Human Rights

Our Human Rights Day is on March 21st. Will there be plain truths spoken on that day, or only platitudes? The principle violator of human rights in the world is the USA. Consequently, the USA uses the “Big Lie” technique, loudly accusing others in a bullying tone, of the very crimes they are themselves committing all the time. Now, linked below in an interview between US writers Tom Engelhardt and Mark Danner, we have a picture drawn from inside the USA. They describe the general deterioration of their country towards even more atrocious, arbitrary, coercive violence. Issa Shivji is a great anti-Imperialist veteran of Dar-es-Salaam University and a living link with the likes of Walter Rodney and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere. In a 2003 text long used by the CU Shivji wrote: “The independence and liberation struggles for self-determination, beginning in the post-world war period, were eminently a struggle for democracy”. He meant that the struggle for democracy is ours (as is the struggle for human rights). The Imperialists have nothing at all to teach us about democracy (or human rights). Shivji is coming to South Africa and will speak at Wits on March 6th. On the 7th he will speak in Pretoria on “National Autonomous Development”, which sounds like a long name for the good old idea of “Independence” (in Kiswahili: Uhuru!). See link. All such ideas are contested in a class-divided society. IFAS is the Institut Francais d’Afrique du Sud (French Institute for South Africa). Are the French also Imperialists? Well, yes, frankly, they are. And like the US Imperialists, they want to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. They are sponsoring an event on a topic (“effective states”) not far removed from Shivji’s. In 2005 we used to have a “combat team” of Communist debaters. It’s time they got back to work. See link below. I don’t know if the Johannesburg YCL met yesterday to study Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech as scheduled. According to the same schedule, they should assemble at the SATAWU offices, 13th floor, 29 Kerk Street, between Harrison and Loveday, next Wednesday, March 8th at about 17h00, to discuss Engels’ “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific” – linked below. Links: State of Exception, Mark Danner, Tomdispatch Interview (7011 words) IERI Shivji invite, National Autonomous Development, Pretoria Mar 7, 09h00 (PDF) IFAS, Building Effective States, 09h00 Mar 8, Wits (Notice) Engels, Socialism Utopian & Scientific, Compilation (16, 229 words)