Angelo Braxton Herndon was a communist labor organizer/author who was arrested in 1932 convicted of a insurrection in Atlanta Georgia when he was arrested conducting a meeting police declared in his possession of inflammatory pamphlets advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government in 18 southern states the seizure of Land belonging to whites and secession from the United States with the establishment of an Independent Black Belt Nation for Blacks in the southeastern United States including Georgia.
Herndon stated ” We demand that the land of the southern white landlords for years tilled by the negro tenant farmers be confiscated and turned over to negroes the pamphlet read “
Angelo Herndon and 17 other Communist were arrested under the insurrection laws of 1807 and 1866 of Georgia
New Afrikan has been used since 1968 as a term for identification of Afrikans in amerika who descend from those enslaved across 246 years of colonial bondage (amerikan chattel slavery 1619-1865).
It emerged from the ‘Black’ Government Conference held in Detroit that concluded with the founding of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (PG-RNA). The popular use of ‘Black’ was assuming a more prominent place in the 1960s as many moved away from the use of ‘Negro’ as an identifier.
Yet, as the liberation struggle wrestled with the reality of our being a nation, many understood that while a color (black) might be a convenient identifier in a ‘racially’-charged social environment, it was inadequate for the IDENTITY of a people aspiring to international recognition as a NATION in pursuit of land and self-government.
Resultingly, the diverse group of nationalists — including a few folks who We popularly know and respect for their work, including Betty Shabazz, Jamil Al-Amin, Queen Mother Audley Moore, Imari Obadele, Milton Henry, and others — who attended the conference collectively put forward NEW AFRIKAN as the term that best characterized our NATIONAL IDENTITY… indeed, our struggle aims to advance a NEW kind of Afrikan with the intention to forge a NEW SOCIETY that is “a better life, a better station for human kind, a surer harmony with the forces of life in the universe.”
New Afrikan as an identity is political and historical but has no religious connotations. It includes and embraces all Afrikan descendants of enslaved ancestors in the u.s. And, according to the New Afrikan Code of Umoja, the constitution of the PG-RNA, other Afrikans, whether from the Caribbean, Continent or elsewhere are fully able and welcome to be naturalized as citizens if they wish and align with the values and trajectory of the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM).
i said all this to really say, i am tired of saying “New Afrikan (Black)”. We are New Afrikan (period).
Let’s continue forward with our lofty ambition for a liberated and independent New Afrikan Nation, and establish the Republic of New Afrika. (It begins with our desire for it. Do you want it?)
About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Madeleine G. Kalb is author of the forthcoming book ”The Congo Cables: From Eisenhower to Kennedy,” from which this article is adapted. By Madeleine G. Kalb On Sept. 19, 1960, the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief in Leopoldville, capital of the newly independent Congo, received a message through a top-secret channel from his superiors in Washington. Someone from headquarters calling himself ”Joe from Paris” would be arriving with instructions for an urgent mission. No further details were provided. The station chief was cautioned not to discuss the message with anyone.
”Joe” arrived a week later. He proved to be the C.I.A.’s top scientist, and he came equipped with a kit containing an exotic poison designed to produce a fatal disease indigenous to the area. This lethal substance, he informed the station chief, was meant for Patrice Lumumba, the recently ousted pro-Soviet Prime Minister of the Congo, who had a good chance of returning to power.
The poison, the scientist said, was somehow to be slipped into Lumumba’s food, or perhaps into his toothpaste. Poison was not the only acceptable method; any form of assassination would do, so long as it could not be traced back to the United States Government. Pointing out that assassination was not exactly a common C.I.A. tactic, the station chief asked who had authorized the assignment. The scientist indicated that the order had come from the ”highest authority” – from Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States.
Twenty years have passed since this bizarre plot against the life of Patrice Lumumba wound its way to an unexpected denouement in the back regions of the Congo and the front pages of the world, but the issues it was ultimately to raise for the American people remain highly relevant – and more so today than at any time during the past five years. For reasons it deems vital to national security, the Reagan Administration wants to remove the restrictions that were placed on the C.I.A. as a result of the investigation conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities, under the chairmanship of Senator Frank Church, in 1975. The committee, after extensive closed hearings, revealed in its report that the C.I.A. had plotted to assassinate Lumumba and several other foreign leaders and had engaged in a variety of other illegal activities at home and abroad – all this under four Presidents (two Republicans and two Democrats).
Congress, reflecting the public mood, established permanent Intelligence Committees in the House and Senate, which were to be informed in advance of the C.I.A.’s covert overseas operations. President Ford issued an executive order, worked out in consultation with the two new committees and the C.I.A., sharply limiting the agency’s activities at home. Under this order, renewed by President Carter, the C.I.A. could no longer conduct covert operations – such as wiretaps, surreptitious entry, opening of mail and infiltration of domestic organizations – within the United States.
Officials of the Reagan Administration, who are now in the process of modifying the executive order, argue that these restrictions hamper the C.I.A.’s ability to monitor and counter the worldwide upsurge of terrorism, which they contend has been financed and encouraged by the Soviet Union and its allies. They want to let the C.I.A. resume covert operations in the United States, when deemed necessary for carrying out the agency’s tasks abroad. They also support the C.I.A.’s efforts to weaken existing Congressional controls over its covert operations in foreign countries.
Others, including the C.I.A.’s critics, warn that if these restraints are loosened, the United States may well find itself slipping back to the situation that prevailed in the 1960’s, when the agency was virtually unbridled, when assassination of inconvenient foreign political figures was an acceptable technique, and when top officials cultivated a deliberate fuzziness that obscured the line of command from the President to the Director of Central Intelligence and on down to the operatives in the field. These critics fear that if the C.I.A. is given too much leeway in the means it employs, it may once again be tempted to interpret a President’s wishes in a way that will damage the good name and long-range interests of the United States.
The plot against Lumumba is a classic example of American policy out of control – an assassination attempt launched by the C.I.A. without any known record of a Presidential order, merely on the assumption, which may or may not have been correct, that this was what the President wanted. The story of the plot, largely buried in the voluminous report of the Church committee, and now amplified by many hitherto classified cables, merits a searching examination before the safeguards now in effect are discarded as no longer necessary. n July 27, 1960, Washington was host to an unusual visitor. Nowadays, with some 50 independent African states active on the world stage, it is routine for an African Prime Minister to call on an American Secretary of State, but two decades ago the arrival of the leader of a brand-new African republic was a novel and intriguing event – particularly when the Prime Minister was as controversial as this one.
Tall, thin, intense, his eyes flashing behind his spectacles, Patrice Lumumba was a spellbinding orator who had created a nationalist party and had led it to victory in the Congo’s first election. Even before the former Belgian Congo became independent on June 30, 1960, he had figured in the C.I.A.’s reports as a radical who had accepted money from the Belgian Communist Party, appointed a leftist Cabinet and hinted that he might accept Soviet offers of financial aid. But there was no sense of urgency in Washington until two weeks after independence, when Belgian troops moved in to quell a Congolese mutiny against Belgian officers still holding their army posts and Lumumba appealed to the Soviet Union for military assistance against Belgian ”imperialist aggression.”
