com on Sun, 09/03/2006 - 6:53pm.

The book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred McCoy, first published in 1972, documents the CIA's involvement in running drugs around the globe since WWII. Reporter Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" series of stories, published in the Los Angeles Times in 1996, along with Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn, update the story with details of CIA drug trafficking used to finance covert operations in Central America. The Iran Contra hearings also revealed some of this stuff, so it's pretty much on the record, and yet the mainstream press won't touch the subject with a ten foot pole--what happened to Gary Webb still serves as a powerful object lesson to journalists everywhere. Regaining control of the nearly entire world supply of opium was probably as critical to the invasion of Afghanistan as gaining control of Iraq's oil reserves was to toppling Saddam Hussein.

http://www.wastedspace.com

Zimbabwe News Update: Government Denies Assault on ZCTU Leader

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe Under Constant Fire by Western Imperialists Countries
Originally uploaded by panafnewswire.

Zim denies trade union's assault claims

Harare - The Zimbabwe government has denied claims by the main labour union that more than a dozen of its members were assaulted in police custody following foiled street protests last month, it was reported on Friday.

Members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) were injured while trying to resist arrest by jumping off police vehicles, Deputy Home Affairs Minister Reuben Marumahoko told parliament on Thursday.

No one was assaulted in the police cells and the police used minimum force, the state-controlled Herald newspaper quoted the minister as saying during a debate.

On Tuesday a Harare magistrate dismissed an internal police investigation that exonerated the alleged perpetrators of the assaults and ordered a probe by detectives from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) instead.

Magistrate William Bhila also postponed the trial of 31 ZCTU protesters until October 17, as several of the union members were still nursing injuries including fractured arms, fingers and bruises - they allegedly received in police custody.

The ZCTU had called the September 13 protests to push for higher wages, greater access to anti-Aids drugs and an end to Zimbabwe's worsening economic crisis. The brutal behaviour of the police has provoked widespread criticism both in Zimbabwe and abroad.

Last week the UN country team in Zimbabwe said it viewed with profound dismay the apparent condoning of the police action by the authorities here.

Top government officials, including President Robert Mugabe have said they were satisfied with the way the police behaved.

Sapa-dpa
Published on the Web by IOL on 2006-10-06 11:37:59


Labour, business urged to shun confrontation

EMPLOYERS and workers should work together and not adopt a confrontational attitude so as to overcome the country’s economic challenges, an expert has said.

Opening the Employers’ Confederation of Zimbabwe (Emcoz) negotiating skills workshop, International Labour Organisation senior specialist, employers’ activities for the sub-regional office for Southern Africa, Mr Hezron Njuguna, urged employers and their workers to negotiate to resolve conflicts.

"Workers and employers should not fight against each but fight for the viability of the enterprises which they work for," he said.

"The two parties cannot divorce themselves from each other for it will be costly and damaging for their enterprises."

Mr Njuguna said it was time the two parties negotiated with each other sincerely and come up with initiatives to keep companies solvent, adding that participants should take advantage of the workshop to refine their negotiating skills.

He expressed confidence that Zimbabwe would recover from the economic challenges it faces as other countries had faced similar problems and had overcome them.

Mr Njuguna said the ILO would continue to support Emcoz and employees in ensuring that both parties work together for the benefit of the country’s development.

Emcoz senior vice-president Mr David Govere said it was imperative to recognise that the three constituencies — Government, labour and business — played an equally important role in wage negotiations.

"It would be folly to think that one constituency is more important than another, let us put away our AK47s and just talk," he said.

He said the parties should show a great degree of empathy based on the understanding of the difficulties facing each participant.

Mr Govere said the need to acquire negotiating skills was made even more urgent as the country faces the spectre of an inflation rate of up to 4 000 percent in 2007.

The training consultant, Mr Petros Mandaza, said negotiations were crucial as they avoided court hearings and strikes by the labour force, a situation that would further damage the productivity levels of companies.

He urged both employers and workers to be aware of the legal framework and implications when engaging in negotiations.

The workshop, which ends today, aims to provide participants with the theory and practice of negotiations and to identify issues for negotiation.

New Ziana


‘Zim must resolve challenges to integrate into regional economy’

ZIMBABWE needs to resolve its economic challenges quickly so as to enhance its capacity to integrate into the regional and global economy, Finance Minister Dr Herbert Murerwa said on Wednesday.

Dr Murerwa said the economy was faced with many challenges hence the need to improve foreign currency inflows, tackle inflation, create employment, increase capacity utilisation in industry, increase productivity in the agriculture sector and, above all, reduce poverty among the people.

"Failure to address these challenges limits our capacity to integrate in the regional and global economy," the minister said.

He said the ravages of inflation and the resultant price instability had eroded the people’s purchasing power.

He was speaking at the official opening of a Zimbabwe Economic Policy Analysis and Research Unit (Zeparu) workshop, which is running under the theme, "Zimbabwe Economic Policy Management in a Globalising World".

The minister called on participants to the workshop to identify practical policy options that would enable the Government to tap into the economies of other countries for the nation’s development.

The current set-up in the international economy was such that countries depended on each other through technology, investment and trade as well as finance, he said.

"The ability of a country to extract gains from other economies to a large extent is a function of how the country manages its economic policies," he said.

"It is therefore my wish that during the deliberations of this conference, participants will identify practical policy options that will enable Zimbabwe to extract such gains."

