Tag: assassination

In this powerful writing of a revolutionary history, education as foundation becomes glaringly obvious and unequivocally key to achieving true freedom.

We are all human beings, capable of bringing great gifts to the world and causing great pain. How we are perceived by others often depends on who is telling the story, if the story is experiential or rhetoric and how open we are to listening from our core being to feel the truth.

For some time now we have been working very closely with the Congolese Solidarity Campaign. We have been working to build a politic from below that accepts each person as a person and each comrade as a comrade without regard to where they were born or what language they speak. In this struggle we have faced constant attack from the state, the ruling party and others.

Twenty years of local democracy in South Africa has been very cruel for Abahlali baseMjondolo and for millions of other poor people. It has been 20 years of hell in shacks. It has been 20 years of living like pigs in the mud. It has been 20 years of living with rats, floods, fire and rotting rubbish. For those of us who have stood up for our humanity, our reward has been lies, assault, torture, wrongful arrest, the destruction of our homes and even assassination.

A Rwandan witness for a French court investigating the assassination of two African presidents, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, in 1994 has gone missing and is reported to have been kidnapped in Nairobi, Kenya. The witness, Emile Gafirita, is a former bodyguard to Rwandan President Paul Kagame. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has the story.

The recent revelations about the USAID’s farfetched scheme to foster a popular anti-government protest movement by infiltrating Cuba’s mobile phone network perhaps bring full circle America’s 55-year campaign to destroy the Cuban Revolution. Fortunately for the people of Cuba, none of these bewildering, hairbrained and often violent schemes – which have included countless attacks on Cuban soil – have succeeded.

By now millions of Americans have heard about COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO was the FBI’s evil and illegal system of spying, lying, telephone wire taps, frame-ups and assassination that violated the constitutional and human rights that they claim to uphold. I was recently asked, while doing a Black Panther Party historical tour in Oakland, how COINTELPRO affected me personally. Here is one of my stories.

Contradictions in White America’s treatment of Blacks, which were exposed by the Black Power Movement, fashioned another side of King, according to his last speech and his writings. A side that began to embrace Black nationalist tactics and strategies as a means to achieve freedom, justice and equality for Black people. A side that accelerated Dr. Kings’ assassination.

"Most people realize that crime is simply the result of a grossly disproportionate distribution of wealth and privilege ... an aspect of class struggle from the outset. Throughout its history, the United States has used its prisons to suppress any organized efforts to challenge its legitimacy," wrote George Jackson in "Blood in My Eye."

It is with a heavy heart that I am writing this letter to appeal to you to take heed of the message that the House of Representatives sent out to Americans on June 24 by rejecting the text authorizing U.S. military intervention in Libya and ending the on-going attacks against the Libyan people with the most extravagant excuses, like the attacks are there to protect them.

“Had the RPF not been made militarily dominant by outside support and the two presidents not been assassinated in the RPF assault for power, the ICTR evidence suggests that the Rwandan genocide would never have occurred,” concludes Professor Erlinder.

On the afternoon of Feb. 21, 1965, I went to the Audubon Ballroom to hear Malcolm X speak. It was the saddest day of my life. An update has been added to this story, originally published in 2009.

It wasn’t just Patrice Lumumba his assassins wanted to kill, it was the genuine self-determination, dreams and aspirations of African people, writes Horace Campbell, reflecting on the murder of the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Jan. 17, 1961. Two poems by Lumumba follow the story.

The identity, motive and/or sponsors of Professor Jwani Mwaikusa’s assassins, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, may remain “unknown,” meaning “unproven,” for some time, but Professor Mwaikusa’s friends and colleagues know that whoever was responsible deprived the legal fraternity and the entire human race of an irreplaceable, independent and incorruptible mind.

They smiled and they grinned with the deeds they had done. / They chanted, “Chairman is dead,” while they splashed through his blood. / The media made up lies; the States Attorney told tales. / Before I was born, I was cellies with my Mama in a jail cell. - POCC Chairman Fred Hampton Jr.

It was as it should be / Young Black Panthers / Were killed for trying / To protect the cubs / For educating the cubs / For feeding the cubs / This was never the American dream / But we have lived a nightmare for days / In efforts to make our dreams / Come to life take flight / We still have to fight / It was as it should be / Giving honor to Chairman Fred / And Defense Captain Mark Clark

December 4th, International Revolutionary Day, was a historic day, not just because it was the 40th commemoration of the assassination of Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton and Defense Captain Mark Clark of the Black Panther Party, but because of the way the people responded to remember these freedom fighters after such time.

The evening before Human Rights Watch expert on Rwanda Alison Des Forges' critical quote on the secret deal worked out between Rwanda's murderous U.S.-backed President Paul Kagame and Congolese President Joseph Kabila appeared in the Washington Post, Des Forges died in a the fiery crash of Continental Flight 3407.

We're leading off the relaunch of SFBayView.com with an array of news and views about the foment at KPFA since police brutalized Nadra Foster, a 12-year unpaid programmer and Black single mom, inside the station after they were called by management and about KPFA's retaliation against Minister of Information and Bay View Associate Editor JR Valrey for covering it.