To Allen W. Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence and brother of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who had died in office the previous year, this was enough to make Lumumba ”a Castro, or worse.” At a meeting of the National Security Council on July 21, Allen Dulles described Lumumba’s background as ”harrowing.” ”It is safe,” he said, ”to go on the assumption that Lumumba has been bought by the Communists; this also, however, fits with his own orientation.”
At the State Department, on the other hand, top officials were not convinced that Lumumba was a Communist and thought it might be possible to exert a moderating influence on him. When he came to New York for a meeting with United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, they invited him to Washington. As Under Secretary of State Douglas Dillon was to testify before the Church committee 15 years later, ”We hoped to see him and see what we could do to come to a better understanding with him.”
Both for Lumumba and the United States, it was a decisive encounter. The new Secretary of State, Christian Herter, received him, and spent a frustrating half-hour trying to persuade him to rely exclusively on the United Nations and refrain from calling on outside powers for assistance. His arguments fell on deaf ears. Dillon, who was present at the meeting, testified that Lumumba had struck him and Herter as an ”irrational, almost psychotic personality.” ”The impression that was left,” Dillon said, ”was … very bad, that this was an individual whom it was impossible to deal with. And the feelings of the Government as a result of this sharpened very considerably at that time.”
On Aug. 1, Eisenhower presided at a National Security Council meeting at the Summer White House in Newport, R.I. The chief topic of discussion was the Congo. The Joint Chiefs were concerned about the possibility of Belgium’s bases in the Congo falling into Soviet hands. The council decided that the United States should be prepared ”at any time to take appropriate military action to prevent or defeat Soviet military intervention in the Congo.”
It was at about this time, according to Dillon, that the possibility of assassinating Lumumba came up. The idea was broached at a Pentagon meeting he attended, along with representatives of the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the C.I.A. As Dillon was to testify, ”a question regarding the possibility of an assassination attempt against Lumumba was briefly raised,” only to be ”turned off by the C.I.A.” The C.I.A. people present seemed reluctant to discuss the subject – not, Dillon believed, for any ”moral” reason but because they either regarded the notion as unfeasible or thought the group was ”too large for such a sensitive discussion.” While this conference, in his opinion, ”could not have served as authorization for an actual assassi-nation effort against Lumumba,” the C.I.A. officials ”could have decided they wanted to develop the capability … just by knowing the concern that everyone had about Lumumba.”
By the middle of August, the American strategy of using the United Nations to prevent Lumumba from turning to the Soviet Union was in trouble. Lumumba had broken relations with the Secretary General, claiming that Hammarskjold had yielded to Western pressure in refusing to suppress the Belgian-backed secession of mineral-rich Katanga Province, and he was threatening to expel the United Nations peacekeeping force. From Leopoldville, the C.I.A. station chief, Lawrence Devlin, summed up the situation in alarming terms:
”Embassy and station believe Congo experiencing classic Communist effort take over government. Many forces at work here: Soviets … Communist party, etc. Although difficult determine major influencing factors to predict outcome struggle for power, decisive period not far off. Whether or not Lumumba actually Commie or just playing Commie game to assist his solidifying power, anti-West forces rapidly increasing power Congo and there may be little time left in which take action avoid another Cuba.”
To counter this threat, Devlin proposed an operation aimed at ”replacing Lumumba with pro-Western group.” Bronson Tweedy, head of the African division of the C.I.A.’s clandestine services, replied that he was seeking State Department approval.
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The same day, C.I.A. and State Department officials raised the Congo issue with President Eisenhower at a meeting of the National Security Council. According to the minutes of the meeting, Dillon said it was essential to prevent Lumumba from forcing the United Nations contingent out of the Congo: ”The elimination of the U.N. would be a disaster which, Secretary Dillon stated, we should do everything we could to prevent. If the U.N. were forced out, we might be faced by a situation where the Soviets intervened by invitation of the Congo.” Dillon said Lumumba was serving the Soviet Union’s purposes; Dulles said Lumumba was in Soviet pay.
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Eisenhower’s reaction, the minutes made clear, was a forceful one: ”The President said that the possibility the U.N. would be forced out was simply inconceivable. We should keep the U.N. in the Congo even if we had to ask for European troops to do it. We should do so even if such action was used by the Soviets as the basis for starting a fight.”
Dillon commented that that was how the State Department saw it, but that Hammarskjold and Henry Cabot Lodge, the American Ambassador to the United Nations, doubted the world body could keep its force in the Congo if the Congo put up determined opposition to its presence.
”In response, the President stated that Mr. Lodge was wrong to this extent – we were talking of one man forcing us out of the Congo; of Lumumba supported by the Soviets. There was no indication, the President stated, that the Congolese did not want U.N. support and the maintenance of order. Secretary Dillon reiterated that this was State’s feeling about the matter. The situation that would be created by a U.N. withdrawal was altogether too ghastly to contemplate.”
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Among those present at the meeting was a middle-level official, Robert H. Johnson, a member of the National Security Council staff, and in l975 he testified before the Church committee as follows:
”At some time during that discussion, President Eisenhower said something – I can no longer remember his words – that came across to me as an order for the assassination of Lumumba…. There was no discussion; the meeting simply moved on. I remember my sense of that moment quite clearly because the President’s statement came as a great shock to me.”
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Johnson added that ”in thinking about the incident more recently” he had ”had some doubts” about the accuracy of his impression; it was possible that what he had heard was an order for ”political action” against Lumumba. Yet on further reflection, he said, he went back to feeling that his initial impression was correct. The minutes of the meeting did not contain any such assassination order, but that did not prove anything one way or the other, in Johnson’s view. Under the procedures then in effect, he explained, a Presidential order of such a nature would either have been omitted from the minutes or ”handled through some kind of euphemism.”
The testimony of the other participants in the meeting was less dramatic. Marion Boggs, the council’s acting executive secretary, could not remember hearing the President say anything that ”could be interpreted as favoring action by the United States to bring about the assassination of Lumumba.” Dillon said he did not recall a ”clear-cut order” by Eisenhower for the assassination of Lumumba, but the circumstances themselves, he added, were ambiguous:
”It could have been – in view of this feeling of everybody that Lumumba was (a) very difficult if not impossible person to deal with, and was dangerous to the peace and safety of the world – that the President expressed himself, ‘We will have to do whatever is necessary to get rid of him.’ I don’t know that I would have taken that as a clear-cut order, as Mr. Johnson apparently did. And I think perhaps others present may have interpreted it in other ways.” For instance, he said, it would be ”perfectly plausible” to assume that Dulles would have taken such Presidential language as ”implicit authorization” to proceed with an assassination plan. ”(Dulles) felt very strongly that we should not involve the President directly in things of this nature,” Dillon said. ”And he was perfectly willing to take the responsibility personally.”
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In any case, the next recorded step was a cable sent to Devlin in Leopoldville the following day by Richard Bissell, the C.I.A.’s Deputy Director for Plans. Bissell, who was in charge of covert operations, authorized the station chief to proceed with his scheme for replacing Lumumba with a pro-Western group. Devlin, two days later, reported discouraging news: Anti-Lumumba leaders had approached the President of the Congo, Joseph Kasavubu, with a ”plan to assassinate Lumumba,” but Kasavubu had refused, explaining that he was reluctant to resort to violence and that there was no other leader of ”sufficient stature to replace Lumumba.”