The two-day workshop, is being attended by stakeholders from both the Government and the private sector, as well as economists and academics, and seeks to provide stakeholders with a platform to discuss policy challenges facing the economy and measures to address them.

Zeparu seeks to build sustainable indigenous capacity in the area of macro-economic policy analysis and management for use by Government institutions responsible for the various aspects of macro-economic policy formulation and implementation.

Its core activities are policy analysis, research and training.

Since its launch two years ago, the unit has carried out a number of research and training activities, with some of the work being commissioned by the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Economic Development, Ministry of Agriculture and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.

In addition to research, Zeparu is contributing to the continuous capacity building efforts in Government ministries and department as well as the University of Zimbabwe economics department.

New Ziana

Rev. James Lawson, Ousted From Vanderbilt in 1960, Returns As Visiting Professor

James Lawson Under Arrest in Nashville During 1960
Originally uploaded by panafnewswire.

Activist Ousted From Vanderbilt Is Back, as a Teacher

The Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., a civil rights leader who was expelled from Vanderbilt University in 1960, is now a visiting professor there

By THEO EMERY
New York Times
Published: October 4, 2006

NASHVILLE — Just before 6 p.m. on a recent evening, students began to fill a lecture hall at Vanderbilt University. Some pressed cellphones to their ears, others sipped cups of coffee. Flip-flops scuffed the carpet as the students shed book bags and opened laptops.

A typical class, perhaps — until the teacher with the shock of white hair rose from the table at the front of the hall, greeted the students and asked a question: “How many of you have experienced a hate crime against yourself? Let’s see the hands.”

So began the lecture by the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., 78, who returned to teach at Vanderbilt this fall, 46 years after the university expelled him for his role in lunch-counter sit-ins that made Nashville a springboard for a generation of civil rights activists.

The expulsion of Mr. Lawson, a Methodist divinity student who was one of the nation’s leading scholars of civil disobedience and Gandhian nonviolence, was quickly dubbed the Lawson affair, and tarnished Vanderbilt’s reputation for years. University officials apologized to Mr. Lawson long ago, honoring him and inviting him back for periodic lectures. Even Harvie Branscomb, the chancellor who presided over Mr. Lawson’s ouster, apologized before his death.

But the invitation to return as a visiting professor is a new chapter in relations between Vanderbilt and its famous former student.

“It isn’t often that an institution gets the chance to correct for a previous error,” said Lucius Outlaw, Vanderbilt’s associate provost for undergraduate education, who first proposed that Mr. Lawson be asked here for the year.

Mr. Lawson said the invitation came “out of the blue.” He bore no grudge when he was expelled, he said, nor does he today.

“I simply did not anticipate that Vanderbilt would do this, or offer me that, so I had no inkling,” he said.

He also said he intended to accept the university’s invitation to donate his papers to its archive.

When Mr. Lawson enrolled in 1958, Vanderbilt was still largely segregated and widely seen as aloof from Nashville, which had a reputation as being racially moderate though still a segregated city.

Mr. Lawson, who at the time was a field officer for the pacifist group Fellowship of Reconciliation, had spent three years studying nonviolence while a missionary in India. He was one of only a handful of blacks at Vanderbilt, which had begun admitting black graduate students, but not black undergraduates.

In some cases unwittingly, Mr. Lawson said, he began undoing segregation on campus and off. He ate at the university’s whites-only cafeterias and played intramural football. When he bought orchestra seats for the Nashville Symphony through the university, he and his date, Dorothy Wood (now his wife), were ushered to a blacks-only section of the balcony. Once there, Mr. Lawson said, another usher consulted their tickets and told them their seats were on the concert hall’s first floor.

“Dorothy and I desegregated Symphony Hall, because we went back downstairs,” he said. “They were a little surprised, but they led us to the row and we sat down.”

The university, he said, took notice and tolerated those activities. But that changed, he recalled, in the winter of 1960.

For months in late 1959, Mr. Lawson led workshops on nonviolence for students from Nashville colleges and universities, including Fisk, American Baptist, and Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial, in preparation for peaceful protests at downtown businesses and for a campaign to desegregate the city’s lunch counters. Their lunch-counter sit-ins, coming on the heels of those in Greensboro, N.C., in early February, were well-organized and drew national attention. Protesters kept up pressure on the city, and in late February about 80 students were arrested.

Under pressure from university board members, including James G. Stahlman, the strongly anti-integration editor of The Banner, one of two daily newspapers in Nashville, Chancellor Branscomb told the dean of the divinity school to ask Mr. Lawson to withdraw.

Mr. Lawson refused, and the board expelled him, which quickly led to protests, condemnation from other colleges across the country, and the resignation of the dean and faculty members from the divinity school.

Mr. Lawson finished his studies at Boston University and returned to Tennessee as a Methodist pastor in Shelbyville, south of Nashville, and then in Memphis.

His actions influenced a generation of activists who went on to help organize the Freedom Rides in the Deep South in 1961. Some, like Stokely Carmichael; Marion S. Barry Jr., who later became mayor of Washington; and John Lewis, who is a Democratic congressman from Georgia, took the national stage.

Chancellor Gordon Gee said Mr. Lawson’s expulsion was a defining moment for Vanderbilt, forcing it to decide whether to modernize or “remain in amber.” His return this year, Mr. Gee said, closes the loop on a transformative period in the university’s history.

