Europe pressed on slavery reparations

by Dave Clark
21 mins ago

PARIS (AFP) – Historians and anti-racism campaigners are to urge the countries that oversaw and profited from the Atlantic slave trade to recognise it as a crime against humanity, opening the way for reparations.
Next week, activists are to send a letter to the leaders of Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain asking them to recognise the trade as an historic injustice a century and a half after it ended.
They have already convinced France to do so.
The European Memorial Foundation for the Slave Trade will launch the appeal at the French Senate on May 10, backed by the French historian Louis Sala-Molins and John Franklin from the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.
"There are several reasons for this, including its symbolic value, to restore the memory of this crime against humanity," Karfa Diallo, chairman of the foundation, told AFP.
"There's also a question, shall we say, of justice," he said.
The continuing problem of racism in a Europe that now has an ethnically diverse population that could be precisely traced back to the 16th and 17th century texts justifying and codifying slavery, he argued.
"Racism and discrimination persists in Europe. Young people of Caribbean and African ancestry are victims of it. And we know, historians have shown this, that racism was born in this story."
Diallo's group was founded in the former French slave port of Bordeaux in 1998.
It has found allies in other cities of Western Europe that grew wealthy on the profits of the trade, from Bristol in England to Porto in Portugal.
And now it wants other European states to follow France in recognising that the slave trade was not just a historical tragedy, but a criminal act that has enduring social consequences in Africa, the Caribbean and Europe's melting pot cities.
France passed a law in 2001 recognising slavery as a crime against humanity and the then president Jacques Chirac declared May 10 as a national day of remembrance for the victims of slavery.
"If we accept that it was a crime, then there should be reparations. All crimes deserve compensation for victims and punishment for perpetrators," argued Diallo.
"We'd like to see the creation of an international memorial fund, that would support a School of Memory. A fund managed by the United Nations," he said.
The school would teach the history of the slave trade to descendants of victims and slavers alike, he added.
While European nations now accept that slavery was an injustice, governments have fought shy of offering compensation. Some Europeans argue it is impossible to put a price on the suffering of slaves long dead and of regions of Africa that weren't then even states.
But Diallo argued that Germany's reparations of victims of the Nazi Holocaust had set one precedent, while some payouts have already been made in the case of slavery -- but to the slave owners, not their slaves.
"Europe owes a part of its capital to those that suffered," he said. "So far, only the slavers have been compensated. In all the colonies, when slavery was abolished, states decided to compensate.
"For as long as there are no reparations to the descendants of the victims, we remain in a situation of extraordinary injustice, which is that we paid off the slavers. That's hard to accept in the 21st century.



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“Diski dance” : une choré pour la coupe du monde

La danse vient des bidonvilles où en argot “diski” signifie “football”. 