At the same time, the American Ambassador in Leopoldville, Clare Timberlake, reported that about 100 Soviet and Czechoslovak ”technicians” had arrived in the Congo and that more were expected shortly. Lodge reported from New York that United Nations sources were ”worried about arms from ‘certain quarters’ being imported through the (Leopoldville) airport under guise of food consignments.” The American Embassy in Athens reported that the Soviet Government had asked permission for 10 Russian cargo planes carrying food to Leopoldville to overfly Greece or land for refueling. Meanwhile, emboldened by the prospect of Soviet military aid, Lumumba started to move his troops south, in preparation for an assault on secessionist Katanga.
As these reports arrived in Washington, there was a growing sense of alarm in the top echelons of the State Department and the White House. On Aug. 25, Gordon Gray, the President’s special assistant for national security, attended a meeting of the Special Group, a subcommittee of the National Security Council responsible for the planning of covert operations. Gray listened with interest as a C.I.A. representative, Thomas Parrott, outlined a plan to work through certain Congolese labor groups and arrange a vote of no confidence in Lumumba in the Congolese Senate. As stated in the minutes of the meeting, Gray interjected that ”his associates had expressed extremely strong feelings on the necessity for very straightforward action in this situation, and he wondered whether the plans as outlined were sufficient to accomplish this.”
Purely political intrigue against Lumumba was not, apparently, what the White House had in mind. Both Gray and Parrott told the Church committee that Gray’s reference to his ”associates” was a euphemism for the President, a way of maintaining the convention of ”plausible deniability” – the ability to deny at some later time that the President had had any knowledge of the matter under discussion. Dulles, according to the minutes of the Special Group meeting, replied that he had taken the associates’ views seriously and had every intention of proceeding as vigorously as he could, but that he had to interpret such instructions ”within the bounds of necessity and capability.” It was agreed that ”planning for the Congo would not necessarily rule out ‘consideration’ of any particular kind of activity which might contribute to getting rid of Lumumba.”
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None of the participants, in their subsequent testimony, remembered hearing assassination mentioned. But John N. Irwin II, Assistant Secretary of Defense, thought the reference to ”getting rid of Lumumba” was broad enough to cover that option. Dillon, who had not been at the meeting, said the minutes indicated that ”assassination was within bounds.” Bissell was even more specific:
”When you use the language that no particular means were ruled out, that is obviously what it meant, and it meant that to everybody in the room. … You don’t use language of that kind except to mean, in effect, the Director is being told, get rid of the guy, and if you have to use extreme means up to and including assassination, go ahead.”
In effect, Bissell testified, Dulles was being given a message by the President through Gray. The C.I.A. Director was obviously under pressure to produce results. The very next day he sent Devlin a cable stressing the view ”in high quarters here” that Lumumba’s ”removal must be an urgent and prime objective.” He gave Devlin still ”wider authority” to replace Lumumba with a pro-Western group, ”including even more aggressive action if it can remain covert,” and authorized expenditure of up to $100,000 ”to carry out any crash programs on which you do not have the opportunity to consult headquarters.” The implications of this ”wider authority” were spelled out by Bissell to Tweedy, the chief of his African division. Tweedy described their conversation as follows: ”What Mr. Bissell was saying to me was that there was agreement, policy agreement, in Washington that Lumumba must be removed from the position of control and influence in the Congo … and that among the possibilities of that elimination was indeed assassination.”
It was now that the C.I.A.’s top scientist was brought into play. His name was Sidney Gottlieb, he was Bissell’s Special Assistant for Scientific Matters, and he was asked by his superior to prepare biological materials and have them ready on short notice for possible use in the assassination of an unspecified African leader, ”in case the decision was to go ahead.” According to Gottlieb’s testimony, Bissell told him he ”had direction from the highest authority … for getting into that kind of operation”; Gottlieb assumed he was referring to the President.
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The scientist checked with the Army Chemical Corps at Fort Detrick, Md., on substances that would ”either kill the individual or incapacitate him so severely that he would be out of action,” and he chose one that ”was supposed to produce a disease that was … indigenous to that area (of Africa) and that could be fatal.” He also assembled some ”accessory materials,” such as hypodermic needles, rubber gloves and gauze masks. At about that time, he was told that the African leader in question was Lumumba, that it had been decided to go ahead, and that he was to take his deadly package to Leopoldville.
By the time he arrived there in September, the situation in the Congo had changed. Disgusted by Lumumba’s disastrous military campaign, which had degenerated into a massacre of more than 1,000 civilians, and alarmed by his use of Soviet planes, trucks, weapons and military advisers, President Kasavubu had dismissed the Prime Minister. When Lumumba persuaded Parliament to reverse the dismissal, the Americans and their allies persuaded a young colonel named Joseph Mobutu, the No. 2 man in the army, to take control. (Mobutu is now President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, as the Congo was renamed in 1971.) Colonel Mobutu promptly ousted all the politicians and expelled the Soviet and Czechoslovak diplomats, along with the military advisers and their equipment. Yet Devlin in his cables put little stock in the stability of the new regime. He feared that the situation could be reversed at any moment, with Lumumba returning to power and inviting the Russians back in.
”Only solution,” he concluded, ”is to remove him from scene soonest.” Dulles agreed. He told Eisenhower on Sept. 21 that the ”danger of Soviet influence” was still present in the Congo and that Lumumba ”remained a grave danger as long as he was not disposed of.”
Five days later, Gottlieb (”Joe from Paris”) arrived in Leopoldville with his poison kit. Ironically, the C.I.A. took its first concrete step toward the assassination of Lumumba three weeks after he was removed as Prime Minister, 12 days after Mobutu seized power and nine days after the expulsion of the Soviet diplomats and military advisers, whose arrival in Leopoldville had caused the panic in Washington and had set the assassination plot in motion.
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When Gottlieb reported to Devlin on his mission, the station chief, according to his later testimony, had an ”emotional reaction of great surprise.” As he put it:
”I looked upon the Agency as an executive arm of the Presidency….Therefore, I suppose I thought that it was an order issued in due form from an authorized authority. On the other hand, I looked at it as a kind of operation that I could do without, that I thought that probably the Agency and the U.S. government could get along without.
”I didn’t regard Lumumba as the kind of person who was going to bring on World War III. I might have had a somewhat different attitude if I thought that one man could bring on World War III and result in the deaths of millions of people or something, but I didn’t see him in that light. I saw him as a danger to the political position of the United States in Africa, but nothing more than that.”
Devlin also had practical objections to the assassination plot: ”I looked on it as a pretty wild scheme professionally…. I explored it, but I doubt that I ever really expected to carry it out.” Yet, like a good bureaucrat, he seems to have kept these doubts to himself, for he told headquarters that he and Gottlieb were on the ”same wavelength,” and he recommended a number of exploratory steps, such as infiltrating Lumumba’s entourage. If headquarters approved, he would instruct one of his agents to ”take refuge with Big Brother” (Lumumba) and ”brush up details to razor edge.” Headquarters told him to go ahead.