“It’s a reminder that we have much left to do,” he said. “But we’ve come a long way.”

Mr. Lawson admits to a certain anxiety about being the torchbearer for the civil rights movement.

“I want to be sure that my understanding of the 50’s and 60’s is relevant to the present,” he said.

During the evening lecture, he tucked his hands in his trouser pockets and jingled loose change as he paced in front of the class. He sprinkled his comments with references to the Bible and Gandhi as the students discussed hate crimes, role-played confrontations between strangers, and saw a movie about the antiapartheid movement in South Africa.

A student in the back row, Elias Feghali, asked about violence and Islam. Mr. Lawson hesitated only a moment before starting a discussion of the international arms trade and how difficult it was to disarm a society armed to the teeth.

“I don’t happen to think that Islam is the most violent religion,” he added. “I think Christianity is. As a Christian, I think we need to think about ourselves first, and clean up our own act.”

Afterward, Mr. Feghali said he had been “blown away” by Mr. Lawson’s course. Nonviolence, Mr. Feghali said, is more relevant today than ever.

“Obviously it’s the right step to take,” he said of Vanderbilt’s invitation to Mr. Lawson. “They probably should have reached out to him much earlier.”

Abducted Oil Workers Freed in Nigeria

Nigerian Rebel Holds Gun Protesting Exploitation of Oil Resources
Originally uploaded by panafnewswire.

Wednesday 04 October 2006 11:40 AM GMT

Militant attacks have hit oil production in Nigeria

Twenty-five workers of a Royal Dutch Shell contractor kidnapped in Nigeria this week have been freed, a company spokeswoman says.

Militants on Monday abducted about 25 Nigerian staff working for a contractor and killed at least 10 soldiers in a raid on a convoy of boats supplying oilfields in the Niger Delta.

No production was affected, the company said.

On Wednesday, the Shell spokeswoman said: "All the contractors have been released."

Attacks and pipeline leaks have cut roughly a quarter of production for Africa's biggest oil producer.

More kidnappings

In a separate attack on Tuesday, Nigerians suspected of campaigning for a greater share in the country's oil wealth, invaded a residential compound for foreign oil workers, killing two guards and kidnapping at least five expatriates.

The workers were taken from the compound in Eket, close to the operational base of Exxon Mobil, which exports about 800,000 barrels a day from Africa's top oil producer.

The series of attacks ended a period of relative quiet in the Niger Delta, which accounts for all oil output from the world's eighth biggest exporter.

Violence in the delta is a result of widespread poverty, corruption and lawlessness.

Most inhabitants of the wetlands region have seen few benefits from five decades of oil extraction that has damaged their environment.

Agencies
You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/78196813-3DB6-473E-832A-ABDF734538D0.htm

The Day the Enemy Struck Us a Blow: Remembering Joe Nzingo Gqabi

Joe Nzingo Gqabi of the ANC Was Murdered by Apartheid Agents in 1981
Originally uploaded by panafnewswire.

Courtesy of Umrabulo, Number 26, August 2006

Twenty-five years after his assassination at the hands of the apartheid government, Joe Gqabi's legacy as a dedicated, disciplined and effective revolutionary leader continues, writes Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.

Speaking at the funeral of Joe Nzingo Gqabi on 9 August 1981, former ANC President Oliver Tambo said: 'To say that the enemy has struck us a blow is to tell the truth. He is a positive loss because he is the type of leader who knew how to follow. He was the type of operative who yielded results. He was a leader who in his sector produced results. And it is the test of leadership to be able to produce intended results. Joe Gqabi passed this test with great distinction.' These words resonate through our minds as we remember Joe Gqabi.

It is twenty-five years since the assassination of Joe Gqabi in Ashdown Park, Harare on 31 July 1981. The South African revolution now, more than at any other time, needs the kind of leader that Oliver Tambo described Joe Gqabi to be - a leader that 'knew how to follow... an operative who yielded results... a leader who in his sector produced results'. He was also a leader who would never place the revolution and the democratic project at risk, a leader who was willing to pay the ultimate price in furthering the revolution and defending its gains.

Joe Gqabi touched the lives of many of people. In the words of Tambo: 'Joe Gqabi was capable of making friends across political and ideological barriers, across colour lines. He communicated with ease and effortlessly with all generations: young and old. That is why in the Pretoria Twelve trial one of the accused was 67 years old, another twenty. That was why he was the most effective organiser of the youth - he understood them and they understood him.'

Those who met him - as activists, members of the underground, in mass political formations, as members of the community, and others socially -have vivid recollections of their interaction with him. He could quite easily appear as just another 'peasant' if the situation required, as he pointed out that an underground operative should never attract undue attention to themselves. However, when the situation required he distinguished himself through his interaction with people.

Recent recollections by the Swedish Minister of International Development Cooperation, Carin JSmtin, of when she was a sixteen-year-old in Harare, as the daughter of a Swedish diplomat, bears testimony to the impact Gqabi made on old and young alike. She recalls discussions her father, Ula JSmtin, had with Joe Gqabi for hours on end debating the South African struggle. They provided him with 'safe accommodation' when he was warned of a direct threat on his life by the South African regime. This action was reflective of many who formed a support network to Joe Gqabi fully conscious of the risks associated with it. He was able to develop an extensive support network that would not only be for his personal benefit.