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Nouvelles de la Guadeloupe

Claude Ribbe

Vendredi 23 Avril 2010

n se doute que je ne suis pas déplacé en Guadeloupe pour bronzer. De retour sur le terrain, j’ai eu le plaisir de me rappeler pourquoi les racistes me vouent une telle haine. J’aurais dû comprendre plus tôt que le 3 juillet 1974, le jour où un Guadeloupéen (d’origine) est enfin entré à l’École normale, était évidemment pour eux (les racistes) un jour de deuil. Mais quel plaisir de croiser les gens pour la dignité desquels je me bats. Il me semble, d’après les réflexions des plus jeunes qui me saluent, que ce combat a du sens et que ce sens est bien compris. En fait, mon travail ne consiste qu'à servir de contrepoids à ceux qui tirent l’outre-mer vers le bas pour mieux l’exploiter ou pour mieux permettre à leurs maîtres de l’exploiter. Nous les connaissons bien. Ici, en Guadeloupe, le malaise est partout perceptible. Le racisme ? Un tabou dont il n’est sans doute pas prudent de parler sur cette île. Sur les affiches des publicités, ceux qui représentent l’ « identité guadeloupéenne » sont toujours très clairs de peau. Les Békés, les « Syriens » (pour les non initiés : commerçants d’origine syro-libanaise), les élus, les « expats », ceux qui voyagent dans les classes supérieures d’Air France aux frais de la République, vont très bien. RAS. Les autres, les « noirs », la plèbe, le lumpen, n’ont pas l’air d’exister. Un euro le yaourt ? Les plus pauvres - c'est à dire à peu près tout le monde - se nourrissent de patates, de racines au chlordécone. Ils deviennent obèses à force d'avaler ce qu’ils peuvent et s’efforcent de croire qu’ils sont des Français à part entière. Ils sont calmes. Pour l’instant. Vingt cinq à trente pour cent de chômeurs. Six exportations pour cent importations de métropole. Tout va bien. Merci Paris. Pour résumer : malgré les luttes menées l’an passé, les gendarmes, les préfets et les magistrats sont toujours métropolitains, les hôpitaux psychiatriques certainement bien remplis et la vie toujours aussi chère. Une fois et demie à deux fois plus chère qu’en métropole, d’après mes vérifications ! Comment les gens d’ici peuvent-ils arriver à se nourrir ? Mystère et bouche cousue. Il n’y a que le rhum qui soit meilleur marché, ce qui est une incitation, pour ceux qui se posent trop de questions, à trouver, sinon des réponses, du moins une échappatoire. Ici, sous l’un des volcans les plus dangereux du monde, en pleine zone de risque sismique maximum, avec la dengue en prime (400 cas par semaine dans l’indifférence complète de la métropole), en attendant que ça pète (car si ça continue, c'est inévitable) la culture, c’est le luxe. Et le luxe, forcément, c’est cher. Un livre vendu à 19,90 euros à Paris – le mien par exemple - arrive en Guadeloupe avec un retard d’une semaine à un mois, augmenté de 3 euros qui représentent, paraît-il, le prix du transport. Une contradiction flagrante au principe du prix du livre unique imposé par la loi Lang. Et tout est comme ça. Il me semble que la moindre des choses serait que, pour les ouvrages ayant une valeur culturelle, et en particulier un intérêt pour le département d’outre mer concerné, l’État prenne au moins en charge le coût de ce transport de sorte que le principe du prix unique du livre et celui de la continuité territoriale soient respectés. N’est-ce pas Monsieur le ministre de la Culture ? Votre dernier voyage en Guadeloupe remonte à quand, au fait ? Le secteur du livre est très menacé en Guadeloupe comme dans tous les DOM. Je ne m’explique toujours pas que les radios nationales France Culture et France Musique ne soient pas diffusées en Guadeloupe, ce qui ne peut être un hasard. Sans doute, l’État et Radio France considèrent-ils que les Français d’outre mer son trop arriérés pour mériter de capter des radios dites « culturelles ». À moins que l’on craigne que les Guadeloupéens s'aperçoivent qu'on les méprise à Paris dans les sphères du pouvoir économique, politique et culturel; qu’un Finkielkraut dispose d’une tribune sur France Culture tandis que les Antillo-Guyanais (je ne parle pas des imbéciles dont le métier est de se prosterner devant le maître) y sont généralement traités comme des étrangers dérangeants et problématiques. En ce qui me concerne, non seulement, je n’y dispose pas de tribune, mais en dix ans, je crois n’avoir été invité qu’une seule fois sur France Culture. On y a cependant plus d’une fois cité mon nom pour m’insulter, en particulier au moment de la sortie du Crime de Napoléon. Ici pas de journaux, sauf France Antilles et les innombrables publications hippiques. Et Internet – pour celui qui ne fait que passer - c’est quand on peut. Le haut débit est plutôt moyen. La télévision reste allumée toute la journée. On y voit des séries lamentables achetées à bas prix où des héros et des héroïnes à la peau claire totalement décérébrés évoquent leur misère affective. Pour les mères, un seul espoir : avoir un enfant sportif. Le football. Normal, avec la sélection naturelle de l’esclavage, seuls les plus costauds ont survécu. Les plus révoltés, eux, sont passés à la casserole. Malgré tout, Guadeloupéens, on compte sur vous pour que ça change. En douceur, je l’espère.

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Noam Chomsky Has ‘Never Seen Anything Like This’