Over the next two months, Devlin sent a steady stream of progress reports to Washington through a top-secret channel set up for the assassination project. But, although he emphasized the need for haste, he apparently still had reservations about the scheme, for he kept stalling about putting it into effect. Finally, on Oct. 5, Gottlieb left Leopoldville, later recalling that he dumped the poison in the Congo River before his departure because it was ”not refrigerated and unstable” and was probably no longer sufficiently ”reliable.”
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By mid-October, headquarters was impatient. Tweedy asked Devlin what he thought of the idea of sending a senior C.I.A. officer to Leopoldville to concentrate on the assassination project, in view of the demands placed on Devlin by his other commitments. Tweedy also suggested using a ”commando type group” to abduct Lumumba from the residence where he was under the protection of United Nations troops. Devlin thought that sending another man was an ”excellent idea.” As for alternative ways of disposing of Lumumba, he recommended that a ”high-powered foreign-make rifle with telescopic scope and silencer” be sent to him by diplomatic pouch. ”Hunting good here,” he cabled cryptically, ”when lights right.”
The senior case officer selected for the task of getting the assassination project unstuck had his own reservations about the idea. The official, Justin O’Donnell, testified before the Church committee that he was called in by Bissell in mid-October and was asked to proceed to the Congo to ”eliminate Lumumba.” ”I told him that I would absolutely not have any part of killing Lumumba,” he said. However, O’Donnell was willing to go to Leopoldville and try to ”neutralize” Lumumba ”as a political factor.” As he explained in his testimony, ”I wanted . . . to get him out, to trick him out, if I could, and then turn him over … to the legal authorities and let him stand trial.” He had ”no compunction” about handing Lumumba over for trial by a ”jury of his peers,” although he realized there was a ”very, very high probability” that he would be sentenced to death.
O’Donnell arrived in Leopoldville on Nov. 3. But he never had a chance to implement his plan to lure Lumumba out. Lumumba slipped away of his own accord on Nov. 27, after a United Nations vote to seat Kasavubu’s delegation rather than his own. Fearing that he would lose the protection of the United Nations force, Lumumba headed for his own stronghold of Stanleyville, 1,000 miles to the east. He was arrested on the way by Colonel Mobutu’s soldiers and was imprisoned in Thysville, 90 miles from Leopoldville.
On Jan. 13, 1961, the Thysville garrison mutinied, demanding higher pay and threatening to put Lumumba back in power. Devlin sent an alarming cable to Washington: ”Station and embassy believe present government may fall within few days. Result would almost certainly be chaos and return (of Lumumba) to power.” He added: ”Refusal to take drastic steps at this time will lead to defeat of (U.S.) policy in Congo.”
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The next day, Devlin was informed that Mobutu was going to transfer Lumumba to a prison in a safer place. Three days later, Lumumba was flown to the province of Katanga, domain of his archenemy, the provincial leader Moise Tshombe. As he stumbled off the plane in the provincial capital of Elisabethville, blindfolded, his hands bound behind his back, he was kicked and beaten by Katangan soldiers, thrown into a jeep and driven off.
For the next few weeks, Lumumba’s whereabouts were a matter of confusion and uncertainty. Two days after he was flown to Katanga, the C.I.A. station in Elisabethville cabled headquarters: ”Thanks for Patrice. If we had known he was coming we would have baked a snake.” On Feb. 13, the Katangan authorities announced that he had escaped; three days later they said he had been captured and killed by Congolese tribesmen. No one believed them. A United Nations investigation, while failing to establish the exact circumstances of Lumumba’s death, concluded that he had been murdered by Katangan officials and Belgian mercenaries on the night of Jan. 17, immediately after his arrival in Elisabethville, with Tshombe’s personal participation or approval.
What was the role of the C.I.A. in Lumumba’s death? What was the role of President Eisenhower? The C.I.A. has stated that it had no hand in Lumumba’s murder. But a review of the evidence suggests that over a period of four months American officials at the Embassy and the C.I.A. station in Leopoldville encouraged Lumumba’s Congolese opponents to eliminate him before he turned the tables on them and invited the Russians back to the Congo. These officials were following a policy that had been set the previous summer, when Allen Dulles compared Lumumba to Fidel Castro and President Eisenhower agreed he was a threat to world peace. They were to get rid of Lumumba one way or another. If murder ordered by the United States Government and carried out by a C.I.A.-hired assassin was acceptable, then murder carried out by Lumumba’s Congolese opponents, with the help of Belgian mercenaries, was not going to offend anyone’s sensibilities.
As for the second question -did President Eisenhower actually order Lumumba’s assassination? – there has been considerable controversy. Robert Johnson thought he did – implicitly. Douglas Dillon was not so sure. Several officials on President Eisenhower’s staff denied knowledge of any Presidential consideration of assassination during their tenure. The Church committee found ”reasonable inference” that the plot against Lumumba had been authorized by Eisenhower, though, because of the ambiguity of the evidence, it did not reach a conclusive finding to that effect.
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But the people in charge of ”dirty tricks,” such as assassinations – from Allen Dulles right on down to Richard Bissell, Bronson Tweedy, the scientist who supplied the poison and the resourceful station chief who was certain there was a better way to dispose of Lumumba (and turned out to be right) – these people had no doubt they were acting on Presidential orders.
The risk we court in any return to the unfettered system of the past is thus twofold. We may well be recreating situations in which operations like assassination plots can go forward without any clear Presidential authority and control. And, in that atmosphere, the best-intentioned of Presidents may be tempted once again to thrust unpleasant problems at the C.I.A. and look the other way, protected by the doctrine of ”plausible deniability,” counting on the agency to handle the matter discreetly without bothering him with details. We should be very sure, before we undo the reforms of recent years, that we want that system back.
#Dagara #Healing 🌍🇧🇫 The Indigenous Dagara Medicine Wheel cosmology and five element rituals of the Dagara. The five elements are Fire (red, south), Water (blue, north), Earth (yellow, centre), Mineral (white, west) and Nature (green, east).
Fire 🔥 the original element is seen as a most potent connection to the spirit world. It is puts us back on our spiritual track by consuming that which stands between us and our purpose.
Water 🌊 brings cleansing, reconciliation, purification and peace-making.
Earth 🌍 the central element, is the mother who is inviting us to come home to community and the earth, our true home.
Mineral 🪨 is the elemental energy that invites us to remember, through ritual, who we are and why we are here.
Nature 🌳 asks us to open to transformation in order to realise our true and authentic selves.
About the ArchiveThis is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
Monster The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member By Sanyika Shakur, a k a Monster Kody Scott 383 pages. The Atlantic Monthly Press. $22.
Eldridge Cleaver once described the fierce, liberating power that comes from penetrating “one’s own little world” with language, the power that comes from “combining the alphabet with the volatile elements” of one’s soul. It’s a power possessed by his own 1968 book, “Soul on Ice,” and it’s also a power radiated with dangerous aplomb by Sanyika Shakur’s disturbing new book, “Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member.”