Joe Gqabi was a good and rigorous teacher. Those who were exposed to training in underground work under his tutelage would recollect that he emphasised the need for rigour in understanding and appreciating the political-military situation. He combined theoretical and practical training. He would allocate tasks starting with less complex ones to observe the results and allow for learning, then escalating these to more complex tasks. He allowed for time with people irrespective of their background as he believed that everyone could make a contribution.

Joe Gqabi was persuasive in recruiting people into the ANC and in mobilising others to support our struggle. He also taught perseverance. He had a love for the Marxist classics and he would spend hours studying, reading and re-reading the classics, specifically Lenin's 'What is to be done?', in preparation for meetings with internal operatives.

Joe Gqabi did not hesitate to express his impatience when he felt comrades were taking undue risks that could lead to their exposure, arrest or worse.

One such incident was when a young Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadre called 'Fury' was in some difficulty and came directly to the Angwa Street office of the ANC. He was exposed to the wrath of Gqabi, who physically lifted him off his feet and said: 'You know how to contact me. This place is under constant surveillance by the enemy and you are unnecessarily exposing yourself, which could lead to problems for yourself and the unit that you are part of.' He was particularly critical of mistakes by those who he believed, because of their maturity in theory and practice, should have the tools of analysis to assess a particular situation and handle its complexity.

He loved the music of the ANC's cultural ensemble 'Amandla'. On one occasion when he left Harare for Angola he had collected some money and bought guitar strings as it had come to his attention that they needed these. He enjoyed listening to the cassettes of
'Amandla' and Letta Mbulu and Caiphus Semenya as he drove his white Toyota Cressida in the streets of Harare. He had a great sense of humour and he loved life.

He loved his family very dearly and yet they never had the opportunity to spend sufficient time together. He believed that his commitment to the larger cause would ensure that all families, his family included, would eventually be able to live together in 'peace, security and comfort'. His untimely death came as a great blow to the ANC but especially to his wife Nomazothswa, daughter Nonkululeko and son Jomo. At that stage, he had one grandson, Tebogo. His grandsons will never have the opportunity to know their grandfather.

An extraordinary comrade On 6 June 1960 a group of amaMpondo community leaders and representatives met on Ngquza Hill between Bizana and Lusikisiki to discuss their grievances. Since the passing of the Bantu Authorities Act (Proclamation 180 of 1956) the people of the area had been trying to get the authorities to hear their grievances and had been holding meetings. In March 1960 these meetings had been banned, but the people continued to meet, and it was on that day at Ngquza Hill that the turning point came.

Between the green grass and blue winter skies, they discussed their concerns around the Bantu Authority and government interference within their communities. Suddenly two Harvard airplanes and a helicopter swept overhead and dropped teargas into the crowd. At this, men in the crowd tore off their white shirts and waved them in the air: they wanted peace. They did not get it - police vehicles roared up and what had been a peaceful and orderly meeting descended into chaos. Eleven people were killed, scores were beaten with sjamboks, arrested and sentenced to prison.

A government commission of inquiry into the incident reported that the complaints raised at the meeting were unjustified. The amaMpondo, of course, rejected this.

Deployed by the ANC to organise in the region was a man who had played a significant role in earlier campaigns, Joe Gqabi. Gqabi was born in Aliwal North during the depression. He was 20 years old when the National Party came to power in 1948. In 1950 he joined the ANC Youth League and the ANC.

The community embarked on a boycott in November 1960. The people avoided shopping in towns, and refused to pay taxes. They also boycotted the Native Recruiting Corporation. The campaign was highly organised, and a complex cell structure developed. Mass meetings were held, many of which ended in violent confrontations with the police. This was the Pondoland Revolt. The revolt ended with 30 members of the community being sent to the gallows for participating in this campaign against apartheid oppression.

Potato Boycott In an article in Sechaba in October 1982, Wolfie Kodesh describes how he was sitting in his office at New Age newspaper, when a gaunt man dressed in tattered clothing walked into his office.

The man told an horrific story of 'starvation and deaths from exhaustion and whippings on the farm; of work bent over from sunrise to sunset in long rows, picking up the potatoes, while behind them were sjambok-carrying 'baas boys' whipping anyone who straightened up through sheer exhaustion. All of the slave workers had been 'bought' at the detention centres for pass (offenders).

Kodesh, with his colleagues Ruth First and Joe Gqabi, immediately drove out to the farm and saw - as Gillian Slovo describes in her book, 'Every Secret Thing' - 'a vision straight from Hades: scarecrow men, shoeless and dressed in sacks, working with hoes along rows of potatoes while baas boys - black overseers - stood ready to lash at them with knobkerries.' Kodesh noticed mound in the fields which, he realised, were the same shape as those he had seen in Ethiopia during World War II - mounds formed by too-shallow graves, which when kicked revealed corpses. Later investigation would reveal that these were indeed corpses, though who was buried in the graves would never be discovered - by the time the graves were uncovered, only skeletons remained.

The photographs by Joe Gqabi and articles by Ruth First on the conditions on this and other farms triggered a sensation in the national press, and led the ANC to launch the historic potato boycott which resulted in stockpiling of potatoes across the cities of South Africa.