Posted on Apr 19, 2010

By Chris Hedges
Noam Chomsky is America’s greatest intellectual. His massive body of work, which includes nearly 100 books, has for decades deflated and exposed the lies of the power elite and the myths they perpetrate. Chomsky has done this despite being blacklisted by the commercial media, turned into a pariah by the academy and, by his own admission, being a pedantic and at times slightly boring speaker. He combines moral autonomy with rigorous scholarship, a remarkable grasp of detail and a searing intellect. He curtly dismisses our two-party system as a mirage orchestrated by the corporate state, excoriates the liberal intelligentsia for being fops and courtiers and describes the drivel of the commercial media as a form of “brainwashing.” And as our nation’s most prescient critic of unregulated capitalism, globalization and the poison of empire, he enters his 81st year warning us that we have little time left to save our anemic democracy.
“It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,” Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. “The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over.”
“The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen,” Chomsky went on. “Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”
“I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime,” Chomsky added. “I am old enough to remember the 1930s. My whole family was unemployed. There were far more desperate conditions than today. But it was hopeful. People had hope. The CIO was organizing. No one wants to say it anymore but the Communist Party was the spearhead for labor and civil rights organizing. Even things like giving my unemployed seamstress aunt a week in the country. It was a life. There is nothing like that now. The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies.”
“I listen to talk radio,” Chomsky said. “I don’t want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear the people calling in. They are like [suicide pilot] Joe Stack. What is happening to me? I have done all the right things. I am a God-fearing Christian. I work hard for my family. I have a gun. I believe in the values of the country and my life is collapsing.”
Chomsky has, more than any other American intellectual, charted the downward spiral of the American political and economic system, in works such as “On Power and Ideology: The Managua Lectures,” “Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture,” “A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor and the Standards of the West,” “Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky,” “Manufacturing Consent” and “Letters From Lexington: Reflections on Propaganda.” He reminds us that genuine intellectual inquiry is always subversive. It challenges cultural and political assumptions. It critiques structures. It is relentlessly self-critical. It implodes the self-indulgent myths and stereotypes we use to elevate ourselves and ignore our complicity in acts of violence and oppression. And it makes the powerful, as well as their liberal apologists, deeply uncomfortable.
Chomsky reserves his fiercest venom for the liberal elite in the press, the universities and the political system who serve as a smoke screen for the cruelty of unchecked capitalism and imperial war. He exposes their moral and intellectual posturing as a fraud. And this is why Chomsky is hated, and perhaps feared, more among liberal elites than among the right wing he also excoriates. When Christopher Hitchens decided to become a windup doll for the Bush administration after the attacks of 9/11, one of the first things he did was write a vicious article attacking Chomsky. Hitchens, unlike most of those he served, knew which intellectual in America mattered. [Editor’s note: To see some of the articles in the 2001 exchanges between Hitchens and Chomsky, click here, here, hereand here.]
“I don’t bother writing about Fox News,” Chomsky said. “It is too easy. What I talk about are the liberal intellectuals, the ones who portray themselves and perceive themselves as challenging power, as courageous, as standing up for truth and justice. They are basically the guardians of the faith. They set the limits. They tell us how far we can go. They say, ‘Look how courageous I am.’ But do not go one millimeter beyond that. At least for the educated sectors, they are the most dangerous in supporting power.”
Chomsky, because he steps outside of every group and eschews all ideologies, has been crucial to American discourse for decades, from his work on the Vietnam War to his criticisms of the Obama administration. He stubbornly maintains his position as an iconoclast, one who distrusts power in any form.
“Most intellectuals have a self-understanding of themselves as the conscience of humanity,” said the Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein. “They revel in and admire someone like Vaclav Havel. Chomsky is contemptuous of Havel. Chomsky embraces the Julien Benda view of the world. There are two sets of principles. They are the principles of power and privilege and the principles of truth and justice. If you pursue truth and justice it will always mean a diminution of power and privilege. If you pursue power and privilege it will always be at the expense of truth and justice. Benda says that the credo of any true intellectual has to be, as Christ said, ‘my kingdom is not of this world.’ Chomsky exposes the pretenses of those who claim to be the bearers of truth and justice. He shows that in fact these intellectuals are the bearers of power and privilege and all the evil that attends it.”
“Some of Chomsky’s books will consist of things like analyzing the misrepresentations of the Arias plan in Central America, and he will devote 200 pages to it,” Finkelstein said. “And two years later, who will have heard of Oscar Arias? It causes you to wonder would Chomsky have been wiser to write things on a grander scale, things with a more enduring quality so that you read them forty or sixty years later. This is what Russell did in books like ‘Marriage and Morals.’ Can you even read any longer what Chomsky wrote on Vietnam and Central America? The answer has to often be no. This tells you something about him. He is not writing for ego. If he were writing for ego he would have written in a grand style that would have buttressed his legacy. He is writing because he wants to effect political change. He cares about the lives of people and there the details count. He is trying to refute the daily lies spewed out by the establishment media. He could have devoted his time to writing philosophical treatises that would have endured like Kant or Russell. But he invested in the tiny details which make a difference to win a political battle.”
“I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions,” Chomsky said when asked about his goals. “Don’t take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can’t. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself. There is plenty of information. You have got to learn how to judge, evaluate and compare it with other things. You have to take some things on trust or you can’t survive. But if there is something significant and important don’t take it on trust. As soon as you read anything that is anonymous you should immediately distrust it. If you read in the newspapers that Iran is defying the international community, ask who is the international community? India is opposed to sanctions. China is opposed to sanctions. Brazil is opposed to sanctions. The Non-Aligned Movement is vigorously opposed to sanctions and has been for years. Who is the international community? It is Washington and anyone who happens to agree with it. You can figure that out, but you have to do work. It is the same on issue after issue.”
Chomsky’s courage to speak on behalf of those, such as the Palestinians, whose suffering is often minimized or ignored in mass culture, holds up the possibility of the moral life. And, perhaps even more than his scholarship, his example of intellectual and moral independence sustains all who defy the cant of the crowd to speak the truth.
“I cannot tell you how many people, myself included, and this is not hyperbole, whose lives were changed by him,” said Finkelstein, who has been driven out of several university posts for his intellectual courage and independence. “Were it not for Chomsky I would have long ago succumbed. I was beaten and battered in my professional life. It was only the knowledge that one of the greatest minds in human history has faith in me that compensates for this constant, relentless and vicious battering. There are many people who are considered nonentities, the so-called little people of this world, who suddenly get an e-mail from Noam Chomsky. It breathes new life into you. Chomsky has stirred many, many people to realize a level of their potential that would forever be lost.”

