The war on terror, a war on all people

The presentation by the former member of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Black Liberation Army (BLA), Dhoruba al-Mujahid bin Wahad, will examine current global power structures and what they imply for the future.  Mr. bin Wahad’s expertise is rooted in his struggle against white supremacy, which yields particular insights into the dynamics below surface development such as the military penetration and occupation of the Sahel and other regions by U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the European Union Training Mission (EUTM) in Mali, NATO’s forward strategy in Afghanistan and the Arab world, as well as the traditional US policy of promoting military coups in Latin America. Such developments are visible to the attentive observer, but in fact are widely ignored even though they are the essential prerequisites for the establishment of the new “terms of trade” that will allow the re-colonization of the global South. Key parts of these “terms of trade” are Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), the maintenance of the currency of the Financial Community of Africa (CFA franc), and the strategic control of oil in the Arab world.

These policies have crucial but very different impacts on world regions. For the global north (USA, Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia), they serve as a guarantee of prosperity while profit rates fall in the final phases of capitalism. For the global south, they ensure destruction and impoverishment of people, societies and institutions. These military measures for penetration, economic control, and exploitation require a policy of consensus within the rich north. We, as citizens or as civil societies (in Gramsci’s sense) of the north, must consent to institutionalized racism here and the war-on-terror there. The systemic dehumanization of black people through US American cops using public lethal violence is the racist equivalent of the war against the global south. Just like the persecution, arrest and drowning of refugees in the EU and at the borders of the EU.

Dhoruba bin Wahad tears the left-liberal mask off the faces of our ruling elites. He confronts us with our knowledge and complicity. He calls for open-heart surgery on our body politic to help find our way back to our own real interests, to community and to solidarity.  Just as his political practice was and is concrete, so is his political perspective. He will outline the situation in Bolivia and Venezuela, the actual policies of the US Administration and their allies, as well as the deployment of the European and US armies from Mauritania to Somalia. He will ask us to participate in the establishment a united front against fascism.  Regardless of ideological and religious differences, of diverse identities and philosophies, he demands that we unite to stop the common enemy. As George L. Jackson wrote:

“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”