The Pondoland Revolt gave Gqabi an insight into the challenges facing the struggle for liberation. He was described as a militant cadre and became one of the first four ANC cadres to be sent to China for military training. The youngest of the four, he returned to South Africa in 1962 to become an active member of Umkhonto we Sizwe. On his return he immediately resumed his political activities and carried out several sabotage operations.

In 1963, as part of a group of twenty-eight who were to receive military training outside the country, Gqabi was arrested in what was then Southern Rhodesia. He was deported to South Africa and sentenced to 12 years on Robben Island.

He completed his sentence at a turning point in the struggle for liberation.

In 1975 he returned to Soweto. His imprisonment did not deter him from getting centrally involved in underground work. Many a youth activist at the time relates how they scaled the wall of his Soweto home to meet with him at night and confer on their organising. He was directly linked to many of the leaders and youth who played a role in the Soweto uprising.

In December 1976, he was arrested and was one of the twelve ANC cadres who stood trial in 1977, charged under the Terrorism Act. He, however, was so effective at operating underground that the state was unable to secure a conviction against him at what became known as the Pretoria Twelve trial.

Following his trial he escaped to Botswana where he continued to play a major role in organising and working with underground structures from the neighbouring states.

After the independence of Zimbabwe, Gqabi was appointed ANC representative there. In the short time he spent in Zimbabwe he made an impact in the diplomatic arena. Along with current ANC President Thabo Mbeki he played a crucial role in developing and cementing relations between the ANC and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). He retained his links with both the political and military underground structures.

The South African regime made several attempts on his life in 1981. An attempt in January 1981 involved attaching a bomb to his car at the ANC residence in Ashdown Park. In view of this attempt on his life, the ANC recalled Gqabi to Lusaka, Zambia. However, he insisted that he needed to return as he had just started his work in Zimbabwe. He increased his vigilance and avoided staying at the Ashdown Park house at night.

On 31 July 1981, Gqabi was murdered by operatives of the apartheid government outside the ANC residence in Ashdown Park. After Joe Gqabi's murder, the Citizen newspaper published an editorial alleging that Gqabi was killed as a result of an internal fight between factions within the ANC. One of self-admitted members of the death squad who assassinated Joe Gqabi, Gray Branfield, was killed in Iraq in April 2004.

Gqabi's entire adult life had been dedicated to the liberation of South Africa. The remains of Joe Gqabi were returned to South Africa in 2004, where they were re-interred at his birthplace, Aliwal North, on 16 December.

Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi is a member of the ANC National Executive Committee.

Eyes on the Prize Returns to PBS on October 2

Rosa Parks Being Fingerprinted After Arrest in Montgomery on Dec. 1, 1955 For Violating Alabama's Segregation Laws
Originally uploaded by panafnewswire.

Watch on "The American Experience"
Channel 56 in Detroit From 9:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m.

Eyes on the Prize is an award-winning 14-hour television series produced by Blackside and narrated by Julian Bond. Through contemporary interviews and historical footage, the series covers all of the major events of the civil rights movement from 1954-1985.

Series topics range from the Montgomery bus boycott in 1954 to the Voting Rights Act in 1965; from community power in schools to "Black Power" in the streets; from early acts of individual courage through to the flowering of a mass movement and its eventual split into factions.

When Eyes on the Prize premiered in 1987, The Los Angeles Times called it "an exhaustive documentary that shouldn't be missed." The series went on to win six Emmys and numerous other awards, including an Academy Award nomination, the George Foster Peabody Award, and the top duPont-Columbia award for excellence in broadcast journalism.

Eyes on the Prize was created and executive produced by Henry Hampton (1940-1998), one of the most influential documentary filmmakers in the 20th century. His work chronicled America's great political and social movements and set new standards for broadcast quality. Blackside, the independent film and television company he founded in 1968, completed 60 major films and media projects that amplified the voices of the poor and disenfranchised. His enduring legacy continues to influence the field in the 21st century.

Series Description

Produced by Blackside, Eyes on the Prize tells the definitive story of the civil rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today. Winner of numerous Emmy Awards, a George Foster Peabody Award, an International Documentary Award, and a Television Critics Association Award, Eyes on the Prize is the most critically acclaimed documentary on civil rights in America.

Eyes on the Prize recounts the fight to end decades of discrimination and segregation. It is the story of the people -- young and old, male and female, northern and southern -- who, compelled by a meeting of conscience and circumstance, worked to eradicate a world where whites and blacks could not go to the same school, ride the same bus, vote in the same election, or participate equally in society. It was a world in which peaceful demonstrators were met with resistance and brutality -- in short, a reality that is now nearly incomprehensible to many young Americans.

Through contemporary interviews and historical footage, Eyes on the Prize traces the civil rights movement from the Montgomery bus boycott to the Voting Rights Act; from early acts of individual courage through the flowering of a mass movement and its eventual split into factions. Julian Bond, political leader and civil rights activist, narrates.

The driving force behind Eyes on the Prize and Blackside, Henry Hampton (1940-1998) won numerous awards for this landmark series including the duPont-Columbia Gold Baton, the Peabody Award, and Academy Award nominations. He set out to share his vision of what he called "the remarkable human drama that was the Civil Rights Movement" through the Eyes on the Prize documentary and a book of the same title by Juan Williams. In recent years, a number of key figures who appear in the films (including the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, a leader of the Montgomery bus boycott; Coretta Scott King, wife of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, and an activist in her own right; Kwame Ture, also known as Stokely Carmichael, leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and George Wallace, the 1960s Alabama governor who resisted integration) have died, making this record of their testimony all the more valuable.