AP / Hussein Malla

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Dorothy Height, Dorothy Height activist, dies at 98

By BEN EVANS, Associated Press Writer1 hr 7 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Dorothy Height, the leading female voice of the 1960s civil rights movement and a participant in historic marches with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, died Tuesday. She was 98.

Height, whose activism on behalf of women and minorities dated to the New Deal, led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years. She continued actively speaking out into her 90s, often getting rousing ovations at events around Washington, where she was immediately recognized by the bright, colorful hats she almost always wore.

She died at Howard University Hospital, where she had been in serious condition for weeks.

In a statement, President Barack Obama called her "the godmother of the civil rights movement" and a hero to Americans.

"Dr. Height devoted her life to those struggling for equality ... and served as the only woman at the highest level of the Civil Rights Movement — witnessing every march and milestone along the way," Obama said.

It was the second death of a major civil rights figure in less than a week. Benjamin L. Hooks, the former longtime head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, died Thursday in Memphis at 85.

As a teenager, Height marched in New York's Times Square shouting, "Stop the lynching." In the 1950s and 1960s, she was the leading woman helping King and other activists orchestrate the civil rights movement, often reminding the men heading the movement not to underestimate their women counterparts.

One of Height's sayings was, "If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time." She liked to quote 19th century abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said that the three effective ways to fight for justice are to "agitate, agitate, agitate."

Height was on the platform at the Lincoln Memorial, sitting only a few feet from King, when he gave his famous "I have a dream" speech at the March on Washingtonin 1963.

"He spoke longer than he was supposed to speak," Height recalled in a 1997 Associated Press interview. But after he was done, it was clear King's speech would echo for generations, she said, "because it gripped everybody."

She lamented that the feeling of unity created by the 1963 march had faded, and that the civil rights movement of the 1990s was on the defensive and many black families were still not economically secure.

"We have come a long way, but too many people are not better off," she said. "This is my life's work. It is NOT a job."

When Obama won the presidential election in November 2008, Height told Washington TV station WTTG that she was overwhelmed with emotion.

"People ask me, did I ever dream it would happen, and I said, `If you didn't have the dream, you couldn't have worked on it," she said.

Height became president of the National Council of Negro Women in 1957 and held the post until 1997, when she was 85. She remained chairman of the group.

She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 from President Bill Clinton.

To celebrate Height's 90th birthday in March 2002, friends and supporters raised $5 million to enable her organization to pay off the mortgage on its Washington headquarters. The donors included Oprah Winfrey and Don King.

Height was born in Richmond, Va., and the family moved to the Pittsburgh area when she was four. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees from New York University and did postgraduate work at Columbia University and the New York School of Social Work. (She had been turned away by Barnard College because it already had its quota of two black women.)

In 1937, while she was working at the Harlem YWCA, Height met famed educator Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder of the National Council of Negro Women, andfirst lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who had come to speak at a meeting of Bethune's organization. Height eventually rose to leadership roles in both the council and the YWCA.

The late activist C. DeLores Tucker once called Height an icon to all African-American women.

"I call Rosa Parks the mother of the civil rights movement," Tucker said in 1997. "Dorothy Height is the queen."

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