Like Mr. Cleaver, Mr. Shakur, named Kody Scott when he was born in 1963, went to school in jail, teaching himself literature, history and philosophy. His memoir too aspires to tell the story of one man’s painful spiritual journey from violence toward transcendence. It is also a shockingly raw, frightening portrait of gang life in South-Central Los Angeles today, a book that sheds harsh new light on the violence that erupted a year ago after the Rodney G. King verdict.
Mr. Shakur, who was profiled in “Do or Die,” Leon Bing’s 1991 book on gangs, was known on the streets of South-Central as Monster, and as his account here chillingly demonstrates, the moniker was well deserved. Mr. Shakur was initiated into the Eight Trays, a “set” of the Crip gang based in his neighborhood, at the age of 11. His initiation rite included shooting several members of the rival Blood gang. At 13, he says, he robbed a man and stomped his face so badly that the police told bystanders the person responsible for the crime was a “monster.”
At 15 he was arrested for car-jacking and assault. At 16 he was ambushed by rival gang members and shot six times. In the ensuing years, he was convicted of armed robbery, mayhem and possession of an AK-47 assault rifle. He is now serving a seven-year sentence in Pelican Bay State Prison in Northern California for beating a crack dealer.
“In a perverted sort of way I enjoyed being Monster Kody,” he writes. “I lived for the power surge of playing God, having the power of life and death in my hands. Nothing I knew of could compare with riding in a car with three other homeboys with guns, knowing that they were as deadly and courageous as I was. To me, at that time in my life, this was power.”
As Mr. Shakur tells it, the war in South-Central is not only between the two major gangs, the Crips and the Bloods (who agreed to a cease-fire after the Rodney King riots), but between different neighborhood “sets” within each gang. Indeed, the No. 1 enemy of Mr. Shakur’s set, the Eight Trays, was another Crip set, the Rollin’ Sixties. During the 80’s, Mr. Shakur recalls, terrible atrocities were committed by both sets. When the Rollin’ Sixties kidnapped, raped and stabbed the sister of an Eight Tray member, the Eight Trays retaliated by ambushing a rising Sixties member. After beating him into submission, Mr. Shakur reports, they chopped off both his arms with machetes, leaving him as “a walking reminder” of their commitment to revenge.
In fact, disfigurement and early death are givens in the gang world of South-Central. This is a world in which you can get killed crossing the street into another set’s territory, a world in which a small infraction, like stepping on someone’s shoes, is regarded as a capital offense. “Regardless of the condition of the shoes,” Mr. Shakur writes, “the underlying factor that usually got you killed was the principle. The principle is respect, a linchpin critical to relations between all people but magnified by 30 in the ghettos and slums across America.”
For youths from fractured homes, like Mr. Shakur’s, one’s set becomes one’s family, one’s religion, one’s profession. Joining a gang in South-Central Los Angeles, Mr. Shakur says, is “the equivalent of growing up in Grosse Pointe, Mich., and going to college: everyone does it.”
To Mr. Shakur, who left school after the sixth grade, gangbanging (engaging in gang activities) was a career that promised the chance for advancement, distinction and glory, and as a teen-ager, he says, he served his set with all the ardor and dedication of an ambitious young “corporate executive planning a hostile takeover.” Eager to achieve the esteemed title O.G. (Original Gangster), he put in long hours on the streets, trying to at least get off a few shots at an enemy gang member, before going home to watch “The Benny Hill Show” on television.
“Only when I had put work in could I feel good that day, otherwise I couldn’t sleep,” he writes. “Work does not always constitute shooting someone, though this is the ultimate. Anything from wallbangin’ (writing your set name on a wall, advertising) to spitting on someone to fighting — it’s all work. And I was a hard worker.”
Gangbanging, of course, is an occupation with two predictable destinations: death and prison, and Mr. Shakur says he knew “prison loomed in my future like wisdom teeth: if you lived long enough you got them.” Like many others, he says, he regarded the months in San Quentin and Folsom as yet another stepping stone toward manhood, another test of nerve and street smarts and will. His years there would galvanize his legend on the streets as a “ghetto star,” but they would also eventually propel him toward a renunciation of gang life, a realization that “to continue banging would be a betrayal first of my children.” He married his longtime girlfriend Tamu, broke with his old set, joined a black nationalist group called the New Afrikan Independence Movement, pledged himself to the eradication of the causes of gangsterism and traded in his old name Monster for Sanyika, an African name that means unifier, gatherer of his people.
No doubt “Monster” will be denounced for its sensationalism. Its cover features a menacing photo of Mr. Shakur in his gang days wielding a semi-automatic gun. And it will doubtless be read by some for its graphic, gut-wrenching descriptions of gang violence.
Such matters, however, should not deter serious readers interested in trying to understand the endemic social conditions underlying last year’s Los Angeles riots. Set down in quick, matter-of-fact prose, “Monster” provides a shockingly intimate picture of gang life in South-Central. Although the book is inconsistently edited and its tone is strangely uneven, the volume attests not only to Mr. Shakur’s journalistic eye for observation, but also to his novelistic skills as a story-teller, an ear for street language that’s as perfectly pitched as Richard Price’s, a feeling for character and status potentially as rich as Tom Wolfe’s. This is a startling and galvanic book.
The Igbo progenitors left behind theories, concepts, philosophies laced with principles that cut across various fields, sociocultural fields, anthropology, astronomy, psychology, natural sciences, ethics etc. These theories and their principles were mostly stored, preserved and saved in Igbo language and artefacts. Only those who pay attention to Igbo language without being ashamed of it, and those who meticulously study and analyse the artefacts without idolising and demonising them can decode to understand and innerstand the message and knowledge therein.
Independent of postcolonial and Anglicised meanings, mistranslations and misinterpretations: 1) Chi na Eke or Eke na Chi 2) Oma na Chi 3) Ala/Ani/Ana 4) Anyanwu (Anya na adighi anwu anwu) 5) Ifejioku (Ife Ji Oku) 6) Njoku (Nji Oku) 7) Okummou (Oku Muo) 8 ) Agwu (Agwu Isi) 9) Ngwu 10) Ogwugwu 11) Amadioha 12) Ekwensu 13 Ikenga
These and many more are what I consider the Igbo libraries where Igbo worldview, theories, concepts and principles on various fields were saved and preserved, only when you open your mind and pay attention would you begin to grasp them. Today let’s talk a little about Ikenga.
WHAT IS IKENGA?
Literary Meaning: In Igbo lexicon, words mostly come in two or more syllables, complimenting each other to drive home the desired meaning. So on that light, Ikenga is a combination of two words.
1)#IKE: meaning, Energy/Force/Power/Strength
2)#NGA: This in Igbo means Place/Location (Like when Igbos say “Bia Nga” Come here, here in the sentence indicating where the speaker wants you to go) NGA, is also used as a word describing Movement or mobility (Eg: Ngaghari/Moving about. Kam Nga ahia/ let me GO to the market)
So Ikenga literarily and denotatively means #IKE_NJI_AGA 1) The Energy that Drives 2) The moving Force 3) A place of strength/Power
To most Igbos because their minds have been Christianised, anglicised, Europeanised and westernised, their knowledge and understanding of Ikenga is only limited to that ram-headed, two horned, aggressively looking statue, a graven imaged idol that has to be destroyed. They’ve failed to understand that Ikenga is an aspect of Igbo anthropological and psychological theory because Ikenga is our WILL POWER, THE ENERGY THAT DRIVES YOU TO SUCCEED IS IKENGA.