Programs in the series:
Awakenings (1954-1956)
Individual acts of courage inspire black Southerners to fight for their rights: Mose Wright testifies against the white men who murdered young Emmett Till, and Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.

Fighting Back (1957-1962)
States' rights loyalists and federal authorities collide in the 1957 battle to integrate Little Rock's Central High School, and again in James Meredith's 1962 challenge to segregation at the University of Mississippi. Both times, a Southern governor squares off with a U.S. president, violence erupts -- and integration is carried out.

Ain't Scared of Your Jails (1960-1961)
Black college students take a leadership role in the civil rights movement as lunch counter sit-ins spread across the South. "Freedom Riders" also try to desegregate interstate buses, but they are brutally attacked as they travel.

No Easy Walk (1961-1963)
The civil rights movement discovers the power of mass demonstrations as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. emerges as its most visible leader. Some demonstrations succeed; others fail. But the triumphant March on Washington, D.C., under King's leadership, shows a mounting national support for civil rights. President John F. Kennedy proposes the Civil Rights Act.

Mississippi: Is This America? (1963-1964)
Mississippi's grass-roots civil rights movement becomes an American concern when college students travel south to help register black voters and three activists are murdered. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenges the regular Mississippi delegation at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City.

Bridge to Freedom (1965)
A decade of lessons is applied in the climactic and bloody march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. A major victory is won when the federal Voting Rights Bill passes, but civil rights leaders know they have new challenges ahead.

The Time Has Come (1964-66)
After a decade-long cry for justice, a new sound is heard in the civil rights movement: the insistent call for power. Malcolm X takes an eloquent nationalism to urban streets as a younger generation of black leaders listens. In the South, Stokely Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) move from "Freedom Now!" to "Black Power!" as the fabric of the traditional movement changes.

Two Societies (1965-68)
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) come north to help Chicago's civil rights leaders in their nonviolent struggle against segregated housing. Their efforts pit them against Chicago's powerful mayor, Richard Daley. When a series of marches through all-white neighborhoods draws violence, King and Daley negotiate with mixed results. In Detroit, a police raid in a black neighborhood sparks an urban uprising that lasts five days, leaving 43 people dead. The Kerner Commission finds that America is becoming "two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal." President Lyndon Johnson, who appointed the commission, ignores the report.

Power! (1966-68)
The call for Black Power takes various forms across communities in black America. In Cleveland, Carl Stokes wins election as the first black mayor of a major American city. The Black Panther Party, armed with law books, breakfast programs, and guns, is born in Oakland. Substandard teaching practices prompt parents to gain educational control of a Brooklyn school district but then lead them to a showdown with New York City's teachers' union.

The Promised Land (1967-68)
Martin Luther King stakes out new ground for himself and the rapidly fragmenting civil rights movement. One year before his death, he publicly opposes the war in Vietnam. His Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) embarks on an ambitious Poor People's Campaign. In the midst of political organizing, King detours to support striking sanitation workers in Memphis, where he is assassinated. King's death and the failure of his final campaign mark the end of a major stream of the movement.

Ain't Gonna Shuffle No More (1964-72)
A call to pride and a renewed push for unity galvanize black America. World heavyweight champion Cassius Clay challenges America to accept him as Muhammad Ali, a minister of Islam who refuses to fight in Vietnam. Students at Howard University in Washington, D.C., fight to bring the growing black consciousness movement and their African heritage inside the walls of this prominent black institution. Black elected officials and community activists organize the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, in an attempt to create a unified black response to growing repression against the movement.

A Nation of Law? (1968-71)
Black activism is increasingly met with a sometimes violent and unethical response from local and federal law enforcement agencies. In Chicago, two Black Panther Party leaders are killed in a pre-dawn raid by police acting on information supplied by an FBI informant. In the wake of President Nixon's call to "law and order," stepped-up arrests push the already poor conditions at New York's Attica State Prison to the limit. A five-day inmate takeover calling the public's attention to the conditions leaves 43 men dead: four killed by inmates, 39 by police.

The Keys to the Kingdom (1974-80)
In the 1970s, antidiscrimination legal rights gained in past decades by the civil rights movement are put to the test. In Boston, some whites violently resist a federal court school desegregation order. Atlanta's first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, proves that affirmative action can work, but the Bakke Supreme Court case challenges that policy.

Back to the Movement (1979-mid 80s)
Power and powerlessness. Miami's black community -- pummeled by urban renewal, a lack of jobs, and police harassment -- explodes in rioting. But in Chicago, an unprecedented grassroots movement triumphs. Frustrated by decades of unfulfilled promises made by the city's Democratic political machine, reformers install Harold Washington as Chicago's first black mayor.

Running Dry: The Humanitarian Impact of the Global Water Crisis

Child Holds Animal in Ethiopia
Originally uploaded by panafnewswire.

The global water crisis: Managing a dwindling resource October 2006

“Our demand for water has turned us into vampires, draining the world of its lifeblood. What can we do to prevent mass global drought and starvation?” asked Fred Pearce, the New Scientist’s environmental expert and author of ‘When the Rivers Run Dry”, published in February 2006.

There is some mordant irony that in the last 18 months parts of the world have witnessed colossal damage and lost of life due to the excess of water, at a time when the diminishing stock of freshwater continues to affect millions of people and threaten future crises.

Since the tsunami of December 2004 claimed more than a quarter-million lives and caused billions of dollars of damage, excess of water has created other natural disasters, including the 2005 hurricanes in the Caribbean, western Pacific and the United States and flooding from unprecedented rainfall across Europe. Even now, post-earthquake Pakistan is bracing itself for a season of landslides as the monsoon rains loosen and let slip the ruptured mountainsides of the Himalayas.

At the same time, millions of people live without access to adequate or clean water, with little hope their situation will improve as the global water-shortage crisis escalates. Droughts caused devastating living conditions in Niger in 2005 and in parts of eight countries in eastern Africa in early 2006, affecting over 13 million people. Although the poor – both rural and urban - are typically the most vulnerable whenever resources are squeezed, the dimensions of this crisis will affect us all.

According to the United Nations Water Development Report of March 2006, the combination of lower precipitation and higher evaporation in many regions is diminishing water quantities in rivers, lakes and groundwater. In addition, increased pollution is damaging ecosystems and the health, lives and livelihoods of those without access to adequate, safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

From the Aral Sea to Lake Chad and including most of the major rivers of the world, water reduction through environmental change and human exploitation is massive. In Africa, studies have shown rainfall patterns shifting away from the continents’ interior to its coasts, leaving millions of fast-growing inland populations without sufficient water for consumption or food production.

The triennial UN report further claimed that “major demographic changes are also seriously affecting the quality and quantity of available freshwater on the planet.” For the first time in human history, a smaller proportion of the global population now lives in rural areas, according to UN statistics from June 2006. Increased urbanisation, especially in developing countries, leads directly to poor heath as the work necessary to develop infrastructure required to deliver clean water and sanitation proves insurmountable in many countries. Inadequate water not only leads to poor health but also a low quality of life and, in some cases, social unrest. The tragedy of the water crisis is that irrespective of the changes caused by global warming or the pressures of modern man on the environment, there is a lot of water around, if only we knew how to share and manage it.

Water resources

The Washington-based thinktank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) stated in a recent publication that “global trends in population, urbanisation, economic development, industrialisation, migration and other areas have pushed water demand to unsustainable levels.” The indicators are alarming.

Our planet’s total freshwater resource available for human consumption every year is approximately 14,000sqkm, but this represents only 0.03 percent of all the Earth’s water. If this amount were divided equally amongst the population of the world, it would provide more than enough water for everyone’s needs.

However, different people have varying levels of water access for socioeconomic and political reasons, and the location of water is disproportionate to the concentrations of human settlements as well. For example, the Amazon River carries about 15 percent of the Earth’s freshwater runoff but supplies water to less than 1 percent of the world’s population. Advances in human engineering and technology have only exacerbated both the disparities in water access and the rate at which we use our freshwater.

Heavy use of groundwater was not made possible until relatively recent technological advances in geology, well-drilling, pump technology and rural electrification. For most areas exploiting groundwater and deeper ‘fossil’ aquifers, these advances date from the 1950s but have been greatly accelerated in the last decade.

According to the International Association of Hydrologists, “Today a global withdrawal of 600-700 km3/a [cubic kilometres per year] makes groundwater the world's most extracted raw material.” In ‘From Development to Management’, a publication from January 2003, the association explained that this level of extraction has been and remains a cornerstone of the Asian 'green agricultural revolution,' it also provids about 70 percent of piped water supply in the European Union and effectively supports rural communities across large areas of sub-Saharan Africa.

Many experts said that current levels of usage come with an expensive environmental pricetag. The unregulated use of boreholes and private pumps represents what Pearce described as “an extraordinary ‘barefoot’ hydrological revolution”. Today, more than 21 million Indian farmers use private pumps to tap underground reservoirs to water more than two-thirds of all their irrigated crops. This water took millennia to build up and is rapidly running out.

Even in 1999, the rate of demise of these fossil aquifers was about 3m a year in India alone. And what one expert described as the “colossal anarchy” of underground water management in India is being repeated all over the world. “From China to Iran and Indonesia to Pakistan, rivers are running dry under the impact of increased abstractions,” Pearce said in the February edition of New Scientist.

According to some estimates, the amount of water being used globally is more than twice the quantity being recharged by rainfall every year. India, China and Pakistan alone account for more than half the world’s total use of underground water for agriculture. While farmers produce bumper crops and high-yielding crop varieties flourish, the prognosis for water resources is bleak. Clearly, the level of current usage is unsustainable. “The farmers are certainly destroying their children’s future, if not their own,” Pearce said.

During the course of the twentieth century, global water consumption rose six-fold, more than double the rate of population growth.

Cross-cutting

Water is a cross-cutting factor affecting every aspect of human well-being and prosperity. Critical to basic human health, water availability is precondition for the production of food, raising of livestock, slaking of thirst, prevention of disease and provision of good hygiene and sanitation.

Clean water is also crucial for social and economic development through health facilities and education, through energy production and industrial expansion.

In relation to security from water-related crisis, there is an increased need for protection from floods and drought which, for a variety of reasons, are affecting people more regularly - especially communities in the developing world, where protection and mitigation from natural disasters is less common and where a disproportionately high number of victims of natural disasters live.