“Ikenga is the gut within us, it represents the human gut, the gut in our stomach is Ikenga. The word God derived from GUT, so having a Gut feeling is having a God feeling, and that gut to do things is ikenga. When someone tell you that you have a lot of guts, they’re saying your Ikenga is activated” (~ Ugo Nwanne)
Without the Ikenga energy principles, we will lack the WILL FORCE and energy drive to remain resolute, resilient and persistent to succeed. Without Ikenga we may not understand the essential elements of achievement. That extraordinary force that possesses a GOAL GETTER is the Ikenga energy. One of the most essential principles of Ikenga is that it teaches you that YOUR DESTINY AND SUCCESS IS IN YOUR OWN HAND, YOUR RIGHT HAND/BRAIN, HENCE ‘AKA IKENGA WU AKA NRI’ This is the reason why Ikenga statues always giving a right fist up. And scientifically the right hemisphere of the human brain is responsible for creativity, so the ability and energy force needed to create wealth and achieve success is ikenga in Igbo.
According to #Ugo_Nwanne “IKE-NGA (WILL-POWER / DRIVING-FORCE / WILL-MOTIF) Is The Character Of A Real IGBO Person. Quite Similar To The CHI Principles, But A Little Bit More Sophisticated. IKENGA BU OMUME ONYE IGBO. The Personality Of IGBO Is IKENGA. Ancient IGBO Shared The Sacred WILL Of IKENGA All Over Across Africa. In The Congo, IKENGA Is Called “DIKENGA”. The KOI-SAN People Of Namibia Call IKENGA “KAANG”. And EDO People Of Nigeria Call IKENGA, “IKEGOBO”. The IGBO Principles Of IKENGA Makes An Ordinary Man/Woman A GOD/GODDESS. The Kind Of Principles That Enlightens You That Your Destiny Is In Your Own Hands. Your Right Hand, In Particular. AKA IKENGA BU AKA NRI – The Right Hand/Right Brain Is The Spirit Of IKENGA”
And according to Oziọma Ọdịnanị “In Ọdịnanị Faith each man venerates his/her ikenga because creativity and wealth are the first spiritual. Your Ikenga is that aspect of your Chi that governs creativity, wealth creation and success and personal fulfilment. And it is one unique side of your CHI clearly set aside for your greatness. A man’s Ikenga, ‘the strength of his arm’, is that which inspires him towards greatness and personal fulfilment.
Your Ikenga may be a Passion you have for something, a drive or even a mentor whatever that lights up your spirit of success, that very thing which you believe that you are born to do”
IKENGA IS FEMALE TOO In the Primordial Igbo society, Ikenga shrine and statue appeared to be a statutory right for male members of the society, but the female counterparts had to earn the right to Ikenga cult, totem and shrine, that was way back in the days, mostly only titled women had Ikenga figure. But Man or woman Ikenga is the human gut, that energy that drives you to success, that force and will power that propel you to auto-transcend your limitations and achieve greatness is your Ikenga. And in our contemporary world, where women are breaking barriers and pushing boundaries, I’m confident to say, Ikenga is female too.
I think if it had come thus: 1) Aristotle’s theory of Ikenga 2) Plato’s Allegory of Ikenga 3) The Socratic Ikenga dialogue 4) Isaac Newton’s laws of Ikenga 5) The Darwinian Principles of Ikenga
Maybe our people would’ve loved it, studied it and even taught it in our schools. But it’s African, it’s Igbo, it was by our ancestors, so it’s either rubbish or demonic, whichever one we couldn’t care less.
Dear Igbos, when next your pastor tells you to bind every spirit of Ikenga, when you kneel down or raise your voice to do that, I put it to you, you’re doing yourself a great disservice.
May we achieve our goals and fulfil our destinies by our #Aka_Ikenga
HUMAN RIGHTS, THE RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION AND THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM
Munakata Takayuki
Human Rights are Universal Rights Shared by All Mankind
In recent years concern for human rights problems has heightened and policies of guaranteeing human rights are being developed. However, this development is due to the leadership of the advanced countries. Not all developing nations are actively dealing with human rights problems.
When the world human rights conference was convened in Vienna in 1993, the advanced nations asserted that “human rights are a universal concept applicable to the whole of mankind,” but the developing nations opposed this position, saying “the concept of human rights varies by region.” For historical events which caused considerable progress in human rights, one could mention the American Revolution and the French Revolution in the 18th century.
The American Declaration of Independence of 1776 states:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Also, in the midst of the French Revolution, the French constitutional convention adopted in 1789 the “Declaration of Human and Citizens’ Rights,” which states:
Men are born and exist free and with equal rights. The purpose of all political unions is to preserve men’s inalienable natural rights. These rights are freedom, ownership, security and opposition to repression. All principles of sovereignty reside in the citizens. Liberty means the ability essentially to take any actions without hurting others.
In these two Declarations human rights are deemed universal rights shared by the whole of mankind. However, the infringement of human rights such as discrimination against races and nationalities continued for many years both in post-independence America and in post-revolutionary France.
In the colonies, the ruler and the subjugated were divided by nationality, and the notion of universal human rights was completely ignored. The height of imperialism, when the advanced nations colonized most of Asia and Africa, was at the end of the 19th century, one century after American Independence and the French Revolution.
In the 20th century, human rights were mercilessly violated in various regions of the world due to wars and disturbances (including the two World Wars) and the advent of dictatorial regimes with credos of class discrimination or racial discrimination.
It was only after World War II that the notion of universal human rights became widespread based on retrospective understanding of the grievous historical reality.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. The preamble of this Declaration states:
…recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world….
It was declared that the affirmation of human rights as universal rights common to all mankind, regardless of any differences in race, national origin, religion and class, is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.
Furthermore, the International Covenant on Human Rights adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966 defined in detail the substance of human rights and also stipulated the obligations of each signatory state to promote the observance of human rights.
This International Covenant on Human Rights is divided into “International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights” (A Covenant) and “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights” (B Covenant). The language in Article 1 of both A Covenant and B Covenant shows the same “peoples’ right of self-determination.” Article 1, item 1 is as follows:
All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
Why is the peoples’ right of self-determination emphasized to this extent? Because if the right of self-determination of people as a group is not secured, then the basic right of each individual in the group will not be secured.
So let us consider the historical origin of the right of self-determination.
The Right of Self-determination and the Right to Freedom
I consider the origin of both the right of self-determination and the right to freedom to be the same thing.
The ancient Greeks were the first to reflect most deeply on freedom. As a result, ancient Greeks considered that nothing was as important as freedom and they invented a system of society called democracy to protect their freedom.
Why did the ancient Greeks deliberate over freedom? Perhaps because they were constantly exposed to the risk of losing it. At that time there were several hundred cities (polis) in Greece and the cities were incessantly at war with one another. The city was the state for the Greeks and wars never ceased due to conflicts of state interests. Naturally there were occasional wars with alien races but most of the fighting was among the Greeks themselves. When captured in a war, payment of a ransom would usually bring release. If unable to pay the ransom, the prisoner would be sold as a slave. Thus even a free person couldn’t tell when he might be reduced to the status of a slave.