Today, millions of people, mainly women, struggle to locate and transport water for the drinking, cooking and washing needs of their families. From China to Peru, Niger to Palestine, Afghanistan to Mexico, the effort to access water of adequate quality and quantity absorbs a major part of the daily efforts of millions of poor people. Harrowing stories of the difficulties or high cost for families trying to obtain the minimum of water are only too common from rural or urban communities in the developing world. Of course the cost is not only effort and opportunity cost and a reduced quality of life, but also health and life itself is lost. Millions of people, possible as many as five million, and most of them children, die each year from illnesses and diseases caused by contaminated and unclean water.

A desperate ‘Catch 22’ situation exists for most developing countries: The very thing these countries need to raise funds to tackle water problems - economic development – requires yet more water to supply agriculture and industries that drive it.

Consumption patterns and virtual water

Global consumption preferences are dangerous and arguably unsustainable when it comes to efficient water use. Economists use the term ‘virtual water’ to express the quantity of water wrapped up in the growing and manufacture of goods traded around the world. To produce 1kg of coffee, a staggering 20,000 litres of water are needed. The virtual water content of a single, 250g hamburger is 11,000 litres, while 1kg of cheese and sugar require 5,000 and 3,000 litres respectively. Even 1kg of milk sucks up 2,000 litres of water, while a normal cotton T-shirt hijacks as much as 7,000 litres, according to Fred Pearce’s grim calculations.

Consumption patterns show an ever-increasing desire for products that require high levels of water, while global population growth continues unabated. It is increasingly difficult to resist the Malthusian logic of those who warn of a major crisis of demand and supply in relation to water.

According to analysts, some countries will increasingly be forced to import more of their food to cope with water scarcity. Countries that rely on agriculture need immense amounts of water for irrigation. It is estimated that one needs 1,000 cubic metres of water to grow one tonne of grain. By importing wheat, water-stressed countries can allocate more of their scarce freshwater to other industries or cities.

According to the New York-based Global Policy Forum, 26 percent of global wheat imports come from water-stressed regions in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It is estimated that in the next 15 years, as countries join the ranks of food importers, the demand for international grain will increase by 30 percent. For instance, countries like China, India and Pakistan, which are currently grain self-sufficient, will likely start importing food in coming years due to water and land scarcity. For those nations without sufficient foreign exchange to turn to imports, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, higher world grain prices, combined with detrimental changes in rainfall, will likely mean greater hunger and more calls for humanitarian aid.

“Widespread over-consumption of freshwater resources is causing a collapse in global freshwater systems that will be a primary driver in future water scarcity,” stated CSIS in their 2005 report, ‘Addressing Our Global Water Future’. The report claimed that according to the UN Population Division’s population projections, 15 countries - home to 2.3 billion people - would be ‘water stressed’, meaning per capita water availability is below 1,700 cubic metres per year, by 2025.

Future conflicts?

Financial markets are beginning to take an interest in investing in water companies, recognising that if an estimated two billion people are expected to be short of water in 2050 the resource could become more valuable than oil. Regional disputes and intrastate conflicts over water are already common in many countries. Some analysts say that future wars will be fought over water, not oil, and claim that water wars are inevitable.

Five year ago, the US National Intelligence Council reported that the likelihood of inter-state conflict over water would increase in the next 15 years. Publications and research papers with titles linking water and war reverberate around the world, and the current statistics give little cause for optimism.

History has shown that there has always been a shortage of water in some place on Earth at some time. Whenever this happened, there was competition for water and sometimes conflict. Locally and regionally, competition for water is currently increasing. A publication presented at the Third World Water Forum in Japan in 2003 outlined the scope of the problem. This report, compiled by Bill Cosgrove and published by Green Cross International with the UN Environmental, Scientific and Cultural Organization, stated that the threats to regional and global ecosystems caused by manmade and natural climate change are significant, with serious security implications. Inequities are increasing between the rich, who can afford to cope, and the poor, who cannot. The Earth may near a “point of discontinuity in human civilisation” unless it learns to cooperate, it warned.

The report is one of many highlighting the grave need for increased international management and cooperation if conflicts over water are to be avoided. Despite increased recognition that the present crisis is a combination of the interrelated factors of environmental mismanagement, poor governance, overpopulation and climate change, additional claim add that learning to share water would also build peace. Optimists argue that history teaches us that people cooperate over water rather than fight over this life-giving resource and also point to a range of low-tech, community-based methods of conserving freshwater and recharging diminished aquifers. Cosgrove’s analysis, in conclusion, sided cautiously with the optimists.

The challenge

The world’s governments agreed at the Millennium Summit in 2000 to halve the number of people who lack access to safe water, mainly in the world’s cities, by 2015. With rapidly growing urban populations, the challenge is immense, and with current levels of surface and groundwater depletion, it is not clear what impact such an aspiration, in the unlikely event that it is achieved, would have on the environment.

The CSIS report, using statistics from UN Children’s Fund and the UN World Health Organisation, estimated that in order to meet the Millennium Development Goals approximately 1.5 billion people will need to be given access to water over the next nine years. Little wonder the UN declared 2005-2015 the International Decade for Action, launching a Water for Life campaign in an effort to address the most detrimental humanitarian results of the current, and increasing, global water crisis.

This IRIN In-Depth focuses on the most pertinent issues surrounding the water crisis through feature essays dealing with some of the ‘macro’ issues and direct field reports from the communities and people most affected by water scarcity and contamination.