Even among slaves, their circumstances varied. In the case of Athens, ordinary families owned only one or two slaves, so many of the slaves lived with the master or his family. Some slaves were treated as members of the family by a magnanimous master. Many slaves, however, received inhumane treatment.
For example, slaves who worked at mines were forced to labor strenuously in dangerous underground shafts. But quite often a slave would supervise these mining slaves. A slave who was entrusted by the master with the management of the mine would rule over many slaves and earn a high income. To do business with the mine, even a citizen had to please the manager-slave. Athens was a commercial metropolis and also one of the centers of world trade and businesses and trades thrived there. In many cases, a slave was appointed to manage the businesses and trades. Such slaves would control many other slaves and enjoy good wages. So more than a few slaves were richer than ordinary citizens and ruled over numerous underlings.
Observing such conditions, some citizens must have thought about the difference between themselves and slaves.
Even in the case of rich and somewhat powerful slaves, such privileges were given to them by their master. When the master changed his mind or when he was angered, a slave who had been acting as a manager might suddenly find himself working in the mine shaft or be demoted to a low class laborer in business or trade. In contrast, a citizen would not have his life style dictated by another even if he was poor. The ancient Greeks must have considered this the dissimilarity between slaves and free men.
Slaves have their life style decided by their master. Citizens who can determine their own lifestyle are free men. Therefore, I believe the origins of the right of self-determination and of the right to freedom are one and the same.
The ancient Greeks, who considered having or not having the right to freedom as the difference between free men and slaves, reasoned “even the pompous governor of Egypt or Syria who reigns over tens of thousands of troops and bureaucrats is nothing but a slave of the great king of Persia.” At that time Egypt and Syria took pride in their ancient civilizations and were wealthier than the whole of Greece. Still they were just a part of the Persian empire, then the world’s only superpower. No matter how great the wealth and power possessed by the governors, these were merely things bestowed by the great king of Persia. Once the governors aroused the displeasure of the great king, their heads were immediately chopped off. Thus the ancient Greeks called people who were ruled by a dictator “king’s subjects” and despised them, because unlike the Greeks who could determine their own way of life as free men, these people were all slaves.
In order for a people to determine their own way of life, it will be necessary for them to decide the laws and policies of their country by themselves. For example, if a country declares war on another, its citizens will be obligated to serve in the armed forces. However, if a people is compelled to risk their lives and fight due to a decision made by someone else, then such people do not have the right of self-determination. To ensure their own right of self-determination, a people must hold in their grasp the right to decide on laws and policies of their country. This is why the ancient Greeks created the democratic system.
Because the ancient Greeks deemed freedom precious above all and were proud to be living as free men, they resisted the invasion by the superpower Persia, proclaiming “liberty or death.” The Persian War was like a war between a gigantic elephant and a mouse. Miraculously the ancient Greeks beat back the Persian force and won the war. But for this historical event democracy would have been forgotten in human history and the Europeans would not have rediscovered democracy after the Renaissance.
The Need to Delineate Territory is Urgent
Many Hong Kong residents have escaped to foreign countries ever since the decision was made to return Hong Kong to China. Those who have decided to remain in Hong Kong are in mortal fear of Hong Kong’s reversion to China. When asked “what are you afraid of?” Hong Kong residents answer in unison “we worry about losing our freedom.” If the ancient Greeks had heard such a story, they would have been surprised and said: “So you thought you have had freedom till now? Have you been making by yourselves the laws of Hong Kong, which you must obey? Haven’t such laws been drafted by England and the governor? You were not even involved in the return of Hong Kong to China, an event which would control your fate. You people have been slaves of Great Britain. What you fear is actually not a loss of freedom, but your transfer from a lenient master to a cruel master.”
The example of Hong Kong shows vividly that the individual’s right of self-determination cannot be preserved when a people does not possess the right of self-determination as a group. The Taiwanese people have been suffering for 400 years because they have always been ruled by alien powers and have not been able to have the right of self-determination. Until very recently the Taiwanese people were slaves of emperors named Chiang Kaishek and Chiang Chingkuo. But not anymore. The laws and policies of Taiwan are now being determined by officials chosen in free elections. By their own blood and sweat over the last several decades, the Taiwanese people have won the right of self-determination and are now free.
If the Taiwanese people want to continue living as free men then they must protect and further develop the hard-won right of self-determination.
The greatest tasks facing Taiwan today are to be officially recognized as an independent state equal to other countries of the world and to be admitted to the international community.
The international community makes agreements in various fields based on national units. That is to say, a group’s rights of self-determination are exercised in the international community with nations as component units.
If a country is unable to participate in an international agreement affecting its interests, that country is not free and it does not possess a full right of self-determination. Such a country is not a full-fledged independent state with perfect sovereignty even if it is an independent entity.
This is exactly the case with Taiwan: Taiwan has achieved economic prosperity and has succeeded in democratizing its polity. So why is Taiwan denied participation in the international community as a full-fledged independent state?
Because Taiwan’s national sovereignty is imperfect. The reason is immediately clear when one looks at the map of the Republic of China. It includes the territory of the People’s Republic of China and that of the Mongolian nation. To be recognized as a sovereign state, an indispensable precondition is that the government effectively rules the country. It is a basic principle of international law that a country which does not govern at least the main part of its national territory will not be recognized as a sovereign state.
In the international community, recognition of the right to independence and the right to equality is predicated on recognition as a sovereign state. The right to independence is the right to be recognized as a full-fledged independent nation, eligible to join the international community as such. The right to equality is the right to be treated as an equal independent state regardless of the size of the country.
The Kuomintang regime demands the recognition of the rights to independence and equality for the Republic of China (ROC) and admission to the United Nations and other international organizations since ROC is a sovereign state. But the ROC government does not rule any part of the Chinese mainland. The Republic of China governs only a small part of its official territory. It is logical that the international community does not recognize ROC as a sovereign state since it effectively controls only a small part of the country.
The ROC regime blames China for its inability to join the international community. But this is merely an excuse.
The international community is not so devoid of common sense that it will keep ignoring a basic principle of international law. Once Taiwan meets sufficient conditions of a sovereign state under international law, the international community will accept Taiwan.
It is the ROC regime itself which is excluding Taiwan from the international community. Witness the August 1992 resolution of National Unification Committee, Office of the President: “The sovereignty of the Republic of China extends to all of the Chinese mainland.” This is tantamount to proclaiming to the world “the Republic of China is not a sovereign state.” To be accepted into the international community, Taiwan needs to discard such nonsensical fiction. Haven’t the leaders of the KMT regime been emphasizing “the Republic of China in Taiwan” recently? What’s needed is to stipulate this in law.
The Republic of China will fully satisfy the prerequisite of a sovereign state by legally stipulating that “the territory of the Republic of China is the region presently being governed by the government of the Republic of China.”
Even then the name Republic of China will obstruct its admission to the international community since it includes the word China. This is because most nations of the world have declared “non-recognition of two Chinas.” But this problem can be solved by merely changing the country’s name. There wasn’t any problem with the international community when Ceylon changed its name to Sri Lanka or when Burma became Myanmar.
What is important is the establishment of territory based on reality. If that is done, the international community will most likely be inclined to accept Taiwan with the condition that its state name be changed. At that time few people in Taiwan will say “to preserve the name of the state we would rather forfeit admission to the international community. “
The problem of assuring Taiwan’s security will be virtually solved once Taiwan is admitted into the international community as an independent nation, a peer of the countries of the world, because unilateral use of force against a nation, which is recognized as an independent state by the international community, is an act of aggression subject to condemnation and sanction by the international community.
The people of Taiwan have won the right of self-determination through their own efforts, but Taiwan does not yet have the right of self-determination as a full-fledged country. In order for Taiwan to win the right of self-determination as a nation equal to other countries of the world, the right of self-determination possessed by each individual resident of Taiwan must be exercised wisely.
At present, the most essential task for Taiwan is to establish a territorial boundary which conforms to reality as soon as possible. It is most important for the people of Taiwan to pool their strengths and make every effort to that end.
#BlackPantherHistoryMonth Three Community Freedom Fighters take on Elite DPD Stress Police Squad & Dope Dealers That Terrorized Amerikan Afrikan Communities
On December 4, 1972, three young Black men engaged in a shootout with four white STRESS officers during a murky encounter that took place outside a dope house. The threesome–Mark Bethune, John Boyd, and Hayward Brown–were –ages 18, 22, 23, depending on the perspective, either activists dedicated to fighting the narcotics trade in their community or vigilantes taking the law into their own hands because the police would not.
They respectively–became prominent in the community as avowed enemies of street dealers and narcotics criminals. In a 1973 interview (gallery below left), Hayward Brown explained that he had grown up in a tough neighborhood and seen several of his good friends succumb to heroin addiction, and even briefly experimented with the drug himself, before he decided to team up with his cousin John Boyd, a Vietnam War veteran, and “make some moves on the dope man.” Brown expressed frustration that “as soon as you got rid of one dope house there was another one” and also described DPD harassment of them for their efforts. Eventually he and Boyd teamed up with Mark Bethune, another anti-narcotics crusader who had reportedly received weapons training from the Black Panthers and the Republic of New Africa, a black nationalist organization based in Detroit.
Mark Igbo Bethune, the youngest of eleven children, had moved into a YMCA when he was 14, later joining the Black Panthers. His nickname was Igbo, “after the African tribe,” recalled the Rev. Dan Aldridge, a local black nationalist who served as a mentor to Bethune. “But he spelled it wrong, E-I-B-O. You know young people, man.” Bethune had become fed up with “all the talk and no action” when it came to Detroit’s heroin epidemic. “Mark told me that the only way to stop dope traffic was to rip off the big dealers,” Aldridge said. “I disagreed with him and argued vigorously against his vigilante plan. But Mark was his own man.” Aldridge had brought the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leader H. Rap Brown to town for a rally after the 1967 riot. Bethune became fixated on a poster of Brown hoisting a rifle in one hand and a black newborn baby in the other. THE PRICE OF DOPE, the poster read, IS DEATH.
After two shootouts with police four officers injured one dead Mark ” Igbo ” Bethune and John Boyd were killed in Atlanta and Haywood Brown was captured later acquitted on all charges.
In 1873 white Louisianians responded to Reconstruction policies with violence, resulting in the Colfax Massacre.
The Colfax Massacre of 1873, also known as the Colfax Riot, was the deadliest incident of racial and political violence during the Reconstruction era, claiming the lives of at least seventy and perhaps as many as 150 men. Nearly all of the victims were African American. The confrontation elevated the standing of white supremacist organizations in Louisiana and the South. The Colfax Massacre is remembered as a signal event in the establishment of the Jim Crow system, for it led to United States v. Cruikshank (1875), a Supreme Court decision that disallowed the federal prosecution of racially motivated crimes.
The Disputed Election of 1872
In an era characterized by extreme and repeated restructuring of election laws and practices, the elections of November 1872 produced disputed results and a divided government in Louisiana. The contest pitted Radical Republicans allied with President Ulysses Grant and the US Congress against a “Fusion Ticket” of conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans sympathetic to the cause of home rule in the South. Because neither party recognized the legitimacy of the other side’s claim to victory, two sets of officials laid claim to every office in the state. In Grant Parish, the establishment of dual governments led to a contest for control of the courthouse in Colfax, a rural outpost and Radical stronghold on the Red River.
The Radicals claimed the offices of sheriff and judge for party stalwarts Dan Shaw and R. C. Register. Fusionists insisted that voters had favored Christopher Columbus Nash for sheriff and Alfonse Cazabat for judge. Led by members of a disbanded black militia unit, the Radical faction gained control of the courthouse building and began to form a sheriff’s posse in defense of its position. White men of Grant and nearby parishes organized their own ranks, mustering volunteers from as far as one hundred miles away.
The Battle of the Colfax Courthouse
After weeks of mounting tension and incidents of violence, the confrontation at Colfax erupted on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873. Hundreds of black people, including women and children as well as dozens of men with guns, had gathered in the vicinity of the courthouse. A white force of 150 or more announced its intention to attack and made time for the safe passage of noncombatants from the site. Armed with a small cannon, mounted whites forced most of the defenders inside the courthouse and set fire to the building. As some of the men inside the courthouse tried to arrange for surrender, other participants fired their weapons. Two white men died, including James West Hadnot, thought to be the leader of the local white supremacist organization, the Knights of the White Camellia.
Enraged by the killings, white participants began firing at the crowd of black militants near the courthouse door. A general slaughter ensued, as the African Americans scattered and the white men rode off in pursuit. A large number of men emerged from the burning courthouse to be detained as prisoners on a site nearby.
The Massacre
Late in the evening, white participants began to dispute the wisdom of releasing their black prisoners, as members of families drew close to the courthouse site. Led by the sons of James Hadnot, a group of militants proceeded to execute their captives. Members of the prisoners’ families served as eyewitnesses to the killings, most of which were shots to the head. A white participant estimated the total number of victims to be forty-eight, but a few survived to testify against the perpetrators in court proceedings.
United States v. Cruikshank
State officials investigated the scene of the violence and assisted in the burial of fifty-nine bodies. The US attorney in New Orleans, James Beckwith, prepared an indictment and commissioned federal marshals to arrest suspected organizers on the white side. His authority derived from the Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871, which created a special code of federal criminal offenses to fight Klan violence. Hundreds of African American and white witnesses testified in the case United States v. Columbus Nash, later renamed United States v. Cruikshank, because the lead defendant remained at large.
The jury convicted three of the men on charges of conspiracy, but federal Circuit Court and Supreme Court rulings threw out the convictions and all charges and invalidated key sections of the Enforcement Acts. After 1875, the full responsibility for prosecuting racial and political crimes would rest with the states. Southern courts and elected officials increasingly favored white supremacy and turned a blind eye to Klan-style violence and repression.
Keith, LeeAnna. The Colfax Massacre: The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror, and the Death of Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Lane, Charles. The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2008.
Lemann, Nicholas. Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War.New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007.
Tademy, Lalita. Red River. New York: Warner Books, 2007.
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